Sunday, June 12, 2022 AM

It's good to be together. If you were here for Sunday school, I hope you're enjoying your summer Sunday school session so far. They've been a blessing, at least to me, so far, and it's not too late to jump in and join one.

So a few announcements as we get started this morning. Come back for our evening service tonight at 530 regular time. Looking ahead to this Wednesday, we'll have our meal together at 545 in the Fellowship Hall, prayer meeting for the adults at 630, and then children's choir for the kids at that same time.

Looking ahead to a couple Sundays and Saturdays in the future on June 26th, we'll have the Lord's Supper that morning, and then Truth Group for the young adults after the evening service that night. Sunday, July 3rd, Sunnyside will be having a special 70th birthday celebration in the evening service that night, so be sure, if you know people who have been here in the past, invite them back to come celebrate with us.

And then Saturday, July 9th, the Words of Life Women's Retreat that we've talked about a couple times over the course of the past few months, that's happening on Saturday, July 9th. If you need any information on that, I think Haley Mounce is probably the person to talk to there.

If you need to sign up for our weekly Preparing for Sunday emails, there's a link in your bulletin for that. And then we're coming up on the deadline for the Big Mission House demo, so if you need to schedule anything that you want to see that might still be in that house right now, please talk to Hannah Hamilton.

We still have some directory updates at the back of the sanctuary there. You can look for those with your last name on them. Also, there's an insert in your bulletin calling on all men of the church. On Father's Day, we're going to have a brief time to sing together corporately in worship.

There'll be a brief practice after tonight's evening service. If you want to hang around and lend your voices together, and then that's tonight, and then Wednesday night in the auditorium, kind of after service as well.

Any other announcements before we get started? All right, this week's fighter verse comes from 2 Timothy 1, verse 7. For God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and self-control. We're going to have a time to pray, preparing our hearts for worship, and at the conclusion of that, Michael will come and open us in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we give you praise today. We thank you that you are who you have revealed yourself to be. You are good and you are sovereign. You are our Heavenly Father, as you have given us to your Son, Jesus Christ, and sent forth your Holy Spirit to indwell us, who cries out from our hearts, Abba, Father.

Thank you for your provision in our lives this past week, how you have arranged everything for our good and for your glory. We ask today that as we worship you, that you would accord us these mercies, that we would worship you in spirit and in truth, that you would give us a clear view of your Son in your word.

We pray that you would lead us to rejoice in your promises, and that we would exhort and encourage one another in your truth. We thank you. We thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Sovereign, and it is in his name that we pray.

Amen.

Do you stand with me for our call to worship? Continuing on in Psalms chapter 78, we read in verses 30 to 33 this morning. Let's point out how God was upset with the disobedience of Israel. He brought them out of Egypt with ten plagues, delivering them marvelously, miraculously, providing them water and quail to eat, manna to eat, but yet the children of Israel sinned before the Lord, and thus his anger was kindled.

Read with me together. But before they had satisfied their craving, while the food was still in their mouth, the anger of God rose against them, and he killed the strongest among them, and laid low the men of Israel.

In spite of all this, they still sinned. Despite his wonders, they did not believe. So he made their days vanish like a breath, and their years in terror. So if you would turn in your Psalms for worship hymnal, page 78E, we'll sing all four verses.

Hymnals, hymns modern and ancient. If you would turn to page 95, and we'll sing, O Church, arise.

Reading will be taken from Isaiah chapter 26, starting in verse 12. You will establish peace for us, for you have also done all our works in us. O Lord our God, masters besides you have had dominion over us, but by you only we make mention of your name.

They are dead, they will not live. They are deceased, they will not rise. Therefore you have punished and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish. You have increased the nation, O Lord. You have increased the nation, you are glorified.

You have expanded all the borders of the land. Lord, in trouble they have visited you. They poured out a prayer when your chastening was upon them. As a woman with child is in pain and cries out in her pangs, when she draws near the time of her delivery, so have we been in your sight, O Lord.

We have been with child, we have been in pain. We have, as it were, brought forth wind. We have not accomplished any deliverance in the earth, nor have the inhabitants of the world fallen. Your dead shall live.

Together with my dead body, they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust. For your dew is like the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. My people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you.

Hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation has passed. For behold, the Lord comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth will also disclose her blood and will no more cover her slain.

Please join me in prayer. Thank you, Lord God, for your word. Thank you that we have hope. You have hidden us, and give your salvation. And it's in his name, the Lord Jesus of Nazareth. I pray this.

You may be seated. It's wonderful to be able to meet together to worship and praise the Lord. So we've already begun this morning worshiping before the Lord in prayer. Worshiping before the Lord and reading of his scripture, his word.

Singing praise to his name and the preaching of the word of God. Our next three songs are going to go together here. If you would be turning to your HMA hymnal, page 112, the gospel song. A tremendous song.

Then next, in page 99, oh, the deep, deep love. And then end in our regular hymnal, page 259, breathe on me. Breath of God.

Thank you for your towards us.

Recognize how consistent you are, how kind you are to manifest your good and perfect, beautiful character to us. That every good and perfect gift comes down from you, our maker, our God, our father of light.

And then you, there is no variation or shifting shadow, no capriciousness. You are constant in your power and in your goodness, in your promises, in your plan. We ask today that as we read your word, that once again, you would nourish us with your truth.

We know that we do not live by bread alone. And we recognize that you have no limitations upon you in feeding your children. There's no disruption with you. You are good and you are powerful. And your word is rich and nourishing.

And we ask today that you would bless us and that you would help us with the grace of the amen, that we would be the amen on earth of your will that is in heaven. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 1.

And we will be reading again the introduction here, Acts chapter 1 verses 1 through 11. The title for this introduction is, The King in His Kingdom. The King in His Kingdom. Acts chapter 1 verses 1 through 11 serves as an excellent introduction to this second volume of Luke.

When you bring together everything that the good Dr. Luke wrote, as he was born along by the Holy Spirit, every word that he wrote down superintended with the very truth of God. When we total it all up, he wrote more in the New Testament than his friend the Apostle Paul.

And we are so grateful to not only have the Gospel of Luke, in which he set forth an orderly account of all that occurred, according to the eyewitnesses themselves, to establish us in our faith. But also here, the book we call the Acts of the Apostles, he puts together a faithful, accurate, theologically rich account of the early church.

And we are spending our time looking at this introduction, doing our best to listen carefully and look carefully at the key ideas and terms that we're going to encounter time and time again throughout the book of Acts to make sure that we have a biblical definition for our terms.

We want to understand what does it mean when the Gospel of the Kingdom is referenced. We want to know what it means that there is a promise of the Father, the importance of the Holy Spirit. We want to know what it means that Jesus is ascended to the right hand of God in glory and that he's coming again.

These are important themes that we encounter here at the beginning of Acts, and we need to understand them from their biblical definition. And the more I've been reading through this passage, the more I see layers of glory boggling the mind.

It is very rich soil, and I trust that this is a blessing for all of us as we look at this text. We have the title handed down to us from antiquity, the Acts of the Apostles, which is non-inspired. The titles themselves were added later for designation, but they weren't part of the inspired text.

It's a working title. I am in agreement with folks like Alan Thompson who says maybe the Acts of the Risen Lord Jesus is a more accurate title. This is about Christ. This book is about the glory of Jesus Christ and the power of his Holy Spirit, how he works through his people.

That's where the focus is. And of course, we do read a lot about Peter and a lot about Paul, but they would be the first to tell you that this is all about Christ, about his leadership in the church. It's about his power and authority.

He's the one who set them on their trajectory to preach the gospel throughout the whole Roman Empire. So, the Acts of the Risen King Jesus through his Spirit in his people. Let's read the first 11 verses again.

If you please stand with me in honor of the word of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through his Spirit and his servant Luke. Acts 1, beginning in verse 1. The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up after he, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, you have heard from me. For John, truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Now when he had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?

This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. What do we expect from the book of Acts?

Interesting stories, to be sure. We have a sense of interest as we look upon the lives of our spiritual ancestors to see how they did things, and what happened to them, and how they came through. We have that same interest about our genealogical ancestors.

We have interest in the stories of how, in God's providence, they survived and succeeded, and God, in his providence, has brought things to where they are today. But what do we expect from the book of Acts?

The book of Acts, in some ways, is the second most abused book in the New Testament, right behind Revelation. The reason for that is that, first of all, there is a great confidence amongst those who misuse Acts.

A specific misuse, not every misuse, but a specific misuse. But they have the same conviction that we do, that everything there is absolutely true, authoritative, inspired by the Holy Spirit. You can depend on it.

And with this, we agree. But the abuse of the book of Acts comes into an inability, sometimes, to distinguish between what is descriptive and what is prescriptive in the book of Acts. In other words, as we read through the book of Acts, is every single event, and every single response to that event, and the details surrounding those events, are we to recreate all of that every single time, in just the same way in our church today?

Not only would this be impossible, but even those who claim that we are to have a first century church in the 21st century, have to pick and choose about what they consider to be valid. A valid expression of the first century church.

This has long been the concern of many new denominations, and new startup churches, and even cults, who look about and say, look at all the differences that we have today. Look at all the... I mean, when you go to church today, and you spend time with Christians today, doesn't it just seem to be absolutely different from what we read in the book of Acts?

And what a compelling argument. What a compelling argument that we would want to go to the Bible to see what it is really like to worship God. What is it like to be Christians? But does it mean that we recreate everything from the book of Acts?

I always found it a little amusing when somebody says, we need a first century church. And I say, oh, you mean that we can't have a copy of God's word? We can't have a complete canon in our own language?

Maybe we should go back to the... If it's a first century church, then only one of us, or two of us, maybe we'll have a copy of some of the scriptures, and it'll be in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, probably, and some scraps from some of the apostles.

That'll be a first century church experience for you. Get rid of our songs and the hymnals. We're not singing any first century hymns or songs today. Singing the Psalms is great, but you notice that we put them in rhythm and rhyme, and it's in English.

First century church didn't do that. First century church didn't have... They met in homes, and a lot of people really enjoy that. And that's fine. But there's an idolatry that comes with a reflection upon the first century church that what we really need that would solve all of our spiritual problems and our lack of the fear of God, and our lack of the understanding of the scripture, and our lack of zeal for evangelism, and what we really need to bring revival in the church is we need to go back to have a first century church, just like in the book of Acts.

As we go through the book of Acts, we're going to find that the early church misunderstood a great deal. Often they disobeyed their master and Lord Jesus Christ. And we're going to find Christ, true to form, washing his bride with the water of his word.

We're going to see God using various types of trials and difficulties to sanctify his people and to bring them in line with his will. And we need to be careful of calling out what is descriptive in the book of Acts and making it prescriptive for today.

I don't want a first century church. I don't want a first century church. I rejoice in 20 centuries of the glory of Jesus. I rejoice in his reign. I rejoice in how many people on the earth today are together worshiping Christ.

I rejoice that they have the word of God in their language. A far greater, substantive, long-lasting miracle than even the languages of Pentecost. For it wasn't in 20 languages that we have the word of God today.

We have the word of God in hundreds of languages. In the hands of people all around the world today who are rejoicing in Christ and singing songs to his name. From here to the church in the backwaters, if you pardon the expression of the Gobi Desert, where they're meeting and reading the word of God and rejoicing in Christ our Savior.

I don't want a first century church. We don't need a first century church. We have what we need in the everlasting Savior, Jesus Christ. That's who we need. We don't need some sort of ancient paradigm.

We need Christ. And this is the prescriptive parts of the book of Acts. The prescriptive parts of the book of Acts are the ones where we see Christ's authority, Christ's provision, Christ's leadership.

And when we see obedience in the lives of the people, their dependence upon the Lord, their gathering in prayer and gathering around the word. These are the prescriptive parts of Acts. We don't have to recreate everything out of the book of Acts.

For instance, I don't have to preach to midnight. There it is. Amen. And we don't have to preach. We don't have to spend our time in such a small place that somebody has to sit on an upper story window and fall asleep and die and have a committee on taking up the dead.

Will the committee of the taking up of the dead please attend to the carcass outside? We don't have to recreate all the details of the book of Acts. What we must do is see how the early church looked to Christ and depended upon him and followed his instructions.

And then where they failed. We're going to see that in the text. Where they failed. We're going to see them fail. And we're going to see how Christ faithfully, in a long-suffering way, corrected them and brought them along.

Praise, praise to his name. Now, we left off in a very quick rundown of some points from last week that we're going to return to. So pardon me for not getting to the outline just yet. But we were talking about the fact that the kingdom is all about the king.

And this is a very helpful observation from the first 11 verses of Acts. That the kingdom is all about the king. This is going to remain in focus throughout the book. It would be a good theme for the book.

Nonetheless, we've been talking about, in verses 1 through 3, the presentation of the kingdom. There we are reminded that Jesus had 40 days between his resurrection and his ascension. How valuable a space of time is this?

Only 40 days to spend with his disciples, his apostles, before he left. And what is he going to spend his time talking to them about? Well, the very same thing he spent his three and a half year ministry talking about.

The kingdom. He preached the gospel of the kingdom in every place that he went. The kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom. How often does he say, the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of God is like.

And here, we see it's his emphasis as well. During these 40 days, verse 3, he spoke to them the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. This is his priority. And congruent with this teaching, in full agreement and connection with the teaching of the kingdom, is his focus upon the Holy Spirit.

We see that the progress of the kingdom is entirely dependent upon the provision of the king. The kingdom is all about the king. How does his kingdom progress? How does his kingdom advance? He's talking in terms of Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.

This is what he says in Matthew 28. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Philippians puts it this way. That God has given him a name which is above every name. He has all authority.

We are told time and again where Christ is. That he is at the right hand of the father and that he is reigning and he has all authority. And he says, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go therefore, on the basis of this authority, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.

And so what is Jesus saying to his disciples? He says, I have all authority. You are my ambassadors. You have plenipotentiary powers. You go in my name and my authority. And you're going to go forth, O church, and declare the gospel of the kingdom.

Good news. Jesus is king. Oh, yes, and he's your savior. Savior and sovereign. What a wonderful bit of news. Now, in the gospel of Luke, in the gospel of Luke, at the very end in chapter 24, where Matthew has a command, go therefore, Luke has a promise.

The command is a promise. And so in Luke 24, near the end, in verse 46, then he said to them, thus it is written, is written, so it's in the Old Testament. Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day.

And, meaning continuing with what was written, continuing with what was necessary, what is necessary, not only that Christ died and rose from the dead the third day, but also it was written and thus necessary that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem.

Meaning, Jesus is saying, the Old Testament not only declares the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ, it also declares the preaching of the gospel to all nations. So it is necessary that this comes about.

And he says, and you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the promise of my father upon you, but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. Quote from Isaiah 32, 15.

He says, you're going to go, but wait, wait in Jerusalem because you need the Holy Spirit. Now the promise of the Holy Spirit, the promise of the father is a very rich promise. We find the promise of the Holy Spirit given to us in several different Old Testament and New Testament contexts.

And we don't have time to survey them all. But I want to bring us to Acts chapter one, verses four and five. We're going to look at these two verses again briefly before we move on to verses six through eight.

Because I want you to see how Jesus encourages his apostles, how he grounds them in this promise from the father. We talked about this briefly, but we need to talk about it more. He says they need to wait for the promise of the father.

If there's anything more difficult to do, I don't know what it is in the Christian life, but to wait. It is difficult to wait on what God promises to give to us what we need. It is difficult to humble ourselves, to put our own, our own fidgeting on pause and say, I will wait and show dependence upon the Lord.

But Christ encourages his apostles. He says, you will wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the father, which you have heard from me. And we looked at various contexts in which Jesus had taught about the Holy Spirit.

But then notice how he brings more emphasis to this promise in verse five, when he says, for John, meaning John the Baptist, truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

And we briefly looked at this reference to John the Baptist. Do you see what's going on here? Jesus says, I want you to hold fast to this promise of the father, the promise of the Holy Spirit. You need to understand how important, how vital the Holy Spirit is for the calling that I have put upon your life, that you will be my witnesses through Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth.

You need this promise from the father. And he said, he brings in his own teaching as a witness, just as I have spoken to you about, just as I have taught you, as you've heard from me. And then notice he brings another witness.

So by the testimony of two witnesses, their faith is going to be established. Not only what he has said to them, but also, remember John the Baptist, how what he said and how he preached. So he brings the testimony of John the Baptist into this very same discussion of the promise of the father.

This is a very natural thing for Jesus of Nazareth to do, for after all, John the Baptist is his relative. And more importantly, John was the prophesied forerunner of the Messiah. So that as John comes and does his ministry and preaches and proclaims the coming Messiah, he is preparing everyone for the message of the Messiah.

Let's consider briefly how it is that John preached at the beginning of the gospel of Luke. In Luke chapter 3, I want to look especially at verses 16 and following of Luke 3. Well, let's begin in verse 15.

As the people were in expectation and all reasoned in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ or not, John answered saying to all, I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I is coming.

Whose sandals trap I am not worthy to lose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. The Holy Spirit and fire, under the same controlling language of baptize with. So it's one and both together.

The whole idea of Holy Spirit and fire together. Baptize you with Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing hand, his winnowing fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn.

But the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire. It is helpful for us. It is so like our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is a master teacher to give this instruction to his apostles in this way.

The promise of the Holy Spirit, as we've already seen, is critical, a centerpiece to the promise of the new covenant. It is the premier promise of the new covenant that it would not be in the new covenant that some of the members would not know the Lord.

But all the members of the new covenant would know the Lord. No longer in the new covenant would the law of God be written upon stone that was put over here into the Ark of the Covenant. But in the new covenant, the law of God would be written on the very hearts, living hearts, hearts of flesh, not hearts of stone.

And promise upon promise in the Old Testament shows us the centrality of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the new covenant. So as Jesus begins to talk about the new covenant, or about the promise of the Holy Spirit, the new covenant is in mind.

And so when he brings up John the Baptist, how helpful is that to see John the Baptist and Jesus together speaking about the same theme? What did Jesus say about John the Baptist? He was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, the greatest of the Old Covenant prophets.

If you want to, better than Elijah, better than Elisha, more significant than Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Here is John the Baptist, and he's the greatest of all the Old Covenant prophets. And I tell you, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

How, Jesus? How does that work? What are you saying? We'll reflect about how often Jesus uses that maneuver in his teaching. He describes the glory to the temple, and then he says, but something greater is here.

He describes the wisdom of Solomon, and he says something greater is here. And he takes all of the shadows and the types and the pictures and the promises of the Old Testament, and he points to one after the other after the other, and he says, yes, this was good.

Yes, this was significant. Yes, this was meaningful. But someone greater is here, and something greater is here, and every time he's pointing to himself. Every time. So when the writer of Hebrews talks about Jesus being the administrator of a better covenant, how much better?

That much better. That the lowliest member in the New Covenant has far more blessing and riches and understanding and glory in their life than even John the Baptist, who was the greatest of the prophets.

That's how much better. When you compare and contrast the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, how much better is the New Covenant? That much better. And this is tied up with the significance of the promise of the Holy Spirit.

Because the Holy Spirit has a direct, indwelling, invigorating, empowering ministry, not only upon the kings and the priests and the prophets of the Old Covenant who were the anointed ones, but because he is upon the Son, the Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ, who is King of kings and the high priest and the great prophet.

That in him, we too receive the Holy Spirit. That we are anointed ones. In other words, not Christ, but Christians. Why are we Christians? Why are we anointed ones? Because we have the Holy Spirit. How wonderful a blessing is this?

John baptized them with water to prepare them for the Messiah. But look, he baptizes you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Now, in connection with this fire is the idea of purification. And with purification comes clarification, for his winnowing fan is in his hand.

And he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor. A winnowing fan, of course, is a tool that you go to your threshing floor where the wheat or the barley has been laid after it's been cut out of the field.

And there it is all just laying around in a big box on the ground. And upon this box, there's some sort of probably an ox with a sled behind it going around in a circle and it's treading down the grain.

And the impact of this is that the kernels of grain on the plants is separated from the husks and the stalks and so on. After this is completed, then the farmer will then take his winnowing fan and scoop beneath this mound of organic material and toss it up into the air.

And the wind will catch the chaff, which is lighter. The husks and the stalks catch the wind and they blow away like tiny little kites. But the heavy grain comes flopping back down, probably in a nice rhythmic sound, coming right back down into the threshing floor.

Meanwhile, the chaff and the stalks kind of blow over here and are caught by a corner or a hill or so on. And it'll have to be dealt with, probably burned up and removed out of the way. John is important for Christ's ministry.