Proclaiming Christ

SERMON: 2017-03-19--ac17167--proclaiming-christ SOURCE DURATION: 00:39:45.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with an expository introduction setting the stage for the sermon's topic (Acts 19). It concludes with a clear theological exposition and call to action regarding bearing witness to Christ. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Chances are you aren't aware of this or perhaps have forgotten, but our series of studies in Ephesians chapter 6 that we have just concluded was actually a detour from our study in the book of Acts particularly Acts chapter 19 where the Apostle Paul comes to Ephesus on his third missionary journey. I want to go back to that main story now and continue to look at it and as we read the scriptures from Acts chapter 19 allow me to set the stage first by showing you once again the map of his third missionary journey. On Paul's third missionary journey he revisits most of the churches that he established in the first and second missionary journeys and so as he is traveling across the country he decides to stop in at Ephesus where he discovers a small group of believers. There is not yet a church established at Ephesus. His friend Apollos is at Corinth over here and that's where we pick up the narrative this morning. So let's read the first seven verses together and then we'll talk about it again a little bit this morning. "While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, 'Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?' They answered, 'No. We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.' So Paul asked, 'Then what baptism did you receive?' 'John's baptism,' they replied. Paul said, 'John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus. On hearing this they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus and when Paul placed his hands on them the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all." This then becomes the beginning of the church at Ephesus and the community to which the letter to the Ephesians later on is addressed. Our text this morning is the latter part of this passage where Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. Going to start looking this morning at what it means to proclaim Christ. Before we do that, let's pray together. Lord, we're so grateful that you've not left us alone to bear witness to Jesus. We're so grateful for who he is. We're so grateful for what he has come to do. We're so grateful for those moments in our own lives when we have encountered his presence and his power. And Lord, we want to be obedient to the great commission to make disciples of all nations and we want to make ourselves available to you to do that. That having been said, Lord, we're often inadequate, feel ill-prepared, ill-equipped, and are so grateful for the gift of the Holy Spirit. So fill us afresh, reveal Jesus in his glory, fill our mouths with stories of his redemption, and may we mutually encourage one another as well as the world around us that Jesus Christ is exalted at God's right hand, that he is coming again in glory, and that one day he's going to make all things new. So Lord, bless us in these moments together, help me with the words that you've given me and all of us to hear what we need to hear and to respond in ways that you invite us to respond. We pray this together in Jesus' name, amen. We were looking last Sunday morning, as many of you will recall, at Paul's request in the book of Ephesians for the church to pray for him as a preacher, and I would think by extension for all those who have been privileged to proclaim the gospel. The text that we looked at last week, Ephesians 6, the verses 19 and 20, where Paul says, pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should. As we saw last week, Paul was not naturally a gifted speaker. He needed God's help not only to open his mouth, but to be able to declare the mystery of the gospel and to do it fearlessly. And that, of course, is the need of everyone that has ever been called to proclaim the name of Jesus. And I've got to tell you how encouraged I was last week by the many of you that came forward to say, you know, we pray for you and for other pastors and preachers in this church every week or every time when we think of that. Don't ever underestimate the importance of that. And whatever God accomplishes through a spoken word or music ministry in a place like this or in other places depends as much on you who do the praying as the people who do the presenting. And I am confident that on that final day, the Lord hands out his rewards. Your reward will equal that of those who have stepped into those places because the Bible says even a cup of cold water given in the name of the Lord to somebody who speaks on the Lord's behalf gets you the same reward as the person who does the speaking. That's not a bad deal. You might want to take advantage of that as regularly as you can. Paul says, pray for me that words will be given me and I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel. Now that having been said, I think we would be mistaken to assume that preaching the word is therefore primarily restricted to those who are the "professional preachers" because the reality is that every believer is a prophet, priest, and a king. And every believer is called upon to share the good news of Jesus. And I say that because in Acts chapter 8, we have that fascinating episode where Stephen has been martyred in Acts chapter 7, Saul, later to become Paul, launches a persecution against the church and the Bible says the whole church was scattered to Judea and Samaria except the apostles. And then we read this fascinating little verse easily missed Acts chapter 8 verse 4. Those who had been scattered, guess what they did? They preached the word wherever they went. Peter makes a similar observation later on in 1 Peter chapter 3, 15, and 16. He says always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. Proclaiming Christ isn't simply the domain of the professional preacher, the prophet if you will, it is the domain of every believer, which of course immediately raises the question how do we do that because like Paul, most of us are not trained speakers. Like many others, we're probably not theologically trained. We don't always know how to find the words to express the mystery of the gospel. And most of us, I dare say, aren't too interested in hurting other people's feelings or getting ourselves into trouble. And so the result is the people in the world get louder and noisier and influence our culture and our society, while Christians increasingly draw back into their little cave scared to let their voice be heard and the name of Jesus suffers in silence, isn't that true? I mean how many of us here, even in the course of this past week, would have been brave enough to talk to one of our friends or family members about the person of Jesus? How do we get beyond this place of being fearful, this place of feeling inadequate, this place of feeling that we don't know how to engage our culture? Well the answer, of course, lies in a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit because one of the last commands that Jesus gave to the early church in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, you know this verse well, he said, "You will receive power, dunamis, dynamite, when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." God's Holy Spirit is the empowerment that comes upon the church to enable the church to enter into the great commission and to declare the name of Jesus to the furthest ends of the earth. And the whole book of Acts is built around this declaration that you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And so we see the first fulfillment of that in Acts chapter 2 when on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit gets poured out, the early church breaks forth into speaking in tongues in that particular situation and the nations gathered there hear the word of God in their own language. You find a similar thing happening a little bit later on in Acts chapter 10 when Peter goes to the house of Cornelius, proclaims the good news to Cornelius, the Gentile centurion, the Holy Spirit falls upon them and everybody's mouths are open to declare the mighty word of God. And then you come here to Acts chapter 19 and you find the same thing happening. You've got this small group of believers in Ephesus. They haven't even heard there is such a thing as the Holy Spirit. They've been baptized into John's baptism. They are believers, but they haven't been empowered for a life of witness. And so the Bible goes on to say in the words of our text, 6 and 7 of Acts 19, Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. They spoke in tongues and prophesied. In each of those three stories when they are baptized in the Holy Spirit, there is a loosening of the tongue. There is in each instance the gift of tongues, but there is also in each instance the proclamation, the gift of prophecy, which means speaking forth the good message of Christ. Now there are those, particularly in classic Pentecostal tradition, who would argue that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of being baptized with the Holy Spirit and there would be some, I think, that would argue, unless you can speak in tongues, you have not been baptized by the Holy Spirit. Most evangelical Christians would disagree with that position because the reality is that there are many, many Christians who are powerfully anointed by God's Holy Spirit and who are powerfully good at proclaiming the name of Jesus who may or may not have received the gift of tongues. What happens here, however, is that as the Holy Spirit comes upon believers, He loosens their mouths so that on the one hand they can praise God in ways they have never been able to praise God before and also because now they are able to proclaim the name of Jesus as on the day of Pentecost so that people can hear the good news of Christ in their own language. And so if you and I are timid, if you and I feel like we are unequipped, unable to bear witness to Jesus, to our friends, to our relatives, and to our family members, or to whoever, the antidote to that is not another thousand training sessions, which is what Christians typically tend to do, nothing wrong with training sessions, there is nothing like an infilling of God's Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit will empower us to proclaim Christ Jesus. The early church cowered behind closed doors until the resurrection of Christ. They were locked up in the upper room keeping among themselves until the Holy Spirit fell on them on the day of Pentecost and they went out and they turned the world upside down. You and I are here today because they were empowered by God's Holy Spirit. Am I making sense? The Holy Spirit's job is to help us to proclaim the name of Christ. Well in the time that remains I want to try to give you as quickly as I can three ways in which I believe the Holy Spirit empowers us in the proclamation of the name of Jesus. Number one, and we've talked about this before, he reveals to us who Jesus is. He reveals to us who Jesus is. John 15 26, Jesus speaking, "When the counselor comes whom I will send to you from the Father the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father he will testify, he will testify about me." John 16 14 and 15, "He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine." That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. The job of the Holy Spirit is to make real inner experience what God the Father has given to Jesus so that we can become partakers of the divine nature. Quick illustration that I've showed you before. If God is the author of life, the generator, and we are the light bulb, and Jesus is the wires that transmit what God has to us, then you'll remember this from before, who in that illustration is the Holy Spirit, the electric current. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, according to classic Christian professions, and he empowers God's people. He lights up our light bulb, if you will. He enlivens the Christian life and the Christian experience. Now, remember, the difficulty for Christians is that Jesus is no longer physically present here upon the earth. He's gone to heaven. You can't see him, mostly with our natural senses. You can't hear him. You can't experience him. That's why faith for so many people is so incredibly difficult. How do you bear witness to something or somebody that you cannot see? That's why, as I said, faith can be such an incredibly difficult thing to do or to hold on to. And the antidote to that is the Holy Spirit who comes to us and who makes Jesus real. How does he do that? We talked about it before. I'll be brief about it. He opens our spiritual eyes. He tunes our receiver to heaven's wavelength so that we know that we know that we know that Jesus is really who he says that he is. He comes to live within our hearts. He walks and talks with us. As the old hymn says, there are moments that we see him in answers to prayer, in how he comes to us in moments of loneliness and in moments of despair, and how he works in our lives to conform us to the image of Christ. The Holy Spirit is Jesus with us today. And the more you experience that reality of Jesus, as we'll see in a moment, the easier it is to talk about him. And so Peter puts it this way, to a church suffering great persecution, he says, "Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy." Doesn't mean we're always going to feel that way, but for the believer, there are those moments when heaven comes down and glory fills my soul. There will be those moments when we know that we know that we know that God's Spirit bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God, that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And you and I, we can pray for that. We can pray for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. And we can pray that the Lord will take the dimness of our souls away so that we can live in the reality of the new covenant, the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us. And if you find yourself in a place where that is like talking about a foreign country where you've never been, the number one, you need to confirm that you have given your life to Jesus. And the number two, you need to get down on your knees and you need to say, "Lord, I love this old hymn that we have." Periodically we sing it here, "It's Spirit of God dwell thou within my heart. I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, no sudden rending of the veil of clay, no angel visitant, no opening skies, but take the dimness of my soul away." Take the dimness of my soul away. Light my fire. Show me that Jesus is really real and that he is who he says that he is. That's the first job of the Holy Spirit. It's his job to do, it's our job to receive. One thing the Holy Spirit does then in this context is he gives us a desire to proclaim Jesus. To the degree to which we know Jesus and experience him, to that degree, automatically we want to tell other people about him. Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. I love what we read in Acts chapter 4 verse 20 where the apostle Peter and John, they've been called on the carpet by the Sanhedrin, they have been told no longer to proclaim the name of Jesus. And Peter and John respond, "We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." We can't help it, doesn't matter what you do to us. You can kill us and we're still going to be talking about Jesus because we happen to like who Jesus is and we happen to believe that he's the one who's come to change the whole world and to bring about the kingdom of God. John in his epistle similarly makes that observation. He says, "We proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard." To the degree, let me say it again. To the degree to which our spiritual eyes have been opened and that doesn't even take a big spiritual experience because we often get confused about that. To the degree to which our spiritual eyes have been opened to behold the glory of Jesus, to that degree we develop a desire to proclaim him because it means that when people talk to us about their problems, it means that when people are suffering under the load of sin or under the load of guilt or under the load of whatever, we can take them by the hand and we can say to them, as I'm sure many of us have many times over the years, "I don't know what the answer is." Some people's problems are so huge that all you can do is sit there and cry with them because it defies our wisdom to solve the problem. Have you ever discovered that? In that moment, all we can do is take them by the hand and say to them, "I don't have the answer but I know somebody who does. Let me tell you about Jesus and let me pray with you to Jesus that Jesus will step into your situation and make all the difference in the world." Don't ever underestimate how anxious Jesus is to respond to the cry, "I need you, oh, I need you." Sometimes we get cynical because we pray so long and so hard for our own issues, we think that it's going to be hard and difficult for everybody, no. The Lord is more than ready to step into a lot of situations and when he sees the brokenhearted, he wants to bless them and heal them and restore them and you and I need faith in Jesus to proclaim his name and to say, "Let's go to Jesus with this and let's invite Jesus to step into this situation and change your life," because Jesus is alive. He is living and he has promised to live among his people and he wants us to reach out to him in faith and expectation. So the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus, the Holy Spirit having revealed to us Jesus, opens our mouths so that we cannot but speak. I mean, if you won the lottery today or got a job promotion or got a lifelong dream realized, we'd have a hard time shutting you up, don't you think? You would naturally want to share good news. There is no better news than the fact that Jesus is the Redeemer and the Savior of the world who is God's answer to everything that ails us and our job is to grab hold of that and to proclaim it through the power of the Holy Spirit. And then what the Holy Spirit does, that's the whole point of these stories, is he gives us words to proclaim Christ cross-culturally. We talked some weeks ago about we don't know how to pray as we want and the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, while we don't know how to speak as we ought. Who knows what to say to that broken heart? Who knows how to provide an answer to that particularly difficult situation? Who knows how to communicate the love of Jesus to somebody whose heart is so broken that you can't possibly even get in there? The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness also in knowing how to proclaim the name of Jesus. He gives us what we need, when we need it, to penetrate into hearts and to change people's lives. Already before Pentecost, when the Lord Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim the good news, when he made them apostles, sent ones, he said this concerning the persecution that they would experience when they arrest you. Do not worry about what to say or how to say it, at that time you will be given what to say for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. This is pre-Pentecost, before the Holy Spirit is even poured out upon the church. How much more after the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost does the Lord Jesus promise to give us the ability to communicate his glory and his power supernaturally? And notice there is a cross-cultural element in this. Cross-cultural means across cultures. Think this through with me for just a little bit if you will. What does it take for person A to communicate the gospel effectively to person B? First of all, person A has to know Jesus, person A has to know how to find words to express the good news of Jesus in a way that communicates to that other person, and person A has to be able to do that with authority and with power. But that's only half the equation, the other half of the equation is the recipient. The recipient has to be able to understand the language, has to be able to understand the world view out of which that story is being communicated, and has to be, that word has to penetrate beyond all the cultural linguistic barriers that exist in that person's life. And so there's a lot of interference in passing the gospel from one kind of culture to another. And you don't even have to go to foreign countries to have this difficulty. The difficulty that grandparents have in communicating with their grandchildren when it comes to to biblical values will show you in what different worlds those two generations live. What your kids or what your grandkids are enjoying in terms of today's media will be very different from what you enjoy in most instances because you speak a different language. And because you speak a different language they don't hear what you say and you don't hear what they have to say. Cross-cultural communication is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit so that the church is empowered to speak in the language of the culture. That's what happened on Pentecost. That's why I keep saying the speaking in tongues on the day of Pentecost was the gift of cross-cultural communication because you have all these believers gathered in Jerusalem from all these different areas, all speaking different languages, but they all heard the name of Jesus in their own language. And so what the Holy Spirit does is he will empower you and me to identify the different places where people find themselves and then he will equip us to speak into that with power so that people can hear the message and actually experience transformation. Give you an illustration. Kip Ripken, author of the book The Insanity of Obedience, I've mentioned his name before but he has studied cultures around the world with a view not only of trying to find out how do people in persecuted countries stay faithful to Jesus, but how does God reach different people groups in different parts of the world? And he's made some very interesting observations. He says when it comes to converting Muslims, and you've heard us talk about this before, God tends to use three things. Number one, he gives them dreams and visions. Number two, he will lead them to find a Bible which they will then start reading. And number three, he will lead them to a Christian who ultimately ends up bringing them to faith. Very dangerous and very difficult in Muslim countries, but almost inevitably this is the predominant way in which the Lord works. And when people have visions and divine revelations of Jesus, they still get sent to the church because the church is God's vehicle for proclaiming the gospel. It's a very interesting thing. But he says now when you go to the Hindus, God uses an entirely different method. He says for Hindus to come to faith, what typically happens is that some evangelist will come along and he will tell stories of the New Testament and Jesus's healing and restoring power. And then as they proclaim that gospel, miracles begin to happen and people like in the New Testament begin to flock in and give their lives to Jesus because they've just discovered and experienced his redemptive power. Then he talks about North America. How do you think people in North America come to faith these days? Well, a lot of different ways to be sure. But he says it is predominantly by discovering they've come to the end of themselves. Life doesn't work. They need help. Somebody shares Jesus with them, invites them to church, prays with them. They discover an answer to their prayer, and they come to faith, and they come to life in Jesus. That's the gift of cross-cultural communication. And if you're in Christ this morning and you are anointed with the Holy Spirit, then there will be those moments in your life when the Lord gives you insight and burdens to speak into somebody's life with a message of good news. Our tendency will be to say, "I'm not a preacher." Our tendency will be to say, "Well, I'm not very good with words." Our tendency will be to say, "Well, I'll make a mess of it and we'll talk ourselves out of being faithful in proclaiming the good news of Jesus." But why do you think Paul makes a point of being untrained? And why do you think in Acts chapter 4 the educated religious leaders of Israel were astonished at the preaching of the early church when they saw that they were unschooled common people? Why do you think those stories are in the Bible? Do you think it might be because the Lord wants to show us that it isn't first and foremost a function of how smart, how capable, or how gifted we are but it's a function of the degree to which we understand who Jesus is, have received from him a desire to share him with others and can trust him that as we step out in obedience he will give us what we need for the glory of the Lord? And so I end this morning with these words that we quoted last week, 1 Corinthians 2, 4, and 5, Paul speaking, he says, "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom but on God's power." Remember at the end of the day it's not your responsibility to bring somebody else to faith. That's the work of God's Holy Spirit. Our job is to bear witness to him. And as we bear witness to him, maybe, just maybe, the Lord will put a pebble in their shoes that rubs them the wrong way, that makes them re-examine their life, that makes them re-examine their values, that makes them re-examine who they are, where they're going, and how they're living, and who knows but that in the providence of God they'll come to a place where they'll take their shoe off, remove the pebble, acknowledge Christ, and have their lives changed forever. What would happen if each person here over the course of the next 12 months would faithfully bear witness to Christ following the promptings of the Holy Spirit, how many people would come to faith, and how many lives would be changed because of the faithful witness of Jesus in his people? He promises to confirm his word with signs and wonders. Miracles happen when you and I do what we have been called to do for the glory of God. God's people said, "Amen!" [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:39:41.240; remove through 00:39:45.000] [ [CUT]BLANK_AUDIO] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:39:45.000; resume after this marked segment]