Intro: What follows the Holy Spirit taking up residence in those that believe and follow the Lord Jesus Christ? To find out we turn to the book of Acts. The Acts of the Holy Spirit show us the working of God’s holy Spirit in indwelling, empowering, enabling, and pressing the Apostles and disciples outside of their comfort zone of Jerusalem into the hostility of the world. The holy Spirit shakes things up. He does not allow us to stay comfortably complacent as all across the city and world people are separated from God.
I) A desire to know and experience more and closer relationship to God (Acts 2.42)
What had happened? It is almost impossible to get people to come and share in the word and teaching outside of Sunday morning and Sunday evening. What was going on that they devoted themselves to a four fold fellowship? The message translation says they took Peter at His word!! The believed the message about Jesus as Messiah and Savior.
It was no longer just Bible Study. Now they were together to hear a word from God!! This is where it will make a difference in the way you read and study your Bible. From the pages rolls the creative, redemptive, restorative, comforting, encouraging, strengthening, instructional words of God.
This is the God who enfleshed Himself and came to walk and bear your sins before the wrath of God so that you can know what it is to be whole!!
What had the people that took Peter at his word, or believed his message learned?
That the God Peter spoke of wanted to save them. It didn’t merely end at salvation He wanted to speak to them and to you.
Genesis 12.1 “The Lord said to Abraham.”
Joshua 1.1 “The Lord said to Joshua.”
1 Samuel 3.4 “Then the Lord called Samuel”
Jonah 1.1 “The word of the lord came to Jonah of Amittai”
So why don’t we as people hear from God and have the same devotion to the teaching and voice of God that the early church did?
A few reasons:
1) You don’t think God has anything to say to us
2) You don’t know how to hear from Him
3) You disobeyed what he said already
4) You don’t have a relationship with Him and can’t hear from Him
How do I know that God wants to speak to all of us?
Jeremiah 33.2, 3 “"The LORD who made the earth, the LORD who forms it to establish it, the LORD is His name, says this: 3 Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and wondrous things you do not know.
The message translation says marvelous and wonderful things you couldn’t figure out on your own!!
Simply put God has something to say to you!
So what is it that limits the unlimited God’s voice in our life?
I learned this truth through the Holy Spirit by way of Richard Blackaby’s book unlimiting God John 16.12 is part of one of Jesus most powerful and profound teachings. It was His last opportunity to impart truth into the lives of His disciples. The disciples probably thought of it as nothing more than another Passover meal. He taught them profound truth on top of profound truth and then he just stopped.
Listen to Jesus John 16.12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now?”
“God will not reveal more truth to you then you are capable of receiving”
Our minds limit us. Our spiritual maturity limits us. If you have a shallow walk with God don’t expect for Him to reveal His deep truths to you.”
Your heavenly Father wants you relationship with Him to grow so that He can teach you greater and deeper truths about who He is and His plans for you! He wants to reveal His plans for this church. He is revealing His plans for this church. I am convinced He wants us to be a disciple making hub in Carlisle, Lonoke County and beyond.
Jeremiah 29.11 “I know the plans I have for you for blessing and not cursing.”
That doesn’t only apply to Jeremiah!
He goes on to say plans to give you a hope and a future. When do we get hope and a future? Our hope is Jesus Christ, our future is to be in the presence of Him forever. Have you ever heard what God says next?
29.12 “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Richard Blackaby “You will never get the words of meat until you’ve properly digested and obeyed the words of milk.”
Daily obedience to God’s words will grow you spiritually. Obedience leads to growth. The closer you walk to God the clearing your will hear the words of God. If you ignored the last three things God told you why would he give you an exciting deeper revelation?
Jesus didn’t condemn his disciples or us for lack of maturity he offered a promise of the Holy Spirit sharing as much of God’s truth as they were spiritually prepared to receive.
God has a word for you in your messed up marriage right now. God has word for you in your broken relationships right now. God has word for you in your current situation. God has a word for you in how you can overcome the addiction your facing. God has a word for you in the loneliness you face. God has word for you as you try to resist the temptation of your peers. God has word for you in the ministry He’s leading you to. He will only reveal that word as you are ready for it. How do we un-limit God’s limitless power and creative word in our life? Obey the word He has already given you. Why should you pray? God wants to speak to you, why should you hear teaching and study on God’s word he wants to speak to you.
II) A demonstration of the Holy Spirits Power and ministry (Acts 2.43)
What was the result of the surrender to the control and movement of the Holy Spirit? In this passage we are told there was a sense of Awe, a respect for the name of Jesus, an expectation for the Holy Spirit of God to work in, on and through their lives.
We have this same God!! A God of activity that is waiting to do things supernaturally with our relationships, our resources that cannot be explained outside of His miraculous hands!
In Acts 1.8 Jesus gives a clear and commanding invitation to be illustrations of the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
My heavenly Father often gives me opportunities to live out the truth He reveals and allows me to teach. That does not only apply to myself, James, Shane or other teachers etc.
The ongoing invitation by God is for you to allow His supernatural life to be lived through you.
Forgiveness of others is something that must be done by faith because the world says its foolish and week.
Meekness of spirit must be given by a right understanding of who God is an what he has done it does not come naturally to prideful people.
Carlisle Arkansas has heard far too many sermons and seen far too few.
What was happening with the early believers? They were living in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.
Are you overcome with what God is doing in your life and the life of Immanuel Baptist Church?
If not why not?
Are you expecting God to do something through the Power of His Spirit in this church and city?
I am I prayed asking our father to do something in me and in us this week.
III) A distribution of resources based on a stewardship of grace (Acts 2.45)
How were the early believers able to sell their possessions and meet needs?
A) Recognition of God’s ownership and His call to love our neighbor and brother
B) Reception of responsibility to others in the body of Christ (voluntary)
IV) A divine unity grown out of common life and purpose (Acts 2.44, 46)
2.44 “Now all the believers were together and had everything in common.”
2.46 “Gladness and simplicity of heart”
Simplicity comes from a Greek word that means free from stones, or smooth. They did not have stony hearts filled with selfishness, gossip, gripping, division, etc they had hearts smoothed by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Fellowship means more than enjoying each others company. It comes from a Greek word that means a sharing of all life belonging to each other. We will always do more as we do together.
V) A dynamic growth because of their authenticity and dependence on the working of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2.47)
John MacArthur shared the writing of a second century philosopher named Aristides:
“Now the Christians, O King, by going about and seeking, have found the truth. For they know and trust in God, the maker of heaven and earth, who has no fellow. From him they received those commandments which they have engraved on their minds, and which they observe in the hope and expectation of the world to come.
For this reason they do not commit adultery or immorality; thy do not bear false witness, or embezzle, nor do they covet what is not theirs. They honor father and mother, and do good to those who are their neighbors. Whenever they are judges, they judge uprightly. They do not worshipidols made in the image of man. Whatever they do not wish others should do to them, they in turn do no do; and they do not eat the food sacrificed to idols.
Those who oppress them they exhort and make them their friends. They do good to their enemies. Their wives, O King, are pure as virgins, and their daughters are modest. Their men abstain from all unlawful sexual contact and from impurity, in the hope of recompense that is to come in another world.
As for their bondmen and bondwomen, and their children, if there are any, they persuade them to become Christians; and when they have done so, they call them brethren without distinction.
They refuse to worship strange gods; and they go their way in all humility and cheerfulness. Falsehood is not found among them. They love one another; the widow’s needs are not ignored, and they rescue the orphan from the person who does him violence. He who has gives to him who has not, ungrudgingly and without boasting. When the Christians find a strange, they bring him to their homes and rejoice over him as a true brother. They do not call brothers those who are bound by blood ties alone, but those who are brethren after the Spirit and in God.
When one of their poor passes away from the world, each provides for his burial according to his ability. If they hear of any of their number who are imprisoned or oppressed for the name of the Messiah, they all provide for his needs, and if it is possible to redeem him, they set him free.
If they find poverty in their midst, and they do not have spare food, they fast two or three days in order that the needy might be supplied with the necessities. They observe scrupulously the commandments of their Messiah, living honestly and soberly as the Lord their God ordered them. Every morning and every hour they praise and thank God for his goodness to them; and for their food and drink they offer thanksgiving.
If any righteous person of their number passes away from the world, they rejoice and thank God, and escort his body as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby. When a child is born to one of them , they praise God. If it dies in infancy, they thank God the more, as for one who has passed through h the world without sins. But if one of them dies in his iniquity or in his sin, they grieve bitterly and sorrow as over one who is about to meet his doom.
Such O king, is the commandment give to Christans, and such is their conduct.
A) What we need is authenticity
Questions to ask yourselves.
1) Do you want comfort or Christ-likeness
2) Do you want success or significance
3) Do you want easy answers or dynamic power with God
B) What we need is dependence on the Holy Spirit
Do you want to do things that if God doesn’t come through we are in big trouble?
Conclusion: Do you realize what your heavenly father wants? 1) He wants to speak to you 2) He wants to live in and through you by His Holy Spirit 3) He wants us as a church to incarnate – to make alive the truths of His word!!
How can we do this?
Live in obedience to God’s word as He reveals its truth to you!!
Live in the reality of joy because you have hope.
Live in the opportunity of each moment to invest into others lives for the Kingdom of God
