Being the Church (pt 1) Love and Liturgy on Fire

And I would invite the rest of us to take our Bible and go to Acts, chapter one.

We are in the home stretch of our making much of Jesus teaching series, joining God's unstoppable mission for the church.

And let me just take a moment to once again, as I said at the beginning of this series, thank the pastors and elders of Redeemer Church here in Fremont for allowing me the great privilege of being invited to teach this sermon series, to teach through this very, very pivotal and important series in your life together as a church and in our life together as a church, as we're planting Redeemer Church of St Jose For those of you who are our guests, my name is Ian and I am a church planting partner with Redeemer Church here in the Tri-Cities area and I will be a part of the founding leadership team of the Redeemer Church in St Jose and we are just so grateful to be in this together and I am grateful to have the opportunity to teach this particular sermon series.

And this morning we find ourselves in the book of Acts two sermons left in this series and, as we've considered the mission of God and our participation in God's mission, as we've considered the great and hopeful reality that Jesus will build his church, and nothing can stop it.

As we consider the invitation of Jesus to join him in the harvest through the ministry of teaching, proclaiming and healing in his name, what we understand is that, as he calls us into mission, as he calls us to join him in the glorious harvest, he joins us not simply to do it as individuals.

He calls us to do it as his church, and so there's nothing more significant.

There's no better way, in my understanding as a hack misciologist, than to close out this series highlighting the teaching of God's word that points to the grand reality that God does not just have individuals who have been sent on mission, but he has a church to accomplish his mission.

Therefore, there's nothing more important than for us to understand what it means to be the church, and so that is the topic we're going to look at the next two Lord's days, lord willing, on being the church, and so I invite you now to Acts, chapter one, and I'll be reading verses six through 11.

Let us hear God's word.

So, when they had come together, they asked him Lord, will you, at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel?

He said to them it is not for you to know times or seasons that the father has 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 and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.

And while they were gazing into the heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

Let me direct your attention back to verse eight.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses.

That is God's word.

May he add his blessing to his reading and preaching by the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Many years ago, after a wonderful resurrection Sunday, our family decided to call the next day Resurrection Monday.

And that's not because we wanted to continue the celebration of Easter Sunday the next day at home.

It's because our backyard needed to be raised from the dead, and so we gave a day, that early spring, to getting our backyard, particularly our garden beds, a back in shape.

And one of the projects I gave to our kids they were young at this time was to take the soil in the garden boxes that I had just turned over with a shovel.

They were.

I asked them to till that soil, and so they each had a hand shovel and a hand rake ready to go, and as they put themselves to the task, not a single one of them was doing exactly what I told them to do.

So here's Payson, our oldest at the time.

He's shoveling and finds a bug and just gets fixated on this bug.

Piper, she's the gentle one, she's taking the rake and she's like petting the dirt, like it's a puppy.

And then Silas, as you can imagine, is just taking the dirt, just flipping it all over the place.

It's going everywhere.

And so as I'm watching this go on, I interrupt them and say guys, that's not what I was talking about.

And then I showed them again and helped them understand how to actually do what I asked them to do.

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus looks down on his church and sees what we're doing and says I really love you, but that's not what I was talking about.

I really love you, but that's not what I said to do.

This is, in essence, what Jesus says to the churches in the book of Revelation and Revelation, chapter two and Revelation three.

He's among the churches, he affirms the churches, he draws attention to the way that the churches are doing well, but then he draws attention to the ways in which the churches need to grow and change.

What's the in essence saying?

I love you, but that's not what I was talking about.

Why does Jesus do this?

Why does Jesus evaluate and re-instruct his church?

Well, because it's his church.

Psalm 100 says it emphatically that we are his people and the sheep of his pastor.

What did Jesus promise to do?

Not to build our dreams, not to build our visions, not to make effective our amazing strategies.

What did Jesus say?

He said I will build my church.

We belong to Jesus, we are his, we are his precious possession and, more than anything, what we need for Jesus to do is tell us who we are, what we're supposed to be doing and how we're supposed to be doing it and, from time to time, for him to interrupt our plans and say not that this.

Let's never forget it.

We are his church Redeemer, you are his church, and being his church is not only a great privilege.

Being his church is, in fact, a great responsibility, and so we need to be what Jesus wants us to be and we need to do what Jesus wants us to do.

And the way we go about that is listening closely, attentively, again and again and again, to what he says being the church is all about.

So if we are going to make much of Jesus together in the Bay Area, then we need to be the church that Jesus envisioned us to be.

So that sounds great.

How do we do that?

How do we measure that?

How do we evaluate whether or not our way of quote unquote doing church lines up ultimately with Jesus' vision for being the church?

Here's what we do we go to Jesus.

We go to Jesus, just as we've been looking at Jesus' example about what it means to join him on mission by following his example.

He's more than an example.

He's not less than an example.

He teaches us, through his example, what it looks like to join him in gathering the harvest.

That's where we've been the last couple weeks.

But, as we asked the question, what's it look like to be the church.

What's it look like to be faithful to Jesus' vision for being his people, called and collected and sent on mission with the gospel?

Well, the answer is, jesus tells us Now.

All Scripture is profitable toward this end.

Let me make that clear.

From cover to cover, genesis to Revelation, god's Word reveals to us what it looks like to faithfully be His people on earth as it is in heaven.

But the book of Acts, the book of Acts, helps us especially.

As we look at the book of Acts, we see a clear, stunning, compelling answer to the question what's it look like to be the church?

You see, the epistles primarily function to tell us, to show us and tell us how the church should believe.

But it is the book of Acts, in this beautiful narrative, which is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, that tells us how the church should behave.

Both are important.

What the church believes, how the church behaves, organizes itself to make much of Jesus is significant, and there's no book of the Bible that helps us towards that glorious end like the book of Acts.

The book of Acts gives us a unique vantage point to see what it looks like to be the church.

The book of Acts picks up where the Gospel of Luke left off.

It's the same author, and the Gospel of Luke is basically saying this here are the highlights of who Jesus is and what Jesus did on mission to redeem humanity, while the book of Acts, as it picks up, reveals the highlights of what Jesus wants His church to be and what he wants His church to do as they continue His mission until he returns.

So Luke closes out his Gospel with these words straight from the mouth of Jesus, and thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day, rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things and behold, I am sending the promise of my father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

The book of Acts picks up where Luke left off at the end of this Gospel, and the book of Acts opens up exactly how Luke closes with very similar instructions, straight from the mouth of Jesus.

See if this sounds familiar Acts 1-6 again.

So when they, that's the 120 disciples had come together, they asked Him Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel.

And he said to them it is not for you to know times or seasons, that the Father is 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 and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

Sound familiar?

The book of Acts picks up exactly the way the Gospel of Luke closes, directing our attention to the fact that Jesus has very clear instructions for His church, very clear instructions for who we are, what we're supposed to be doing and how we can get it done.

And so I find it interesting that Jesus, as the master teacher, here in Acts, chapter 1, the disciples ask a question, and Jesus' answer to that question is that's not the question you were supposed to ask.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

Let me answer the question you should have asked.

What they should be asking is not when will you restore the kingdom to Israel?

The question they should be asking is since you were crucified and raised from the dead and are about to ascend and will one day return, what do you want us to do until you come back?

And so what we have in verse 8 is Jesus giving the answer to the question they should have asked, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and at the end of the earth.

This sermon today and, lord willing, next Sunday's sermon, is not a deep dive, because this is, this is.

There's some deep, weighty stuff here.

What I'm hoping to do for you these next two weeks is create some categories that we want to function in if we truly want to be the church as Jesus envisioned.

And here's a category that's so significant to me that I want to pass on to you, and it's this in the book of Acts, jesus gives us his vision for being the church in between the time of his ascension and return.

What are we supposed to do, how are we supposed to view ourselves and how are we supposed to get it done?

Jesus shows us, tells us and then shows us in the book of Acts.

In fact, right here in Acts 1, verse 8, jesus encapsulates who we are, what we're supposed to be doing and how we're going to get it done.

Acts 1:8

And then what we see in the rest of the book of Acts is what it looked like for the first century Christians to execute Christ's vision for being the church.

In short, the book of Acts gives us a unique vantage point to see what it looks like to be the church as Christ envisioned it and the way he wants his church to be and how he wants his church to function until he returns and makes all things new.

And here's what I think we see, and this is my language, not Bible language, but here's what I think we see.

I think we see love and liturgy on fire.

We see love.

We see a church that is deeply aware that they are so incredibly loved by Jesus and this love that they've been shown by their crucified and resurrected and soon ascended Lord overflows into lives devoted to loving God, back to loving one another and to loving the world in his name.

They never get over the fact this church in Jerusalem and later on the other example, church in Acts 13, the church in Antioch they never get over how loved they are by Jesus and it drives everything.

But we also see liturgy.

A life of love doesn't happen by accident.

There's a commitment to an intentional order and rhythm of life that is conducive to being agents of God's loving kingdom, and liturgy, if you will, that provides structure and order to live out lives of devotion, loving God, loving one another and loving the world.

The church in Acts is organized.

They've organized their lives with a liturgy that's supporting their devotion to being a community of love in Jesus' name.

So if they're going to be the church, it's not going to be by accident.

So they have leaders that help them organize and structure their lives together, day by day.

Even we're going to see next week to live out lives of devotion to God, to one another and to the world.

So we see love, we see liturgy, but we also see fire.

What makes all of this possible is not just some self-actualized human devotion to a liturgical life of love.

All right.

So what Jesus wants, we're going to do it.

See, what makes all of this possible is the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus will go away in the clouds in just a few moments.

He will leave them, but, church, he doesn't leave them, he doesn't leave us alone.

He asked the Father to send the promise of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes and mediates the presence of Christ with the church, and he continues to do so until Jesus returns and makes all things new.

That's why he instructs them.

Wait.

Don't rush off in the mission.

Don't rush off and try to get it done.

Wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon you with the white, hot power of heaven, because only with the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit can this mission be accomplished.

Only with the vibrant, active, empowering presence of the Holy Spirit can the liturgical life of love not only be lived out but also change the world in Jesus' name.

So, putting this all together, the book of Acts shows us that being the church looks like love and lyrical on fire.

That's how the world was changed in the first century and I would argue, that's how the world continues to be changed today.

You want to see the kingdom come to the bay, do you?

Do you want to see God's kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven?

Do you want to see, parish by parish, transformed by the reign of Jesus?

Do you want to see your life continue to make a difference in the lives of others?

Do you want to see our church and other churches like ours make a dent in the significant gospel needs of the bay area?

Do you want to see that it is going to require love and liturgy on fire?

So today I wanna consider that love on fire and then, lord Willow, next week, consider that liturgy on fire, how they organized their lives to be at the church.

So let's begin with.

After this lengthy introduction.

I'm trying to create categories.

Let's begin by getting our heads and hearts around Jesus' vision for the church as it is encapsulated in Acts 1-8.

This isn't everything there is to say about Jesus' vision for the church, but oh, it's a beautiful summary.

I love summary summaries help me.

I get lost in lots of words, but when there's like a short, succinct description of something, oh, that helps a guy like me, does it help you?

It helps me.

That's what Jesus does in Acts 1-8.

He gives us the succinct summary of what it looks like to be the church.

So let me direct your attention to four critical elements of being the church, and here they are their gospel, community, mission and power.

And when all these elements are operating together, here's what you have.

You have a spirit-empowered, gospel-saturated community of love on mission.

Or, in short, you have love on fire.

And that's the big idea I want us to consider this morning.

Jesus calls us to be a spirit-empowered, gospel-saturated community of love on mission.

That's what it looks like to be the church, four critical elements.

Let's look at the first one gospel.

The church is built on the good news of Jesus' love for his people and, like I said, we're just going to create a category.

We will simply scratch the surface.

In verse eight, jesus looks these men and women in the eyes, these men and women who have been following him now most for three and a half years, the ones who went with him through it all.

They heard him teach with authority.

They saw him work miracles supernaturally.

They watched him suffer and die in agony.

They saw him rise from the dead victoriously.

They saw it all.

They were with him.

They saw it, they heard it, they witnessed it, they experienced it.

And Jesus is looking at them.

You gotta understand that.

They're glued to his face.

What's he going to say?

Here's what he says you are my witnesses.

Now, I can only imagine how this landed on their hearts.

I can't help but wonder how that small two-letter word, my, fell upon their hearts.

Oh, you see, this is such a small word and it's a first person possessive pronoun.

How significant is the word my?

It's very significant.

Church.

Jesus is looking at these people and he's saying you are mine, you're mine.

Look what we've been through together.

You're mine.

You've heard me teach you.

You've heard me.

You've watched me perform miracles.

You saw me in agony, you saw me die, you saw me suffer, you saw me rise.

You're with me and here's why you are mine.

We can gloss over words so quickly in our English translations of the Bible and miss the nuance and miss the significance.

This might seem small, but I think it's there.

Jesus owns his people personally.

You're mine.

This isn't a one-time occurrence.

All throughout the scripture there's this beautiful language that describes, that accentuates Jesus' love for his people by owning them as his own.

Jesus is the shepherd and we are his sheep.

Jesus is the cornerstone and we are his building.

Jesus is the head and we are his body.

Jesus is the elder brother and we are his family, brothers and sisters.

Jesus is the bridegroom and we are his bride.

Jesus is the king and we are his subjects, and this is good news.

This is gospel.

See, what all these pictures ultimately point to is how eager Jesus is to claim us as his own, even though there was a time in our lives where we wanted nothing to do with him.

In other words, the church is built, this whole operating system that Jesus is laying out here, in this encapsulation of what it means to be the church, is deeply rooted on a relationship, and this relationship is significant.

A relationship where Jesus belongs, that.

We belong to Jesus and Jesus belongs to us.

The church is built on the good news that Jesus loves us, that he was sent for us, that he saves us, that he sanctifies us, that he satisfies us, that he sends us, that he sustains us to the end.

Why?

Because God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.

Being the church.

We're talking about being the church.

Being the church starts with embracing our identity as those whom Jesus claims as his own.

We're his, we are his church.

We are those who identify with the one who loves us and gave himself for us, who lived and died and rose and ascended and reigns and ever lives above to make intercession for who Us?

You get that Right now, jesus is owning us before the Father's throne.

Right now, this very moment, we've some of us, have limped into this auditorium to offer our worship to God and we don't feel worthy, we don't feel significant, we feel stale, maybe even we feel unworthy to be here.

But Jesus says to the Father they may be weak, they may be small in number, they may stumble and struggle and trip and fall.

But, father, they're mine and I love them and I gave myself for them.

These are my people and I am their God.

That means everything being the church begins there that we wouldn't be the church If Jesus didn't gladly own us by leaving heaven and coming to earth to claim us through the merits of his life, death and resurrection.

Church.

If we want to be the church, if we want to be like them, we must never get over that good news Gospel.

The first critical element of being the church is gospel.

The church is built on the good news that Jesus loves us.

Second critical element to being the church community.

The church is a family of disciples who love to follow Jesus together.

One thing that becomes clear as we look at the church in the book of Acts is that they were far from perfect and they were far from all being the same.

But, man, they were committed to one another.

But you also receive power.

In verse eight, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses, we move from a two letter word to a three letter word.

See, we're progressing, you.

It's used three times in verse eight, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses.

That's a second person plural pronoun.

This simply means that Jesus is directing these words to a group of people.

A group of people, and that is the church, a bunch of groupies following Jesus.

The church is a group of disciples brought together in community by Jesus.

See, when we see the church in the book of Acts, even when we see the little motley crew that's following Jesus around during his earthly ministry, when you look at them and how different they are, one might say how in the world did they get together?

Fishermen and zealots and tax collectors and a lying, betraying, conniving thief, how did they all come together?

There were so many things that should have kept them apart, but there was one thing that brought them together and kept them from killing one another.

Who was it?

Jesus.

And so here's what we know about this group this you is a group of people who've been brought together not because they formed the world's greatest affinity group, not because they have all the same hobbies, all the same vocations, all the same backgrounds, all the same situations of life that they're coming out of.

They've come together because they're committed to something significant.

It's Jesus.

It's Jesus.

So you want to be the church.

Part of being the church is making sure that we do not have a standard of all being the same.

There's not a sameness in anything, almost anything, other than Jesus.

He's who brings us together.

In fact, there's a special word that's used in the New Testament, starting in chapter two, to describe that community.

It's Koinonia.

It's the word fellowship.

It's a shared life based on a common faith in Jesus.

This is their favorite word.

Yes, we are a church.

That's more of an organizational, macro level description of who we are, but in essence, what we are, we're a fellowship.

We are people who've been brought together to enjoy life with Jesus.

That's critical.

This is Jesus' vision for the church.

And as you go through this chapter and I said we're not getting down into all the weeds after Jesus ascends, he tells them to wait for the Spirit to come.

And so they're.

They're all in this upper room in verse 15.

And we're told that there's 120 of them and it says they were all in one accord.

One accord, what's that mean?

One accord communicates mental, emotional, spiritual and relational closeness.

There's a one accordness to this group, there is a fellowship to this group, there's a tight knit community, a spiritual family, if you will, so much so that, as Paul instructs the church and Bob preached from this passage several weeks ago and I referred to it in a message several weeks ago as well In 1 Timothy, chapter five, he says that the church is the household of God.

It's a family.

So how do we treat each other?

Paul goes on in chapter five of 1 Timothy like treat the older men like fathers and the younger men like brothers, and the older women like mothers and the younger women like sisters, with all purity.

And if there's there are widows, you take care of them.

Why?

Because the church is a family.

It's a community that loves to follow Jesus together.

And so what?

This is the second of the critical elements of being the church as Jesus envisioned it.

We need to make sure that we never get over the gospel and we make sure that we never get over one another that God has chosen to put us in the same room.

We're all so different in so many ways.

There's only one reason why we all agree to be in this room together, under the same spiritual roof, in the same family.

His name is Jesus.

It's not politics, it's not sports.

It surely isn't sports?

Found myself in a very interesting conversation this week with some guys on my block.

For many of you who don't know me, our family recently moved here from Philadelphia, where I was born and raised.

I'm a die-hard Philadelphia sports fan and I may have flaunted it a little too much last season when I had my huge Eagles flag waving in the wind as we beat the Niners to go to the Super Bowl.

I found out this past week that I actually had neighbors on my block who were conspiring to do something with that flag.

I love it.

That doesn't bring us together.

It's not our politics, it's not our sports, it's not our hobbies, it's not our culture, it's not our ethnicity, it's not our food preferences, it's not our economy, our economic status, it's not our background, it's not our family.

Here's what brings us together, and this must be enough for us if we're going to be the church.

Here's what brings us together and makes us a force for the power of God that although we are diverse, we are united by Jesus.

It's a community, a community of love, that's rooted, built, grounded, founded, secure in the love of God in Christ Jesus.

And even Jesus hinted that this was his vision for the church.

Back in John 1335, after the Last Supper, he said by this will all people know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another?

Do you realize this?

The way we love each other, the way we care for each other, the way that we even choose to like each other when it's hard, the way that we choose to work out our problems, as a family often has to do, all of this contributes, jesus says, to the world, going wow, that gospel really is good news.

Look what it does to a group of diverse people who otherwise wouldn't be together.

This is who we are, redeemer.

We are a family of disciples who should love following Jesus together.

That's the second critical element.

The third mission the church is sent with the gospel to bear witness to their encounter with Jesus.

So Jesus makes a family out of his followers, built and founded on the love of God in Christ Jesus, and then he gives them an assignment.

He gives us an assignment.

Jesus says you will be my witnesses.

The mission of this gospel, saturated community of love, is summarized in one word witness.

Now, again, this isn't everything there is to say about mission, but it's an important summary statement about our mission.

A witness is someone who testifies to an event based on personal experience.

A witness is someone who says here's what happened.

And let me tell you my story of encountering what happened Back in 2004, almost 20 years ago.

This blew my mind as I was thinking about this in relationship to this text this week.

It was almost 20 years ago that I had this very surreal experience as a witness.

It seemed like it was a normal morning in the middle of the week and I was sitting at my dining room table at our first house in Philadelphia and I was preparing a sermon for that week and Rachel was in the kitchen and she was doing some things and she said hey, ian, this is weird.

Someone just parked behind our house in the alleyway.

Now, if you were familiar with the alleyway that I'm speaking of, you realize that that alleyway was kind of like your assigned parking spot.

You don't park there, right?

I mean, if you park in someone's alley spot, you're either very desperate or you want to get in a fight.

I mean, you just don't do that in Philly.

And so Rachel's like this is weird.

Someone's in your parking spot.

And I jokingly said well, you have to understand this.

Our house, that row house that we lived in, and that alleyway backed up right against the back wall of a Wells Fargo bank, and right next to that Wells Fargo bank is one of our favorite pizza shops that we've never gotten over and not lived in next to anymore.

Bentulis Greeks make amazing pizza, by the way.

And so Rachel's like someone's just parked behind our house and I just jokingly said because of the bank.

I said I hope they're not planning on robbing the bank.

I said that, rachel did.

I say that.

I said it.

Less than two minutes later, I hear a door slam, a car start up.

I jump out of my seat, go to my dining room window and as I get to the window, I see a guy jump into the back of that car with a bag of money.

I kid you not, these guys just robbed our bank.

Now, these weren't the brightest crooks because, I told you, at the end of our alleyway was a brick wall, 90 degree angle.

So these guys couldn't just jump in their car and take away.

They had to get in their car and very carefully and gingerly turn around that 90 degree angle to get out and to escape.

Well, while they were doing that.

I memorized their license plate and so I called 911 and I said you're not going to believe this.

I think I just witnessed a bank robbery.

Here's the license plate of the getaway car.

Thank you, sir, hold.

Within minutes you hear sirens all over the place and there is a SWAT team member at my front door.

And I walked out.

The front door stood by the SWAT car as I listened to them track down the car with the information that I provided from my eye witness.

Mind you and this is what the SWAT team member said You're not going to believe this, but most crooks are so dumb that they rob banks with their own cars and head back to their own houses.

And that's exactly what these bank robbers were doing.

So they caught them and I heard it happen on the radio with the information I provided.

Did I say that?

By the way?

I thought that was it.

Next, the SWAT captain shows up in his cruiser and says we want you to go down to the place where we've apprehended him so you can ID them.

I'm like what?

So I get in the front seat of the cruiser, go down to the scene where they apprehended the bank robbers and I ID them?

Did that?

Then I came back to the bank and I sat down with an FBI agent and told my story.

Did that?

Then they asked me if I needed to see a psychiatrist because I may have been traumatized from this event.

Didn't do that.

There was a.

There was a.

There was a in the newspaper the next day, bank robbers apprehended with the valuable testimony of an eye witness.

That was me.

What happened?

I witnessed something with my very own eyes and I was given an opportunity to share the story, and sharing that story made a difference.

That's what witnesses do.

They have an experience, they share the story of that experience, and then that experience makes a difference.

Here's what happened.

Let me tell you the story of how it happened and how it affected me.

Church this is how Jesus describes our assignment as a community of love on mission.

You are my witnesses, in other words, the disciples who were hearing this from Jesus' own mouth, had personally experienced the life, transforming reality Of the crucified and resurrected Lord, and now he is sending them to share that witness, to share that story.

You've encountered me.

Now go tell others about me.

See, witnessing is more than sharing the facts of the gospel.

Witnessing is sharing the facts of the gospel Plus our personal experience of encountering Christ.

There's a difference.

It's saying here's who Jesus is, here's the significance of his life, death and resurrection.

And let me tell you the story of how that made all the difference in my life.

That's a witness.

See, the gospel is about someone who has changed our lives.

It's about one who, not someone who just lived and died and rose from the dead, it's someone who lived for us, died for us, rose for us, and there was a time in our lives where we encountered the life transforming power of that good news.

And we've never been the same since.

And now we are witnesses that those truths of the gospel have transformed and continue to transform my, transform my very life.

That's a witness.

Being a witness is sharing the gospel Plus sharing our story of encountering the power of Jesus.

I love how the gospel of John this is more of a takeaway and spend some time meditating on this this next coming week.

I love how the gospel of John is packed with stories of people bearing witness to their life transforming encounters with Jesus.

In the opening of the gospel, andrew encounters Jesus and then shares his story with his brother.

We found the Messiah.

Philip encounters Jesus and then shares his story with his friend Nathaniel we have found him of whom Moses, in the law and the prophets, wrote.

The woman of the well and John, chapter 4, encounters Jesus and then she shares her story with the entire village.

John 4 · chapter mention

Come and see a man who told me everything I've ever done.

In John, chapter 9, the man born blind encounters Jesus and then shares his story with the religious leaders who didn't want to hear it.

John 9 · chapter mention

I was blind, but now I see.

Then you have Mary Magdalene, who encounters Jesus after his resurrection and then goes and shares her story with the disciples.

I have seen the Lord.

What's your story?

I didn't say.

What's the gospel?

I'm sure every single one of you could rattle off the gospel.

The gospel is the good news that the Father sent Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit to do for us what we couldn't do for ourselves.

He lived the life we could not live.

He died the death we deserve to die and he rose from the dead so that all who turn from their sin and trust in him will be forgiven all their sin, covered from all their shame, delivered from all their guilt and made God's blessed and beloved sons and daughters forever.

That's good news, my friends.

There's a day where that good news became good to you.

It began to change your life.

You have a story.

What's your story of encountering Jesus?

When's the last time you shared it?

Did the people around you, your brothers and sisters, do they know your story?

I want to encourage you Think about your story, when the gospel of Jesus Christ intersected with your life, made all the difference, and you've never been the same since.

We are His witnesses.

So being the church involves both sharing the truth of the gospel, the facts, and the facts matter big time.

But those facts are not just stale theological principles, those facts about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

When attended to by the Holy Spirit, they changed your life.

What's your story?

That one that happened for you.

You're a witness.

Being the church involves sharing both the truth of the gospel and the story of our life-changing encounter with him.

That's part of our mission as a family of disciples, and where the church plays a role is that there's a gospel, there's a story, and then you have a community that backs it up.

There are people who've seen your life change and have seen the difference Jesus has made, and we back up the story together, as a community.

We are sent into the Bay Area with this assignment.

We are a family who loves to be together, rooted in the love of God that's ours in Christ Jesus, to go share our story of encountering the Lord through the gospel.

This is part of our mission, redeemer, we are sent to be his witnesses, amen.

Final element and, briefly, power.

Let me just say this none of this is possible without the Holy Spirit.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and there's much to say here.

But when the Holy Spirit comes on the day of Pentecost, what the Holy Spirit does is enable ordinary disciples to live out lives of extraordinary love for the glory of God.

It's not just the apostles who receive the Holy Spirit, it's the whole church.

And if you're familiar with the story, you know what they did All 120 of them who were in the upper room.

They are filled with the empowering fire of the Holy Spirit and then they all together go out into the streets of Jerusalem and they begin to witness.

They begin to testify.

And why did they need the Holy Spirit's power?

If you're familiar with the story, we are told that they were enabled by the Spirit to speak in known languages that they didn't know.

Why was that necessary?

We're told that there were Jews from all over the world in Jerusalem for the Pentecost Festival and they all spoke different languages, which means that there would have been an obstacle to sharing the story.

There would have been an obstacle to sharing the gospel, and what did the Holy Spirit do?

The Holy Spirit removed the obstacle so the mission could go forward.

And I think oftentimes this text in particular we get caught up with the question well, does the Holy Spirit still enable people to speak in tongues they didn't know?

That's a worthy subject, but what's more important is this when the Holy Spirit comes, he removes every obstacle that would prevent the mission from going forward.

Here's the broad takeaway we need the Spirit to do what we're called to do, because there are many obstacles.

If we need to speak in a language we don't know, the Spirit can handle that.

If we need courage to overcome our fears, the Spirit can handle that.

If we need resources we don't have, the Spirit can overcome that.

If we have questions that people ask us that we don't know how to answer, the Spirit can help us with that.

If we need a place to gather and I could tell the story of how this situation opened up for us to be meeting in St Jose.

The Holy Spirit directed the conversation and provided for that.

Over and over again.

Church, when we find ourselves in a place where there seems to be an obstacle, whether internal or external, whether material or immaterial it would be find ourselves in a place where it seems like it's going to be hard for the mission to go forward because of that obstacle.

Trust me, believe me, believe the Bible.

The Holy Spirit can handle that.

Later on, in Acts, chapter 4, the church is persecuted for being a community of love on mission.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

The very same leaders who put Jesus on the cross are now telling them to shut up.

But they know they can't shut up because Jesus told them to go and tell.

And so they need boldness to overcome their fears.

They need boldness to overcome their fears because their lives are being threatened by the very same ones who put their money where their mouth was and put Jesus on the cross.

And what do they do?

They pray.

And we're told in Acts, chapter 4 that they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

And then what was the result?

With great boldness, they continued to bear witness.

Let's believe that the same Holy Spirit enables us to overcome our fears.

Let's believe that the same Holy Spirit will help us experience the unity that we need as a community.

Let's believe the Holy Spirit will continue to keep our hearts warm to the love of Christ that's rooted in that gospel.

In that first point, the Holy Spirit will help us to have boldness to share our story and to repeat the glorious facts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

And the same Holy Spirit will do in others what he did in us make our dead hearts alive, that we would believe and trust in Christ.

That's how the church in Jerusalem was planted and that's how the church in Jerusalem flourished.

The Holy Spirit enabled all the means of grace to enable Him to be the all God had called Him to be, by His grace there being what Jesus envisioned Him to be.

And Jesus is making it happen because he poured out the Spirit, just like he promised.

Can you see it?

Can you see it?

Can you see what Jesus wants us to be?

It's beautiful, it's powerful, it's so simple we trip over it.

We are His church and he calls us to be a spirit-empowered, gospel, saturated community of love on mission.

And that's going to take gospel, that's going to take community, that's going to take mission, that's going to take power, and when these are all operating together, as I said at the beginning, that is love on fire.

This is what it looks like to be the church and, by the grace of God, redeemer, let's be who Jesus wants us and has called us to be.

And, lord, we'll next week we'll consider what it looks like to organize our lives around being this in order to make much of Jesus.

Amen, let's pray together.

Father, thank you so much for this word from your word.

Thank you that you've not left us to our imagination or to our devices to figure out how to do what you've called us to do.

Thank you that your word reveals to us clearly that we are the church of Christ.

We have been given an assignment and we want to be faithful to this assignment.

We want to be a gospel, saturated community of love on mission.

And if we are going to be a gospel, saturated community of love on mission, then we desperately need the outpouring of the Spirit's power.

So give us everything we need to do, everything we're called to do, that we might faithfully represent your church in the Bay as it is in heaven.

In Jesus' name Amen.