Book Of Acts - You Shall Be My Witnesses

God Centered Theology

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You shall be my witnesses. We'll look in two places this morning.

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Matthew chapter 28 and verse 19 after Jesus came out of the grave. He says,

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Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the

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Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age, or end of the age, rather.

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Let's pray. Father, I pray you bless the preaching of your word, Lord. I pray the hearts will be changed and we'll be further sanctified by it.

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And I thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Big place, right?

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You ever think a place as small as Emporia could reach all that?

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Would you believe it? You think it's even possible? It says,

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Go therefore and make disciples. Those two words, go therefore, would be more literally rendered, having gone.

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It's not something that we're looking to the future to do. The Bible assumes it.

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Why? All Christians are commanded to make disciples. So therefore it goes that all

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Christians would be having gone into the world. Having gone, having reached out.

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Go therefore and make disciples. Disciples are those that are trained, instructed, growing into mature learners or believers.

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It says disciples of all the nations. This word nations is ethnos, where we get the term ethnicity, race,

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Gentiles, you know in this specific time frame, any pagan country that's not worshiping the true

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God. Why do we make disciples of all the nations? Disciples of all ethnicities, all races, backgrounds.

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Why is it that we have a community revival tonight that has all of Emporia and the greater counties

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Christians coming together to worship God under one roof? Well because in Christ there's no black, there's no white, there's no

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Chinese, there's no Hispanic. Fill in the blank as many times as you want to fill it in.

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None of that matters. It matters that we're in Christ Jesus.

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That is what unifies us. Now on the individual level, your race, your background, your culture, and all those things come in and they sum up who you are.

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And also your spiritual gifts in combination with that has a lot to do with what you'll do in the local church.

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But in Christ the roof, the floor, the ground at the cross is level.

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There's no this race better, or that race is better, or that background, or that amount is even.

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Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the

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Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then next we notice teaching them to observe all things, or all that I've commanded you.

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This word teaching them is a present tense verb. Ongoing action. It's not a simple occurrence.

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It's not something you can do one time. It's not something you can do to a point and you've arrived. The teaching of the

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Word of God, the instruction of the Word of God, the constant bringing someone up to full maturity in the

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Word of God is an ongoing process, an ongoing thing. And we're teaching them to observe, meaning watch over, to guard, to keep.

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We're not told to observe, to watch, to keep over, or excuse me, to watch over, to guard, or to keep preferences, or these things that divide us, or these things that are not scriptural.

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We're told to watch over, to guard, and to keep the Word of God.

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That means we defend the deity of Christ. We defend authority of Scripture. We defend justification by faith.

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We defend sola Scriptura, tota Scriptura, all of Scripture. But only Scripture is the rule of faith in the

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Christian church. We defend the things that Jesus has commanded us. So that's why when we reach out and we speak into a dying world, a lost and dying world, and say, this, or that, or these things you're engaging in is sin, even if they want to take our heads off, which happens in this world, we are never to compromise.

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We are never to give up. Now, there are some Christian groups out there that take that way too far, and they think that if you compromise the way you dress, or compromise this, or they label everything a compromise.

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You know, if you don't do things exactly like they say, well that isn't what the Bible says. The Bible says the core doctrines, the historic

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Christian faith, that which is clearly revealed in the

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Word of God about Jesus Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection, the fact that He's on the throne,

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God is the Creator. The Holy Spirit is our indweller. He's our power. He wants to transform us.

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He wants to sanctify us. He wants to use our spiritual gifts. He wants us to impact both people in the four walls, but also have a connection to the community.

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All those things that are clearly revealed, we are to observe, to watch over, to guard, and to keep those things.

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I've got for you verse 8 on the board, but now we're going to look, and we're going to look at the time of the book of Acts. Now, I'm going to read up to verse 8, and when we get to verse 8,

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I'll have it there for you on the screen. But in the book of Acts, we read the first account

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I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day

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He was taken up to Heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom

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He had chosen. Notice here, chapter 2,

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Pentecost. Chapter 1, Jesus Christ has not even ascended yet into Heaven, and we've got action of the

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Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ begins to do and to teach, and He's given final instructions to His disciples about what they're going to face, what they're going to have to do.

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And Jesus Christ is still bringing the sermon from last week in Philippians 2, 1 -8 fashion, not ceasing to be

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God, but willfully and voluntarily setting aside His rights and privileges and preferences as God to willfully submit to the

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Father. And in this instance, He's allowing and stepping to the side for the Holy Spirit, the third person of the

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Trinity, to be the one by which these instructions are coming. Why? Because at Pentecost, which we're going to see when we get to chapter 2 down the road, is the

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Holy Spirit that comes to indwell the believers. Jesus Christ is on His throne.

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He's at the right hand of the Father. He will return one day, which we will see at the end of this sermon. But for now,

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He is in Heaven, we are on Earth, and the Holy Spirit indwells us.

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Verse 3, to these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of 40 days and speaking of the things concerning the

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Kingdom of God. We're not going to get into it. It's a sermon for another day. But in apologetic fashion, defending the faith, this wasn't a situation where a body was just missing.

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This wasn't a situation where Jesus rose from the dead, nobody ever saw Him, and He's just gone one day.

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Over a period of 40 days, we have at least verified over 500 people. I tend to come down and think we're probably talking close to 1500 people, but the

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Scripture references one crowd, I think there was at least 500. These people saw Him, they knew it was

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Him, they were instructed by Him because while He had the 12 disciples, which if you go home,

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I'm not going to preach this passage next week, but if you want to spend some time reading the rest of chapter 1, you get the situation where they had to replace

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Judas. So you got the 12 disciples, but Jesus Christ had many more disciples that weren't the 12.

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He's instructing them and still teaching them, having resurrected from the grave. Many convincing proofs.

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We don't serve and believe in someone that has a tomb. There's no headstone, there's no mausoleum, there's no tomb, there's no grave you can go to on this planet, the same picture

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I had on the title screen, anywhere on the planet where you'll find the body of Jesus Christ. It's not there.

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Every other religion has a leader or a quote -unquote

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God that you can go and see their body. You can see their grave. It's there. If you were to exhume them and do

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DNA evidence, it would be them, not Jesus Christ. And He says, speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

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My friends, we are part of a kingdom. Did you know that? We're a part of a kingdom.

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This is just a planet. God's kingdom is

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Him reigning in the hearts and minds of individual people. And one day He will be on this earth.

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He will be ruling this earth with a rod of iron. He will be physically and fully present on this earth.

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But for now, He reigns in your hearts and your minds and in my heart and my mind. He didn't speak to them about little petty things.

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He didn't speak to them about money. He didn't speak to them about business, how to go out and start a business.

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There's nothing wrong with that. Many of you have had businesses or have businesses. Nothing wrong with those things. Nothing wrong with the jobs we have and all these things.

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God didn't instruct about none of that. He talked about the kingdom of almighty God. That is what we're supposed to be about the business of doing.

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That's what we're supposed to be focused on. Those are the things that should occupy and dwell our mind,

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Ephesians 5 .18. Be filled with the Spirit. The idea of a glass sitting on a table and you filled it up with water, not to the top, but overflowing with water.

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Filled with the Spirit, therefore controlled by the Spirit, focused on the things that the

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Holy Spirit commands. Hence, He says, after He had by the

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Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles concerning the things of the kingdom of God.

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Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised.

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My friends, in the first four verses of the book of Acts, if that's all we had as inspired scripture, you have the doctrine of the

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Trinity, you have the doctrine of the deity of Christ, you've got justification by faith if you look hard enough, and you've got the authority of scripture.

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The four main historic Christian doctrines are all contained in the first chapter of the book of Acts.

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It's all there. You've had the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all referenced in this first couple of verses.

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For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

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Now, we're going to eventually have some teaching on what baptism with the Holy Spirit is and what it is not.

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That will be another day, but it does reference it here. And it moves on in verse 6. It says, so when they had come together, they were asking

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Him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?

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And He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority.

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It's not for us to know everything. It's for us to obey.

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Obedience is the hallmark of and the greatest evidence of a true believer.

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Our obedience, albeit imperfect as we remain in sinful humanness, sinful flesh, but our obedience to Jesus Christ is our assurance because we obey out of a heart that truly loves

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God. You can go into any LifeWay Christian bookstore and find what seems like hundreds of books of, well now

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Trump's President, so now I know we're closer to the end. When Obama was President, Obama's President, now

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I know we're really close to Tribulation. Every single time there's a new President, whether he's Democrat or Republican, somebody puts out a book and says, well now

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I know we're in the end times. Do you think for one iota, now look,

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God is sovereign, He cares about everything, just work with me here. But in light of putting out a book, do you think

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God really cares who's in the White House? I mean come on, He's concerned about the kingdom of God.

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Who's in the White House does play a part in God's sovereignty. Now He rolls out the times and the epochs and all these things that go along and the dispensations of time and the different ways in which

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God deals with the humanity of the world. And all these things that are going on until He sums it all up in Jesus Christ and His second return.

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But all these books, I've got it figured out. It's going to be this year, it's going to be this thing. Look at what just happened with the stock market,

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I'm sure. And then you fast forward a couple years, we're still here, still serving.

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Why? It is not for us to know. It's okay to have say a

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Sunday school class about end times, revelation, it's all part of the Word of God. We should teach it, we should understand it.

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But it should not be the primary focus of what we do as Christians.

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You can get lost in it. And if you're so focused on one part of the Bible, you're teaching it and living it out of context.

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That's why I said, Sola Scriptura, only Scripture is the rule of faith for the Christian church.

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Tota Scriptura, all of it. Not just Revelation, not just Leviticus, all of it.

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And then He says, and I've got this one on the screen, but you will receive power. The Greek word dunamis, dynamite.

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It's not power where we have this ball and it's bigger than we are and we're just sort of slowly inching it up a hill.

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It's, I really want to do this, but I don't want to scare the children. I really just want to like have some loud noise and just scream as loud as I can and really get that across to you.

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But it's, think about explosions and dynamite and how loud they are and how instant it is.

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That's the power we're talking about. Dynamite, explosive power, miraculous power, the kind of power that makes people stand back and say, whoa, did you see what they just did?

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Did you see what that church down the road accomplished? Did you see what Emporia is doing with community revivals?

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Did you see how they took that time and gave of their money or gave of their time or gave of their gifts to serve that other person without even thinking about themselves?

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That's power. That's Holy Spirit power. That's kingdom of God.

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You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Now, this time and this point of human history, the

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Holy Spirit did not come to permanently indwell believers. We will see that later in Acts. But in our time in 2018, we are constantly, fully, completely, and will always be indwelled by the

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Holy Spirit of God. And to the degree that we are filled up by His presence and control, we will willfully and voluntarily yield and submit ourselves to the

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Word of God and to Christ. And you shall be my witnesses, both in the surrounding areas, so he covers it, both in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, even to the remotest part of the earth.

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So what is he saying? You shall be my witness, both in surrounding areas and to the whole world.

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As we live out a life that is a witness for Christ, you and I, all of us, we experience and have to struggle through and with spiritual attacks.

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Satan and his demons believe and they tremble because they know their time is short.

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And if they see you living for Christ or attempting to live for Christ, they're going to show up at your doorstep and they're going to fight you.

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They're going to try to wear you down. They're going to try to destroy your testimony. They're going to try to get you to a place where you would rather give in to whatever

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Satan is trying to get you to do rather than stand firm on the Word of God. And the good news is, my friends, as Christians, as a church, we have the indwelling

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Holy Spirit with the dunamis, the dynamite, the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome any spiritual attack.

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Satan is a defeated foe. He has no authority over your life. None. He only can do what

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God allows him to do. And it's all Romans 8, 28, working together all these things for good.

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Don't let him in your house. Don't let him in your life. He doesn't belong there and he has no authority to be there.

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Obey God. Obey His Word. Submit yourself to Christ. Let Him transform you. And you will be prepared.

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You will see it coming. And you'll say, turn around and leave. Don't want you in my house.

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We are commanded by Christ to be making disciples and to be His witnesses in this world.

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Which brings me to this. The world in which we live is changing.

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And in case you haven't been paying attention, it's doing so quickly. If we don't engage and adapt to the changing culture around us, then we will have nothing to offer the people in that culture.

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While the Word of God never changes and must never be compromised, the way in which we are witnesses to the

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Gospel in light of Acts chapter 1 verse 8 does change with every generation.

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And we must change and adapt to be able to reach those new generations.

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I'm not brave enough to ask y 'all how many of you can go as far back and remember some of these early ones.

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Evolution of television. 1930's, 50's, 70's, 90's, 2000's, 2010.

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Do we use the same television they used in 1930? No. Every time you ask this question, there's always that one.

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But putting that one person to the side, is there anybody that would want to use a television from 1930?

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No. What year is it? 2018?

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We're not even 100 years past that first picture on that slide. And look how much it's changed.

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I don't have this in a slide, but think about medicine too, right? The telephone. Has it changed?

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Some of you may have this as an antique, and if one of you has one of them older ones and you still use it, I'd love to talk to you because that'd be kind of cool.

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I mean to think they would use it. But typically and primarily, people don't use what's probably one of those first two on the top left.

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I doubt the third one. I doubt the fourth one. Although there probably are some rotary phones available. But typically it's one of the ones towards the end.

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So if phones changed, another one I didn't include this morning was cars.

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The only way you can be consistent with saying I don't want to change is if you came this morning in a horse and buggy. Otherwise, you're either fibbing, lying, or just not honest with yourself.

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We all change. You know what kind of change people don't want? The one they can't control.

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We fear what we can't control, but we gladly give in to things that benefit us or things that we feel like we're in control of.

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Then take the mobile phone. So we've got telephone, then you fast forward to 2008, and then look at the evolution of the mobile phone.

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So not only have we had a period of gradual change, but then in the last ten years, it has skyrocketed.

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Skyrocketed! I mean every single day there's a new phone or a new gadget or a new thing. A new way to get the gospel out.

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I doubt very many of you still have the phone which is on your left. If you do,

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God bless you. I love my iPhone. So the timeline of communications.

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I'm going to turn it so I can read it. That way I can read it for y 'all too. You can't quite see it on the back. But you've got your postal system on the left, radio, typewriters, telegraph, telephone, camera, personal computer, the internet, which

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Al Gore invented. Nobody has got that political joke. Man, that's why I don't tell jokes.

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Okay. Well, note to self, right? Internet, cell phone. And Lord knows the internet's changed.

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We've gone from Windows 95, Windows 98, XP, all this stuff, Windows 7, now

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Windows 10, then you've got Apple has really exploded. But it's all changed, hasn't it? The timeline of communication.

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We do not communicate the same way we did 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even 5 years ago.

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Computers, huh? Boy, have they changed. I don't really know what that one in the top left is.

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That might have been the one I played Oregon Trail on as a kid. But then you had the massive desktops, right?

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And then a more modern desktop, and the first laptops were those big thick things, right? And now they're so thin, they're almost like paper thin.

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And then you've got your tablets. That's eventually my goal, is I want to have me an iPad up here so I can have my sermon notes on that and don't have to keep printing paper.

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Paper's just not a big fan. But then it's got the question mark. So what's next? What's next?

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The world is changing. The culture is changing. The way the gospel gets out is changing.

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We're going to see that in a minute. What's next? And are we willing to adapt to the culture around us, which, whether you want to admit it or not, 95 to probably 99 % of people adapt to the culture outside of a church.

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And then we come to church and say, I'm never going to change. Really? Because the whole world is, and you do with it, because we're not riding horse and buggy.

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We're not dressed like they did in the 1500s. We don't obviously use the same computers and telephones. So why is it we decide in church we can't?

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I have good news for you, and I want to make my best argument to you that by changing and adapting with the culture, we are actually doing what this sermon's about.

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We're actually reaching the world for the gospel. So how do we measure whether a ministry is successful?

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How do we measure whether a church is successful in light of all these slides? By the numbers of people in the pews on Sunday, by the amount of money in the offering, by the amount of shoeboxes collected, which is a wonderful thing.

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I would say it's measured by the number of lives changed. The total number of shoeboxes collected, while a good thing, is ultimately not important.

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The number of people in the pews, while we always would want to have more people, is ultimately not important.

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How large our room or building or educational building or all these things, what someone is wearing, what somebody looks like, what the color of their skin is, all those things, not important.

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How much money we give or how much positions or committees we're on, those things aren't important.

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Religion says those things are important. Even idol worship says those things are important, but not

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God. What is important is the number of lives changed and transformed by the gospel and the power of Jesus Christ.

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The number of lives changed by the shoeboxes put together and packed and shipped, that is what is important.

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That's why they're putting shoeboxes together next week. That's why you see so many kids toys and dolls and things just in storage rooms and out there and in bins, because it's not about that.

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It's not about the ministry itself. It's about the potential of the lives being changed. And last

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September we had a meeting with 300 people in here with a girl from Russia and her life was changed by one box.

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And that's the only life that was ever changed. The entire shoebox ministry, everything Franklin Graham has done, including our ministry here, was worth it.

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It is the same goal no matter what we are doing, whether it's a shoebox,

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I picked that one out in particular, but anything we do, whether it's a music ministry, VBS, whatever, anything we do, it's the same goal.

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Because results, true biblical results, gospel -centered results,

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Christ -centered results are real people being transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Who would have ever thought that Calvary Baptist Church, with a decade -plus falling attendance, and so much attitudinal angst amongst some of its members, and so much disunity, sickness, at times idols, would actually have a legitimate and real life -changing impact on strangers in faraway lands?

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Countries that many people probably couldn't even find on the globe, much less knew they existed. Would you believe it?

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It's true. What if I told you that in spite of all of our shortcomings, all of our distractions, and yes, petty complaining, we are still spreading the gospel literally all over the world, and having a positive impact on many, many people we probably will never meet this side of eternity.

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Would you believe it? It's true. While for much of our time we've spent way too much time focused narrowly on what happens inside of our four walls, we have unwittingly had a hand in doing

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God's work and fulfilling the Great Commission in very different and surprising ways. Would you believe it?

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It's true. The time to wipe the slate clean has come. The time for repentance has come.

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The time to stop focusing on the past has come. Because God is doing something in our present day that has the potential to go, to be far greater than anything this church or you have done in the past.

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Would you believe it? It's true. There is kingdom work to be done.

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Your pastor is focused on kingdom work. I want you all to be unified in doing kingdom work.

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We have to get our eyes opened to what God is actually doing, even in some cases, despite us.

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We need to consider what God is doing, take a look at what we are actually achieving, and then unify around the

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Great Commission, unify around Christ, build upon the foundation that is laid in Jesus Christ, care for it, love it, live it, and then truly be

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His witnesses to the entire world. Why? There's no limit to what

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God can do if we trust Him and surrender and submit ourselves totally to Him.

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I have a personal website, the church has a website, but I'm on this thing called Sermon Audio, sermonaudio .com,

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and the wonderful thing about Sermon Audio that I didn't even know until about a week ago is Sermon Audio has very detailed statistics.

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Since May of 2017, when I started on Sermon Audio, which is about a month after I got here, when somebody views or plays one of the sermons, they don't download it, they just view it or play it, the number of times that has happened since last

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May is 5 ,646 times. Do we have 5 ,646 people in our church?

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No. Downloads, they not only listened or viewed the sermon, but they actually chose to download it to their computer or their device.

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How many downloads have we had since May of 2017? 2 ,269, of which 707 of those were with a mobile phone, and this is two weeks old data, so it might be even more now.

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Total blog views, now on andycaine .org I have my full blog, I don't put every blog post on Sermon Audio, I mainly put the ones that pertain to the sermons, but I have 34 blog entries on there.

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The total number of views since May 2017, 3 ,282.

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People are listening, they're downloading, and they're reading about what's going on at Calvary Baptist Church.

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You have a hand in this. This is not Andy Cain, although it may have been my sermons, it's the role

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I play, but I've already preached a whole spiritual gift series, and you know where I am about that. It's not about me.

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But I wanted to bring out these statistics about what the sermons I preached at Calvary Baptist Church, and through your support of Calvary Baptist Church, which enables me to be able to preach sermons,

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I want you to see what they're doing, because you all have a part and a hand in what we're doing.

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Here's the big one. The total number of countries, did

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I say counties? Did I say counties in Virginia? Did I say counties in North Carolina?

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No, I didn't. I said countries. The total number of countries reached with the gospel, not in every church, just Calvary Baptist Church, since May of 2017.

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41 countries that this little old church, 111 going on 112 years old, has reached for the gospel.

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41 countries. Now we will never know the sight of eternity probably, if any lives were changed, but we weren't told to ensure that lives were changed, were we?

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It says, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses.

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My friends, we are witnesses to 41 countries, whether you realize it or not, up to and including the

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United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, India, Dominican Republic, Germany, Canada, Nigeria, Oman, Philippines, Switzerland, Afghanistan, Belgium, France, Japan, Netherlands, South Africa, New Zealand, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Zambia, Ghana, Israel, Peru, Vietnam, Kenya, Fiji, Brazil, and many more.

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Costa Rica, Greece, Thailand, Sweden, Portugal, yes, even the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Norway, Italy, I don't know how to say that one,

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Malaysia, and yes, the good old U .S. of A. At least one verified download in each one of those, and in most cases it's more than that.

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It's happening. It's happening right in front of your eyes, and you may not have even known it.

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It's happening. We are literally reaching all over the globe.

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We are getting the Gospel out literally all over the globe, and the potential for changed lives for the

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Kingdom of God is unlimited. Imagine what we could accomplish if we had a people completely unified in Christ, completely submitted to the

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Word of God, willing to repent of their sin, wipe the slate clean, start over with a new day, with a renewed focus, because this right there, that picture is the only thing

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I care about. Now within that, I need to say, that obviously includes what

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I've taught about a Kingdom balance. There's some inward needs, outward needs. It doesn't mean we don't care about our people here, but it means we're balanced with looking to the world as well, because it says, take the

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Gospel to the surrounding areas, which would include us and Emporia, but also to the world.

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My point is that that represents Kingdom of God. That represents a Kingdom focus.

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That is what I'm focused on. Those are the things I will be focused on, and if we can be focused on it, the possibilities are limitless.

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Who would ever thought a church as small as ours, in a place that I honestly didn't know existed until I came here, would be reaching the entire globe?

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Would you believe it? It's true. Think about where we could go from here.

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Remember the slide with the question mark? Think about where we could go from here if we get behind one another, if you get behind the vision

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I'm laying out for this church. We're going to end with this, verse 9,

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And after he had said these things, he was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received him out of their sight.

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And as they were gazing intently into the sky while he was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them.

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They also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taking up from you into heaven will come in just the same way as you have watched him go into heaven.

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Not only should we be focused on the Kingdom, we need to remember Jesus is coming back.

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My friends, you don't have to like me. You don't. I've talked about personality differences, right?

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You don't have to. But you're going to have to love and trust me. I'll never steer you wrong.

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I'm showing you what you're accomplishing. I want you to trust me to understand what more we could be doing.

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I'm only going to get one life. I think it stands to reason you're only going to get one life, right?

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I'm only going to get one life. One ministry.

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The time for procrastination, the time for putting it off, the time for laziness, the time for every sin we can fill in that blank with is over.

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God's doing real work, and I want us to do real work with Him. You shall be my witnesses, and I leave you with this.

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We need to imprint this on our brains. The church isn't here so we can be served. The church is here so that we can serve.

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The church isn't here so we can be served. The church is here so that we can serve.