Ready To Go Series

READY TO GO

Acts 2:14-36

S: Witness

Th: Discipleship Month—Freed to Minister

Pr: WE MUST BE READY TO PROCLAIM JESUS.

?: How? How is it done?

KW: Stages

TS: We will find in Acts 2:14-36, four stages of Peter’s explanation that demonstrate a readiness to proclaim Jesus.

The ____ stage of explanation is the…

I. CLARIFICATION (14-21)

II. CASE (22-24)

III. CITATION (25-35)

IV. CONCLUSION (36)

RMBC 09 September 01 AM

INTRODUCTION:

ILL Notebook: Communication (Camilla and Mark)

Camilla and Mark were at a party chat-ting with some friends when the subject of marriage counseling came up. "Oh, we’ll never need that. Mark and I have a great relationship," Camilla explained. "He was a communications major in college and I majored in theater arts. He communicates real well and I act like I’m listening."

Looks like they were made for each other…right?

Well…

Have you ever noticed that there is an art to communication?

ILL Notebook: Communication—newspaper headlines

Note some of these true newspaper headlines:

Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted

Farmer Bill Dies in House

Teacher Strikes Idle Kids

President Wins on Budget, But More Lies Ahead

It is our desire this morning to communicate clearly about communication, because the church needs to communicate clearly.

Sometimes, the church disappointingly closes itself off from the world and becomes sequestered behind its own doors.

We do that to avoid the accusation of not being politically correct, so we just keep to ourselves.

Or we go the opposite direction…

We water down the gospel in an attempt to be seen as culturally relevant.

But I propose to you that we should do neither of those things.

Instead, we need to communicate it…as it is.

TRANSITION:

We have come to the second week of our discipleship month.

Our theme is “Freed to Minister,” for…

1. We have been freed to minister.

We were in bondage to sin when we came to Christ.

But now that the Holy Spirit has come into our lives, we have the freedom and power to do what we could not do before.

In the message last week, we studied the first thirteen verses of Acts 2, the account of the disciples in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost.

We saw the Holy Spirit had come on them, indicated by the sound of a great wind, the tongues of fire and the gift of tongues.

We saw how the gift of tongues was especially significant as a sign of the beginning of Christ’s reign and the reversal of Babel, as hundreds of devout and God-fearing Jews gathered in Jerusalem from throughout the world for the Feast of Pentecost.

Luke tells us how God had enabled the hundred and twenty disciples and followers of Christ who were waiting in the Upper Room, to speak in tongues and declare in known languages the wonders of God.

We saw how this created a great commotion, and the Jews were astonished to hear Galileans speaking to them in their own native languages.

The people there were “amazed and perplexed,” some even accusing the disciples of being drunk, saying, “They have had too much wine.”

Amazing, even unexplainable things were happening because of the Holy Spirit.

And the same can be true of us, for…

2. We can minister because of the filling of the Spirit.

Last week, we made a distinction between the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Spirit.

Let me review…

2.1 Baptism of the Spirit (I Corinthians 12:13)

Paul writes…

For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus today, you have been baptized by the Spirit.

You were brought into the church, the body of Christ, by the Spirit.

You cannot make the baptism happen.

It is something only God can do.

But when it comes to the…

2.2 Filling of the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18b)

…there is a command.

As Paul again says…

…be filled with the Spirit.

We are to be continuously filled with the Spirit.

It is an issue of control.

Are we going to let the Spirit control us or are we going to assume the mastery of ourselves?

It is a moment by moment choice we make.

Sometimes we do this right, and other times we do not.

But the unusual thing that happens, and we see evident in today’s text, is that when we are filled with the Spirit (under His control), He enables us to speak.

He gives us the ability.

But at the same time, we need to be ready.

3. WE MUST BE READY TO PROCLAIM JESUS.

When we come to today’s text, you really have to notice the difference of Peter.