The Gift of Leadership

SERMON: 2009-08-30--h1309--the-gift-of-leadership SOURCE DURATION: 00:26:14.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with a conversational introduction leading into the main theological exposition and concludes with extended prayers for revival, all of which are integral parts of the sermon content. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:23:11.700-00:26:12.340 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 --- I want to ask you this morning to try to put yourself in the shoes, or maybe I should say sandals of the early apostles. Here you are, you have just received the most astonishing and far-reaching mandate ever given to a group of people. Beginning at Jerusalem and moving out to Judea and Samaria, your job is to go to the far corners of the earth and make disciples for Jesus Christ. That is to say, you are to proclaim the lordship of Jesus, you are to encourage and invite them to leave behind them their old belief systems, their old habits, and their old customs, and you are to invite them to take up their cross and to follow Jesus. Now that's quite a mandate, but what makes it even more astounding is that your resources are extremely limited. You have no budget to speak of, you have no education, training, or skill other than what you picked up and hanging around with Jesus for three years, you have no independent means of transportation, and you are undoubtedly limited in your knowledge of and understanding of other languages and cultures. How in the world are you going to fulfill that mandate? That was the position the early apostles found themselves in upon the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and when in this passage here, he commissions them once again to this task. And the key, of course, as we know from the verses that we have read together, the key is the presence and the power of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Notice again how scripture reads here in verse 4, "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." And if you know the rest of the story of the book of Acts, that's precisely what happens. Ten days later, the Holy Spirit comes upon them in power. He commissions them for the work of ministry, and as we like to say, the rest is history. That raises the question then, who is the Holy Spirit? What does he do? And more importantly, how can you and I experience the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives? These are some of the questions we at least want to make a start on in trying to answer this morning. Well, first of all, theologically then, the Holy Spirit is, of course, the third person of the Holy Trinity. One of the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith is that God, while he is one God, consists of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have one God, but three distinct persons. That is a mystery that defies logical understanding. And there are many people who make fun of the doctrine of the Trinity on that account, and they say logically it doesn't make sense. I would argue that even in nature we find certain phenomena that give an illustration to that. Most of us, if we've been through science, have seen a prism. A prism takes in the outside light and breaks it into the spectrum that you see there, red, orange, yellow, green, blue. There's an indigo in between there, and there's a violet. And if you know anything at all about science, then you will know that in that spectrum you have three primary colors. What are the three primary colors? Red, yellow, and blue are your three primary colors, and the other colors in between then are combinations where those primary colors overlap. So here you have white light turning into the three primary colors, and then some of the secondary colors that come out of it. Do I understand how that works? No. Do you understand how that works? I bet you you don't either. But you have an example there of what the Trinity looks like. Because what happens then is that the key to understanding the dynamic of the Trinity is to understand how they relate to each other as opposed to just who they are. That is to say their relationship is a dynamic relationship, not a static relationship. Let me walk you through that as quickly as I can. First of all, there is the Father. We talk about God the Father. Now work with me a little bit here while we try to get this together. When you think of the Father, what do you think of? Just call out some characteristics of the Father to me. Love. What else? Holy. Almighty. Yes. All of that. Compassion. I want you to try to zero in on the most fundamental characteristic that makes God a Father. If you're a Father, what is the first thing that you must be? A Father begets what? Children. So God the Father is a begetter of children. All eternity past, the desire of God the Father to share His love with a child has come to expression in the person of Jesus Christ. So the Father is an originator. He is the one who gives life. Well, if that's who the Father is, then what is the Son? Well, the Son is the express image of the Father not only, but He is the agent through whom the Father carries out His work. And you'll see in a few moments how important this becomes. The Holy Spirit then is not just some vague, nameless, impersonal voice. No, the Holy Spirit is the agent of the Father and the Son, and the person through whom God the Father and God the Son come to expression. For all eternity, those three have been one, and they are truly one God, even as the spectrum of colors is truly one white light. Now, to understand, therefore, the impact of this, diagrammatically I can show it to you this way. You tell me what you see here. That's a generator. Why is it a generator? Because God the Father is a begetter. A generator gives life, produces power. Now in that particular model then, you see those two wires going up there. What do they represent? The person of Jesus Christ, because He is the vehicle through which the Father works. Now here comes the trick question for you, and I'm warning you, it's a trick question. What does the light bulb represent? The light bulb is us and all of creation, so who's the Holy Spirit in that diagram? He is the electrical power that brings life to being. You see how this works? So you get God the Father who originates life, the Son who is the vehicle through which this life gets carried out, and then you've got the Holy Spirit who provides the zap to make it happen. Now if that isn't quite clear enough yet, let's take that a step further, and now we're going to look first at how this works out in creation. Because you see the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are all equally involved both in creating the world and in redeeming the world. So in creation, what does the Father do? The Father says, "I want to beget for myself a family of children." Remember now, for all eternity, He and the Son have had this incredible relationship, and God didn't create you or me because He was lonely, because He had no need to be lonely. He was completely satisfied and completely fulfilled in this most intimate of relationships with His Son. But see, what's the outstanding characteristic of God besides being a Father? Why did God become a Father? Because He's full of love. And because He's full of love, He wants to share that love with not only His Son, but with an extension of that Son. So picture it this way, here's the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit sitting down in their eternal council in all eternity past, which is a timeless existence, and the Father says, "You know what? We've got it so good, we can't keep this to ourselves. We want to share this. Here's my idea. Let's create a humankind in our image and in our likeness who we can bless the way that we bless each other. And let's make this great, big, huge universe to go along with it so that they can live in that universe and they can experience the wonder and the amazement of their relationship and their walk with us and with each other." And so the Son comes along, and the Son says, "That's a great idea, Dad. I'm going to set about doing it right away." And so we don't often think about this, but when it comes to the creation of the world, Jesus plays an incredibly important role because He is the one who puts the Father's plans into action. That is to say, He is in charge of the building project, if you can picture it that way. See, that's why scripture says in John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Now listen to this. "He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made." And we pick up the same thing in the book of Hebrews, the first chapter, the second verse. "In these last days God has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He did what? Made the universe." So do you get it? God the Father is the originator. Jesus is the one who carries it out. And then along comes the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit says, "All right, I'm going to take the Father's idea, transmit it to me through the Lord Jesus, who dreamed it all up as to how it's going to work, and who's in charge of making it happen." And then the Holy Spirit says, "I'm going to be the power that actually brings it to life." And so what do we read in Genesis chapter 1? "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep." And what's the next part of the verse? "And the Spirit of God did what? Was hovering over the water." Why was the Holy Spirit hovering over the water? He wasn't lost. "The image is that of a chicken, a hen brooding its egg. The Holy Spirit broods over the unformed water of the creation," wherever that came from. And when God speaks and Jesus says, "Yes, sir, we're at it right now," the Holy Spirit says, "You leave it with me." And when God the Father says, "Let there be light," what does the Holy Spirit do? He lights up the whole universe. And when God the Father says, "Let there be dry land, let the water be separated from the dry land," what does the Holy Spirit do? He blows with a mighty wind and He energizes all of creation, and out of the chaos order begins to emerge. You see, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, they're teaming up to make the world the way that you and I see it today. You see, that's why Christians never really have to be worried about the discoveries of science. People are, and they say, "Science is removing for us, you know, all reasons for faith," and they are, "Don't you ever believe such foolishness?" The heavens declare the glory of God the Father, and the more deeply we dig into the complexities of the universe, the more amazed we stand that all the power that you see in the universe is but a small expression of the grandeur and the glory of God. You know, I read this past week that all the visible universe that we now know is 15 billion light years across, that consists of billions upon billions of galaxies, the visible universe is only 4% of what's out there. You say, "What else is out there?" Well, 23% is a thing called dark matter that nobody can find, but they know that it's there. That's really interesting to me. That's like some philosophers, you know, looking for a non-existent black hat in a dark room. 76%, 76% is dark energy that they don't know how to find. Have you been following the news about this CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland that's just come on stream? CERN is, I think, the French word for European Organization for Nuclear Research. They have about 10,000 scientists from the nations around the world working on this project that's been on the go now for more than a decade. This is the largest particle accelerator in the world. It's I think 27 kilometers in circumference. And what they're trying to do is move lead ions and protons at a speed close to light and then create the biggest collision that they know how to create in an effort to reproduce the early fractions of seconds of what they believe has been the Big Bang. It's been in the news because some scaremongers were proclaiming that the whole world would blow up when they fired this thing up. Well, that wasn't exactly the case. They did, however, blow up their little machine because one of their transformers burned out. A big, huge monster. But they've replaced that. It'll take them decades, decades to find out what they're all creating in these sub-optomic particle collisions, and what they're looking for, among other things, is a thing called the Higgs boson, and that is thought to be the particle that gives mass to all the particles of the universe. If you're like me and you left a part in your science lesson here this morning, then we're still stuck in the place where we think the universe consists of atoms which are made of protons and neutrons and electrons, right? Well, we're 20 years behind because each of these, in turn, is composed of all kinds of other complex things that somehow or another, against all odds, hang together. And I'm always reminded of that verse in the book of Colossians that talks about Jesus as being the one who unites all things in heaven and on earth. And by the time they finish banging all these little critters together, and by the time they finish studying them all, I think up on their screen is going to come the word Jesus, because he is the author of everything that he has made. So don't worry about what they're going to come up with. True science will always truly lead you to the person of Jesus. Now that's the creation of the world. But in addition to the creation of the world, there is also what we can call the recreation. You know, the story of the fall, God's entry into the world, and God's saving activity in the course of human history to try to bring all things back to himself. And there again, you see, each of the persons of the Holy Trinity has a unique and particular job which they carry out in divine coordination. First of all, there is the Father. What does the Father do? Well, he is the one who takes the initiative in bringing us back to himself. Remember why he created us? He destined us in love to be his sons and his daughters before the foundation of the world. In the fall, we've become alienated. We've walked away from home. God could have left us there. But God the Father says, "I'm still a father with a heart full of love for his children even though they are prodigal." And so throughout the course of human history, the Father is constantly at work trying to win us back. And if you're here this morning and you've experienced the saving power of Jesus, and you've come to know God as your Father, don't you ever think that's simply because you took the initiative? The Bible says we love because he first loved us. And way back in eternity, God sat down and he said concerning you and me, "I want them to be part of my everlasting and eternal family." People often ask the question, "Why did God allow the world to fall into sin when he knew it would cost him everything?" And the answer is amazingly simple. It gave opportunity for God to demonstrate a degree of love that he could not have demonstrated if the world had not fallen into sin. Put it this way, it's one thing to get a child because you're full of love and you want to shower your goodness and your riches and your love into that person's life, but you take that person, you have them turn against you, you have them walk away, you have them spit in your face, and yet you reach out to them in love, you bring them back, and you reconcile them to yourself at all the costs that you have to pay in reputation, money, and emotional resources. You've got love of another kind altogether. Well, that is the love of God the Father. Remember here, because the Father chose you to be his child. He's the originator of recreation. So what's the role of Jesus? Well, remember, he is the vehicle through which God works. Why is it difficult for sinners to be reconciled to God? Because he's holy and we're not. The gap has to be bridged. And so when the world falls into sin and the Father says, "I miss my creation. I miss its goodness. I miss the intimacy of my walk with my people. How will I ever get them back? How could we ever deal with the issue of sin?" And we're speaking hypothetically, of course, because we can never capture the thoughts of God fully, but the Lord Jesus, he comes forward and he says, "I got an idea. Why don't I get born into the world as one of them and I live their life? And I will die a sinner's death so that all their sins could be forgiven. And I, by my love, will win them back over to you. And by my resurrection from the dead and my ascension into heaven, I will pioneer a path so that sins can be forgiven and sinners can be reconciled to God the Father." And the Father and the Son, they did a high five up there and they said, "We got it, but now what?" Well, up pipes the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit says, "I'll go out there and I'll make it happen." So how does he make it happen? Well, first he sees to it as we've seen already that you're born, and then as you're growing up and as you're living life, he starts to create in your heart and in my heart a vacuum, [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:23:11.700; remove through 00:26:14.000] an awareness [CUT] about the brevity of life, an awareness that we can dream a lot of dreams and we can have a lot of hopes, but you know, without God, it's eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. And in the providence of God out of that place of hunger and out of that place of need, often not recognized, he puts us in a situation such as this or many other situations where we hear about Jesus. Maybe we read the gospel. Maybe somebody tells us their experience of Jesus. And through the Holy Spirit our eyes are open to see that Jesus is more than just a man, more than just a good prophet, more than just a good leader. No, Jesus is God's answer to everything that ails humanity. And then the Holy Spirit begins to convict me of my sin because the more I see Jesus, the more I see how he loves God, and the more I see how he loves his neighbor, the more I'm convicted about how miserable, rotten, and sinful, and under judgment I am. But instead of spiraling down into shame and hopelessness and despair, the Holy Spirit helps me to understand the good news of salvation, and helps me to know that as I own my sin, acknowledge my nakedness, and lay it bare before God, how God in Christ forgives me my sin, comes to live in my heart by the power of the Holy Spirit and transforms me. And now he brings me to surrender, and he brings me to faith, and he comes to live in my heart, and I know that I know that I know that I'm a child of God. And I know that I have the foretaste, the first fruits, of what one day will be universal when Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit wipes this whole world clean, burns up every cause of sin, every cause of injustice, every cause of greed and pain, and then makes a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness will reign, and in which all of God's children will live to the full in the presence of God for all eternity. See how it works? The Father starts it, Jesus is the vehicle who makes it happen, and then the Holy Spirit is the one who actually comes into creation. He hovers, he hovers like a hen over its egg, and when God speaks and Jesus acts, then [CUT] the [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:26:14.000; resume after this marked segment] Holy Spirit moves in power, and suddenly the egg hatches and you've got new life. a new life. Lord, pour out your Spirit on all the peoples of the earth, let your sons and daughters speak your words of prophecy, send us dreams and visions, reveal the secret of your heart. Lord, our faith is rising, let all heavens sound the coming of the day. There's gonna be a great awakening, there's gonna be a great revival in our land, there's gonna be a great awakening, and everyone who calls on Jesus, they will be saved. Lord, pour out your Spirit on all the nations of the world, let them see your glory, let them fall in reverent awe, show your mighty power, shake the heavens and the earth. Lord, the world is waiting, let creation see the coming of the day. There's gonna be a great awakening, there's gonna be a great revival in our land, there's gonna be a great awakening, and everyone who calls on Jesus, they will be saved. There's gonna be a great awakening, there's gonna be a great revival in our land, there's gonna be a great awakening, and everyone who calls on Jesus, they will be saved. And everyone who calls on Jesus, they will be saved.