When God Shows Up

SERMON: 2011-02-27--ac1158--when-god-shows-up SOURCE DURATION: 00:44:16.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The material begins with expository context setting (Acts review) and concludes with theological exposition and music that marks the end of the sermon's address. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:40:36.520-00:44:15.720 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, as I said a few moments ago, it's been over three months since we've left off in our ongoing series of studies in the book of Acts. So allow me just to set the context with a few moments of review. Acts chapter 3 tells the story of a man who was born crippled. He was 40 years of age. He was begging at the temple. He sees Peter and John as representatives of Jesus coming to him, and by the authority and in the name of Jesus, they heal the man. As you can imagine, that becomes quite a spectacle, becomes a great opportunity for preaching the gospel. And as a reward for the kindness shown to this cripple, and in response to the crowds who are being drawn around the preaching of the name of Jesus, Peter and John get hauled on the carpet by the religious leaders of their day, the Synhedrin. They get threatened to with an inch of their life. They are forbidden to speak the name of Jesus upon threat of punishment. And then in the middle of Acts chapter 4, upon their release, Peter and John go back to the church. And the church does the only thing that it knows how to do, which is to raise their voices together in prayer according to verse 24 of this chapter. And as they pray, in the context of this passage, they pray for three things very specifically. The first is this, they ask God to take note of the situation in which they find themselves. They say, "Now, Lord, consider their threats." Please take note of the dire situation in which we find ourselves. Secondly, they ask for courage to continue to speak boldly, enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. And then number three, they ask for God to confirm his word with signs and wonders. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. And that's where we pick up the story this morning, because what happens when the early church in its moment of frightful desperation cries out to God, and they plead with God for mercy? Well, listen to verse 31 once again. "After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly." You notice with me this morning, there are three things that are said to happen in this verse in response to their prayer. Number one, the place where they were meeting was shaken. Number two, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And then in response to that, they spoke the word of God boldly. As time allows this morning, let's see if we can unpack each of these statements a little bit, beginning then with the observation that the place where they were meeting was shaken. That is to say, there was a physical manifestation of the presence of God, very likely an earthquake or an earth tremor. And I find it rather fascinating in scripture that while many times when God comes to the earth, he comes quietly and silently discernible only to those whose eyes have been opened and whose ears have been opened, every so often God comes dramatically. And sometimes he comes with a dramatic shaking of the earth. Let me give you just a couple of examples as we find them in scripture. First of all, Exodus chapter 19 verse 18, "Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace. The whole mountain trembled violently." This is in the context of God entering into covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. Then in the New Testament, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, a very similar story. There was a violent earthquake for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. In fact, when Jesus died earlier, it also was accompanied by a shattering earthquake and many of the dead who had died previously were raised to life. Then later on in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 16, we read these words, "Paul and Silas are in jail. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open and everybody's chains became loose." Somebody has said Paul and Silas were in prison for their faith. They were singing songs of praise to God. God came down and sang bass and the whole place shook and the prison came apart. And then one more reference, Hebrews chapter 12 verse 26, "At that time," referring to the covenant at Mount Sinai, "his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." The words once more indicate the removing of what can be shaken, that is, created things so that what cannot be shaken may remain. And right there you have a clue as to what is the significance of this shaking. It represents the loosening, the removal of everything that stands in the way of the coming of God's kingdom. And so when here in Acts chapter 4, they pray and in response to prayer, the place where they were meeting is shaken, God is saying to them, "Listen, the forces that are arrayed against you are significant. The power of the authorities is real. They have the power to hurt and to kill and to destroy. They oppose you and they oppose your message, but I've got news for you. I'm bigger than what they are and there is coming a day when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen? We live in a world that is increasingly dark and we have seen some of that shaking just in recent weeks with the turmoil in the Middle East when one regime begins to decline, gets shaken to the core, and another regime climbs to the foreground. Now I don't profess to know what that's going to lead to in the Middle East. I have my suspicions. I think what's going to happen is that the nation of Israel will increasingly be isolated and I think it's setting the stage for the day that I believe scripture talks about when the people of Israel become increasingly a stumbling block to the nations of the world and we will have the pieces put in place for the battle of Armageddon because eventually all the kingdoms of this world are going to be shook up, all the powerful people of this age are going to yield to the authority of Jesus and God's people will inherit the kingdom of God according to the promises of scripture. That is the promise of God. The building where they were meeting was shaken. So that's the first thing that I want us to note in this particular passage. There is a second thing then that we need to note as to what happens there. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Now remember the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. He is the agent of the Godhead who in the original creation story hovers over the waters, brings order out of chaos. He is the one who comes upon Moses and the leaders of Israel to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt into the inheritance that God has for them and he is also the Spirit who comes upon Jesus to perform the mighty acts and the miracles that he does. And he is also the Spirit who raises Jesus from the dead and who then descends upon the church to enable the church to proclaim the good news to the ends of the earth. Now to be filled with that Spirit is to have our whole being brought under the influence of this Spirit of God. And practically speaking, that means every faculty of our being becomes influenced by the presence and the power of God's Holy Spirit spiritually. It means that our spiritual capacity is enlightened so that we can understand and comprehend the spiritual things of God. Isn't it true that so often to paraphrase the old chorus, the things of heaven grow strangely dim in the light of this world's glory and grace? Isn't that true? I mean, aren't there days when you come to the end of the day and you've been so caught up in what is happening in the world all around you that you've lost pretty much the sense of where God is and where the things of God are at? Isn't it true that not infrequently in prayer we go through the motions but we've lost the sense of connecting with God? Isn't it even true that sometimes you come to church on a Sunday morning and you're so preoccupied with all the things that have happened, maybe on the way to church, maybe in the context of the past week or the party of the night before that we're caught up in the here and now, but the things of God that supposedly are so important to us, they've just sort of faded into the background. Am I the only one that ever feels that way or lives that way? Well, what's the antidote to that? Well, the antidote to that is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit declares to us the things that are ours in Christ. And when we have a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit, our spiritual eyes are enlightened and all of a sudden the invisible spiritual world becomes real. Remember the story back in the Old Testament with Elisha? And they're part of this city and I haven't looked the story up just lately, but it comes to mind how the city was surrounded by the enemy and Elisha's servant was in a panic. And Elisha says to him, "Those that are with us are greater than those that are out there." And the Lord opens the servant's eyes and what does he see? He sees the whole army of heaven that is arrayed on their behalf. Every so often you and I, we need to have a fresh opening of our eyes to see who God is, what he has done for us in Christ, and how great are the riches that we have in the Lord Jesus. That's why Paul, writing to the Ephesians, prays this marvelous prayer. He says, "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe, a spirit of wisdom and revelation, a moment whereby our eyes are open." Do you understand what I'm talking about? Without that kind of revelation, the things of the world will always be greater and stronger than the things of God. And so we can pray for that kind of wisdom. In fact, that prayer in Ephesians 2 for two years was, for me personally, my ongoing prayer. Give me, Lord, a spirit of wisdom and revelation. Show me who Christ is and who I am in Christ. It'll change your life. But not only is our spirit enlightened, so is our mind and our emotions and our will. Because again, isn't it true that every so often we go through life, and our minds are kind of like in a fog, and our wills, we know what it is that we're supposed to be doing, but we seem to be powerless to make it obey God, where we're drawn to sin or we're drawn to unrighteousness. And our emotions and our passions are much more passionately committed, oftentimes, to the things of this world, even the things sometimes that are wrong, than we have passion for God. And if the great commandment is, "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind," and the second commandment is, "Love your neighbor as yourself," then we all understand, don't we, how difficult that is by nature and how limited is our own ability to live that way. But remember, in Christ, we're a new creation. And in Christ, God has given us the Holy Spirit. And what the infilling of the Holy Spirit does is it enlightens our mind so that all of a sudden we can understand things that we've never understood before. He empowers our wills so that all of a sudden we can say, "No, I won't go that direction. I want to do what God wants me to do." And our passions are stirred so that we want to do. What it is that God wants us to do. Paul says, "Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." And nobody feels like that all the time. Nobody that I know of lives up here all the time. But the antidote to when we start dragging our spiritual feet, when our hearts and our minds grow cold, is the fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit. Because once the Holy Spirit comes afresh, then all of a sudden we come to life in ways that we have perhaps not experienced before or not to the same degree. And it's not only our spirit that gets enlightened. It's not only our minds and our emotions and our will, but our bodies get strengthened by the resurrected power of Jesus. How many of us know that our bodies are not always a friend to grace? I mean, there are times when we know that we should present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. We ought to love him and we ought to do his will, but man alive, our bodies have quite a mind of their own, if you don't mind my saying so. They pull downward. We have our passions. We have our lusts. We have our desires. We have the makeup that in all of us, because of sin, is crooked. And we've been talking about brokenness, how in cases of brokenness, it's even more crooked than crooked, and how much we need God's grace. And we find ourselves wanting to pray, but our body says, "I want to go to sleep." And Sunday morning rolls around, and we know that we ought to get up and attend worship with God's people, because God's grace is manifest in the context of community. A burning log on its own doesn't burn very well. But how often doesn't it happen that we turn over and we say, "Well, I'm just too tired. I'm not up to it. Maybe I'll go next week." Next week rolls around, and it's even easier to stay in bed next week than it is this week. And there's a very interesting verse in Romans chapter 8 that I often come back to. It's Romans chapter 8, verse 11. "If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies also through his spirit who lives in you." Isn't that interesting? He gives life to your mortal bodies also through his spirit who lives in you. And while the ultimate fulfillment of that word is on the day of the resurrection when we get our new bodies, which will be so yielded to God that the downward pull of sin will no longer have any effect, we know from scripture that God's Holy Spirit also empowers our bodies today, gives us energy to do the will of God, gives us energy to say no to sin and to empower our bodies to be a living sacrifice so that we can actually speak kind words, we can actually have strength to do righteous deeds, and we can actually live in a way that honors God. And so the infilling of the Holy Spirit not only enlightens our mind, not only enlightens our whole psychological well-being, but it even empowers our bodies. And there are some curious examples of that in the Old Testament, for example, stories that you don't often think about. Remember when Moses goes up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, he's up there for 40 days and 40 nights, and there's no reference made to his having to eat or drink during that period of time, did you know that? And then there is the story of Elijah. Remember after his encounter with Jezebel and the prophets, and he flees into the wilderness and he has this real moment of depression, and the angel awakens him and gives him some bread and food, and then he walks on that energy for 40 days and 40 nights. And all of us, if we're in Christ, we'll have those moments when we sense the Holy Spirit lifting us up in ways that are beyond natural understanding or natural comprehension. I think I experienced just a touch of that the other day when I had to travel out west to do Bill Versteeg's funeral. Bill died, as you know, on a Friday. I flew out to Vancouver on a Tuesday to beat the storm that was forecast for Wednesday, participated in his funeral on Thursday, flew back on Friday to do Jerry's funeral here on Saturday, and then did the Sunday morning service, not because I had to, Dave gladly would have taken it, but because I felt called to. Now normally with that amount of traveling and that amount of work, I should have been utterly and totally exhausted, but I wasn't. Because it was like the strength of the Holy Spirit was bearing me up, in part, no doubt, due to your faithfulness in prayer and in support. You don't know how powerful are the prayers of God's people until you find yourself in a situation where you are depleted and you know that people are praying for you and God meets you in places where you could have never met before. How many of you know what I'm talking about when I say when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, there are those moments, and they're moments, it's not like that all the time, but there are those moments when you know the wind of the Holy Spirit under your wings and you fly in ways that you cannot explain naturally. That's what happens here when the building shakes and they're all filled afresh. Remember they had already been baptized in the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but as Dwight L. Moody used to say when they asked him how come he always talked about being filled with the Holy Spirit, he said it's simple, I leak, and don't we all? And so the Bible talks about constant in fillings of the Holy Spirit. Now allow me to just very quickly say two more things about being filled with the Holy Spirit. Number one, it is a command of scripture. Listen to Ephesians 5, 18, "Do not get drunk on wine," which leads to debauchery, which means loose living, "instead be filled with the Spirit." And there are two things about that verse that always strike me. The first is the contrast between being filled with wine and being filled with the Spirit, because in both cases we're under the influence of a spirit, if you will. In the one case, alcohol. In the other, the Holy Spirit. Alcohol leads to losing control and loose living. The Holy Spirit leads to praise, it leads to worship, it leads to a life of love before God and before your neighbor. That's why the two stand in contrast to each other, and sometimes they're easy to confuse. But here is what's also important about that little verse. It is a command to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It is an imperative. In fact, if I remember my Greek correctly, it's an ongoing imperative, be constantly being filled with the Holy Spirit, and that means that we're not just passive vessels sitting around waiting for God to hit us. Now, if you look at it in the context of the early church, this happens in the context of praying to God for boldness and for courage to do the will of God. And it's in response to that kind of prayer that God pours out his Holy Spirit upon them afresh and they are filled with the Holy Spirit. And what that means, then, is that you and I bear some responsibility for being filled with the Holy Spirit. We need to abide in Christ. We need to confess our sins. We need to stand and claim the righteousness of Jesus, and we need to lay hold of the means of grace, and we need to say, "Lord, this life is too difficult on my own journey. I cannot do it myself, but please fill me afresh with your Holy Spirit." The catechism, the Heidelberg, puts it this way when it asks the question, "Why do Christians need to pray?" And then it gives this answer, "Because God gives his grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, to those who pray continually and groan inwardly." Jesus put it this way. He said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." And so if you find yourself in a situation, as all of us do by times, where the fire has gone out and you're overcome by the coldness of life that seeks to rob your spiritual passion, and you've lost the song in your heart and the spring in your step, then one of the things that you can do is draw near to the Lord and say, "Lord, fill me afresh with your Holy Spirit." And if you've never asked the Lord to fill you with the Holy Spirit, then take that promise of scripture and God says, "Ask according to my will and I will give it to you." Go to him and say, "Lord, please fill me and then receive him by faith." You don't have to work at earth-shattering experiences because they will vary from individual to individual. I know people who when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, they are electrified. You know, it's like they're plugged into the wall. And I also know people who receive the Holy Spirit and nothing external seems to happen whatsoever, except you see the fruit of it. Their minds are illumined, their spirits are enlivened, their bodies are strengthened, and they have a new desire and a new ability to live for God. You know what I'm talking about? Pray to be filled with the Spirit. And if need be, get somebody to pray with you or over you. That's what I had to do many years ago. I felt for a long time that I was standing outside a plate glass window and other people seemed to have things that I did not have. I didn't know how to get there. And I finally just had to humble myself, confess my sins, had people pray over me. And I've often told you experience nothing physical or even emotional, except that I knew that I knew that I knew that God loved me and that I love him and that I wanted to live for him and do his will. To be filled with the Spirit is a command outside of which you can not only not live the Christian life, you for sure will not have the energy or the boldness that you need to stand up for Jesus in a world that is very antagonistic and very dark and very cold. So that's one additional observation that I want to make. The second observation that I want to make with regard to the Holy Spirit is that this experience of the Holy Spirit's presence most typically happens in the context of serving the Lord. It happens most typically in the context of answering our call and stepping out by faith. Let me try to explain for a moment what I mean by that. All of us, if we're in Christ and have received his Holy Spirit, are given certain spiritual gifts and spiritual callings for which God has uniquely destined us from the foundation of the world. For some of us that means gifts of speaking. For others that means gifts of helping or serving, gifts of intercession perhaps, any number of spiritual gifts. The Bible is full of them depending on how you count them. And those spiritual gifts are sort of given in seed form. In fact, most of us aren't even aware of what is the gifting that God has given us until we hear the call of God and we step out in obedience and we begin to do his will. And we discover that it is in the stepping out that we experience God's presence and God's power in ways that we had not expected or known before. Let me try to illustrate that with reference to my own life, not because I want to talk about myself, but because that's the only clear frame of reference that I have. Part of my calling and gifting I think in the Lord is to not only lead people to Christ, but to lead people to maturity in Christ. And in order to accomplish that, God has given me I think certain gifts of insight into people and the ability to speak into their situation in such a way as to enable them to recognize the places of their sin and to recognize the places where God is calling them to go. Now most of the time, I'm not particularly aware of that. And most of the time I'm not even particularly aware of God's presence. I just sort of do life as best as I know how. But put me in a situation where I'm in conversation with an individual or where I'm called upon to speak to a group of God's people like we're doing this morning. And what happens then is as by faith I step into that conversation, listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying, and begin to respond to it, that's when I become aware of the presence of God. That's when the gift of faith rises up within me. That's when the gift of recognizing what is happening behind the scenes rises up within me not because I'm so smart, but because the Holy Spirit knows everybody's hearts. Kind of freaks people out every so often, because it makes them feel that I can see right through them. And if you've got things to hide, that's sometimes very scary. But the purpose of that gift is not to exercise power over anybody. It's to help identify what God is doing with a view of helping us grow up in Christ. And so then as I speak into that, as I pray into that, that's when the Holy Spirit rises up and I know that I'm catching the wind of the Holy Spirit. Do you understand what I'm saying? Now your life may not be that, because your calling and your gifting may be very different. Some of you have a similar identical prophetic gift. You know exactly what it is that I'm talking about, and you know exactly what happens in those situations when you step into it, and God meets you, and you begin to fly with a fresh awareness of the presence and the power of God. But you all have gifts, and if your gift is helping, then you will find yourself in situations where you line up with somebody who has a particular need, and your heart is stirred by their need. And so you step into it, and in stepping into it, there is a joy and a satisfaction in being a servant, because you know you're floating on the wings of the Holy Spirit. Some of you have the gift of administration. You come into a situation where there's nothing but a huge mess, and there's something inside you that says alright, what an opportunity to clean up this mess. And you find joy and power in straightening out this business, and you wonder why everybody else doesn't feel the same way you do. Some of you have the gift of leadership, and you see the chaos in a meeting that is leaderless, or a challenge arises where clearly people need to be gathered together to pursue a goal and a gifting, and not because you want to be the boss, but because this is your calling, this is where the Holy Spirit flies in your life. You step into that, and in stepping into it, all of a sudden you see the strategy and everybody else thinks you're brilliant. How come nobody else thought of this before? But it's your gift of leadership operating in the power of the Holy Spirit. You're moving forward into it, and as you do, the Holy Spirit meets you, and you discover that your gifts are given for the overall body of Christ. So here's what I'm saying. You want to experience more of the feeling of the Holy Spirit, then don't just sit around forever waiting for it to happen, because if you're in Christ, you've already been given the Holy Spirit. He's there, but he will activate upon your movements in faith in response to his calling. And so when you see opportunities for service or ministry, when you sense the call of God on your life, and you step out into it by faith often filled with terror as we all are because God is always stretching us beyond where we've ever been. You know what you're going to find? You're going to find that God meets you, and that in meeting you, he gives you insight that you never thought you had before. He gives you wisdom that you never thought you had before. He gives you energy that you never thought you had before. And no, you won't always feel that way. Sometimes you'll be walking by faith and you'll say, "Oh my goodness, what have I started?" But it will happen enough for you to know eventually when I step out into this area, this is where God meets me, this is where people affirm me, this is where I know that I know that I know that I have the right and the authority to step into this by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now as you know, for the last couple of weeks or so, we've taken this little detour into talking about hearing from God and hearing God better. And at first I wondered, "Lord, why the detour when we need to push forward in the Book of Acts?" And it dawned on me that this whole thing of boldness that we need, this whole thing of standing against the tide, not being bowled over, but speaking authoritatively in the name of Jesus in a society that is increasingly anti-Christian. We need to know that we know that we know that we belong to God, that we have his authority and we have his backing and he will be there with us when we step out into the fray. So I want to end this morning by asking you this question and we'll need to come back to speaking boldly, perhaps Lord willing next week, but where is it that God has been speaking to you? Where are the places that you know he has invited you to step into? But where you've hesitated? Maybe you've been afraid of your spouse. Maybe you've been afraid of laying down the line with your kids. Maybe you've tolerated improper behavior at work because you're scared or you just are so worried about other people's approval. What is it that God maybe has been speaking to you about for a long, long time? And if you know what it is, would you pray with me that he fills you with the Holy Spirit, that he will give you the courage to take that first little step knowing that as you take it he's promised to meet you there and he will use you in ways that you have not yet been able to imagine? Next week, Lord willing, we're going to launch in the service here Mission 33. Mission 33 is an ambitious undertaking by the Belvo Christian Ministries to reach every home in Belvo with a gospel over a six or seven week period of time coming to full fruition on Easter weekend when we invite the community to join churches all across this city to worship the exalted and the resurrected Christ. You'll hear a lot more details about that Lord willing next week, but I want to tell you this, the seed for this very ambitious project began with one woman in this congregation who sought the face of God, heard from God a strategy that she believed could work, and we'll tell you more about that next week, went to the BCM with the proposal, headed and embraced by the people in leadership, and it will be very exciting to see what God [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:40:36.520; remove through 00:44:16.000] does through one person who seeks to be faithful to the call of [CUT] God. For now, the weak can say that they are strong in the strength that God has given. Where shield of faith and bount of truth will stand against the devil's lies, an army bold whose battle cry is love, preaching out to those in darkness? We're called to war, to love the captive soul, but to rage against a captor, and with the sword that makes a wounded whole, we will fight with faith and valor, and face with the trials on every side, we know the outcome is secure, and Christ shall have the prize for which he died, an inheritance of nation. Come see the cross, where love and mercy meet, as the Son of God is written, then see His bones, like crushed beneath His feet, for the conqueror has risen, and as a stone is rolled away, and Christ emerges from the grave, this victory march will take you 'til the day every eye and heart shall see Him. Oh, Spirit come, put grace in every stride, and give grace for every hurdle that we may run, with faith to win the prize of the servant good and faithful, as saints of old still line the way, retelling triumphs of His grace, we hear their calls and hunger for the day, for with Christ we stand in glory, as saints of old still line the way, retelling triumphs of His grace, we hear their calls and hunger for the day, but with Christ we stand in glory. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:44:16.000; resume after this marked segment]