Book of Acts Series - Part 30 | How God Builds — Jim Cymbala

The Book of Acts and the Expansion of the Gospel

Months ago, we started a series on the Book of Acts. It was written by the only Gentile writer of any book in the New Testament, and his name is Luke. So Luke is a doctor, and he got converted, it seems, during the story of the Book of Acts, and then he researched other parts of it and then told about his travels.

But let's go back to how it began. Jesus resurrected from the dead, and then after about 40 days, he ascended back to heaven. And he promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit would come and make them the people that God wanted them to be.

And he gave them a commission to spread the good news of Christ. Not to have church, not to have members, all those things have their place, not to do praise and worship, it all has its place, but to preach the good news and spread it to everyone because God loves this world that he sent Christ to die for.

The Spirit was poured out in Acts chapter two. People went into an ecstasy as the Spirit came upon them and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them. And then the early church started just thriving in Jerusalem, not without persecution, but you couldn't hold them back.

The church is going on, and then the gospel goes not just to Jewish people, but now the gospel goes to Gentiles. An Italian guy named Cornelius, who's a Roman centurion, he and his household hear about Jesus, and they become Christians.

And then the main persecutor, one of the great persecutors of the church, a Jewish man named Saul of Tarsus, he has a real encounter, a supernatural with Jesus, and he becomes a Christian, and now the book of Acts starts to follow not only his conversion, but his missionary trips that he takes out of a city called Antioch in Syria, where all the fighting is going on now.

And Paul goes out on one missionary trip with a man by the name of Barnabas, then he comes back, he goes on another missionary trip with a man named Silas. And along the way, he picks up other converts, and a young man named Timothy, who's later gonna play a part in the New Testament, and he's just traveling now, not only into what we would call Turkey today, they're called Asia, but he begins to travel west, and he ends up in Greece, and he spreads the gospel there, and churches are founded.

And then on his way back from this second journey, Paul stops in Ephesus, which was back now in Turkey, and he promises them, I'm gonna come back to you, God willing, but I gotta go back to Jerusalem and report back to the church in Antioch, and sure enough, he does.

And now he appears back in, this is his third trip now, and he appears back in Ephesus. Now in, everybody say Ephesus. Okay, now in Ephesus, he's gonna spend his longest time that we know, three years just about.

And the 19th chapter of the book of Acts, God inspires Luke to write about that part of his stay, some things that happened. And as we read the Bible, what you have to do when you read a chapter, read a paragraph, read the Bible in paragraphs, not in chapters so much.

If you get a good Bible, it has paragraphs, because chapters weren't part of the original Bible, it was written as letters, so it has thoughts with paragraphs. So why did God put that in the Bible? So we wanna step back and learn, what are the lessons for us today?

This is 2 ,000 years later. Why did God put it there? What's it tell us? Let's look at it. Acts 19, verse one. While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus.

There he found some disciples, some followers of Jesus. And he asked them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They answered, no, we've not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. So Paul asked, then what baptism did you receive?

John's baptism, they replied, that's John the Baptist. 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 in the name of the Lord Jesus.

When Paul placed his hands on them after they came out of the water, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues, that same ecstatic foreign languages. They didn't know what they were saying, just like what happened in Acts chapter two.

And they prophesied, they spoke the word of God boldly or they spoke inspired words about God. And there were about 12 men in all. So this makes me stop. Why would Luke write about a meeting with 12 men?

I mean, you know, if you have 5 ,000, 10 ,000 people, you tell about that, but why 12 men? So there must be something important about this story, this encounter, Paul, with 12 men in Ephesus. Paul entered the synagogue in Ephesus there and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God.

But some of them became obstinate. They refused to believe and they publicly maligned the way. The way with a capital W means the way of the gospel, the way of Christ, the truth about Jesus. So Paul left them.

Remember what we've learned? Whenever people got ugly, whenever people got insulting, whenever people got obnoxious and began to speak harshly, he would leave them. Never stayed and argued, never fought with anyone.

He moved on to some other people. You never achieve much by screaming at another person who's screaming at you. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him, disciples meaning those who believed in Jesus, and he had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.

This went on for two years so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. That means by his witness, so many people were coming in and out and hearing about this new message of Jesus that they spread.

See, Paul went to Metropolises because Metropolises has traffic. Ephesus was a city which was full of trade and business and it had the temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the world, one of the great idol temples of that time.

So people would come, hear about Paul, hear the message, and wherever they went, they were spreading the good news of Jesus. God did extraordinary miracles through Paul. This is not found anywhere else in the New Testament.

So that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus.

They weren't Christian. Over those who were demon-possessed, they wanted to mimic Paul. And they would say, in the name of the Jesus that Paul preaches, be free. Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this.

One day, the evil spirit answered them, Jesus I know and Paul I know about, but who are you? And then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all, gave them a beat down. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done.

A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. And when they had calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to 50 ,000 drachmas. In this way, the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power, but other translations say this.

Because of this demonstration of power, the word of the Lord spread rapidly. Not that the word grew in power, but because of the power that was being manifest, the word of the Lord spread because people said, yo, what is this about?

Paul’s Ministry in Ephesus and the Spread of the Word

So now that tells us, right up to verse 20 about Paul's visit to Ephesus. It's got a lot of stuff in there, right? He meets 12 men, he has this encounter. Then he goes to the synagogue. He always went first to the Jew back then.

He ministered to them, he preached for months, trying to reason with them, showing them from the Bible, saying, now look, these Old Testament verses that you believe in, don't you see their fulfillment in Jesus?

Show them Isaiah 53 and other places. And some believed and then others got ugly. And the minute they got ugly, he said, adios muchachos, I'm out, I'm out of here. And he left. And he went and set himself up in a lecture hall of a man named Tyrannus, and then anybody could come and hear him.

And then extraordinary miracles started to be done. Just at that time, unmentioned for any other apostle, unmentioned even for Jesus, that garments that touched him would be taken to someone. But God was doing that.

It says, not only miracles, extraordinary miracles were being done. The wind blows where it wants, Jesus said when speaking about the Holy Spirit. And then the Bible tells us that the word of God, because of this outpouring of power, the word of God spread.

That was the bottom line. Not miracle mongering, not looking for miracles, but the word of Jesus spread powerfully because of the power being exercised by the Spirit. And more people were converted to Christ.

God Cannot Be Put in a Box

So what are the lessons? Why would God put that in the Bible? What does that have to do with us? Now what you can do is try to put God in a box and say, oh, this is the way God works because if you read other parts of the book of Acts, God is doing something different in another place.

And then you'll read about Jesus that in his own hometown he couldn't do many miracles because of their unbelief. There's no little formula that says, here's the way God works. Now let's try to replicate that.

No, you can't do that if you read the Bible honestly. What you can do is try to come up with some summary conclusions, and that's what I wanna leave you with today. First of all, we find out that it's possible to be a Christian and not know about the Holy Spirit the way you should.

The Necessity of the Holy Spirit

Paul goes to Ephesus and he meets believers, and he must have picked up something in them, something different about them. They weren't fully taught. They only understood John's baptism, which was a baptism to witness your repentance.

Well, they weren't even baptized in that Christian way. They had been baptized with John's baptism. You remember John the Baptist? He went out before Jesus appeared, and he was baptizing people who said, I repent, I turn from my old way of life, and I turn to God, and he was baptizing them.

That's all they knew about, and yet they were Christians. How do we know they're Christians? Because Paul talked to them and then baptized them. You don't baptize unbelievers. You only baptize believers.

But baptism is something you do to show what you've done, your faith in Christ. But Paul now was saying, wait a minute. Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believe? I'm not asking you what you've done as a witness to your faith in Christ.

I'm asking you, have you had God do something to you that he promised he wants to do and will do? We don't even know about the Holy Spirit. Wouldn't you think that that's one of the problems right now in America and around the world in Christendom as we see Christianity slipping in so many countries?

It's because people know about Jesus, but they don't know about the Holy Spirit. They know about the cross. They know about the empty tomb, but they don't know about the Holy Spirit. That's the question that was asked by Paul.

Have you received the Holy Spirit, do you believe it? We don't even know who is the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit, ladies and gentlemen, is the one that Jesus promised with such a positive attitude.

He said, when he was on earth, it's better for you that I go and I leave you. And they went, no, no, we don't want you to leave us. He said, no, unless I leave, I can't send the Spirit. I've been with you, but he's gonna be in you.

By my teaching, I haven't created strong disciples. What did Jesus create by his teaching? When he was arrested that night, they all fled from him. They were not tough, they were not strong in their faith, and they had the best teacher you could have.

Jesus said, no, I've been with you, but he, he, notice, not it, he, the Holy Spirit, he's gonna be in you, he's gonna revolutionize your life, he's gonna be me inside of you, making you what I want you to be.

The Promise of the Spirit for All Believers

And this is the great promise that was made back in the Old Testament in the prophecy of Joel. In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, not on Jewish people, not just on men or women, not just on Gentiles, not on white people or black people or Latinos or wherever you're from.

No, on everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord and opens their heart, I will pour out my Spirit so that you're gonna be a whole new race of people. Come on, let's put our hands together. Say amen to that.

No wonder Paul asked the question. We don't ask those questions today. The Christian church, for the most part, does not discuss the Holy Spirit. I have a friend who went to a leading evangelical seminary and was there two and a half years, and the only mention of the Holy Spirit in all his courses in two and a half years was this.

He's inspired the Bible, the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible. Number two, he convicts the world of sin. End of story. We don't wanna talk about anything else. Well, what are you gonna do with all these verses in the Bible?

What are you gonna do with all these manifestations of the Spirit that we see in the early church? We don't need the Spirit's help today. In downtown Brooklyn, where you live in 2014, in the mess that we're living in now, we don't need the Holy Spirit.

No, well, we have the Bible. I know, but he wrote the Bible and he talks a lot about himself in the Bible. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. You receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, meekness, kindness. How many people are trying to have more love without depending on the Spirit? They're trying to love in their own strength. How many young people are trying to have peace without trusting the Holy Spirit to give them his peace?

Christianity is ridiculous without the Holy Spirit. It just becomes a new legalism. You get a bunch of rules now. Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek. Oh, I gotta be meek today. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness.

How am I gonna do that? You can't do any of it. It's not by might nor by power, but it's by my spirit, sayeth the Lord. God does it in us. So supernatural Christianity is on the wane and because of that, Christianity is on the wane because Christianity cannot succeed without the Holy Spirit.

It's impossible. I don't care how many versions of the Bible we have. I don't care how many conferences we have. The power of God has to be manifest by people who have put their faith in Jesus and now are open to the promised one that Jesus spoke so much about.

The Holy Spirit as Comforter, Guide, and Power

In many churches and conferences that I go to, if you mention the Holy Spirit, the people don't even know what you're talking about. And they have pastors who are well-known Bible teachers, but they avoid the Holy Spirit as if he were a plague instead of the comforter.

We're hopeless without the Holy Spirit. You're hopeless, I'm hopeless. How can I preach without the Holy Spirit? I can move my mouth and talk. I won't help anyone. There'll be no conviction of sin. There'll be no inspiration.

There'll be no words that penetrate your heart. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. There'll be no prayer meetings because the Holy Spirit is the spirit of prayer. We know not how we ought to pray, but the spirit helps us.

So where the spirit is downplayed, there's no prayer meetings. You that are visiting, you know in your own city, your own town, there are no prayer meetings. Why? Because the spirit is tamped down. Oh no, the pastors need to talk more about prayer.

They can talk till doomsday about prayer. It won't happen until you open up to the spirit because naturally, we don't want to pray. Naturally, we're proud and self-sufficient, but when the spirit comes, he breaks us and he shows us that God wants to help us, and then you start calling on the name of the Lord.

Come on, let's say amen one more time. So no wonder Paul said, no wonder Paul said, have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed? Because to the early believers, unlike us, no Holy Spirit meant no Christianity.

Oh, see, that's very dramatic. That's very revolutionary to most American churchgoers, but I just said it. I never said that before in my life. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no Christianity. Yes, Jesus Christ, you believe in, I believe in, he died for our sins, but how are we gonna live the rest of our life?

He's in heaven. Don't you get it? He's in heaven. I know he forgave you for your past sins. How many have had all your sins forgiven? Just say amen. I know, but now how about the rest of your life? How are you gonna live?

With what power? So you're gonna go back and just repeat everything you did before you were a Christian. The only one who can set us free is the Spirit. He's the Spirit of life. If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.

I'm gonna pour out living water upon you. The whole thing of Christianity is about what Jesus has done and then the promise of the Spirit, and we're emphasizing one to the loss of the other. So Paul focused on that and Luke wrote about it because Acts is constantly referring to the Spirit and how he manifests himself and helps the Christians not only live their lives and be brave under persecution, but then spread the gospel despite opposition.

God Uses People Controlled by the Holy Spirit

So let's just take away two things here and let's pray because this is a good Sunday to just take some time and quietly pray. Number one conclusion we can come to based on everything we've read and the other verses that I've added to this.

Number one, God uses people, men and women, who are filled in control by the Holy Spirit. The only way you can explain the spread of Christianity, no money, no power, no PowerPoint, no lights, no screens, no sound system, no buildings, no nada.

The only way you can explain that book is that God uses people who are controlled by the Holy Spirit. That's the only way you can explain it. No seminaries, no education, no PhDs, no degrees in theology.

Think of it, no Bible schools, nothing. They just emphasize Jesus and the Spirit and they were rocking the world. And we're emphasizing education and technology and Christianity's swooning. And no one says, time out, maybe something's wrong.

Oh, Pastor Simba, that's dinosaur. You gotta be new age. You gotta be cutting edge. Gotta be new school, that's old school. I don't care what school, this is Bible school that I'm talking about. How many are with me, say amen.

It's what the Bible says. If what we end up being into is not found in the Bible, that's nuts. Then it becomes all about, instead of an awesome display of God, where God's Spirit comes and God is awesome.

You know what happens when the Spirit's not around? You get the cult of personality. Preachers, teachers, oh, did you hear, what's his name? How are they doing, church? This would be unthinkable to early Christians.

They weren't into names and followings and who's saying what. It was, oh, praise God, we can all be filled with the Holy Spirit. It's not about Paul or Peter or Apollos. They're all nothing. All preachers are nothing.

God is everything. Listen to me, one sows, one waters. They all have their role to play, but compared to Jesus, they're nothing. They're nothing. But you take any man or woman who gets filled with God and they're gonna cause the kingdom to be extended.

That's what we learn from this. And if you read the rest of the book of Acts, you don't have to be an apostle. As Jason comes to play, you can be anybody, just a man or a woman. You work for Macy's, you work for the telephone company, you're a lawyer, you're a doctor, you're a school teacher, you're a housewife, you're a man, you're a woman, you're a new convert, you've been 10, 20 years in the Lord, doesn't matter, that's totally irrelevant.

Oh God, renew our minds, help us to think the way your word teaches and not what we formed over the years. Simple lay people spread Christianity. It wasn't famous preachers. When people are controlled by the Holy Spirit, God uses them to spread his message and the kingdom expands.

Prayer, Calling, and the Diversity of God’s Workers

Up in my library in my office, you can come up and look at the books. I have one whole area of nothing but biographies and autobiographies. I've kind of got all my religious books in one place now and there's just hundreds about men and women who God has used.

Did they all have the same doctrine? No. Did they all have the same personality? No. No. One thing was sure, they were people of prayer and they were controlled by the Holy Spirit. Did they ever copy anybody else?

Did they ever mimic the ways, the preaching style, the way other, that would be unthinkable to them. They knew that God can only use you in your own personality whether it's speaking a word to somebody in a store or going on a missions trip or calling someone and praying on the phone with them.

God uses people who are controlled by the Holy Spirit. That's why Paul asked, what, wait a minute, have you ever seen the Holy Spirit since you believe? And we don't even hear about the Holy Spirit. Oh no, we gotta talk.

Because the only way this thing works is when you're controlled by the Holy Spirit and God wants to do it. You know, General Booth was a man that God used back in the 1800s. He started the Salvation Army, much different than basically what the Army is doing today which I honor all the social work they do.

But if you read the history of the Salvation Army, I've got six, seven, eight books all about the Army, maybe 20 books about the early leaders of the Salvation Army. Blood and fire, the blood of the cross, the fire of the Spirit.

That was their motto. Blood and fire. We're gonna preach about the cross and God's gonna help us with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Not a bad formula, right? You know what General Booth said? Someone just sent me the quote this week.

As he was entering into the 20th century, he was a prophet in his own way. He said, what I fear for as I enter the 1900s, he lived to about 1914 maybe, World War I period. His wife died way before that.

He said, what I fear is that we're gonna have a Christianity without the Holy Spirit. He said, I see it coming. It'll be all doctrinally, biblically correct and dissecting every verse and no juice. No power.

And now today what people do is they rationalize it and justify it by saying, yeah, I saw those crazy people on Christian television and they're hawking money and they're imitating the Spirit and they're acting crazy and it's unedifying and it's ridiculous and they use that as excuse to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I disagree with everything that's unbiblical and the Holy Spirit is imitated every single day. Some people think he's noisy so they play the organ real loud and they get everybody shouting. Well, praise God, we had church.

Other people think it's mystical and quiet. He's not loud, he's not quiet, he's the Holy Spirit. Sometimes he moves you to weep. Sometimes he makes you want to shout. But you can't imitate him. You can never imitate the Holy Spirit.

Ah, but when he comes. So we know one thing, God uses simple people who are controlled by the Holy Spirit and the gospel spreads when the Holy Spirit is working. It's the only way the church is, the only way the youth, more youth, we prayed for the youth on Wednesday night.

We had Pastor JC share a word and we prayed for the youth ministry. Whether it's transitions, youth, our church, seniors, your family, your niece, your nephew, your sister, your brother, wherever you're from, France, Mexico, there is no hope for the gospel spreading unless the Spirit begins to work.

Surrendering to the Holy Spirit

Well, how does he work? No, that's not your business. That's not my business. Just come and work. No, no, I want it to be like, no, no, don't tell him how you want it to be. Just say, come Holy Spirit.

Come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit. Pastor Simba, I don't know if I'm the kind of person that God could use like that. Oh, you're the perfect candidate. Are you weak? He makes some people strong who are weak.

Oh, you're the right one now. I'm glad I'm talking to you. Are you discouraged? He's the one who encourages. In other words, the whole wrong teaching of you have to get to a certain place before the Spirit will come and help you, that's as faulty as legalism.

You have to be a certain person before God saves you. No, faith in Christ does everything. Just come to Jesus the way you are today and say, Jesus, you saved me, you died for me. Now give me everything you have for me through the Holy Spirit.

Whatever gift you have, whatever boldness I need, whatever love I have for people that I find it hard to have love, that's another sign when the Holy Spirit's not working. You have racial churches. The whites are with the whites, the blacks are with the blacks.

The West Indians don't want to know about any of them. The Latinos, they're all together. Why? Because the Spirit is the only one who can break down all of those barriers. Come on, do I get an amen? Otherwise, you get racial stereotyping, you get prejudice, you get the white prejudice, the black anger, prejudice, all this stuff.

The only one. You can have ministers meet together, they wash each other's feet, the pastors, the bishops, the cameras are rolling, and all of that. It changes nothing, nothing. Only when the Spirit comes.

When he comes, you love everyone. When he comes, you don't see anybody different than you. When he comes, you think everyone's better than you. When he doesn't come, you're judging everyone. When he comes, you're happy someone talks to you.

Oh, blessed be the name of the Lord. Oh, do we need the Holy Spirit. Would you listen to me today? Why don't you make 2014 a new year in the Holy Spirit? Some of you, I've said things that have convicted you.

You're struggling in your own strength. You love the Lord, you want to serve him, but you're trying the wrong way. You're trying with self-will, with self-effort. No, have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?

That's what Paul asked them. Let's close our eyes. We come to you, Holy Spirit. And we're asking you, would you please come and do a new work in us? We want the choir to sing more Holy Spirit anointed music.

We want the pastors to serve in the power of the Spirit. We want preaching from this pulpit, not cleverness of man, not wisdom of men, but a demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit. We want signs and wonders and miracles to be done as you see fit in the name of your Holy Son, Jesus.

We want miraculous answers to prayer. We want, most of all, the gospel to spread. We want to see converts made. We want to see chains broken. We want to see the light go on for people who live in darkness.

We want to see broken hearts healed. We want to see sins washed away. And God, we cannot do it without the help of the Holy Spirit. For you said in your word, it's not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, sayeth the Lord.

And God, what can we bring to you? It is what it is. We are who we are. But you specialize in taking regular, normal, even weak people and making them strong so you would get all the glory. So we're the perfect candidates, God.

Because as you use us, who could get the glory but you? We're nobody. We're nothing. I'm nothing. I'll never be anybody. But I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. When your Spirit comes, we can do wonderful things, God, as you inspire and lead us and empower us.

If you're here today and you say, Pastor, that word was from me or it struck me, I want a new experience with the Holy Spirit whom Jesus spoke about. I want that experience so that Jesus will be glorified, not that I'll be like famous or known.

I want the Holy Spirit to use me so Jesus will be glorified, that his word would spread, that I'll be able to know how to pray and move among people and God will in his own way use me so that Jesus will be glorified.

If you want that, stand right where you are, behind me or in front of me. Just stand. Stand. Every Christian who says, Pastor, I want 2014 to be a new year in the Spirit for me, just stand up. I don't know how you could not want that.

I don't know where you live or how you live that you wouldn't want that. Everybody who's hungry for that water, who's hungry to be used by God, don't try now. Don't try. You don't have to do anything.

You have to receive. I'm gonna ask every woman, just for the next 60 seconds, find one woman, turn to her, face her, join hands and pray out loud over each other. Just one prayer. Men will do the same, but listen to the prayer before we do it.

Come, Holy Spirit. Empower me. Change me. Glorify Christ through me. Give me the gifts that you have for me. Lift me to another dimension in my Christian life. Show me things I don't see now. Help me to see people the way you see them.

That's all we're gonna pray now. Nothing else. No finances, nothing, no wayward children. We're just praying one thing. God, Holy Spirit, come and do a new work in all of us starting this very moment.

Everybody turn around and find someone. Choir members do it too. Everybody in the balcony. You may put your hands down. And now may the love of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the comfort of the Holy Spirit be with all of God's people all day today.

Give us the power of the Spirit to pray with faith and fervency. God, we're expecting great things in 2014, not because of us, but because of who you are. We thank you for your grace in being with us today.

In Jesus' name, and everyone said. Amen. Hug a bunch of people and say goodbye to them.