Transcript

Good morning. My name is Jonathan. I'm one of the pastors here. I'm really happy and honored to be here today to fill in for Pastor Gary. He's taking some time off and we're still working on the story and we got another chapter to talk about today.

Now, if you've been with us since the beginning of the story, hopefully you're starting to get this. If you haven't been, let me catch you up real quick on the story. Okay. God created the world. He called it very good.

He made us in his own image and he partnered with us and shared his authority and his rule with us and gave us a commission. Be fruitful and multiply and take care of this creation that he's placed us in. From the very, very beginning, we took that freedom, that autonomy, and we made it, we turned it around so that it would be serving us instead of serving God. And we grasped what should not have been ours. And the fall happened.

And ever since that little move right there, that happened at the very beginning, God has been on a rescue mission. He's been on a redemption mission to take what has fallen and to turn it back into what he originally created, which is very, very, very good. And we've seen the fall. We saw Noah and. But we also saw a promise and a covenant made with Noah.

And we saw Abraham and we saw the covenant that God made with Abraham. We saw Moses and the covenant God made with Moses. We saw David and the covenant God made with David. And it turns out this God is a promise making and promise keeping God. That's one of the things we learn about him throughout all of this story.

But we still see humanity taking what is not theirs and turning it into their for their purposes. And that always ends up bad. When we take what God has given for our good and say, no, I'm going to have it serve me instead of serve him, it turns into not good outcomes. And so we saw that at the end of the Old Testament, they had been carried into captivity, they had returned back to Jerusalem, back to their homeland. But still something was off.

Something was not quite right. And then we saw the week before Easter. We saw the Christ. We saw that the hero of the story has written himself into it to come and do what we could not do on our own, to give us his righteousness, to save us and to give us his life. We celebrated that last week through the resurrection, the Easter story.

It's amazing. That's where we are in the story. Okay, now, have you ever been in limbo like I didn't ask you if you played limbo. I'm saying, have you been in limbo?

Thinking about this like my own personal life. I remember back when I graduated high school, you graduate high school, something big has happened. Something has fundamentally changed in your life. And for me, I went to college that next August, and that summer is living in limbo. You know what I mean?

Something big has happened. But you're like, I'm not ready to move on yet. I'm just kind of here. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing right now. I'm not a high schooler anymore.

I'm not in college. I don't know. Or maybe graduating college, but waiting for that first job. Something big has happened. You've graduated, you've accomplished something.

But what's next? And increasingly, can I get a witness to young people. This is getting longer and longer, that limbo period, right? It's hard to find a job, find a career after college. You're just in limbo.

You're just waiting. You're like, something big is coming. I know it, but it's not here yet. Maybe those are kind of like good examples. Those are examples of moving forward in life.

But there's also maybe some times when things hit, something big happens and it's not always a good thing. Like the inverse of that. You lose that job, and all of a sudden you find yourself at home with nothing to do, and you're going, what am I supposed to do now? And there's this uncertain thing coming, but you're in limbo. Or maybe you got a diagnosis from the doctor, but you don't know the treatment plan yet.

You're like, something bad is there, but I don't know what is coming next that's in limbo, right? Or maybe you're in the treatment plan and you're like, at some point this is going to get better, right? And you're just sitting there waiting for something, and you're not exactly sure what's coming, but you're just waiting. I think we can all say we've been in limbo at some point in our lives, but in a very real way, we're sort of in limbo now, all of us together. Have you ever wondered why?

So you come to Jesus, you give him your faith and your trust. He saves you, he gives you his righteousness, right? And he gives you life. Why doesn't he just, like, zap us away right then, Right? Like, that would be in some ways probably preferable, right?

Okay, I'm Saved. Cool. Let's go. Why am I still here? What is the.

What is the purpose of the time period between when we are saved and then when we die? Like, are we just. Are we just, like, holding on, like, white knuckling through life? Like, okay, I'm just trying not to sin. That's what I'm.

That's what I'm trying to do. Just try not to sin. Come on, come on, I'm waiting. Or is there something more than just passing the time that we're supposed to be doing in this period between when we've trusted Jesus and He's given us life, but we have not yet died and received something that's coming in the future? What is this limbo period?

Well, it turns out that's the part of the story we're going to enter into day, which is the disciples, they were in limbo. Jesus was here on earth. He was ministering. They were with him. Three years of Jesus ministry.

Then this awful thing happens. They're on this roller coaster. This awful thing happens. Crucifixion. Oh, maybe this is all.

Who knows? Maybe this is all for nothing. Oh, my goodness. Then three days later, he raises from the grave, and this is. Wow.

And then for 40 days, he's with them. He's ministering to them. They're out. He's telling them all this, you know, this information that they connecting the dots with the whole story. And, oh, this is amazing.

And then he leaves after 40 days. Okay, so they're saying, now what? That's where we are in the story. So as we learn what the disciples were told when they asked the question, now what we can learn what maybe it means for us as we're in this time period of limbo, waiting for something to happen, Something big has happened. Something's still coming.

What do we have? What's there for us in this period? In the book of Acts, Luke records this time period. And we're going to see here that God established His church right here. This is the now what he established his church as to be part of his mission to rescue his whole creation.

And we are here today in his church. We can receive that same invitation to be part of his mission to rescue his creation, that he's extended that same invitation to us. So how do we do this? How do we become the church that God has established? We're going to look in this text.

We're going to see really three defining marks of what it means to be the church that God established. Let's pick up in Acts Chapter two. We're going to read a few verses, and then we're going to skip down to the end of this chapter. So let's read Acts 2. 1.

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind. And it filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

And at this sound, the multitude came together, and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we hear each one of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia. I'm completely assuming I'm saying these words right.

I have no idea if I am or not. I'm just going to be confident about it and be like, yes, that's how those are pronounced. Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene. And visitors from Rome, both Jews and Proselytes, Cretans and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

Let's skip down to the end of this chapter. So we're going to verse 46 and 47. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.

This is God's word. Amen. So let's look at how we can become the church that God has established. We're going to look at these three defining marks of what it means to be his church and how we can receive that invitation. The first is receive His Holy Spirit.

Receive His Holy Spirit. So let's catch up. Kind of. Let's put ourselves in the story. Where.

Where are we on the story? Right here. Well, we know that the place that they're in this story right here is somewhere in Jerusalem. The previous chapter, they were in an upper room. It was sort of like a private.

I won't say secret, but kind of out of the way room. It's possible we're in the same place here. There May be some indication that it was a different place, because if you remember what we just read, a whole bunch of people heard this, and it attracted a huge crowd. So, well, we know they were in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is the place, of course, where the temple was. And a lot of the story that we've been learning so far has been focused on on Jerusalem being.

Being pretty important. And so here they are. Now, what's the occasion? We saw it in verse one of chapter two, when the day of Pentecost arrived. So Pentecost is just a Greek word that means.

Means 50 50th. This is actually referring back to a Jewish festival, the second of three big feasts that they did each year, pilgrimage feasts. And again, I'm just going to pretend like I know how to say this word. Shavuot. That was the Hebrew festival, that the Greek word Pentecost.

Pentecost is easier to say. I think that's why we stick with that. But it just means 50 days after the Passover, that's when that Hebrew festival, Israelite festival, was being celebrated. And it was a big feast, it was a big party. And this is when the Israelites would bring the first fruits of their harvest to God in thanksgiving and saying, God, you've allowed us to do this.

It's your creation, it's your rain, it's your dirt, it's your seed we're giving back, and we're saying thank you for the first fruits. That's what this festival was. This is why a whole bunch of people from all these different places were in Jerusalem, because it was a pilgrimage feast. They were here to celebrate. Who's here?

Well, it's the 12 disciples, or apostles, minus Judas plus Matthias. Read about that in chapter one. So we got 12 disciples now. And it says, Mary, the mother of Jesus was there. That's pretty cool.

And some other women that were been traveling around with Jesus were there and about 100 other people. And so we've got, I mean, I don't know, roughly, probably about the same number of people sitting here in this room right now, all together in one place, waiting in limbo. Jesus had told them to wait, and they were waiting for something big to happen. And something big, big happened indeed. It says that a sound, the sound like a mighty rushing wind from heaven comes.

And it filled the entire house. They were. And then divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. Now, one of the things that you'll hear Pastor Gary say a lot, and it's 100% true. That if you're interpreting the Bible, especially the Old Testament, you read stuff in the Old Testament and you go, huh?

And what in the world Interpret the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament. We look back to the Old Testament through the New Testament, and the New Testament helps us interpret what we're seeing in the Old Testament. The opposite is also true. We must look at the New Testament through the lens of the Old Testament because there's so many patterns and pieces of the story. We spent eight weeks of the story, eight of the 12 in the old Testament.

Why? Because there's a lot that's happening in the New Testament that, that you gotta understand the initial chapters in order to understand what's really happening down here in the New Testament. So you gotta be able to look at it both ways. And so let's put our brains on our story brains. So we're part of the story.

We're learning about the metanarrative. Let's see, when we see fire and a mighty rushing wind, are there connections with stories from earlier in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, that we should go, hmm, things that make you go, hmm, right? What are those things? Well, let's. Let's go back to the covenant with Abraham.

If you were here during that week, Pastor Gary talked about this, that God made a covenant with Abraham. He split these animals in two, and there was the blood path. And he asked Abraham to walk the blood path. And apparently he was too chicken to do it. And so God walked the blood path on both parties of the covenant.

Right. In Abraham's vision of God's presence walking that blood path, he appeared as a smoking fire pot and in a fire. That's how God's presence appeared there. Okay, let's file that one away. When God gave the law at Sinai, God gave the law to Moses at Sinai.

There's this. We covered this in the story. There's this amazing scene where there is thunder and lightning and cloud and smoke and earthquake and fire up on Mount Sinai. And that represents. We knew that represented the spirit, the presence, the glory of God.

People knew that. Now, there is a big connection here between the giving of the law on Mount Sinai and all of that happening and this mighty rushing wind and the fire. Another big piece that we know that. Okay, there's something here is because one of the things that the Jewish people were celebrating at Pentecost was the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. And so there's a connection here.

There's a connection here, but there's also some more. How Did God lead the Israelites through the wilderness, a pillar of cloud and fire? So given this picture, that this is the presence, this is the glory of God, when he told them to build the tabernacle, his tent, his moving tent in the wilderness where they would worship him, they dedicated it. And the glory and the presence of the Lord fell on the tabernacle. How did they know it fell?

Said that a fire came down and smoke came and filled the tabernacle. That's the glory and the presence of God. Then the temple is built. We learned about that. Solomon's temple.

They dedicated the temple. On the day of the dedication, God's glory and presence came into the temple as fire and smoke. This is. So we should be. If we've got our story brains on, we should be going.

Fire. Mighty rushing wind. There's. There's something here. This is.

This is the presence of God. Now, another thing you heard Pastor Gary talk about for a few weeks as we finished up the Old Testament was this vision that Ezekiel had that the glory and presence of the Lord would leave the temple.

It left through the east gate. It then sat on the Mount of Olives. And the way the Jews thought about that is that was the glory and presence of the Lord, basically waiting to see if they were going to repent.

Then later on, about 30 chapters later, in Ezekiel, Ezekiel sees another part of this vision that the glory of the Lord comes back the same way it left comes back into the temple. I think what we're seeing here is that the glory of the Lord, his presence has descended, but this time not on his building, but on his people.

That he has established a new place, a new address for his glory and his presence. And it's each one of us. Notice it said there's a little detail right there. Right. It was like tongues of fire that were divided, resting on each individual one of them, the glory and the presence of the Lord.

When you surrender to Jesus and He comes and gives you new life, his glory and his presence is in you fully, but there's enough for everyone. You know, it's this unity and diversity kind of thing. Like, he is everywhere in each individual person. And he's like, but the amount of spirit that I get doesn't diminish how much spirit you get to get. Right?

He's in all of us. So we are now the temple. That's what we're seeing here in Acts, chapter two, Jesus told him that this was happening. Look at Luke 24:49. This is during the period after he was resurrected.

But before he ascended, he said, behold, I'm sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city. And until you are clothed with power, on high. So that's why they were staying there. They were in limbo in Acts 18.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. This is what Jesus was telling them was going to happen. You stay in Jerusalem, and power is going to come and clothe you from on high. And then you're going to.

You're going to be my witnesses, starting where you are in Jerusalem and then moving out from there. So for generations, God's presence lived in the temple, but now he's moved out, not because he's gone, but because he's chosen a new dwelling place. And that dwelling place is you. It's me. It's all of us together.

So I want to do this little experiment that maybe will help us kind of get in tune with what's going on here. Everyone take a deep breath together.

Now, for most of you all, that's the first time you thought about breathing the whole time we've been here, right? Generally, we don't think about our breathing like something's wrong. If we're thinking about our breathing, right, you're either underwater and you're like, if I breathe right now, I'm going to die, or if I've got some sort of medical issue and I'm having trouble breathing and you're actually paying attention to your breathing, generally, that's not a good thing, right? But breath. Breath is.

Boy, that's life, isn't it? Isn't our breath our life? In Genesis, chapter two, it says God breathed into the nostrils of this man that he created out of the dust, and then he became a living soul. So, like, our breath is actually a gift of God. It's what gives us life, right?

And it's what sustains us. Take away the breath, there's no life. So breath is life, and it's given by God, and it sustains us. And then, if you kind of think about it, we're all in a shared space here, and we all breathed in and we breathed out, and we're breathing in, and we're kind of like in a shared breath environment right now, aren't we? I know that probably grossed some of y' all out, but it's okay.

It's okay. But think about it. The air that you breathed in, is that your Air, like, does it belong to you? No, it's actually just given to you. And it's all part of a collective error that God has given to all of us.

And it's kind of like that with the Holy Spirit. When you receive the Holy Spirit, he's made you spiritually alive. He breathed into your nostrils and said, be alive spiritually when you receive the Holy Spirit. And him giving you the fullness of His Holy Spirit didn't detract from him being able to give His Holy Spirit to other people. And we're all shared partakers of the same one Spirit.

This is the Holy Spirit that's been given. This is one of the defining marks of what it means to be his church is that we are people who have been filled by the same Holy Spirit. That's who we are. We might have come from all sorts of different places, all kinds of different backgrounds, just like these people in this story came from everywhere. But we are shared partakers of the same Holy Spirit.

That's what his church is. And it's that Spirit that gives us spiritual life and it sustains us. I've found it kind of helpful for me sometimes in the morning is to connect my breath with this idea that God's Spirit is what's sustaining my spiritual life. And just take a deep breath. First thing when I wake up, sit down.

I'll say, God, fill me with your Holy Spirit. As I'm breathing in to just kind of like, okay, maybe I shouldn't be paying attention to my physical breath all day, but I should be paying attention to my spiritual breath all day. You know, the Holy Spirit. This is what it means to grow really as a believer is to more and more be in tune with His Spirit that's animating you and giving you energy and allowing you to participate in what he's got for you that day. And his kingdom that's coming to earth is to be in touch more and more with that and to be, you know, really transformed into a person who.

Who is in union with God more and more because His Holy Spirit is inside of you and it's animating you. He's dwelling in you because you are the temple. You're the place where he's chosen to dwell. That's the first. That's the first marker of what it means to be his church.

We receive His Holy Spirit. Let's move on in the story. The second. Second way we receive this invitation is to focus on his mission. Focus on his mission.

Okay, we got to keep going, man. There's so much meat here. I really hope. I really hope you guys read this whole chapter of Acts, chapter two. Maybe start with one.

It'd be okay if you got two chapters. Really get in there, man, and study this. There's a lot of meat on this bone here. We just can't cover it all today. But I want to pick one thread here.

So we see the story is moving from this. People that have been established, the Holy Spirit was given God came to a new dwelling place, his people. And then we see that they're speaking something. They're speaking in their language, but yet it's being heard by everyone who is present. And it was such a commotion.

All these people came and they're like, what's going on? I'm hearing my language, but they're not speaking my language. This is strange. What's happening now? Bible study method here.

When you're reading through scripture, one of the things, Mike Laramie here, who's on our teaching team and our small groups leader, he'll talk about this. Sometimes talk about speed bumps. Like when you're driving around, reading the Bible, driving along, and you go boom. Like, what was that? Right?

Learn to pay attention to those speed bumps as you're reading because they're the things that takes this from like an encyclopedia and turns it into a story, a rich story. And so the speed bump for me here as I'm reading this, look at that list of nations in verses 9, 10, and 11. They add nothing to the story, really. Like, they don't move the narrative forward. They could have just stopped Luke as he's recording this.

He could have stopped verse 8. How is it that we hear each of us in our own native language, skip down to the end of verse 11. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God that moves the story. What is with this list of 16 nations and regions and ethnicities and all in there together? What is the point of this?

And you can read it and go, that's strange. And then move on. Or you can let it be a speed bump and go, let me go back there. What's going on here? So if the first part of our story, the wind coming and the fire coming, is supposed to make us think about Sinai and the giving of the law and God's presence and his glory coming down.

I think this particular piece right here is supposed to give us. The Bible Project calls these hyperlinks. And I love hyperlinks because I've been a web developer most of my adult life. So, like, this One resonates with me. Hyperlinks where we're reading this, but it's supposed to make you go, wait a minute.

There's a story back in the Old Testament that this is hyperlinking to. And what is that? Well, let's look at Genesis, chapter 12, 2, 3. We covered this early on in our sermon series. This is God's promise to Abraham.

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Pop up this map here. This is from a website called visualunit.

Me. Pretty cool site. Never found it before till we were looking for this map. A lot of cool stuff there, so feel free to check that out. But he's attempted to basically plot all of these.

The names of these places that I could barely pronounce on a map, right? And say, where were all these people? There's a lot of meat on this bone, y', all, so go study it this week, I'm telling you. But I'll just, like, hit a couple highlights. Like, does it mean anything?

Is there significance to the fact that he says that there were people from Egypt here? Oh, wait, you mean that Egypt? You mean like enemy number one of God's people in the Old Testament? They're here. They're receiving the Holy Spirit.

They're part of God's family now. What, Mesopotamia? What civilization was from Mesopotamia? How about Babylon? Enemy number 1A of God's people in the Old Testament?

What they're in now? They're here. What's going on? Okay, look up Elam. And what was the capital?

Elam. There's this place called Susa. And then just file that away because we're going to be learning about Esther in a couple weeks. Just file that one away, and then you'll get it later. Okay, so, Elam, Rome.

All the way up there. You mean enemy number 1A of the church, Rome. What's going on? What's going on here? What are we seeing here?

I think we're seeing the beginnings of this fulfillment that God is blessing all nations. He's bringing them all together to this place to. To establish his church. And then he's given them a mission to now go and take this gospel, this good news of Jesus that we learned about last week, right? The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

They're all coming to this one place, and then they're getting ready to be scattered again. There's some cool things in here. Okay. There's another deep well here that we could be talking about, like, theologically that we're just not going to talk about right now. There's.

What do we see here in verse 4? They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. If we just interpret what that means through this story, it's pretty clear what's happening right here. They're speaking their native language, but others are hearing the language that they're from. So that's kind of weird, you know.

And it says, all these who are speaking, aren't they Galileans? What's the significance there? Well, did you know 11 of the 12 disciples are from Galilee? Galilee was known as, like. So it's up in the north.

And, you know, here in our. We have this, you know, geography that we're kind of. South is a certain thing, and north is a certain thing. You know what I'm saying? You got southerners and you got northerners, and we kind of know what that means.

You got to reverse that in Israel, kind of like in England. You got to reverse it. The southerners were the big city folk. That's where Jerusalem was. And northerners were the rural country folk.

So calling someone a Galilean back then was actually kind of like an insult. Okay. The closest thing I could say, what does this mean for us? Is like, the word redneck, you know what I mean? You know, so Galileans were like, you Galilean.

You know, And I'm sure the Galileans were like, yeah, I'm a Galilean. They, like, wrote a country song about it, like, yes, I'm a Galilean, you know, but people from the south were like, you're a Galilean. And they're like, yes, I'm a Galilean. It's that kind of dynamic that's going on. These are uncultured, you know, rough people, you know, from the north.

And they're saying, oh, by the way, any guesses on the one disciple that wasn't from Galilee? Yeah, it was Judas. Yep. So these people are like. They're just common people, you know, they're speaking redneck and they're like, how in the world.

Like, if you move to. Somebody in the lobby told me this in between services, like, I've been there. You move to this part of the country from the north, and you're like, I don't understand a word they say. And he Was like, this is what I experience every time I go to Bojangles. Like, I. I don't know what I'm about to eat, actually, because I have no idea what they're saying.

So these rednecks, they're talking, and I'm understanding them in my language. All of these languages here, this is what's happening. It's amazing. Okay, there's a hyperlink to Abraham's covenant. There's another hyperlink we should be thinking about here.

It's a story we haven't covered in the Old Testament in this series, but it's a pretty famous one. It's the Tower of Babel. What happened in the Tower of Babel? People came together into one place, and they said, we need to get to heaven. And so they, through their own devices and for their own glory, were building this thing to try and reach the heavens.

And God says, no, we're not having that. And so he took. They were speaking one language and he confused them and then created many languages and then scattered them. So what we're meant to be seeing here is a reversal of the Tower of Babel, because now instead of humans trying to make their way to heaven, God's made his way from heaven to Earth, right? He's taken all these people from different languages, different places, and brought them together.

Little twist here. He didn't say, okay, now y' all are speaking the same language now. He just made people understand it in their own language, which I think says something about this God. He's cool with cultural diversity, and he's cool with languages and different people being different. He's doing something special, though, that he's given us this common identity.

Even through that, I think there's something there. And what was the purpose of this day of Pentecost? Was it for humans mission? No, it was for God's mission. He said, I'm going to bring these people together, and instead of them being on their own mission, I'm going to give them my mission.

And little aside here what they're saying here, it says that they were speaking, the spirits gave them utterance. Like, what is an utterance? Like, that's not a word we use a lot. And when I first kind of thought about it, just in my head, I thought, oh, this is like mumbling. But that's not what the word utterance means.

It actually means, like a speech. Like what I'm doing right now. It's a prepared speech. It's discourse. So these redneck Galileans were giving, like, dignified speeches and that's one of the reasons they were like, what in the world's going on?

And this is what is happening. And this is my prayer. Anytime I get up here, anybody else gets up here behind this podium and start speaking, whatever redneck I'm speaking, I'm saying, God, through your holy spirit, please translate whatever the words are that I'm saying out of my mouth so that every person can receive it in their own hearts. And the miracle is that he does it. I'm witness to it for myself.

Y' all are. I know. Witnesses to it. He does it. He finds some way to translate whatever someone's saying.

When you look in the word or yourself when you're reading the word, he finds some way to translate it to your own heart. This is the miracle. That's what's happening here. And so let's put ourselves back in story mode. Let's think about, like, being at a play.

You're at a play, you're in the audience, the room's dark. You're seeing what's going on on stage, and you're like, this is the greatest play ever. Like, you were just enraptured by this play. This story that God is writing is the most amazing story. It's the story that undergirds every story that has ever been created.

Every movie that's been created, every novel is. Is all based on this story. And so we're watching this story unfold, and we're like, this is amazing, because you're just drawn into it. But the thing is, you're still watching the play. There's these actors on stage doing their thing, and you've just kind of left behind your old life for just a little bit.

You've just checked out, and you're just watching what's going on on stage. Have you ever heard of the fourth wall? You know what the fourth wall is in plays? So my theater nerds.

So a stage has three walls, right? These here and then one in the back. That's three walls. And then the fourth wall is this invisible wall that's between what's going on on stage and the audience and people on stage. You're supposed to not pay any attention to what's actually happening in the audience.

Like, these worlds are separate worlds, right? The world you came in on. But you came to put all that away so you could just. This is fantasy land over here. You're just partaking in that.

Here's what's happening in this part of the story. We learned when Jesus came, that this beautiful analogy that the author wrote himself into the story. So the hero is the author, and he's on stage. And you're like, this is the greatest play ever. This is amazing.

And all of a sudden, the hero turns and he looks at someone in the audience. He breaks the fourth wall. He says, come here. Show me on stage. You're like me.

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not an actor, Right? This is what he's doing. He's breaking the fourth wall. This is not a play for us to just watch and to be spectators.

This is a play. This is a story that God has invited us to participate in on stage with him. Turns out, I guess the God that we're learning about in this Bible is a mastered improv. That's what seems to be happening here, because he's got a story that he's written. He's got a story that began and is moving towards a fulfillment.

Then he invites all these people onto the stage, and he is a master at taking us amateurs and whatever goofy things we do when we get up on stage and still weaving our collective stories together towards his fulfillment. That's what God's doing with all of us. So you are not here to be a spectator. You're here to be a participant. This is what's happening in the Book of Acts.

He's saying, I have a mission. I started this mission early on. You read about it in Genesis, chapter one. I gave this covenant to Abraham. I want to rescue my creation, and I've established a church that's going to be part of it.

The church isn't going to watch. The church is going to be part of it, of making that mission come true. And that's who you are. So we are fundamentally a people that are filled and influenced by the one Holy Spirit and that we're joining his mission. So this is the problem, right?

Sometimes we look and say, okay, well, I got my sins forgiven, so that's cool. That was nice. I guess I just want a little bit of Jesus to kind of, you know, I'm going to sprinkle a little Jesus over my life and get a little bit of, you know, flavor and taste, and it'll be a little bit better than it would have been if I hadn't had Jesus in my life. Like, you're the main character of the story, and you just want Jesus to come and kind of spice up your story a little bit. That's not what's going on here.

You're not the main character. We're not the Main character. Jesus is the main character. But we get to participate in his story on his mission. This is better anyway.

This is way better. Anytime we try and start looking inward, inward, inward, inward and going, okay, it's all about me, all about me, all about me. That never ends well. But when we release ourselves, give up ourselves as a kind of death to say, God, not my will, but yours be done. Turns out that's the most fun you'll ever have because you're joining his story.

Okay, let's move on. The third way that we receive his invitation to become the church that he's established is to participate in his community.

So we skip down, like I said. Please read all of chapter two. There's a great speech. There's a great utterance given by Peter here that is pretty cool. And you see lots and lots of things happening.

But we skip down and kind of see the result of what happened here. It says, day by day, attending the temple together, breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God, having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved. Just a few verses later, we learned that 3,000 people got saved on, like, at that moment that Peter got up and spoke. And then they started in this rhythm.

They started in a rhythm of gathering and scattering, of gathering and scattering. And that rhythm of doing that together is what God then used to then begin to establish his church. Now, the reason we're here today is because this church got on a mission. This church that we're reading about from 2,000 years ago, they got on mission, they accepted, they received Christ's mission, and they received his power through the Holy Spirit to do what he called them to do. That's why we're here 2000 years later, halfway across the world, worshiping the same God, because they ended up getting scattered.

But all along the way, there's little pockets, little pockets of believers all coming together, being his church, working together. So here's the thing that we have to understand, and we see very clearly in the Book of Acts, is that God did not write this story as an individual story for each one of us. He wrote it as a collective for us to be part of together. Look at John 17, 20, 21. This is Jesus prayer before he was crucified.

I'm praying not only for these disciples, but also for all who will ever believe in Me through their message. That's us. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one, as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us, so that the world will believe you sent me. Turns out the unity of his church is a key to the credibility of Jesus own mission on this earth to a watching world.

Wow. Talk about being invited into the story. He's like, hinging a whole lot on our ability to be in unity with each other.

Wow. Hebrews chapter 10, 24, 25. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and to good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near. So here's a command, y'. All, get together.

Stir one another up. You may have heard, like, an analogy of, like, a coal. You know, you've got a bunch of coals together, they're on fire, and it's hot. Take one coal out, move it over here away from the pile. What happens to that coal?

The fire dies out. And so we sometimes think about that analogy. We pay a lot of attention to the problem with the coal over here, that it's losing heat. Right? Have you ever thought about.

The real problem, though, is that if all the coals are left from the pile, there's no pile to do its job anymore. I was thinking about this last night. I had some family over. I was cooking hamburgers on the grill using charcoal. I needed those charcoal briquettes to be together to do their job.

They needed to heat. So we had yummy burgers and everyone could enjoy if all of the coals were out doing their own thing. We have no yummy burgers. And this is bad, right? So the togetherness of the coals, there's a reason for that.

Because they got a job to do. And if the coals aren't together. So don't think about the coal analogy and just say, oh, poor me over here, I've lost my fire. Also think about the fact that, hey, I'm over here and the coal needs me. The pile of coals needs me to do its job.

It's not just about you. You're not the main character, right? The mission that God has called us to together, that's what's important. And so, yes, for your own good, don't be too far away from the pile of coals, but get back in the pile of coals because we've got work to do. God's called us to this together.

Hear this. God did not save you so that you could be a discerning consumer of religious goods and services. That is not his purpose for saving you. So you can just go, well, you know, I just like the best Christian music and I like the best books and I like the best preaching and I like the best. And you're just, you know, a discerning consumer.

That's not why he saved you. He saved you because he's got a mission. And for some strange reason, he decided to partner with us for that mission. And he needs us to get to work now. We're not working on our own strength.

We're not working on our own power. If the first point didn't help us remind that this is God's spirit, His power inside of us, animating us, but he has decided to use his church for his mission. He could have done it without us, but he decided not to. And turns out there's. We're in limbo a little bit with the disciples.

We're still in limbo now because if you think about it, there's things that we're seeing, all these hyperlinks back to the Old Testament. You're like, man, that starts to fulfill this, that starts to fulfill that, that starts to fulfill this. Yes, it absolutely does. But like reality here, there's still something big coming, isn't there? Yes, something big has happened.

The Holy Spirit has come. He's established this church. All of the promises in the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus. There's still something big coming. That's what we're going to learn about next week.

We're still in limbo a little bit, aren't we? What are we to do? Are we just to twiddle our thumbs waiting for the consummation that we're going to learn about next week? Or is there something for us to do? Is there a mission that God has called us to participate in?

The answer is yes. We are not to be sitting idly by. We're to be participating with God. His mission to rescue his whole creation. Turns out it's the best mission we could ever be a part of.

It's for our good. It's also for his glory. So this is what it means to be a part of his church, that we are a people and that our primary identity is that we are filled with the one Spirit of God. We are his children, marked by the seal of His Spirit. And then we're a group of people that decided, you know what?

It's his mission. I'm not the main character anymore. I'm going to join his mission. He's given us our mission statement. We're going to do it.

And then the third thing that we have to recognize, I know some of y' all would be like, I'm good. Let's just stop there. Is that he meant us to do it together. And that's why we have the church. That's why we have these gatherings.

That's why we have these gatherings here on Sunday mornings and in homes during the week, is because we cannot do it ourselves. We're meant to do it together. So would you receive this invitation, yield to his spirit, live for his mission, join his community. Because the story is still being written. It's not over yet.

The story's still being written. And by the grace of God, you're on stage and you get to be a part of it. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for what you have done for us. You not only have offered to save us, to give us your mercy, to not hold our sins against us, to do what we could not do for ourselves, which is to make us right with you.

You did this through your son, through his sacrifice on the cross, through his resurrection, you gave us new life. We are so grateful for that. But we are also grateful that you have given us a mission to join and that in your wisdom, you decided to create this church, this people that you would partner with and work through to bring your kingdom on earth just as it is in heaven. God, help us to join the work that you're doing. Help us to stop gazing inward and start looking at what you have called us to do.

For anyone here this morning who has not given your life to Jesus, I encourage you to stop and think about where the story you're writing is ending and join his story instead. It comes as surrender. It comes as a laying down of your old life. It comes as a death. But receive his promised life.

You can pray and say, God, I am so done with my own ways of trying to get to you. Trying to make my life mean something, trying to make my life better, just trying to survive. All that's ever led to is sin. It's only led to my rebellion against your ways. I'm ready to submit to you, to repent of my sins, to ask you to forgive me, to give me mercy and grace and new life.

God, I want to join you. I want to do whatever it is you've got for my life. I want to follow your will.

Pray this in your name. Amen.