Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] So in 2010, I think I broke my nose doing an MMA class.
[00:00:18] Okay, so mixed martial arts is what MMA stands for if you don't know what MMA is. And it was a really dumb decision. I just stopped playing my last season of football, and I didn't really know what to do with my life. I wasn't yet a Christian. That doesn't mean that Christians can't do mma. It's a different conversation for a different day. But I needed something physical to do, so I signed up for an MMA class, did it for a week, broke my nose. That's all you need to know about the illustration.
[00:00:42] And on the way to the hospital, I had to get taken to the hospital by a woman who was in the class that I did not know prior to that moment. And so it was an embarrassment for me for really everybody who was involved at the time and go to the hospital. And there was really only one thing in my mind when I walked into the emergency room and sat across from the doctor, and that was the desire for relief.
[00:01:06] So if you've never broken your nose or gotten punched in the nose, it's a very painful experience, and there's a whole lot of pressure in your face.
[00:01:15] And so I just wanted relief. That was the one thing I wanted. And so by the grace of God, was provided some medication that helped with that relief. And the reason I bring up this silly illustration to you is I don't know that you're aware. Maybe you are, but in the book of Romans, chapter 8, the apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says that all of creation is groaning right now, like a woman in the pains of childbirth, kind of groaning. If you've ever experienced that or seen, you know, if you're married and your wife has experienced that, like, all of creation is groaning. And the thing that creation is groaning for, Paul says in Romans, chapter eight, is the revealing of the sons of God. So there's coming a day, in other words, where Jesus returns on his throne and establishes the new heavens and the new earth and judges evil and evildoers who have not trusted upon him for salvation. Like that day is coming. And in anticipation of that day, all of creation, not just people, but animals, and all of the created order, in some sense, is groaning in anticipation of that day.
[00:02:32] It's a profound thought to think about, but it makes logical sense, doesn't it? If we really look out at the world with objective eyes, then we see, like, yeah, the world is not what it should be.
[00:02:45] In a variety of ways. It's because of Sin. The world is groaning in the pains of childbirth until the return of Christ when He makes all things new. And so a follow up question to the reality of God is doing this. He is renewing the world. And one day he will forever renew the world with the new heavens and new earth. How is he going to do it? And here's the answer, friends. The plan A of God for bringing about renewal and redemption to all of the cosmos and is through his church.
[00:03:16] That's how God's doing it.
[00:03:18] Jesus could have done it a million different ways, but he chooses 12 knuckleheads, saves them, redeems them, fills them with his spirit, with the person of his spirit, empowering these 12 knuckleheads to take this gospel message to the ends of the earth in anticipation of his renewal. So God is renewing all things. And the way he's gonna do it, the way he is doing it, is through his people, the church, his bride, his beloved, his sons and daughters. Imperfect though we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are the means by which God is bringing about redemption in the world. It is an amazing, mind blowing thought, right? Like your life has that much purpose and value as God through His people is bringing about redemption in the world. And there is no plan B for God.
[00:04:11] We are the means by which he's bringing about this renewal. And so when we read in verse 31 that way back in the day, over 2,000 years ago in the first century, God's church was being multiplied. We have to ask how he was doing it.
[00:04:30] Okay, so let me give us a. What I just said, let me summarize it. God is restoring all things by his grace and for his glory. And he's doing it through his people, the church filled with his spirit, proclaiming Jesus to the nations.
[00:04:46] God is the one multiplying his church. And this is what the world needs.
[00:04:50] By the way, the world, our country, does not primarily, or maybe of first importance, need new legislation. New legislation is important for a variety of things.
[00:05:03] What people need is God.
[00:05:07] People have been estranged from God. And so when we're estranged from God, we do terrible, wicked, horrible things.
[00:05:16] And so people in the world, in our culture, need to be born again.
[00:05:21] They need new hearts and new minds that can only come about by God's grace.
[00:05:26] And so the world needs the church to multiply.
[00:05:31] So how does the church multiply? That's the question for the morning. How does God multiply His church in anticipation of the renewal of all things for the glory of his name? Does this make sense so far? Excellent. All right. How does God multiply His church? So I'm going to spend most of our time. We're going to spend most of our time in verse 31.
[00:05:51] And so if you would go ahead and look at verse 31 with me, and then we'll jump back and look at the previous text leading up to this for the sake of context. But verse 31 starts by saying, so the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up.
[00:06:14] So if you go all the way back, if you remember, all the way back to the very beginning of the Book of Acts, which is written by Luke, who's a doctor, inspired by the Holy Spirit. At the very beginning, Jesus is after he had died on the cross, risen from the grave, and ascended back to heaven in front of his disciples, who then wrote it down for us so that we would have assurance that Jesus really did live. He really did die. He really did rise. He really did ascend to heaven. He really is there right now. We have historical evidence of this.
[00:06:44] Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he promised them in chapter one, verse eight, that they would be his witnesses, not only in Jerusalem, where it all started, but in Judea, in Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth.
[00:07:00] So this good news of salvation through faith in Jesus was not only for the Jews, it was for the Gentiles. It was for all peoples of all nationalities and all ethnicities everywhere in the world. Okay?
[00:07:13] So Jesus promises that they would be his witnesses. And we see Jesus promise unfolding because Jesus is a promise keeping God. He always, always, always keeps his promises.
[00:07:25] We can always trust him to keep his promises that have yet to be fulfilled in our lives because we can look back at the history of redemption and see him keeping his promises time and time and time again. This is who he is. And so he promises that this is gonna happen in Acts, chapter one, verse eight. And we see it unfold in the first nine chapters of the book of Acts. And then Luke in verse 31 says, throughout all of these regions in Judea, Samaria and Galilee, the Church had peace. Why and how did the Church have peace? We know the Church had peace because of what he says in verses 20 through 30. So let me read those again to you for the sake of context. So verse 20, for some days, he that being Paul, remember Saul of Tarsus, who was a great persecutor of the Church, was saved by Jesus on the road to Damascus in order to kill more Christians. Jesus interrupts his life. He saves him. He open, He Gives him true sight, opens his eyes to see God for who God really was, namely through the person of Jesus Christ.
[00:08:32] And now he calls Paul to a mission, the mission of planting churches and proclaiming the Gospel to the Gentiles. So it says, for some days, Paul, he was with the disciples at Damascus. And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues. So Paul didn't preach a message of morality, he preached Jesus.
[00:08:53] He preached Jesus in the synagogue, saying, he is the son of God. And all who heard him were amazed and said, is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon his name?
[00:09:06] And has he not come here for this purpose to bring them bound before the chief priests?
[00:09:11] But Saul, Paul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.
[00:09:23] It's confounding when a former persecutor of the church becomes a preacher of the church or of the Gospel.
[00:09:31] That's confounding. It doesn't make sense. To our brains, we're like, but you hated Christians and now you love them. Like, only God can do something like that. And so it's confounding the Jews who are seeing this former persecutor now become preacher.
[00:09:45] He's preaching Jesus and proving that Jesus is the Messiah. That the long awaited Messiah of the Jews that they waited for for thousands of years was come, has come in the person of Jesus Christ.
[00:09:57] Says, when many days had passed, this is verse 23, the Jews plotted to kill him.
[00:10:04] So immediately, if you guys remember what Jesus tells Ananias, who is the brother that we know very little about throughout church history, but played a significant role in the church. Ananias, Jesus tells, hey, I want you to go over to Saul. After he had been struck with blindness on the road to Damascus, Jesus saves Paul. He tells Ananias, I want you to go to Paul and I want you to tell him these things and baptize him, et cetera. Ananias is like, what if he tries to kill me? Basically, it's my paraphrase. And then Jesus says, hey, Saul, this is a chosen instrument of mine and I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. We're seeing that fulfilled now.
[00:10:41] So Paul begins to preach Jesus in the synagogues, and immediately they try to kill him.
[00:10:48] But their plot became known to Saul.
[00:10:50] They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him.
[00:10:55] But his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket and when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples.
[00:11:06] They were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.
[00:11:12] But Barnabas is another brother that we'll talk more about in the weeks to come.
[00:11:17] Took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.
[00:11:30] So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists, but they were seeking to kill him.
[00:11:41] And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. So Saul of Tarsus is saved miraculously by Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus to kill more Christians. Jesus immediately calls Saul to mission. And that mission is preaching Jesus life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus and salvation in his name alone, through repentance of sin and faith. That's the message of Saul. And. And in so doing, Saul is immediately persecuted. Now, we don't often think, friends, about persecution here because we don't experience it.
[00:12:19] We at least don't experience it to the extent that, you know, millions of brothers and sisters around the world experience it. And that's not to make us feel shame. You didn't choose, for the most part, to live here. You didn't choose to be born into the family that you were born into. It's not something to be ashamed of, but it's just to recognize that for most of the world, throughout most of time, the people of God have been persecuted for preaching that message.
[00:12:43] A message of morality, be a good person, don't be a bad person, doesn't typically elicit any kind of persecution.
[00:12:52] That's an easy message. Everybody's preaching that message in some way or another.
[00:12:57] But to preach Christ crucified does.
[00:13:00] Does bring about persecution in some contexts.
[00:13:04] And so we have to be really careful here in the States.
[00:13:07] Being grateful to God for what we do have, for the freedoms we have and the comfort that we experience, we should be grateful for.
[00:13:15] We should be grateful for all of those things. But we have to be careful here not slipping into a belief system that says something like, I can believe in Jesus without discipleship to Jesus.
[00:13:28] Okay, so faith in the New Testament is always intricately tied to works.
[00:13:33] It's not two different things.
[00:13:36] As John Calvin once said, faith alone saves, but faith that saves is never alone.
[00:13:42] It's kind of a quippy way to say that faith alone saves, but Faith that saves is never alone. And we see this wonderfully illustrated in the life of Saul. Saul did not continue to kill Christians.
[00:13:55] He met Jesus, and by the grace of God, he turned from killing Christians and he began to preach the gospel.
[00:14:02] So salvation always brings about transformation. But that doesn't lead us to our main point for the morning. That's our context. Our main question for the morning is how does God multiply his church?
[00:14:13] And I think what we see in verse 31, for a lot of reasons, is very interesting, because I've been to many church conferences that talk about multiplication of disciples and church growth and all of these kinds of things.
[00:14:27] And they're all good in a variety of ways. It's always encouraging. They're always good things and tips and all sorts of things to think about.
[00:14:34] But the things mentioned in verse 31, I don't know that I've ever heard preached at a church growth conference.
[00:14:40] And that's not to put shame on the people who do those conferences. It's just to say that maybe as the people of God, we've kind of like overlooked what Luke tells us in verse 31 as really being two things that God uses to multiply his church for the glory of his name.
[00:15:00] And here's the first one.
[00:15:02] Fear.
[00:15:06] It says in verse 31, the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up and walking in the fear of the Lord.
[00:15:17] And so we'll just pause before we get to the second half of that verse.
[00:15:21] Walking in the fear of the Lord.
[00:15:26] I'm curious if we really have an understanding of what this means. Like, what is the fear of the Lord?
[00:15:33] What is the fear of the Lord, and why?
[00:15:36] What place does it have in the Christian life?
[00:15:40] 1 John 4:18 says, There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment.
[00:15:54] And whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
[00:15:59] So that's kind of confusing.
[00:16:02] They were walking in the fear of the Lord.
[00:16:05] But later on, the apostle John, who walked with Jesus, the apostle Jesus loved, says, don't fear, because perfect love, if you really understand perfect love, if love is being perfected in you and in me, it's going to drive out fear. So how do we make sense of these two realities? Well, it's simply this, that the New Testament talks about two kinds of fear.
[00:16:32] There are two kinds of fear in the New Testament. And one of these kinds of fear, it says in our passage that these Christians in the first century were walking in. It means they weren't stumbling into it. It wasn't a one off. It wasn't like that. You know, on occasion they were doing this. This was a way of life. That's what the word walking means in the New Testament. So if I reference again, first John, he says, anyone who walks in the darkness does not have the light in him, right? Or doesn't belong to the light. What does that mean? He's not talking about occasional sinning in the life of the Christian. He's not even talking about Christians struggling with sin, because if that were the case, none of us would be saved.
[00:17:11] But this idea of walking connotes this idea of a way of life, a disposition of heart. This is a way of life. So what was the way of life for the first century Christians? In the book of Acts, chapter, chapter nine is the fear of the Lord, the fear of the Lord.
[00:17:31] So if there are two kinds of fear, the first kind of fear and the fear that John is talking about in chapter four is a fear that has to do with punishment, the fear that has to do with judgment.
[00:17:48] Hebrews 10:27 says for all those who are not yet Christians.
[00:17:55] Okay, so as a pastor, it is one of the great joys and challenges when you prepare a sermon to have to try as best as you can to think about all of the different scenarios and circumstances in the room. I know many of you, many of you I don't. And even those that I do know, I don't know what you dealt with this week. So you have to kind of always anticipate that and think about that in your study so that you can take God's unchanging word and as best as you can, like, ask the Spirit to help you apply it to the hearts of the people in the room. All right, so what I do know, though, is there are non Christians in the room.
[00:18:33] I am confident in that. Not because I know you. And I'm like, they're definitely not a Christian. I don't know.
[00:18:37] But I'm confident that there are non Christians in the room. And so here's what I want to tell you in regards to the fear of the Lord. One, I want to say I'm like, really stoked that you're here.
[00:18:47] We pray every week that God would bring more and more people made in his image who are not yet Christians, that we could get to know you and walk with you and see you come to faith in Jesus. That is like one of the main reasons we planted the church.
[00:19:00] Not to be another Bible study in the city, not to just gather Christians. But to see more non Christians come to faith and enter into the kingdom of God like that, Like, I get up in the morning excited about that idea. So here's my plea to you today. If you're not yet a Christian, you should fear the judgment of God.
[00:19:19] You should fear the judgment of God more than you do.
[00:19:23] You don't fear it enough. And the reason I know this for sure, one, is because I know my own heart. Two, because we're so terrified of everything else.
[00:19:33] We're terrified of what's happening in the Middle East. We're terrified of who takes office. We're terrified of all these things. And that means you're not fearful of God enough.
[00:19:45] You don't know Him.
[00:19:49] You don't know the majesty of who he is, the glory of who he is, the holiness that is Him. You don't know Him.
[00:19:59] And so because you don't know him, you don't fear him.
[00:20:02] You fear everything else. You fear people that they're going to reject you and not like you. And I'm not shaming you. I fear that, too.
[00:20:15] You fear so many things because you don't rightly fear the God of all creation. John Calvin, who's very pastoral by the way, wasn't a cult theologian, said that true knowledge is a knowledge of God and a knowledge of self. That's where true knowledge comes from.
[00:20:36] And the knowledge of God really breaks down into two parts. Number one, God as creator.
[00:20:42] That's where knowledge of God starts. God as creator.
[00:20:49] Hebrews 10:27 says that for those who are not Christians, there is a fearful expectation of judgment, fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
[00:21:06] God is a consuming fire. He says in Hebrews 10, John 3:18. Jesus Himself.
[00:21:17] The words of our Lord, gentle, humble Jesus says this in John 3:18.
[00:21:25] Whoever does not believe in me is condemned already.
[00:21:34] Romans 5. The apostle Paul says, apart from Christ, we are enemies of God.
[00:21:42] You're an enemy of God if you don't know God, So you don't fear God enough.
[00:21:54] This kind of fear is a fear of terror.
[00:21:59] It's what Martin Luther experienced way back in the day before he became a Christian.
[00:22:05] And the myth, the story goes, he's walking in the field and lightning strikes in front of him, and he's terrified of God.
[00:22:12] He had a legal mind, and so he knew that he was a sinner. He knew that God was holy. And so when lightning strikes, he's like, I'll become a monk. I'll do anything. I'll step aside from all the world. I'LL put all these things that I love aside, like, I will do anything for you. Just don't kill me.
[00:22:29] That is a fear of judgment, and that's one kind of fear that's appropriate for the non Christian. But here's the good news.
[00:22:38] Here's the good news for you if you're not yet a Christian, and here's the good news for those of us in the room who by the grace of God alone are Christians. That is not the only fear that the Bible talks about.
[00:22:52] That's a judicial fear.
[00:22:55] But the fear that we're talking about in Acts, chapter nine is what Michael Reeves calls a filial fear.
[00:23:05] It's a familial fear.
[00:23:10] And it's a totally different kind of fear than the fear of judgment or the fear of punishment.
[00:23:21] In 2008, my grandmother who raised me, my grandfather passed away in 2004. So in 2008, I was already off to college. And in 2008, I received a phone call from her one evening, and she said that while she was alone in our trailer house, a tornado hit the trailer and actually ripped off part of the roof of the trailer house. And so she was cowering in a room by herself, holding onto a portrait of Jesus, praying to God that he would, you know, rescue her and just terror. So she calls me. She calls me terrified.
[00:23:59] And that was the appropriate response for her in that moment. Why was she so terrified? Of course she was terrified of the tornado. She was terrified of what could happen.
[00:24:07] All of those kinds of things, as we all would be, too. But here's the bottom line of things. She was terrified because the shelter that she needed to guard her from the destruction had been taken away.
[00:24:19] What happens, however, when that shelter remains?
[00:24:25] How do we go from a fear of judgment and punishment to a fear that's intricately tied to delight?
[00:24:39] So when the New Testament talks about the fear of the Lord, or the Old Testament for that matter, when the psalmist says that the fear of the Lord is clean, meaning that it drives out other lesser fears in our life, that's what it's talking about, is not merely fearing God as Creator, it's coming to fear God as Father.
[00:25:03] That's what the Christian has.
[00:25:06] The Christian doesn't stand alone in the storm.
[00:25:10] In the midst of the storm, the Christian has shelter under the grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
[00:25:19] And so whatever the storm, we can take solace and rest, knowing that because of the perfect life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ in our place on our behalf, we don't fear Judgment. We don't fear punishment, because punishment, the punishment that we deserved was put on Jesus.
[00:25:44] And so for those of us who are in Jesus, we now know God not merely as creator, not merely as judge. We know God as Father.
[00:26:00] When I One of my favorite things to do now is to sit on our back patio. I've told you guys, like, our somewhat infatuation with the countryside and sky and all those kinds of things, but like, when I sit on, I love to sit on the back patio with a hot cup of coffee in Sydney. And sometimes the kids, and always the kids.
[00:26:22] And I love for us to sit out on the back patio with our family and to look out at the open sky when there's a thunderstorm.
[00:26:34] And the reason we can love that together as a family is because we know we're protected.
[00:26:42] We know that we're protected under the shelter of our home.
[00:26:47] And so with all the confidence in the world, we can look out upon the landscape and enjoy one another and enjoy laughter and enjoy coffee and enjoy relationship and all of those kinds of things. Though there's a storm going on because we know that we're protected.
[00:27:00] And this is the fear of the Lord for the child of God. Michael Reeves goes on and says, redemption in Christ, meaning that Jesus took our place through his life and death and resurrection, reorders our fear from terror and dread to wonder and delight.
[00:27:24] He reorders our fear of terror and dread to wonder and delight. I just want to read you a quote from Charles Spurgeon in regards to the fear of the Lord. And he says this.
[00:27:37] This is from one of his devotionals called the Voice of God in the Storm.
[00:27:42] He says some are particularly timid in times of a storm, when the thunder comes peal upon peal and the lightning flashes follow each other.
[00:27:55] When it seems as if the very earth did tremble and the skies fled away from the glance of an angry God. Oh, how it calms the anxious breast, stills the boding veres and makes the heart tranquil.
[00:28:10] To feel that he covers us with his feathers and that under his wings we may trust.
[00:28:18] I always feel ashamed to keep indoors when peals of thunder shake the solid earth and lightnings flash like arrows from the sky.
[00:28:26] Then God is abroad, and I love to walk out in the open space and to look up and mark the opening gates of heaven as the lightning reveals far beyond and enables you to look into the unseen.
[00:28:39] I like to hear my heavenly Father's voice, but I do not think we could ever come to a state of peace in such times. As those if we did not feel that he was near and that he was our friend, and that he would not hurt the children of his own love.
[00:28:57] I like to hear my Father's voice in the thunder, is what Spurgeon says.
[00:29:04] The power, the strength, the majesty of God's creation, the thunder of the skies that shakes the earth.
[00:29:15] Spurgeon said, I don't just love to hear it. I like to hear it.
[00:29:20] I like to hear it because I know that that strength, that otherworldly, beyond anything that you and I can fully comprehend, majesty and holiness and strength in Christ is on our side.
[00:29:39] This kind of fear, friends, is available to all who take shelter in Christ.
[00:29:48] Psalm 2. David says, Kiss the sun, lest he be angry.
[00:29:57] He's the one who sits in the heavens and laughs at the governments of the world and the rulers of the world and the kingdoms of the world, who all by their own admission, think that they're controlling things.
[00:30:15] The God of heaven and earth sits in the heavens and he laughs in the good news for all who, apart from his grace, would. Would only be able to see him in terror. The good news is that he's not just judge. He's Father.
[00:30:34] And because he's Father, it's Father, Father, the fatherhood of God.
[00:30:40] And I was telling our staff this this week, and I struggle with it myself. Like, we don't talk much about God the Father, and oftentimes the way that we think about God the Father is he's putting up with me because of Jesus.
[00:30:54] People even say that God loves you because of Jesus. That's not true.
[00:31:01] John 3:16, one of the most famous passages in all of the Bible says, for God, that's God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only Son.
[00:31:15] The love of the Father was what sent God the Son.
[00:31:21] And God the Son came in love for the Father and in love for you and in love for me.
[00:31:29] And so we can't. Sinclair Ferguson says we can't compare or project upon God the Father the experience you had with yours.
[00:31:42] You have to see him through the lens of him being the Father of our Lord Jesus.
[00:31:47] What did our Lord say about God the Father?
[00:31:51] Well, he said, no one is good except for God alone.
[00:31:57] Our Lord Jesus loved, loved God the Father, and God the Father loves our Lord Jesus, and God the Father loves the world.
[00:32:09] And so he sent His Son so that any person by his grace might take shelter in his Son.
[00:32:22] This is the kind of fear that drives out all lesser fears.
[00:32:30] This is the antidote to the fear of man.
[00:32:35] The antidote to the fear of failure.
[00:32:40] It's the antidote to the fear of loss.
[00:32:46] It's the medicine to the fear of death.
[00:32:55] And it can only be applied by the Holy Spirit. And that's what the comfort of the Holy Spirit means.
[00:33:02] So if you look at the remainder of the verse, it says, in walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the church multiplied.
[00:33:16] How does God multiply his church?
[00:33:20] He multiplies his church when by his grace they we in Christ walk in the fear of the Lord.
[00:33:29] Not fear of his punishment because that's been taken away, but wonder and amazement and awe. In a similar way that you and I would feel if we stood at the bottom of the foot of Everest and we looked upon Everest and we couldn't see the top, but we knew that there was something so big and so grand and so spectacular that it just dwarfed us, caused self forgetfulness in us as we see something so grand and so beautiful and so majest.
[00:34:01] This is the fear of the Lord in the life of the Christian. And this kind of fear that frees us from the fear of man, from the fear of punishment, from the fear of loss, from the fear of death is applied by the person of the Holy Spirit.
[00:34:18] Walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the people of God go out into the world filled with the Spirit as ferocious sons and daughters of God proclaiming the message of Jesus. And this is how the gospel multiplies throughout the world.
[00:34:37] Like, this is man. This is the time to be bold for Christians.
[00:34:45] You know, like, do you feel any of that?
[00:34:51] I just read. Do you feel any of that?
[00:34:54] All right, thank you, Sky.
[00:34:56] Like I just read a book last week called the Emotional Life of Our Lord and it talks about the emotions of Jesus while on earth.
[00:35:04] Jesus is fully God and fully man. So as fully man, Jesus felt all human emotions, all of them, but without sin. So it's an amazing thing to consider.
[00:35:16] And he says this, and I had never done a word study on this, but it says when Jesus looked out at Jerusalem and, and began to weep over Jerusalem, a more appropriate word would actually be wail.
[00:35:29] So if you've ever been to a funeral and you've heard somebody wail over the loss of their loved one, that's what Jesus was doing over the lostness of the world, wailing over it.
[00:35:40] Is that because Jesus was soft?
[00:35:43] Absolutely not. It's because he is the most full human to ever live. And that's the right response to the brokenness of the world is wailing over it like that. You and I live in a wonderful moment in redemptive history.
[00:36:00] God put you here. He didn't put Charles Spurgeon here. He didn't put Jonathan Edwards here. He didn't put Susanna Spurgeon here. He didn't put Elizabeth Elliot here. Like he put you here right now.
[00:36:11] He put me here right now.
[00:36:14] Like this is not the time to shrink back in fear.
[00:36:20] This isn't the time to not share the good news of Jesus with your co worker because you're concerned that they might not like you.
[00:36:28] I'm not saying it's easy. It's not easy.
[00:36:33] This is the time to be bold.
[00:36:37] And that boldness, friends, is going to come by the Holy Spirit cultivating in our hearts a fear of the Lord, a refreshing picture of who God really is. And if you're here and you're not a Christian, this is not the time to procrastinate. This is the time to take shelter in Jesus. Today.
[00:37:02] Today is the time for you not to assume you're going to have a tomorrow. Judgment will come.
[00:37:11] You might not like that. You might be choosing to not believe that, but it doesn't make the truth. Not the truth.
[00:37:21] So if judgment is coming and you hear the good news that Christ lived, that he died, that he rose in order to forgive you of your sin and bring you into a relationship with the Father, that He might be your Father and you might be his son or daughter, receive it.
[00:37:42] That's all you have to do is receive it.
[00:37:44] Receive the good news, Believe upon Jesus. He will save you.
[00:37:54] So I just want to. I want to conclude by giving you a little bit of homework this week.
[00:37:58] It's supposed to storm this week.
[00:38:01] We don't know if that's actually going to happen or not, but it is supposed to.
[00:38:05] And so I want to encourage you this week, if you have the opportunity to do so, to just open up your window and watch the storm as it happens this week.
[00:38:14] And as you're doing that, be reminded of the source of the storm.
[00:38:20] So as you see the lightning, as you hear the thunder, as you see the rain falling from the sky to the ground, as you listen to the wind and you get to feel for just a moment temporarily, its power, be reminded of the power behind it.
[00:38:39] And if you're a Christian, be reminded of this, that the creator of the storm is your Father.
[00:38:46] He's your loving Father.
[00:38:48] Christ is full proof of the love of God for you. You need not fear the storm because you're in the shelter.
[00:38:59] So watch the storm.
[00:39:01] Let's pray.
[00:39:04] Father, we love you. We thank you for the opportunity to gather in your name. We thank you for the gift of your word.
[00:39:10] God, we thank you that you love us and that in love you sent Jesus to die in our place, to rise from the grave.
[00:39:20] Father, I pray for any in the room who.
[00:39:24] Who don't know you as Father. They might know you as Creator, they might know you as Judge, but they've yet to come to know you as Father through faith in Jesus.
[00:39:35] God, I pray that you would gently, powerfully, lovingly work in their hearts this morning to grant them faith in your son. And I pray for those of us who do. God, that you would remind us this week if if you do bring about storms on the land.
[00:39:54] God, I pray that you would slow us down and help us to observe, to live in the moment.
[00:40:02] We listen to the rain, we listen to the thunder. We see the lightning, we feel the wind.
[00:40:08] God, as we experience these things, would you remind us not only of your power, but of your grace, your mercy, your love, your fatherly care for us when you cultivate in us the fear of you.
[00:40:26] And in so doing would you drive out God all lesser fears that we would step into this moment by the power of the Holy Spirit with boldness, proclaiming Jesus and God. We pray for our friends, our neighbors, our co workers, our family who don't. Who don't yet know you. God, that by your grace you would do it for anybody in our life who doesn't yet know you. God, that you would do it, that you would save them, you'd redeem them, you'd call them.
[00:40:51] We trust that you will. Because God, you saved us.
[00:40:55] We thank you for saving us.
[00:40:58] As we prepare to take communion and you help us to be present in this moment.
[00:41:06] Thank you for loving us. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:41:12] Sam Sa.
