Acts: Power, Spirit, & Bearing Witness

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

 I had a weird thing happen to me, um, when I was in fifth grade. Uh, I was a part of a, um, I don’t remember what it was called.

I think it was called SEEK. It stood for something. It was an acronym. But the gist was that I spent one weekend overnight in 5th grade at my elementary school. And the purpose was they wanted to recreate as best they could. Uh, what it was like for fifth grade students to, uh, and as I’m saying this, I’m realizing it sounds crazy, to, to go to space.

And so what, uh, they did was they gave us, um, it was like a top secret invitation. So I got like a manila envelope as a fifth grader that said, Hey, you are, you are, uh, Selected to be one of our Kilpatrick Elementary astronauts and so, uh, we had to do all this training which meant like I had to make a paper mache like astronaut helmet and I had to buy like a zip up like a jumper space suit and I showed up Friday after school in my space suit and they had completely transformed the classroom into like a space station.

So we walked in. It didn’t look like a classroom. It looked like a Well, it was trash bags that they’d inflated to look like a space station. But you’d go in and all my other classmates were there. There were maybe like 20 of us and we were gathered in this room and for the next, you know, 24 hours is an overnight thing.

Uh, we acted like astronauts. So we built rovers, uh, and we like drove little carts around the campus. We had to solve puzzles. At one point we were in the gym, uh, hung up on like a harness. Like they strapped us to a harness and they swung us around. Like we were supposed to be in space and we had to. Like put together this like PVC pipe kind of puzzle thing, and it was really bizarre and really weird.

The office, the front office, they turned into like NASA headquarters because we lived in Houston. And so we would get video messages from the principal and from the teachers that they would show on the TV to be like, Hey, here’s your mission. You know, your ship is about to explode and you need to solve it or whatever.

And I think the goal was they wanted to encourage us, uh, to go into the arts and the sciences and, uh, figure out ways to use our gifts and talents as little fifth graders to, uh, better the world and join NASA or something. I don’t really know. It didn’t, it clearly didn’t work because I’m here telling you about this instead of doing it on Mars for real.

I was on new the news. So they the news channel local news came and asked us. Hey, where are you guys going? And I very confidently said we’re going to Mars and that was my like two seconds of fame. It was the best, uh, and weirdest experience, uh, of my fifth grade year, by far. Uh, but, showing up on Monday the next day, after that weekend, was by far weirder than the experience itself.

Because I was, it wasn’t quite, like, halfway through the semester, so, summer was close, which was everything as a fifth grader, that’s what we were looking forward to, but it was still kind of far away. I walked in that day and I remember feeling so disappointed, deflated, literally, because our space station was gone.

That room that had transformed into like, uh, the International Space Station was now just a classroom. The front office was just a front office. Our teachers were no longer the commander in chief of NASA. They were just our teachers. Our rover that we had slaved over. It was gone and we don’t know what happened to it.

It was just, it was, it wasn’t there anymore. And the worst part was the teacher said, hey, after this weekend, tell your friends about this because we want to do this again next year. But you have to, you know, this will encourage them to read all their books and do well on their tests and quizzes and, you know, boost their academics so that they can be a part of this.

Because it was for like the top, you know, grade GPA, whatever, in fifth grade, who knows what that means. Um. So then we would tell our friends that we swung from the ceiling of the gym and we built a rover and drove it around the playground and of course our kids didn’t believe us. Like our friends had no idea what we had just been through and so we, we tried to go to the teachers and say, Hey, tell them what we did and the teachers were like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

It was a top secret mission. It was like, you can’t do that. You can’t tell us. Um, so hopefully your, uh. At the, at the Book of Acts now. Um, because Acts is kind of like that. That’s kind of where we’re going. Uh, the Book of Acts is the fifth book of the New Testament. So, it comes after the four Gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then you have the Book of Acts. Uh, as you can tell, we’re starting a new series. Uh, we’re journeying through this book. Over the next, you know, few months as we kind of take a break for our other practices coming up. Uh, we are going to journey through the Book of Acts for a number of reasons, but one of them is We just came off this practice of hospitality, right?

And our main emphasis was, as a church, we want to create spaces in our day to day lives where, where, where people can come and experience and encounter the loving grace of God. And the book of Acts shows us what that looks like. On the ground level, how the church became the church, how we got in this space here today.

But the Book of Acts starts with the same question that I asked as I was walking back into my 5th grade classroom from Mars. Which was, now what? What do I have to look forward to the rest of the years? I mean, summer’s far away, I just had this amazing experience, no one believes me. Now what? What am I supposed to I just go back to life like normal?

And so here’s the scene. As the Book of Acts starts, uh, the Gospels have explained the story of Jesus. Jesus, the Jewish rabbi who did miracles, uh, prophetic teachings, and cast out demons, and all sorts of things, gathered a group of disciples with him who had spent three years of their lives, the past three years, following him, watching everything he did, learning with him, eating in the places that he ate, sleeping in the places that he slept.

And this rabbi claimed to be God, and, and it seemed to, to back up what his, what he was saying. The miracles and the signs and wonders all pointed to the fact that he might actually be God. And so, they were excited. The disciples saw their rabbi take on the Pharisees, promise to take on the Roman Empire, and then he’s murdered.

So he’s handed over, uh, by the Jewish leaders to the Roman Empire to be publicly executed, humiliated on the cross. And for three days the disciples don’t know, uh, what to do, and then their rabbi is resurrected. And Acts starts off explaining what happens there. Jesus comes back from the dead and he, he spends 40 days with his disciples teaching them about the kingdom.

But then Jesus leaves. And so if you look at the tail end of all the Gospels, the last thing that usually happens is Jesus ascends back to rule the cosmos at the right hand of the Father. And in my imagination, as they return from watching Jesus ascend into heaven and go back to be with the Father, to rule heaven and earth together, as they journey back into Jerusalem, they walk into that same space that was once transformed by the presence and power of God.

I imagine they’re asking the same question, now what? That’s what the Book of Acts is about. The Book of Acts is about the now what. Now, for us as a church, what do we do? Those of us who’ve had an encounter with Jesus or who are coming off of maybe a spiritual high, you find yourself in a low season, now, now, now what?

What do, what do we as a church have to do here in Queen Creek with the start of the Christian gospel movement? And so we have the Book of Acts. So let’s start reading. We’re gonna pick up in Acts, chapter 1, verse 1. I wrote the first narrative, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up, after he had given instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.

After he had suffered, he also presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over 40 days, and speaking about the kingdom of God. Now, uh, let’s pause there and go over a little bit of context. So, Acts, the book of Acts was written by, uh, Luke. It’s the same guy who wrote the Gospel of Luke, one of the four Gospels.

Uh, and Luke was a Gentile doctor. Uh, and this is important for a few reasons. So, that he was a doctor meant that he was not a part of the original twelve apostles. Uh, he was likely someone who heard about Jesus. Maybe he was one of the larger groups of disciples that Jesus had, maybe he had familiarity because he actually followed Jesus, or he was somebody who found out about Jesus shortly after all of these things happened, but one way or another, he was a follower of Jesus.

But he was a Gentile, which meant that he was an outsider. He was marginalized from the story and the plan of God until Jesus comes. Somehow, this pagan doctor heard about the risen rabbi and gave up everything to follow him, and so he has the Gospel of Luke. And he’s writing, if you notice, to a man named Theophilus.

Uh, Theophilus, we don’t really know much about, but we can assume that he was also a Gentile because of his name. Uh, Luke, actually, in his first gospel, the Gospel of Luke, calls him Most Honorable Theophilus, uh, which was a title of status. And so, Theophilus, from what we gather, was a Gentile wealthy person.

who had also heard about this resurrected rabbi and wanted to know more. So he had enough money to hire his own private investigator, Luke, to do the research, come back and report his findings on who this Jesus guy really was. And so that’s what the book of Acts is. And that’s what the book of Luke is.

But one, uh, theologian, actually, a few theologians point out this about Theophilus. When you look at what his name means, it actually means lover of God, or loved by God. One person puts it this way, All lovers of God may therefore believe that Acts was written to them because Luke the physician wrote so that they might find health for the soul here.

In other words, the way we read the book of Acts is not just as a historical account of how the church started, though it is that. The way that we read the book of Acts

It’s to read it like a story, a story written to us as those who love God and are loved by God. But notice also how Luke starts this book because it’s not just a normal story. He says, I wrote to you. about all that Jesus began to do and teach. So this is Acts as a two part book. So part one is the Gospel of Luke, is all about the work that Jesus started.

The implication here that Acts, or that Luke wants us to get is that part two, the book of Acts, is about all the work that Jesus continues to do through us, his people. And so the book of Acts is the beginning of a story that we are a part of. Now, what’s that story about? Well, let’s keep reading. Verse 4.

While he was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father’s promise. Which, he said, you have heard me speak about, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?

He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power. When the Holy Spirit has come on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Now most scholars agree that Luke is actually a genius.

He’s a brilliant literary writer and he’s intentionally setting verse 8, that last verse that we just read, as the thesis statement for the entire book of Acts. And so for the rest of our time this morning, all we’re going to do is just parse out that one verse. Power, Spirit. and witness. So first, power.

Now, Jesus answers a question by the disciples, and we’ll get to that question in a second, but his answer to the disciples would have been mind blowing. So when Jesus promises power, the Greek word for power is the Greek word dynamos, or in this case dunamis, uh, which is where we get the word dynamite.

There we go. Does anyone else know Greek? Awesome, this is great. Okay, now the disciples minds would have been blown by this because they would have immediately gone back to all the miraculous things. Uh, that Jesus did throughout his time on earth, all the healings, all the teachings, the signs, the prophecies, the casting out demons, all of those things, that same word for power is used to describe.

And now, what Jesus seems to be promising is that they can do the same things that Jesus did while he was here on earth. Now, as we read this story, it’s easy for us to kind of put this back there. That was then, and this is now. But we can’t downplay the supernatural in breaking of the kingdom here on Earth when we read these stories.

And that’s exactly what these things are. And every miracle, every healing, every prophetic teaching, every casting out of demons, every proclamation of the good news of the kingdom, kingdom was the supernatural kingdom breaking into our natural world. We’ve talked about this at length in the past, but every time Jesus does a miracle, it’s not just to show that he was God because the apostles do miracles later as well.

If the miracles point to a bigger reality that there is a kingdom that is actually overrule in this earth and Jesus is the king of that kingdom. And so when Jesus promises his disciples power, he’s saying that the power that I have to bring the kingdom here on earth is the same power that I’m going to give.

to you. And so Jesus promise here is a promise of power to his disciples, and I would argue to us as well. Remember, this is our origin story. This is about the now what? This is the story that we are living in and a part of. And so there’s a lot of debate on how this happens, but almost everyone agrees that sometimes, today, in some situations, God still moves through us by his power.

But here’s the thing about the power of God, uh, it rarely works the way we want it to. And so we go to the disciples question, uh, that verse 8 is actually an answer to. They say, Are you restore Jesus, we saw everything that you were doing, everything that you did here on earth, you rose again from the day from the grave, uh, came back from death.

Are you restoring the kingdom back to Israel? What they’re really asking is this, Are you ruling the world? By placing Israel as a nation on top and bringing us alongside you to judge all other nations of the world? That’s, we can kind of shake our heads and say no silly disciples That’s not what’s going on because that clearly hasn’t happened and it actually wasn’t a bad question It was actually a really smart question because that’s exactly what seems to be promised all throughout the Old Testament You look at passages like Isaiah 2 or Isaiah 11 or so Psalm 72 or Psalm 89.

You can read those on your own time and see how the disciples would have gotten to this conclusion. But notice that their notion of power was exactly that. It was a, a show of force. It was domination, it was coercion, and it was control. It was power to change their circumstances, to dominate others, and essentially wipe out their enemies.

And Jesus doesn’t sidestep their answer. It’s not him kind of pushing them off and saying, no, you guys have got it all wrong. It’s actually a clarification. Yes, you’ll have power, but it’s not the kind of power that you think. It’s not a power to eradicate the earth and rule from heaven. It’s a power to bring the rule of heaven down here to earth.

As one scholar, uh, N. T. Wright puts it, God’s kingdom is coming in and through the work of Jesus. Not by taking people away from this world, but by transforming things within this world. Bringing the sphere of earth into the presence and under the rule of heaven itself. The power we receive isn’t power to dominate, coerce, or control our circumstances.

It’s a power to bring the kingdom here on earth, as in heaven. To unite heaven and earth through our obedience to Jesus and the openness. To the spirit, and this kingdom doesn’t look like what we would expect it to look like. This is a constant theme throughout Luke’s writings and acts, but also in the gospel of Luke.

It’s the flipping of power. Luke wants to remind Theophilus, right this highly exalted, highly status wealthy Gentile, and remind us that power, status, and success, success on earth do not equate to those things in heaven. So what we would expect power to look like no matter what that looks like here on Earth.

Luke wants to set the record straight. Power in the kingdom looks more like this. Loving your enemies is more powerful than destroying them. Forgiving sins is more powerful than punishing them. Enduring suffering and persecution is more powerful than pursuing upward mobility. Fighting, fleeing, and resisting sin is more powerful than giving up and giving in.

And for some of us, that sounds like a miracle. It sounds like a miracle to say that. You have the power to reconcile with people who have hurt you, to no longer hold their sin against you, against them. To fight temptation, overcome addictions and struggles that you keep losing battles to. To overcome that sounds like a miracle.

Or to actually love our enemies, pray for them. Extend a loving hand to them and open our homes to them through the practice of hospitality sounds like a miracle. So whatever you believe about the supernatural, this is plenty supernatural enough. It’s also impossible. Some of you are imagining scenarios in your head.

You’re thinking, I can’t do that. And you’re right, which is why Jesus doesn’t just stop with power. So next we have the Spirit. Now, Jesus says that we will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us. Again, this is a mind blowing thing to say to a first century Jewish person. It’s actually the fulfillment of a long told Old Testament promise.

Uh, there are tons of examples throughout the Old Testament. Let me give you one from Joel, chapter 2. This is God speaking in the Old Testament through the prophet Joel. He says, I will pour out my spirit on all of humanity. Then your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams, and your young men will see visions.

I will even pour out my spirit on the male and female slaves in those days. Everyone, this is the point of the Spirit, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now there’s a lot of confusion about the works of the Spirit. What is the baptism of the Spirit? How does this happen? How does this not happen?

Now I think that the work of the Holy Spirit is best understood in two ways. One is as a one time event. But also as a continual process. So, first, the one time event. Now this prophecy that I just read from Joel is actually literally fulfilled in the next chapter of Acts. Acts chapter 2, during a Jewish festival called Shavuot.

Or what we would probably call it, uh, Pentecost. We’re going to talk more about this next week, so I’m not going to dive too much into this. Uh, but here’s what happens during Pentecost. Believers Followers of the way of Jesus after Jesus is gone to rule the cosmos at the right hand of the father are gathered in a room and they are baptized with the spirit of God in one instant moment.

Now, prior to this baptism was a practice done by Gentiles who wanted to purify themselves so that they could convert into Judaism. It was the way of entry into a new community. If they wanted to become Jewish, they had to go through a ritual purification process of water and we call baptism. But now. In Acts chapter 2, the Spirit baptizes both Jews and Gentiles alike into a new type of humanity.

Now there are tons of implications for this, but for today, here’s what this means. When you decide to follow Jesus, something incredible happens. The Bible describes it this way. You are brought from spiritual death To spiritual life that prior to following Jesus you’re in your flight. You are overcome by your sin separated eternally from the God who can give you freedom in life and Separated from each other when you make the decision to follow Jesus that changes immediately you your old heart of stone wickedness and evil is Transformed you are literally being made new from the inside out capable of following the way of Jesus obeying the law That Jesus gives, which is to love God and love your neighbors and spread the good news of the kingdom to those around you.

And that happens because on the moment of your profession, you are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is what Jesus promises in John 14, John 15, and John 16, that if Jesus leaves, then the Spirit, God’s presence Himself, will actually come upon you. And this isn’t something that you can take away. Once you have it, you have it.

We believe the moment that you repent and believe in Jesus for the first time is the moment that you receive the Spirit. And then it’s with you for all of eternity. So that’s the one time event. But the receiving of the Spirit is also a continual process because the Spirit of God is not a force to manipulate.

He’s a person to know. Alright, so the spirit of God is a person. It’s not like the force. It’s not, uh, what does Obi Wan say? Um, yeah, I mean, the force, you know, he says, Uh, the force, uh, you know, it binds us, it penetrates us, it holds all living things together. It’s the power, right? That’s not what the spirit is.

The spirit is not like the force. It’s not something we can manipulate. It’s not a disembodied reality. It’s a person. It’s the personal presence of God in us and among us. Meaning Like any other person we can get to know, like the father, like the son, like your spouse or best friend, you can pay attention to him, you can be receptive of him, you can listen to him, or you can cut yourself off completely from him.

And when I say that, I don’t mean you can lose him, but you can stop tuning your ear to the constant movement and speaking of the Holy Spirit in your life. Preventing him from working in you and working through you for the sake of the world around you. And you see this throughout the book of Acts.

Apostles from Acts 2 on are so in tune with the Holy Spirit, not only are they baptized with him, but they are so aware of what the Spirit, the voice of God within them sounds like, that they live their lives not by their own will and decisions. But by the will of God revealed by his spirit. For example, the spirit speaks to the church in Antioch in Acts 13.

The spirit stops Paul and his companions from traveling to Asia in Acts 16. And it warns Paul of what’s going to await him if he goes to Jerusalem later in the book of Acts as well. Stephen, the first martyr, it says is filled with the Holy Spirit. As they’re literally murdering him for preaching about the resurrected rabbi.

He is filled with the spirit so that his dying words are Forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing. That’s the filling of the spirit. That’s not Stephen on his own. That’s Jesus being open to receive the spirit of God, which he already has in him, but filling himself up more. Later in Ephesians, Paul warns us, do not cut off the spirit in your lives.

He says, do not get drunk on wine, meaning, don’t live for the sake of indulgence and pleasure, which I would say is the contemporary default of life for us in the West today, but rather, be filled with the spirit. In other words, there is a way for us to live our lives. So that we never encounter, hear, or access the power that the Holy Spirit wants to give us.

Because the Holy Spirit won’t force God’s power on us. Now Luke contains almost as many references to the Holy Spirit as Matthew, Mark, uh, and John combined. Why is that? I believe it’s because Luke wants us to see what it looks like for God’s people to live empowered lives through the Holy Spirit.

They’re capable of proclaiming truth with power, capable of performing miracles, no matter what that looks like. Enduring suffering, committing to one another, spreading the kingdom, even something like forgiving our enemies. That’s what it looks like to live by the power of the Spirit. Now, the Book of Acts ends on kind of a downer.

The Apostle Paul is imprisoned.

The Apostle Paul is the enemy turned hero of the Christian movement. He started off murdering Christians, but became so convinced of Jesus death and resurrection that he had to give his life up to him, and his sole purpose was to spread that good news that Jesus was ruling to the ends of the earth. And the last thing that happens in the Book of Acts is Paul finds himself in Rome, but in house arrest, under the watchful eye of a Roman parole officer.

And Luke has the gall, the audacity, to say that Paul proclaimed the good news of the kingdom without hindrance. The very last line of the Book of Acts. Paul is in prison, chained to a Roman guard. He sounds pretty hindered to me. Luke’s point is that the Holy Spirit is just as much at work in Paul in confinement, in tragedy, as he is at the start of the book when he’s poured out on the believers and 3, 000 are added to their number after Peter’s sermon.

And for you and us today, the Spirit is just as much at work in us in our lowest moments of pain and tragedy as he is in and through us in our highest moments of joy, celebration, and power. But It’s up to us to respond to the Spirit’s calling and working in our lives. Our openness to the Spirit of God determines our effectiveness in our mission.

But what exactly is it that we are empowered by the Spirit to do? Lastly, we have witness. So Jesus ends this thesis statement of the book of Acts by casting a vision of the impact the disciples will have through their openness to the Holy Spirit and the power of God. And it looks like what a lot of us would call, uh, evangelism.

Which, even as I say that word, I know some of you have an allergic reaction to it. You’re conjuring up images of street preachers and gospel tracts and, you know, I don’t know what else comes to mind. Uh, some of those things are great and some of those things are not so great. Um, here’s what we have to remember about evangelism is that it actually wasn’t a religious word, it was a political word.

So, uh, when a new king, ruler, or emperor would take the throne and start ruling, he would send out messengers or apostles to spread the good news that you are under new authority. And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing today. And so when Jesus calls his disciples to be witnesses, all he’s calling them to do is to be people who experience something, the transformative power of their lives.

and then share that with others. Uh, Tim Keller, the late, uh, great pastor, author, theologian, uh, has, uh, what I think are really helpful frameworks for what it looks like to be an effective witness. So, he says the first thing is attention. So what does a witness do? A witness gets the attention of people around them.

They live in a way that is noticeably different from the world around them. When the world says to dominate others for your own success and good, uh, Jesus says to deny yourself, take up your cross, love your neighbor as yourself, pray for those who persecute you. We attract the attention of non believers in our space when we live out the way of Jesus because it doesn’t look like the way of the world.

But the second thing is attraction. So, we live the way of Jesus in a way that’s compelling. People are looking for hope in our lives. People outside of the faith of Christianity are looking for hope that they can have and cling to, to carry with them throughout life. And our job is to give them hope.

Christianity should look good because of the way that you live. The third thing he says is demonstration. You do the stuff that Jesus did. You actually live the way that he lived, not just in your own life, but for the sake of others, which is why we started the year with the practice of hospitality.

Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors for the sake of extending grace, leading them to repentance. We do the same. That’s the demonstration of the gospel. And the last thing is conviction. We do hold fast to what’s true. So as the world sees us live out the way of Jesus, we get people’s attention, we show them how attractive and compelling it is to follow Jesus, we demonstrate what the power of the gospel can actually do in their lives, and we hold fast to what we know is really true.

This is what a life empowered by the Spirit is able to do. And you see, this is how the early church started. This is how it spread so quickly. So witnessing happens when we commit to living our lives in a way that gets people’s attention because of how radically different and how radically good the way of Jesus is compared to the way of the world.

We experience the transformative love of God. Our hearts and minds completely changed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which means that if you have encountered Jesus, You can be a witness through your openness to the Spirit and the power of God. And look what Jesus says will happen when you do this.

He says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Now this part of the thesis statement is so vital to the mission of the church that Luke actually structures the rest of Acts around this progression. It’s an outward progression. So Acts 2 through 7 tell the story of the spread of the gospel through Jerusalem.

Right? This is their home turf. These are Jews and Gentiles alike centered around the holy city of God, experiencing the rule and reign of Jesus by the spreading of the good news of the gospel. It starts in Jerusalem, but it’s not taken too kindly there. People don’t like that they’re preaching about the risen rabbi.

And so it spreads. They’re pushed out of the home turf of Jerusalem. Again, that’s the power of God using pain, suffering, and bad circumstances to accomplish his mission to the regions of Judea and Samaria. These are the Gentiles. These are the people outside, strangers and sinners, welcome to the table of God.

That’s the power of God. And the back half of Acts spreads to the ends of the earth. After Judea and Samaria, the gospel goes mainly through the work of Paul and his companions to the farthest reaches of their known world at the time. So Acts ends with the gospel having more impact than they could have possibly imagined.

And so what we have in the book of Acts is a story. It’s actually story after story of what it looks like when we do this. Three words, three movements, three goals, power. We receive power. We live in power. We have power in us because of our association with God because of the fact that we are citizens of the kingdom of God.

Power that comes from the authority of God. We receive power when we live lives open to the spirit of God moving in us and among us, allowing the spirit to guide us and work. through us. And that power and openness to the Spirit leads us to be a witness, to tell others about what we’ve experienced, invite them in, just like my teachers told me to tell them about this mission trip to Mars.

God will not not back you up like my teachers. God will back you up. That’s the power of God, right? Jesus is better. And I want to end by returning to where we started. Uh, Acts is the beginning of a story that you and I are a part of. So what’s our part? What’s our part in this story? Or more specifically for our context, the question I want to end on is this.

What does it mean to be a part of Passion Creek Church? And what does it mean that we are gathered in a, in a, uh, uh, middle school cafeteria transformed into a holy space? A tabernacle of God’s presence. Why do we do this week in and week out? To focus our attention on a resurrected Jewish rabbi from the first century who claimed to be God.

What are we doing? Oh, we’re picking up right where Luke left off.

That we are, we, when you, when you are a part of Passion Creek Church, you’re not just coming to church. That we, we hope that you do just come to church. And our end goal, let me be clear. We do, and I say this in Pizza with the Party with the Pastors. Party with the Pastors, no longer pizza. Party with the Pastors, uh, which you’ll hear about later.

Um. And we have, we do have an agenda for your life, and I want to be upfront about that. We do, when you come here to church, we want you to be more than just an attender. Though let me say, if attending is all you can do, then please attend. But what we want is, is to help you. We want to be a community of Jesus followers who are so committed to this risen rabbi that we are reorienting our entire lives.

for the sake of being open to the Spirit of God. That’s why we engage in practices like Sabbath. We, we remove the unnecessary elements of our night, of our lives for one day to remind ourselves of God’s goodness and presence among us. We read scripture because we want our minds to be transformed by the still speaking voice of God through the Holy Spirit.

We practice simplicity because we don’t want to be controlled by our materialism. We engage in hospitality because we believe the Spirit wants to work through us. to reach the lost in our city. That’s what it means to be a part of Passion Creek Church. That’s why we, that’s why we’re doing this. We’re doing the stuff that Jesus did.

So what does it mean to be a part of this church? What does it mean to live the story? It means that we, we want to live our lives in a way that we are open to the Spirit of God. That we move, not in our own power, but through the power of God. And that as miraculous as it sounds, we live our lives as witnesses to the life, teaching, death, resurrection of our risen rabbi, Jesus.

So, why don’t we stand and respond?