To the Ends of the Earth

SERMON: 2008-10-05--ac0804--to-the-ends-of-the-earth-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:31:46.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with the speaker's exposition on the Holy Spirit (sermon). The material continues through various theological points and scripture references until segment [360], which is the last spoken word segment before a sustained acoustic music interval takes over. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:27:38.320-00:27:41.380, 00:27:42.560-00:29:37.340, 00:29:39.120-00:31:00.080, 00:31:02.700-00:31:45.080 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, I pointed out last week that when it comes to the person in the work of the Holy Spirit, it's very helpful to distinguish two tasks or two functions of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit within and the Spirit upon. The Spirit within refers to the indwelling presence and power of God's Holy Spirit and how He imparts to us internally all the benefits that we have in Christ, how He makes God real, how He empowers us to love God and to love our neighbor, and how He gives us insight and wisdom and strength to live the Christian life. And then there is the Spirit upon, and the Spirit upon is an empowerment to enable us to complete the task which Jesus began in His earthly ministry. As Luke says, "I wrote you about all that Jesus began to do and to teach." The Spirit upon is an equipping for ministry. And it's the Spirit upon that Luke refers to here in Acts chapter 1 when he says, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you or upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And as we take a little bit of time this morning to look at that verse together, there are two things that I want us to note. And here is the first, the purpose of the Spirit upon is to enable us to bear witness to Jesus. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses. The word power there, I've talked about that before, is the Greek word dunamis. We got the word dynamite from it, but Jesus says the purpose of the power of the Holy Spirit, not just to make you feel good, not just to give you, as I said last week, holy liver shivers, not just to feel spiritually superior to everybody else, no, no, no. The purpose of the power of the Holy Spirit is to enable you to do the work of God specifically to bear witness to Jesus. Now a witness is a person who gives testimony based on personal presence or perception. And we've all watched enough television courtroom dramas to know what a witness looks like. And in court cases, the challenge is always, is the witness credible, yes or no? So the gift of the Holy Spirit is to enable the apostles to bear witness to Jesus. Now think that through with me just a little bit. What does that look like? Well, the best way to understand what that looks like is to read the rest of the book of Acts. And when you do, you discover there is a twofold component that is consistently practiced by the apostles. The first is this, they bear witness to the death of Jesus on Calvary's cross. But then number two, they especially bear witness to his resurrection. Here's how Peter puts it in his Pentecost sermon in Acts chapter two. He says, "Men of Israel, listen to this, Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did among you through him as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge and you with the help of wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross." And then verse 24, "But God raised him from the dead," and in verse 32 then, "And we are all witnesses of the fact." And then earlier on in Acts chapter one, when it's clear that Judas has betrayed Jesus and needs to be replaced with another apostle, we read this, "Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become," what, "a witness to his resurrection, a witness to his resurrection." And the apostle Paul carries on in a similar fashion in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, "What I received I passed on to you as of first importance." Here we have the two, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. The apostolic witness to Jesus is not only that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, but even more specifically that God raised him from the dead. "To this," says Peter, "we are all witnesses." Now again, think this through with me just a little bit. Why is this so important? Well, it's important because the resurrection of Jesus Christ is proof positive that he is who he says that he is. You cannot read the gospels without being astonished at what it is that Jesus says about himself. No shrinking vial of Jesus, no false self-image. Now he says, "I'm the son of God. I'm the one that was foreordained by God from the foundation of the world to save this whole world." I mean, here is this little carpenter's son from Nazareth, has no credentials, has no army, has never sat in parliament, has never come up with a clever economic solution to all the world's problems, so to speak. Here's Jesus and he says, "I am the one who's going to fix everything up for time and for eternity." Now, anybody can make an outrageous claim. You've heard me tell the story about my good friend Bob Hoyt many years ago. Bob was a manic depressive, and when he got into his manic state, he progressively got greater illusions of self-grandeur. He always started off being a nurse, then he became a doctor, and when he was really in a bad place, he became the Lord God Almighty. There's a lot of people who think they're God, and they're all dead. The resurrection of Jesus is God's confirmation that Jesus is who he says that he is because you cannot raise yourself. C.S. Lewis in his famous quote years ago put it this way, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says that he's a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice." Jesus in his resurrection demonstrated the presence and the power of God. As Peter says in his Pentecost sermon, "It was impossible for death to keep its hold on him." So what's the purpose of the Holy Spirit? It's to enable us to bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus, that Jesus is alive, and that he can save not only every man, woman, and child that will bend the knee before him, but that he will also one day redeem all the world. He is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and every knee is going to bow. They're either going to bow voluntarily, or they're going to bow by force. That's what it is to be a witness to Jesus. Now why is that so important? Well because sometimes when the Holy Spirit stirs in our hearts and we feel that we ought to be sharing our faith with our neighbors, then sometimes we think it all depends on us. As if somehow or another we have to bring people to faith, that's not how it works. You and I, we cannot reach into somebody's heart, change it, and transform it. All we can do is proclaim in the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus is alive, that he cares, and that he will save to the uttermost those who call upon his name. He will do the rest. We'll talk about that, if not this week, then Lord willing, on another occasion. Now what happens? What happens when under the power of the Holy Spirit you begin to share and witness to the fact that Christ is alive? Well two things will happen. The first is that there are some who will reject your testimony. Scripture says the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. And in the parable of the sower, the Lord Jesus tells the story of seed that fell on hard ground, the birds came and they picked it off, it didn't even get a chance to sprout. And there are people, when they are confronted with the reality of who Jesus is, they're not interested at all. They mock him, they reject him, they ridicule him, and they certainly have no intention of bowing their knees before him. Now people like that have typically bought into Satan's lie, understand this well. They've bought into the lie that either God is not there, or if he is, that he is not kind, caring, or compassionate. They cannot trust him. This is often true of people who have been badly hurt somewhere in the course of life. And so they've got a chip on their shoulders, they don't trust anybody, they don't trust God, and they rebel and many people die in their rebellion. And the greater is your testimony to Jesus, and the greater is the power of Jesus upon your life, the more you will discover that nobody stays neutral in the presence of Jesus. You either bow and go his way, or you raise your back over against him and your heart gets hardened. And you know what's interesting about that is that you often cannot tell from the outside what leaves in that person's heart. That person can be a derelict down the street that wants nothing to do with the gospel. It can also be a Pharisee who goes to church all the time, but who in his heart of hearts is not really yielded to the authority of Jesus. But then, thank God, there are also those who respond favorably to the gospel. That same verse in 1 Corinthians 1, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing," goes on to say what? To us who are being saved, it is the power of God. That same message of the cross that is so despicable to those who want to be self-sufficient, who want to be proud in their own arrogance, is the power of God to salvation to those who paradoxically humble themselves, God will raise them up. And so again in the parable of the sower, while three of the soils are bad and the seed never comes to fruition, thank God, there is also a soil that Jesus says is representative of a good and honest heart. And when the word of God falls into a good and honest heart, guess what happens? It sprouts, it comes to life, it produces transformation, and it bears an incredible pile of fruit. And again, you won't know ahead of time who that person is or what that's going to look like because that might well be the most unlikeliest candidate because only God knows the heart. Let me tell you a story that Michelle and I experienced just this past week on Monday. We traveled to Stevensville in the Niagara Peninsula close to Fort Erie for the funeral of the husband of one of Michelle's cousins, her name is Jean, and her husband's name is Louis. And I share the story with you this morning with her permission. Louis just died at the age of 85, and Louis was a man who for the last decades of his life wanted absolutely nothing to do with God and resisted every attempt that his wife made to try to share the gospel with him. The reasons for that were not that hard to figure out. He was born in Ireland, his father either died or left, his mother remarried, they had five other kids, and he and his brother were really not welcome. And so when he was 12 and his brother was 13, they left home for good. And so you can imagine what kind of attitude that produced. For a while in their married life, he went to church, but not because he liked the gospel, but because he was social and wanted to hang around with people. But as the years went by, his heart hardened evermore. For 25 years, Jean prayed that God would touch his heart, and nothing ever got through to him until last November. Last November, Louis took ill and had to be hospitalized with heart problems and breathing issues. Now he'd been in the hospital many times before, and it had never made an impact on him. But on this particular occasion, they put in the bed next to him a young man, 30 some years of age, who looked like he could well be 70, who was terminally ill, maybe had AIDS or something like that, I don't know. He came in Saturday morning at 2 o'clock and coughed steady until 4 o'clock that afternoon. And so when Jean came in to see her husband on Saturday morning, heard all that coughing, she said, "Boy, what's going on there?" And he said, "Yeah, this has been going on all the time." Neither of them was getting any rest. So as she was sitting there with Louis, they overheard the nurse do, what do you call that, an intake or something with the man in the bed. She said, "Who are you?" when he could only give her his first name. "Where do you come from?" "I came from Toronto." No identification on him, no medical records or medical history. And clearly a man who was gravely ill, who had come back to this region because he was raised here as a child, she asked him, "Do you have any family?" No, we had no family. "Do you have any friends?" He had no friends. And so she said to him, "Well, tonight the doctor will come and see you and we'll figure out how to treat you." Well, 5.30 in the afternoon, Jean comes back to visit her husband and the coughing has stopped and she said to him, "Well, it's quiet now." And they thought maybe he had fallen asleep. So in curiosity, she moved the curtain back to see what had happened to this man. And far from being asleep, he had died and lay there unattended, unnoticed by staff or by anybody else in that hospital, a man with no name. And God used that, and I don't know how to put this politely, but he scared the living daylights out of Louis because Louis' face went gray and when Jean left him, 7.30 that night, she wasn't sure that she was going to see him the next day because the pallor of death was upon him. And she said she cried all the way home and cried out to God. And she said, "God, you cannot let him die without knowing him." Hold the clock forward. It's now Sunday, two o'clock Sunday afternoon. She comes in to visit Louis. She leans over to kiss him. She doesn't make it. His face is now glowing and he says to her before she can kiss him, "I've been saved." He said, "I've given my life to Jesus. I've given my heart to Jesus. I've asked him to forgive me." And then he said this, "I don't want to die alone like that man did." And she said, "Praise the Lord," and he said, "Praise the Lord," and that's the first time praise the Lord ever came out of his mouth. Well, God in his grace sustained his life and he lived another 11 months until he died just last week. And when he died, he gathered all his children around him and he said to them, "Listen, I just see you in heaven. I want you to follow Jesus." And here's another thing that he said to his children as they were gathered around him and he said, "Why didn't I accept the Lord sooner? I would have had a much happier life." Eighty-five years old. Do you know how few 85-year-olds ever get the chance to repent and come to faith? And all the evidence was that it wasn't just a convenient deathbed conversion. It was a powerful transformation by the Spirit of God after his wife had witnessed to him and prayed for him for 25 years. He still wonders to this day if that man in the bed wasn't some angel because where in the world did he come from and how did he happen to be there? You see, and this is the irony of it from a psychological point of view, God used Louis' abandonment issues from his youth to draw him into the kingdom because he was afraid to die alone. Praise God. Don't ever write anybody off. You never know the mercy of God. So the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to help us bear witness to Jesus not only, but Jesus goes on to point out that this witnessing to Jesus ought to be taking place in ever-widening circles. So notice again how the verse goes on, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. A series of concentric circles, this is what it looks like, there of course is Jerusalem on the map representing the city of God, the place where the temple is, the hardest place interestingly enough to minister for Jesus and for the apostles because they were so convinced they had it all figured out and they knew exactly what they were doing. Jesus says that's where you're going to begin, that really represents your hometown doesn't it, in your family, in your close relationships, the toughest place to witness for Jesus. Then he says there is Judea, that is the area south of Jerusalem where the tribe of Judah had its inheritance, you can think of that as the broader surrounding area from where you live, then Samaria, the place where the Samaritans lived, all of this by the way is now known as the West Bank, and Samaria was the land of the Samaritans and the Samaritans were half-breeds who were of a different culture and had a different way of worshiping God, and then of course beyond that to the ends of the earth. So you have not only a geographical transition from close to home to further and further away but you also have a transition economically, sociologically, politically and culturally. You start at home with the people that you know, then you expand beyond that to your friends and to your circle of acquaintances and then beyond that the church is to carry the message to the Samaritans, people who are not like you, people who in fact you hate and despise, and then beyond that to the very ends of the earth. Takes an enormous persuasion in the book of Acts by the power of the Holy Spirit to get the church to fulfill its mission, because I'll tell you something, there is a constant tension in the church between our holy huddle and looking after our own needs and fulfilling the mission of Jesus which is to give up your own comfort, to give up your own places of like and dislike and take up your cross and follow Jesus. And so if you read on in the book of Acts you will discover how God fulfilled this commission to the early church. They were all gathered in Jerusalem, great miracles were happening. But it was a holy huddle, so persecution breaks out and they're all forced to scatter. And everywhere they went there were like a virus sneeze bearing witness to Jesus. And then you see Philip going to Samaria. And what a crisis that became for the early church, preaching the word of God to the Samaritans. And then a little bit later on in Acts chapter 10 you get the whole story, and Lord willing in the future we'll look at that together, you get the whole story of Peter at Cornelius's house. And now Peter had to go back to the apostles and say, "Well, don't blame me, God poured out the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles, it wasn't my fault, I didn't bring them in. It was God who did it, blame God." You see that's how Jewish they had become and that's how little they wanted to share their space with people who were bad and dirty and didn't keep the law. Jesus says, "Why do I give you my Holy Spirit, so you can bear witness to my resurrection, my compassionate love for all the nations of the world." And he goes on to say, "I want you to be my witnesses then in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to the ends of the earth." You know why? Here's how the gospel puts it, listen to this verse, "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached to the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come." This gospel says Jesus will be preached as a testimony to all nations and then the end is going to come. You know thousands of years ago Jesus said, "I'm coming soon," he hasn't yet come, why? Because God does not wish that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. And he wants all nations and all people groups all around the world to be given the opportunity to hear the gospel of the kingdom so they can make a choice for Jesus or against Jesus. Because you see on that final day of judgment all the nations are going to be gathered before God's judgment throne. And according to Matthew chapter 25 Jesus is going to separate the nations one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And to the sheep he will say, "Come blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you from before the foundation of the world." And to the goats he is going to say, "Depart from me you workers of iniquity into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." For God to judge people and to judge them with integrity they must all have the opportunity to accept or reject the gospel. That's why the Holy Spirit is given to the church. And that's why as we'll see as time goes on God pours out the Holy Spirit on the church and the church in obedience to that great commission has traveled to the ends of the earth and continues to do that until this day until all the people groups will have been reached. And when all the people groups will have been reached and every ethnic group will have had an opportunity to choose for or against Jesus that's when the word in heaven will go out to the angels. That's when God will say, "Put your sickle in the harvest and separate the wheat from the chaff and God will destroy all that remains of rebellion against him and he will build [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:27:38.320; remove through 00:31:46.000] his eternal kingdom for his [CUT] glory." And God will say, "Put your sickle in the harvest and separate the wheat from the chaff and God will destroy all that remains of rebellion against him and he will build his eternal ♪ Our choices are ours ♪ ♪ Our cause alive ♪ ♪ Is to see the nations worship you ♪ ♪ Heavenly Father ♪ ♪ Your mercy showers down upon all people ♪ ♪ Your grace upon this earth ♪ ♪ Your spirit gives to darkness ♪ ♪ And the chains of death upon us ♪ ♪ Let stars and honors worship you ♪ ♪ To be where your matchless worth ♪ ♪ Our heart ♪ ♪ Our desire ♪ ♪ Is to see the nations worship you ♪ ♪ Our pride ♪ ♪ Our praise ♪ ♪ Is to see your praise in the end of the earth ♪ ♪ Love with love ♪ ♪ Mighty force ♪ ♪ Every tribe, every tongue ♪ ♪ Rejoices ♪ ♪ Our heart ♪ ♪ Our desire ♪ ♪ Is to see the nations worship you ♪ ♪ There is no power ♪ ♪ That for one hour ♪ ♪ Can withstand the greatness ♪ ♪ Of your word on tongues of hay ♪ ♪ So we're holding you to session ♪ ♪ Bringing all of your possessions ♪ ♪ Break down that every heart will bow ♪ ♪ 'Cause oh, you, Lord, in praise ♪ ♪ Our heart ♪ ♪ Our desire ♪ ♪ Is to see the nations worship you ♪ ♪ Our pride ♪ ♪ Our praise ♪ ♪ Is to see your praise in the end of the earth ♪ ♪ Love with love ♪ ♪ Mighty force ♪ ♪ Every tribe, every tongue ♪ ♪ Rejoices ♪ ♪ Our heart ♪ ♪ Our desire ♪ ♪ Is to see the nations worship you ♪ ♪ Is to see the nations worship you ♪ [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:31:46.000; resume after this marked segment]