Turn this session, if you would, to Acts
chapter 1.
Acts chapter 1.
The former account I made, O Theophilus, of
all that Jesus began both to do and
to 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 sufferings by many infallible
proofs, being seen of them for forty days,
and speaking of 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 of
me.
For John truly baptized you 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 unto them, It is not
for you to know the times or seasons
which the Father has put in his own
authority, but you shall receive power, after which
the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and
you shall be witnesses unto me in both
Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the
ends of the earth.
Father, we pray that as we look at
this section of Scripture that we have all
studied and taught numerous times, Lord, we ask
that you would just in a fresh and
simple way open our hearts to what you
would have to say to us and strengthen
us by it.
Refresh us, Lord, in so many wonderful fundamental
issues.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, as we look here and, you know,
obviously we're picking up the book of Acts
in chapter 1 here where we're looking at
it, we're looking, of course, at the first
century church.
And it's obviously to me, I suppose, when
we do look at church, the book of
Acts is where it's kind of our study
manual, isn't it?
And where we kind of look at things,
not because it's at all a perfect church,
there never has been.
Only in heaven will that be as we're
finally conformed to his image, and the body
of Christ finds its full identity of then.
But until then, the church has always been
the church.
As you look through the book of Acts,
you find virtually everything that we're still been
dealing with for the last 2,000 years,
they were already being dealt with in the
early church.
There's really, as you know, the word says,
nothing new under the sun.
And what they, you know, what we're going
through, you can pick up the book of
Acts and find that they went through it.
And the Lord allowed them to have the
same problems and distractions and diversions or struggles
or problems and divisions that could always have
always been around.
And it's something, I think, sometimes it's just
so refreshing to go back and kind of
look at a little bit and to reflect
on and to see what it was to
me in a sense that the early church
was so much all about.
And here as we look at these verses
in Acts chapter 1, there are just three
things I want to pull out of it
and then reflect on.
But just to give them to you first
that we're going to look at is that
we see here a group of people that
whatever else you want to think about them,
you realize that they believed something powerfully.
They believed something powerfully.
And then secondly, they loved someone passionately.
And then third, they lived expectantly.
Now those are things, I think you just
say them and they're easy to kind of
just say, but I think they're such important
things to contemplate and to really find ourselves
sometimes looking at in the sense that here
first of all, as I said, they believed
something powerfully.
As powerfully as I suppose anybody could.
And I think, you know, the world has
always been a confusing place ever since the
fall of man.
There's always been tremendous spiritual confusion in the
whole world.
And particularly today, it seems to be worse
than ever, I think, in our world, in
our society, than at least our country has
ever known.
We're being taught everywhere we go that we
live in a pluralistic society now.
We're being constantly, there's this constant deluge of
views and opinions, you know, that there are
on all sorts of things and we're being
taught there that we need, we're a pluralistic
society and if we are going to make
it as a society, if we're going to
live through these things, it's going to be
because we're a blending pot of the world.
We're a melting pot of the world's thinking
and it's something where people are going to
make it if we're open, if we're flexible,
if we're somewhat negotiable on things.
You got to give a little and take
a little in order to be able to
put a, you know, melting pot of the
world together in America.
And it's going to be, it's going to
succeed because people are somewhat flexible in certain
things.
And so you've got to be social, socially
open-minded on things.
Morally realize, well, you may have some standards
and you may think different, but at the
same time, you've got to realize a lot
of people don't share those things.
And we've got to function together, we've got
to exist together, we've got to work together,
we've got to go to school together, we've
got to live in neighborhoods together, we've got
to find a way to get along.
And we seem to be living in a
world that anybody that is narrow, that's what
you become.
If you believe anything intently, if you've got
something that you believe powerfully, there's very little
room for that.
You're very, you're painted out to be narrow,
you're fanatical, you're bizarre.
And of course, there's always, you know, the
ones that the press can pick up on
that are kind of the epitome of weird
people because they're narrow.
There's always, you know, the militias that are
hiding off in the mountains, storing up their
weapons, waiting for chaos to break out, and
enough for the news guys to go out
and pick them out and just say, this
is what happens to people that just, that
aren't flexible to the world around them, that
don't realize that there is a world around
them that has different things.
They're gonna end up one day shut off
into the world and in their weird little
compounds preaching their own little dogmas, and they're
gonna be the enemies of the world around
them, and the world will be the enemies
of theirs.
And as a result, there's this constant sort
of a little bit of pressure that's unending,
that there seems to be precious little room
for anybody with deep convictions, for anybody that
has something that is very strong about them.
And not that it's not okay to have
them, but at the same time, you've got
to realize you've got to learn how to
keep them to yourself, and to hold those
opinions inside.
And you've got to realize the world in
which we're living and functioning together.
Well, that's something, though, when you think all
those things about the world, and yet when
you look here in Acts chapter 1, you
realize there's a hundred and twenty people there
that didn't think that way at all.
This hundred and twenty people ended up, you
know, turning the world upside down, or right
-side up, depending on what your vantage point
is, I guess.
But they seem to think the exact opposite
from that sort of thinking.
They were absolutely convinced that actually what the
world, while it was thinking as it was
thinking and functioning as it may be functioning,
in all reality, as far as they were
concerned, the world was desperately looking for something
to deeply believe in.
The world was longing for somebody with convictions.
The world desperately had this hunger for what
it was that they actually had.
And they were a group of people, and
that's 120 in the upper room, that they
had something that they believed in, and they
believed in it as powerfully as I suppose
anybody has ever believed in anything in all
of history.
And very simply, they believed that Jesus Christ
was the Son of the Living God.
And then about that, they had absolutely no
more flexibility than you had about the law
of gravity.
I mean, that was not up for discussion,
that wasn't up for negotiation, that wasn't up
for varied opinions.
It was fixed.
And the silliness as far as they were
concerned, even to, you know, you could talk
about it if you wanted to, and have
all those sorts of things.
But in the final analysis, truth was truth.
And, you know, we live in a democratic
society where, you know, morality and truth and
ethics are all quite negotiable.
You know, they're just voted in and out.
We live in a society where the majority
rules.
And society is governed by people, and by
the mind of man, and whatever the majority
says it is, it somehow or another has
a way of becoming that.
Well, they looked at that, and that was
ridiculous.
They were no more negotiable, as I said,
about Jesus being God than they were about
the law of gravity.
And that is something you vote on.
You don't vote on the law of gravity.
You know, 51% of us or 80
% of us decide, you know, we want
to vote on the law of gravity.
We never liked that law.
It was just a difficult law.
And the older you get, the more you
hate that law.
You know, type of a thing, anyway.
Everything starts falling, you know, anyway, and it's
being pulled down.
We don't like that law.
We're gonna vote it out.
And so we decide.
We hold an election, and 99% of
us vote against it.
We don't believe it any longer.
As if, so what?
You know, I mean, you can win all
those elections you want, but you can climb
to the top of a ten-story building
and jump off it, and all there'll be
is one less voter.
You know, I mean, sort of a thing.
It has nothing to do with anything negotiable.
These are fixed things.
They are things way outside of the realm
of any man's opinion.
And here it's something to where, when they
look there, I mean, you know, God was
a creator of the universe, of the world.
He was God in heaven above and earth
below.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to
himself.
It was the most wonderful truth in the
world when they looked at the cross, and
they looked at the sacrifice, and it was
as sure as anything ever was.
It was.
No negotiation about it.
You can call it, I think, as far
as they were concerned, dogmatism, fanaticism, legalism, zealousness.
I don't think they cared a hoot.
You know, pick your word, you're right.
You know there's something on it if you
want to.
We are that.
We're absolutely sold on it completely, 100%, and
there's no negotiation to us about it.
And I think what the world is desperately
looking for is just such thinking.
That is, not just being something that's made
up, but when they see that there are
people that absolutely, truly, totally are convinced of
things, and about it, there is no discussion
with them.
It's something they're completely given over to.
And this is what they had come to
realize.
And this was to them the great realities.
And we already read here, in Acts 1,
the former treatise of Otheophilus, of all that
Jesus began both to do and to teach,
till the day that he was taken up.
After he, through the Holy Spirit, had given
commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen,
whom he had presented himself alive after his
sufferings, by many infallible proofs being seen of
them forty days.
And speaking of things pertaining to the kingdom
of God, about that, for that last six
-week Bible school that they had been through
after the resurrection.
From that point on, there was no more
discussion.
There was no more negotiation.
These were the greatest facts in all the
world, and they had come to see them
by all these many infallible proofs.
And here was something, as far as they
were concerned, to transform them.
They had not only spent some three years
with him.
They had seen him day and night, and
they had seen him from every possible angle
that you could observe anybody.
They had seen him with their eyes.
They had heard him with their ears.
They had touched him with their hands.
They were there for his miracles.
They watched him as he walked on water.
They watched him still the seas.
They watched him there as he multiplied loaves
and fishes, as he healed the sick.
They watched him raise the dead.
They heard him preach sermons, give sight to
the blind.
They watched him forgive sins.
And everywhere he went, they watched a mass
of humanity that was eternally transformed by his
presence.
And about that, there was no discussion.
It was real.
As John says in his epistle, that which
was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have looked upon, which our hands have
handled, and we're concerning the word of life.
The life was manifested, and we have seen,
and bear witness.
And we declare to you that eternal life,
which was with the Father, was manifested to
us.
That which we have seen, heard, we declare
unto you, that you may also have fellowship
with us.
And truly, our fellowship is with the Father
and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
And here, he looked there, he said, this
is, there's no negotiation about this.
What we have seen, what we have heard,
what we have handled, it's absolutely overtaken us.
And this is the reason now it became
the defining reason for their existence.
It was such a powerful truth to believe
in this.
As Paul, when he stood before King Agrippa
in Acts 26, he explaining who he was
and what he was all about to Agrippa.
He says, while I thus occupied, I journeyed
to Damascus with authority and commission from the
chief priests.
And at midday, O King, along the road
I saw light from heaven, brighter than the
sun, shining round about me and those who
journeyed with me.
And when we'd all fallen to the ground,
I heard a voice speaking to me, saying
in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are
you persecuting me?
Is it hard for you to kick against
the goads?
So I said, who are you, Lord?
And he said, I am Jesus, whom you
are persecuting.
But rise, stand your feet, for I have
appeared to you for this purpose, to make
you a minister and a witness of those
things which you have seen and the things
which shall be revealed unto you.
I will deliver you from the Jewish people
as well as from the Gentiles to whom
I now send you, to open their eyes.
And in order to turn them from darkness
to light, from the power of Satan to
God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins
and inheritance among those who are sanctified by
faith in me.
Here Paul looked, and this was something that
absolutely from that road to Damascus experience on,
he had a truth that he believed, and
he believed it so powerfully, it took over
his being.
It transformed his identity.
It became the definition of what he was
as a human being, why he lived, why
he breathed, why he woke up every day,
why he functioned, why he existed.
It gave definition, recognition, focus, purpose to all
of what he was.
And this was why we're all alive.
Everyone's alive for this reason.
That's why each one of us hopefully exists.
And it was something that they believed it,
and they believed it more important than even
breathing.
As far as you look at the early
church, and you know what they were all
about, they had something they had come to
believe so powerfully, that for that the issue
of even negotiating their lives was a small
price to pay.
It meant absolutely nothing to them.
They believed something so powerfully that it was
greater to them than their own lives.
And as history has suggested of the Apostles
and so many early church leaders, when you
go through the list and you look at
Stephen, whom Paul had stoned in the streets
of Jerusalem, or you look at James, John's
brother, who was beheaded for preaching Christ in
the temple.
You look at Matthias, who was tied to
a cross, draped in molasses, and eaten by
vultures.
You look at Jude, Thaddeus, who was crucified
and shot to death with arrows.
You look at Nathanael, skinned alive, and then
crucified in double agony.
You look at Philip, hanged on the columns
of the great temple.
Andrew, crucified in Egypt.
Matthew, beheaded in Alexandria.
Mark, dragged to death behind a chariot.
Luke, crucified in Acacia of Rome for preaching
Christ.
James, Alpheus, thrown from Herod's triple roof.
Thomas, speared by a mob.
Simon the Zealot, sawn in pieces, alive.
Paul, beheaded on the Appian Way.
Peter, literally forced to watch his beloved wife
being crucified on Batacale Hill, and all through
her death and agony, he cried to her,
oh beloved, remember Christ, remember Christ, Peter himself,
who felt so unworthy to die in the
manner in which his Lord had asked and
was end up being crucified upside down.
But you look at a group of people
who believed something and believed it.
They're more precious and more glorious and more
wonderful than life and breath itself.
That's what they had.
We, so oftentimes, we want to look around
and you say, I'll believe your gospel if
you can show me proof.
Well, you look at the early church and
they had all the proof you could dream
of seeing.
There was something about then, there was the
blood of the martyrs that just poured constantly,
because what happened, they believed something so powerful.
And how these ordinary men and women who
ended up turning the world upside down, what
had simply happened at the core of them
was that they had come into a reality,
into a truth, into a knowledge, that to
the very end, even many of them on
their own crosses, did nothing but preach a
triumphant Christ for which they believed greater than
life itself.
And I think to me, you know, and
I wonder about them today.
If you look at these group, you look
at the Apostles, you look at the early
church leaders, and if they were at a
lot of our conferences or our meetings or
our strategy sessions or the things that the
church is so often doing, what do we,
what are the people looking for?
What do they need?
What's society at?
How do I be, you know, somebody that's
relevant, you know, in all of these things
that we're kind of trying to be?
What's the greatest and freshest approach to people?
What are they looking to?
What are they interested in?
I'm not saying that God is entirely unknown,
has no interest in any of these things,
but it is something there.
I think these men and women of the
early church were watching a lot of our
strategy and planning and thought meetings about defining
who we are in our vision, would look
and say, what are you talking about?
What in the world are you talking about?
That there is something, I think, that when
people don't have something that they believe so
powerfully and passionately, they need a lot of
strategies.
They need a lot of other sort of
support systems to come, but you take a
person and you give them the deepest abiding
conviction that the brain is capable of embracing,
and then you make that the truth, that
Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living
God, and God was in Christ, reconciling to
the world, to himself, and either you come
to Christ and you live forever or you
live without him forever.
But, you know, it's something to me that
this is so powerful and all in and
of itself, that there would be something that
each person ever stood in the pulpit, and
when they stood in the pulpit, you realize
there is somebody that they stand there and
they believe something powerfully.
They believe something so deeply that it is
more important to them than life itself.
It is more precious to them.
You realize that when they stand up there,
they've got something they believe in.
They believe in more than life.
They believe they have something for which they
would gladly, willingly, without a second thought, give
their life for.
That's what I believe the world is looking
for there, when they can see that.
And to me, if there's somebody that stands
in a pulpit and doesn't have that, get
out of the pulpit.
Get out of the pulpit until you can
stand.
People are coming to church looking for heaven.
They're looking for a way to go to
heaven and to be there and to have
a truth that can absolutely transform their life,
and if you do not have it for
which you are willing to live and die,
go do something else.
And for God's sake, do something else.
For your sake, do something.
And for the poor people's sake, you know,
do something else until there is something where
you realize, I believe it, and I believe
it passionately.
I believe it powerfully.
I believe it completely.
But they were not only people that they
believed something powerfully, they also, as I said,
they loved someone passionately.
You look at them, they had a belief
that was quite powerful, but they also had
a love that was quite passionate.
In verse 6, it says, therefore, when they
had come, hereafter this seven-week, you know,
40 days Bible school, the Lord kind of
gave them through the ultimate training seminar, if
you can imagine being at that time with
them.
But therefore, when they were come together, they
asked Him, saying, Lord, will you at this
time restore the kingdom to Israel?
Here they were coming right now, and they
had been without Jesus for the three most
devastating days of their lives.
There as He had died on the cross,
and before He was risen, and made known
unto them.
Their heart and their soul had gone through
a process of agony and turmoil that had
to be devastating to them.
We can't, I don't think, understand what fully
we can think of it and meditate on
it, I suppose.
But there is something during that period where
now they saw Him alive and risen from
the dead.
How that had to just absolutely inflame the
passions of love.
And to look there and realize that He
is alive.
And that just as Mary, when there she
went to the tomb, and she embraced Him,
she grabbed on to Him, where he had
to say, Mary, don't cling to me.
She was determined, I'll never take my hands
off of you again.
I'll never let you out of my sight
again.
I'll never be away from you again.
She not only had something she believed powerfully,
but they also had a love that was
passionate.
It's something about them that had overtaken them.
They wanted Him, and they wanted His kingdom
now.
Lord, what do you mean?
You're going, you can't go, don't ever leave
us again.
Tell us that you're just gonna set up
your kingdom.
You're gonna be here with us, to lead
us, to guide us, to fill us.
You're going to reign.
We want your throne.
We prepared for your throne.
We understand your throne.
We understand your majesty.
And we love you.
Please, don't tell us you're going away.
And something here that is just as important
as believing something powerfully, is loving someone passionately.
I think we've all found, and one of
the sad things to me, and I mentioned
it a little bit last night concerning Wilbur
Smith, but I found through life and through
ministry, there's a lot of people that I
think, they're truly sound theologically.
In the sense, they believe all of the
right things.
They believe in Jesus Christ.
They know He's the Son of the Living
God.
They fully subscribe to all the right doctrines
and biblical Christianity.
They know man is sinful, and God is
holy.
They know that Jesus Christ came into the
world.
They know that He took their sins to
the cross.
They know He died.
They know He rose.
They know He ascended to heaven.
They know right now He ever lives to
make intercession for them.
They know He's coming back again.
They preach it.
They teach it.
They believe in it.
They communicate it to others.
They know that He's going to take us
home, conform us to His image.
We'll reign with Him forever.
But somehow or another, though the mind is
fully educated, fully trained, fully convinced of things,
it's somehow or another, with many people, it
falls short of capturing the passions, of capturing
and keeping the heart on fire, and the
heart in love in a great way.
And it's something there that it doesn't, all
these wonderful things, they don't sustain a passionate
love for Christ, a deep, profound, abiding desire
for communion and for fellowship with Him.
So many, I think, are like, and we
can easily become like the church in Ephesus
in the book of Revelation, when John writes,
the Lord speaks to him, but to the
angel of the church in Ephesus, write these
things, says he who holds the seven stars
in his right hand, who walks in the
midst of the seven golden lampstands, I know
your work and your labor, your patience, that
you cannot bear those who are evil, that
you have tested those who say they are
apostles and are not, and have found them
liars, and you have persevered, and you have
patience, and you have labored for nine names'
sake, and you have not become weary.
What a church.
Doesn't that sound like a fabulous church?
Wouldn't you, I'd love to go to that
church, when you look at it, think of
this, I know your work, your labor, your
patience, you cannot bear those who are evil,
you've tested those who say they're apostles, they're
not, you found them liars, you persevered through
all of these things, you're still in there,
you're still fighting the good fight, you have
patience, you've labored for nine names' sake, and
you're not tired of it, you haven't even
grown weary.
What a great bunch of people to be
with, until he then goes on to say,
nevertheless, I have this against you.
You've left your first love, you've got all
the right persuasions, the doctrines are there, you
will stand for all the right things, you
will fight for it, you will nail every
false doctrine that comes along, you'll call them
liars, you'll produce the truth, the proof of
it, the evidence will be out there, right
there, and you'll hang in there, and you're
in, as soon as you're ready, with finished
with that battle, you're ready for the next
one.
And you'll stand up, and you'll identify the
next false thing that comes in, the next
error, the next problem, and you'll nail it
to the wall, and you won't go tired
of it, you'll almost be, give me another
one, I'm hungry for another weird thing, you
know, to defend for the kingdom of heaven.
I love it, you know, or something, but
here the Lord looks, and at the same
time, he says, but that isn't how we
started.
You didn't become a Christian to become a
defensor, the defender of God, he didn't need
any defenders, he needed lovers, he needed people
that he loved, that he died on the
cross, where he didn't die for defenders of
the faith, he died for us.
Now, hopefully, along the way, we become tremendous
apologists and defenders of the faith, but at
the same time, that that's just a side
issue to a mind that believes powerfully, and
a heart that believes passionately, that there were
those two, when you get those things together,
when you've got the mind, and you've got
the passions, and the heart, you've got those
united, you've got an awesome thing, you've got
somebody, you put like, somebody like that in
a pulpit, you put somebody like that, you
put the Word of God in front of
them, and say, now here, go feed my
sheep, but to me, I'm convinced, if you
don't have those things, you can't give them
enough things that the congregation can sit at
and listen to.
And while on one hand, we can be
the, you know, the proud ones that we
realize that we're still standing when others are
falling, and we've outlived all the weirdness and
the doctrines that have come and gone, and
all the other things, but in the process
of it, and even though we're determined, we're
gonna keep doing this as long as our
heart beats.
I believe so often, the Lord says, that's
not what I was all about.
I was in somebody there where I got
in, I've been their mind believed powerfully, and
their heart loved me passionately.
That's far greater than anything else.
It's far more glorious than anything else, and
anything else than that is a lesser, and
not acceptable to God.
But it's also something there, that because they
believe something powerfully, and they also love someone
passionately, they then thirdly, they lived expectantly.
They were a group of people, it tells
us in verse 12, it says, they returned
to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which
is near Jerusalem, on a Sabbath day's journey,
and when they had entered, they went up
into the upper room, where they were staying,
and Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew,
Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon the
Celadon, and Judas, the son of James, and
they continued with one accord, in prayer, and
supplication, with the women, and Mary, the mother
of Jesus, and with his brothers.
Here there's something they now, they were somebody,
they believed something powerfully, they loved him passionately,
and they lived expectantly.
All of them said, well we're gonna go
back and do exactly what it was he
told us to do, go wait.
And they found themselves there, as they gathered
together in the upper room, and there was
such tremendous sense of expectancy, they continued with
one accord in prayer.
If there was now something they were absolutely
sure of, and convinced of, as that the
very God that they believed in powerfully, that
they loved passionately, there was a full expectation
that now they were going to become fully
engaged with him, and the power of his
indwelling Holy Spirit, and he was going to
transform their lives.
And there was a full expectation that God
was going to transform them, and use them
mightily.
There was a full sense of, of course
this is what he's going to do.
We will expect in a nothing less than
this.
We are going to go back until we
have received the promise of the Father.
Until that anointing, and that power, and that
enabling, that God who was in Christ reconciling
the world himself, now he wants to be
in us, reconciling the world.
Now he wants to take us in the
full sense, of course he wants to use
us.
On one hand there's a, we're Christians, I
suppose we ought to be kind of an
interesting dichotomy, or a paradox, or something.
There's one part of us, inside of us,
that is absolutely amazed that God would even
talk to us.
That he'd even acknowledge we exist on the
planet, and yet at the same time that
somehow or another to be blended with somebody
that there is a full expectation that if
God spared not his own son, will he
not give us all things?
That there is this sense within us that
God wants to use us.
He longs to use us.
He loves those people with all of his
heart.
He's no respecter of persons as much as
he himself went out on the Mount of
Olives and preached and prayed.
As much as he went on the hill
of the Beatitudes and preached his sermons.
As passionately as he spoke to any that
while he was here in his own body,
as passionately as he wants to speak today
through ours.
To touch lives, and to transform lives.
And when they expected this, they realized, if
I do believe something powerfully and I passionately
love it, I have the right to fully
expect an anointing, and an outpouring, and a
hand of God upon me to achieve the
eternal purposes that he has for the people
that he loves, as much as he loved
his own son.
As Jesus prayed in John 17, for Father,
thou lovest them as thou has loved me.
He looks there and he realizes, there God,
you just scratched the surface when Jesus was
here for a few years, but now you
want to go into all the world.
You want to go in Jerusalem, Judea, and
Samaria, or Amsterdam, or Russia, or wherever else
it is, and there's somebody that can expect
and long to go to whatever city you're
going back to, and say, God, you want
to minister to them.
God, is there somebody going back that has
something there that I don't know if I
believe it that powerfully?
Well, you better straighten it out.
If you don't, and you're not sure, and
when you open the word, and you begin
to prepare, and if it isn't something that
arouses your own passions, and if it isn't
something that thrills you, if it isn't a
message that pierces your own heart, as you
study and prepare for it, how do you
expect it to do anything to anybody else's
when you're the first person it ought to
be touching?
And you're just trying to get through the
preparation yourself.
God, just please help me.
Get this sermon together.
There's a football game on, you know, or
something there, and then finish this thing.
I mean, to think somebody can think that
way, and then expect anything to happen tomorrow,
I don't think so.
But when there is somebody, they sit down,
and the greatest truths, the greatest passions that
are ever stirred up within them, they, you
know, we as Christians, we ought to make
these bizarre, weird people you see on TV
at football games, and they are bizarre.
You know, so you see these guys, they're
standing in the freezing snows in Green Bay,
you know, naked with a barrel tied around
them, and a cheese stuck on their head.
You want to say, this guy, he obviously
seems to believe something very powerfully, and is
quite passionate about it.
I hope he's got something on under that
barrel, you know, or something.
But it's probably too late, you know, anyway.
You know, but the thing is, is it
there, but it ought to be something there
that any of these other people you'd see
in the world, they ought to, people come
to church, and see something that strikes them
in the same, though a different way, something
to realize this guy, he is a believer
in what he is saying.
I don't know if I believe it yet,
but I know he believes it from cover
to core.
It's transformed him.
He has nothing that his mind is more
absorbed in.
There's no greater truth than that which he
is actually talking about right now.
He's absolutely absorbed in it, and you realize
this has grabbed him, and it's taken him
from cover to core.
Alan Redpath used to say there's two types
of people in the ministry, and you're just
referring to the evangelical, essentially.
He says you can give two men the
exact same message, exact same sermon, and they
can both go out and preach it, but
one of them you sense there, though it
is all right, and it's doctrinally there, every
word is absolutely accurate and true, but somehow
or another you sense that what he said,
it came over the top of his head.
It's true, but then there's another man who
stands up that you sense that everything now
when he says it, it went right into
him at the gut level and utterly turned
the man inside out and upside down and
turned him around, and it came out in
power, and to me that's what the world
is looking for.
Somebody there that when he stands before people,
there is something that you realize it has
grasped him, it has transformed him.
For this there is nothing else in life
that means anything to his mind or to
his heart that has drives him as powerfully
and as wonderfully this, and he lives with
a full expectation that God is going to
take his life and use him, and expects
there the Lord to anoint and to do
wonderful and glorious things within them because of
it.
There was no doubt within them, and there
was no sense, it was just simply, okay,
we're gonna go wait.
The only thing is how long we may
wait.
Is it a day or two?
How much longer?
When is there the spirit of God going
to come?
It's not if, it's when.
We are waiting for the promise of the
Father, and about that there's no question.
We are waiting to be able to go
out into the streets of Jerusalem and preach,
and we are fully expecting all sorts of
unbelievable things that we maybe even haven't dreamed
of what they'll be yet, but they'll be
awesome, and they'll be earth-changing, they'll be
world-changing, they'll change society, they'll change the
planet, they'll change the future of mankind because
we believe them powerfully, and we love passionately,
and we live expectantly.
And to me that's when, when those, you
get those things together.
I, you know, when you, when I look
at all the other things that so many
meetings, and planning, and discussions are all about
many times, even sometimes in our own circles,
and wonder what is it that, you know,
could you imagine the early church looking at
us?
And we, I think the reason that they
would look at us and think we're such
weird birds is because we spend so little
time looking at them, and realizing this is
what made them tick.
This is what happened.
This is why worlds were transformed, why societies
were transformed, why the face of the planet
is transformed.
And when we realize the potential of our
life for our city, for our world.
I have a grandfather, actually my 16th grandfather,
a long way back, direct.
He was born either 1499 or 1500, and
never quite sure which one it is.
He grew up a Catholic, became a Catholic
priest, graduated from Cambridge in Greek and Hebrew.
And as a Catholic priest though, in the
early 1500s, when he began to hear about
what was going on down in this place
called Wittenberg, he was so moved by it,
he went down to see what it was.
My grandfather's name was John Rogers, not known
to many today, but at any rate, he
went down there to this place called Wittenberg,
and there he met and was converted to
Christ by a fellow named William Tyndale, a
name we do know.
And there is Tyndale, and another fellow, Coverdale,
discipled him.
His life was transformed personally, turned upside down.
He believed something powerfully, loved someone passionately.
A greater reason for existence now began to
infuse his being.
He ended up, but Tyndale actually never finished
the Tyndale Bible.
He was martyred before it was done, but
John Rogers and Coverdale actually finished it.
But then Rogers, because he was a Greek
and Hebrew scholar, he ended up writing his
own English translation of the Bible while he
was doing this, known as the Thomas Matthews.
I've been trying to find, I've got pages
of it, but I want to get the
whole thing.
Cheapest one I've been able to find is
7,000, so actually maybe from the $30
,000 check from the airplane ride, I may
get one.
But anyway, but it's something that someday I
want to get one.
But at any rate, he was so powerfully
moved by what happened.
He couldn't get it printed in England, so
he had it printed in Switzerland.
Put it in Switzerland, he then brought it
back with him to England, where he began
to preach in Catholic England these things.
And there is he began to preach essentially
the fundamentals of the Reformation, that is, salvation
by faith and not by works.
And then began to preach that Jesus Christ
is the only mediator between God and man.
It isn't the Pope, it isn't the priesthood
that does any of this.
Began to preach that salvation is by the
blood of Christ, transubstantiation.
Well, there is no such thing.
By taking simply the aspects of communion and
attending church, you will not live.
And there he brought these things back to
England.
The father of the English Reformation, that what
Luther did in England, Rogers did.
I mean, what Luther did in Europe, Rogers
did in England.
One man when he came back.
And there he ended up, because he wouldn't
stop preaching this, this heresy, he was brought
in before Queen Mary I, now historically known
as Bloody Mary.
But there is he was brought in before
her, but because he knew the languages so
well, Greek and Hebrew, and was able to
give an answer, the bishops couldn't argue against
him and they let him go, but told
him not longer to preach these things until
they had been determined better.
He wouldn't stop.
He continued to do it, so they brought
him in.
He was in prison for one year.
At which time he had a long court
case, of which I've got a volume of
some almost 400 pages there of his documents,
where he came back to a cell day
by day and he wrote down the records
of what actually happened in this court case,
on how he presented his biblical arguments for
salvation by faith.
And here just one man going through all
of this, one man coming back to country,
beginning to believe something.
And any of us today that are oftentimes
of British heritage in one way or another,
to realize this man back finally in the
year 1554, it had gone on so long
and they couldn't stop him.
And there as they kept him in prison
for a year, they finally came to a
place of realizing this thing called the Reformation,
we can't contain it, we've got to stop
it.
And so Queen Mary I, he was brought
before her and given opportunity to recant, and
if you recant, you can live.
But if you will not, you will be
burned at the stake.
We, they've got to stop this thing, and
Roger's famous statement as he turned to her
and he says, that which I have said
with my lips, I will seal with my
blood.
And the next day on February 4th, 1555,
that's precisely what happened.
Is there they took him out of the
prison early in the morning because there was
such a huge following of this thing starting
to happen in London.
Thousands of people were coming to Christ, the
Reformation was beginning to sweep, so they took
him out early in the morning according to
Fox's Book of Martyrs.
And as he was being led to Smithfield,
he became the first of some 300 martyrs
under Bloody Mary.
But as he was brought out and taken
there, they brought him out early in the
morning, ordered the the lamps of the street
to be dimmed so that people would know
they didn't want any rebellion happening.
But the word got out.
But instead of a rebellion, the streets were
lined with people that as Fox's Book of
Martyrs describes it, as an event instead of
going to a funeral that's as if they
were going to a wedding with the worship.
And here as he was led there, and
with his wife and his ten small children
there at her side, whom he hadn't been
able to see or talk to and never
did get to before he died, but led
to the stake, giving one last opportunity there
to recant to the sheriff.
And saying that he wouldn't do it, the
says, I will not pray for you.
Which to a Catholic, not to have somebody
praying you out of purgatory, that's a bummer.
But you know, he looked at him and
he says, but I will pray for you.
And there as they have it described of
his death there of his hands lifted up
to heaven until he lost consciousness and died,
praising God.
He will give his life.
And to me, I think what the world
is still waiting to look for is people
that burn for the kingdom of heaven.
That they can see people who when they
stand in a pulpit, you sense their heart
and their life lifted up towards heaven.
Lifted up long that they would have the
honor of living, of burning, of loving, with
all of their passions for the kingdom of
heaven.
And a person like that will know anointing.
They will know a reason for which they
exist.
And when we realize this is the stuff
that not, you know, when you look at
the world and what people are willing to
do for the world, how much more ought
to be for the kingdom of heaven?
My heritage there, both my mother and father's
side, if you ever know anything about the
Scottish Covenanters and heard anything of them, there
are a whole group of people, descendants of
Rogers, who because of the fact that after
what happened, of course, after Rogers brought the
Reformation to England, then initially the throne hated,
you know, and fought the Reformation.
But then it got clever.
Can't beat him, join him.
One of the things that the British throne
always hated was the fact that 16 times
the amount of money every year left Britain
that the throne got, Rome got 16 times
more from the Catholic Church.
And they're looking at all this money, you
know, going out every year and the British
throne, how can we get it?
The Reformation offered them a way.
They said, look, not because they had a
one thought whatsoever spiritually or any hunger for
God whatsoever.
They were just merely looking there and how
can we get the church and the state
together so we can have it all?
And they found a way to hijack the
Reformation.
They found a way to look, say, hey,
we'll take it.
We'll create the Church of England.
They put in all the political, you know,
appointees over the thing where all the money
came into it and now was funneled back
to the throne of which the king still
to this day is known as the defender
of the faith, the head of the church.
But all these descendants of Rogers into the
body of Christ in the Reformation, they said,
hey, we just came out from under one
man ruling us.
We'll never have another.
And they call themselves covenanters because of the
fact that they determined we have a covenant
with Jesus Christ in the Word of God
only and no man.
And therefore the Church of England rejected them,
rebelled them.
They outlawed field meetings and church and home
meetings because they wouldn't go to the Church
of England under this political system set up.
And there as they went on, many of
them, the capital crime is what it was.
And you read through like Fair Sunshine and
some of these historical books of which England
tried to blot out, of which it's all
there, of the hundreds of thousands of these
covenanters who did to the the last drop
of blood within them, their life and their
love for Christ and in wanting to preserve
the Reformation within their heart and their love
for Christ.
And then the whole reason we as a
country exist was in 1620.
Another couple, honestly, of my relatives, Rogers, and
it came over in 1620 on the Mayflower.
A lot of people don't realize that was
a church, 100%.
All of the people on that Mayflower were
covenanters.
There was a congregation of people that came
over seeking religious freedom from Britain, from the
Church of England.
And then most of the settlers in our
country, they came, they left everything they had
from either the persecution from the Catholic Church
in Europe, many of them, or the persecution
from the Protestant Church in England.
And they came over and were willing to
give their lives and to give up everything
they had for their children, their future, there
to want to see the gospel, there be
able to take hold in a new country,
to bring the Word of God and have
the freedom without any fear and oppression to
worship and to study and to grow in
Christ.
And here, I mean, I've got two of
my direct relatives fought at Bunker Hill, fought
at Ticonderoga, they were at Boston Tea Party.
And there they were willing to put their
life on the line there just simply for
the cause of Christ.
They were highly committed Christians.
They didn't care.
And the reason that we're here today, that
whatever there is left of this country is
we are, we stand on their blood today.
We stand on millions that gave their blood
for the freedom and Christ and for the
Word of God and the passions.
And we are still heirs of that.
But the responsibility that we have to stand
up, do we truly believe it ourself?
Is it something there again where there's another
generation that has caught fire and they can
look at their homes and their cities and
they believe the power of the Word of
God and that they can stand before a
congregation and communicate these truths with all of
the heart, with all of the mind.
And that's what the world needs.
And then when there's somebody that simply has
got some new little ditty to preach, hey
I was at a conference and guess what
I heard?
Let's try this on for size and to
see if it just might shake our city.
And you know, do this or do that.
How weird.
I think the book of Acts, the early
church would look and say, wait, what, what,
what conference?
What are you, what are you short-circuiting
of the kingdom of heaven?
That until the, that when we are talking
about eternal life, that when we look there
and we realize God, take my life, I've
got the highest and most glorious message ever
known.
The very reason that the human brain was,
was created to hold these truths.
And I have them.
The greatest reason for which the heart and
the passions of man were ever even spoken
into existence was that he could have a
passionate love for God above all else, the
first and the greatest commandment.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all of your heart and all of your
mind and all of your soul and all
of your strength.
And when there is something that they, that
the mind and the heart are so connected
and empowered and driven, and there is now
engaged a full expectancy, who knows what'll happen?
I know Rogers never dreamed many of us
today would be sitting here because one man
came back from Europe to England and he
says, this must be taken there.
And he brought it.
I'll write it and I'll transcribe it.
No inkling there of his descendants, no inkling
of the covenanters, no inkling of the, of
the, the pilgrims, no inkling of all of
these other things yet to be born out
of the English tongue.
But when people look and they realize, God,
this is why I'm alive too.
I may have, I don't care what inkling
I have of why I'm going back to
the city I'm going back to.
Other than God, send me there, alive and
on fire and with passions lit.
Truths convicted, you know, convicted deeply within me
that abide within my heart.
In a full expectation, God turn my life
and my city and my congregation upside down
for the kingdom of heaven.
Dear Father, we thank you for your love.
Thank you, dear Lord, for the early church
and for the Word of God.
And Lord, what these men and women discovered
and how for the joy that was set
before them they endured the cross as you,
Jesus.
The cross you gave to them.
They despised the shame as you despised yours.
And they have now sat down at the
right hand of the throne of God seated
in Christ with you.
And Lord, may we be ones that even
dream of such a glory of resting and
being seated in Christ.
May we pay no lesser price.
May there be no lesser convictions.
May there be no lesser passions.
May there be no lesser expectancy within us.
Then God take our lives and transform our
lives.
Set us ablaze for the things of the
kingdom of heaven.
That Jesus, who you are, is deep and
real.
Lord, I pray for those that may be
here whose minds have been wandering, who were
once rooted in things, once driven by the
passions and in powerfully.
But somehow or another it's just as you
looked at the church at Ephesus when here
they were like this.
And you said it's somewhat against you, but
you gave them a wonderful answer.
You said remember.
Remember when we met.
Remember how it began.
Remember when the passions were alive.
Remember when the love was deep.
Remember from which thou had fallen and come
home.
Jesus, I pray that even through these few
days here, that it would be a wonderful
time of reflecting in the brain and remembering
in the heart and reigniting the passions.
And Lord, that the things which we known,
the places our mind has been, we may
never grow weary of them.
We may never let them go to go
search for another truth.
We have the greatest of all.
And may our hearts never depart from the
passion of being in love with Jesus Christ
who gave himself for us.
And Lord, may you take over our lives
in a great and rich and wonderful way.
And for your glory.
And may there be cities turned upside down,
beyond our dreams, that we could ever wonder
how such a thing could happen.
But Lord, may we realize we have a
reason to exist far beyond ourselves.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.