00:00: For the disciples, they were told by Jesus before the cross to expect this.
00:07: Jesus repeatedly told them that he would, after his death and resurrection and ascension, that he would send the Holy Spirit, that the Father would send the Holy Spirit.
00:17: And now we're there.
00:18: We just heard right aloud the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
00:24: That's a word that we hear not at all outside of Christian church kind of setting.
00:32: It's a significant word in some Christian circles.
00:36: There are congregations and denominations that literally have that in their title, in their name, because they emphasize that so significantly that it's part of their core identity.
00:49: And in the passage we just saw, Pentecost has arrived.
00:55: The Holy Spirit comes, and the people on whom the Holy Spirit came spoke in tongues.
01:01: And so one might think, well, there you have it.
01:06: When the Holy Spirit comes on a person, the person speaks in tongues, right?
01:11: Well, that's the official teaching of some groups out there.
01:15: There are congregations and denominations that believe that and teach that.
01:18: I remember about 15 years ago or so, before I moved to Green Bay, I served in a little town.
01:24: There was a church there that I was privileged to serve.
01:28: And as I got to know folks in this small town, I got to know a pastor in another congregation, in another denomination.
01:35: He happened to serve in a denomination that believed that if you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you will necessarily speak in tongues.
01:41: And we didn't agree on that, but we agreed on the main things.
01:45: And so we'd get together from time to time.
01:47: We'd visit.
01:48: We'd encourage each other.
01:49: We'd share what's going on in life.
01:50: We'd pray for each other.
01:52: And I remember on one such occasion, this fellow, this other pastor named John and myself were talking.
01:58: And he said something about the Spirit.
01:59: And I knew him well enough.
02:01: I thought, you know what?
02:01: I'm going to ask him about this.
02:03: John, do you believe that if a person is filled with the Spirit, they have to speak in tongues?
02:08: And he said, yeah.
02:09: I said, okay, why do you believe that?
02:12: Because I knew John to be a man of the book.
02:14: And he was not just random, whatever.
02:17: He was like, in Scripture.
02:19: That's where we go.
02:20: I said, so where do you see that in Scripture?
02:22: And he said, well, every time in the book of Acts that a person is filled with the Spirit, where the Spirit comes on someone, they speak in tongues.
02:30: And I said, no.
02:35: I actually, at the timing of that conversation, providentially, had just been doing in my own Bible reading, some reading in the book of Acts.
02:43: And I had just the day before read a story in the book of Acts where the Spirit came on someone, and there was no speaking in tongues.
02:50: And I said, I just read where that doesn't happen.
02:53: And he's like, what?
02:54: And it began this journey for him where he had to call into question what he had been taught because he found out that what he had been told Scripture said and what Scripture actually said didn't match.
03:08: Over time, he began to recognize, that's just not so.
03:13: It's not so.
03:14: We're going to see some of those examples in the book of Acts.
03:17: The Spirit comes on people, but there's not tongues.
03:20: We're going to see that as we work through the book of Acts.
03:22: So I'm not going to go there right now.
03:25: But if the Holy Spirit coming on Christians is not primarily evidenced in speaking in tongues, if that's not the point of it, what is the point of it?
03:37: Well, go back to chapter 1, verse 8 again.
03:42: 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 ends of the earth.
03:56: The point that was being made was that the Holy Spirit would come and bring power for the purpose of witness about Jesus.
04:06: Now, that's not to say that that's all that the Holy Spirit does.
04:11: He certainly does much more than that in the lives of both unbelievers and in a different way in the lives of believers.
04:17: And yet, this is a core idea in what they were experiencing of the Holy Spirit here.
04:23: In fact, Acts chapter 1, verses 4 and 5 says, So let's get our chronology.
04:49: Jesus was crucified, died, was buried.
04:54: Three days later, on resurrection Sunday morning, he was raised from the dead.
04:59: Then he spends about 40 days encountering believers, revealing himself as resurrected.
05:10: Acts chapter 1, verse 3 is where we get that.
05:12: He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days, and speaking about the kingdom of God.
05:20: So after the resurrection, there's a 40-day period where Jesus is saying, No, it's really me.
05:23: I'm really here.
05:23: I'm alive.
05:23: Let me explain some things to you.
05:27: And then, there's the ascension.
05:30: He says, Hey, I'm going up, but you wait.
05:33: You wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to come.
05:35: And he ascends.
05:37: Chapter 2, verse 1, the beginning of our passage this morning, tells us the day on which the Holy Spirit came was Pentecost.
05:44: Now, Pentecost, I always just assumed was a New Testament Bible word that kind of was just a word assigned to this event.
05:53: It is not.
05:55: It turns out that it's a Greek word that basically means 50th.
06:00: Five zero TH.
06:02: In fact, about 200 years before Jesus was on earth, there were some Greek-speaking folks who translated the Old Testament into Greek.
06:13: And that translation, often called the Septuagint, used this very word, Pentecost, to describe the Old Testament year of Jubilee, which happened every 50 years.
06:24: So it was a 50th is the meaning of it.
06:27: And in the context of the New Testament day of Pentecost, it's 50 days after Passover.
06:37: So Jesus was crucified either on Passover or the day before Passover.
06:44: There's a little bit of dispute over exactly which of those two days it was.
06:48: But right around Passover.
06:50: And then 50 days later is when the Spirit came.
06:55: But it's not a random day.
06:56: I got to thinking, why did Jesus make them wait?
07:01: Why not just, he goes up, Spirit comes down, they trade places.
07:05: Why a waiting period?
07:08: 50 days after Passover in the Old Testament is a date of significance.
07:14: It's the Feast of Harvest.
07:16: Exodus chapter 23, verse 16, and then Deuteronomy 16, 10, both describe this.
07:21: And so in the Jewish Old Testament calendar, they would every year celebrate the Passover.
07:27: Happened in their first month of the year.
07:29: God, after bringing them out to Egypt, said, you're going to remember this, you're going to celebrate this every year.
07:34: And 50 days later was harvest.
07:37: And so they would celebrate harvest, and they would give to God a portion of what they received.
07:42: And it was a big milestone in the Jewish calendar.
07:46: Now, Jesus says, I'm timing the giving of my Spirit to be at the Feast of Harvest.
07:54: Why is that significant?
07:57: Now, we're not going to get there today.
07:59: But as we get a couple weeks from now into the next chunk of chapter 2, we're going to see the Apostle Peter filled with the Spirit, preaching and telling the people in Jerusalem about Jesus, and 3,000 people get saved.
08:15: 3,000 people put their faith in Jesus.
08:17: And so there's a spiritual harvest that's about to take place on this day.
08:22: God timed the pouring out of His Spirit so that the Feast of Harvest would become a Feast of Spiritual Harvest.
08:30: That's what's going on here.
08:35: So the disciples are waiting.
08:38: Jesus ascends.
08:39: They wait about a week after that, depending on exactly how you do the math.
08:43: And then on the 50th day after Passover, the Holy Spirit comes.
08:49: Now, look at verses 2, 3, and 4.
08:52: 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 of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
09:03: And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
09:10: All right.
09:12: That's weird.
09:13: None of us have experienced that, right?
09:15: None of us have encountered the Holy Spirit coming on somebody in that way with a rushing wind and with little flames of fire over each person's head.
09:23: In reality, it's not only that we haven't experienced that, no one apart from the folks in this instance experienced that.
09:30: No other time in the New Testament does the Spirit come on someone and manifest in this particular way.
09:38: So why did God choose to do it this way the first time?
09:42: I think it's because God is using the Old Testament pictures of his presence to set the stage for what he was going to do here.
09:55: We already know that the Old Testament is full of things that are preparing the way for Jesus, and it also prepares the way for this.
10:01: For example, Exodus 19, verse 18.
10:04: It describes Moses' encounter with God on Mount Sinai.
10:08: It says, Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord descended on it in a fire.
10:15: The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.
10:20: So Moses' encounter with God on Mount Sinai involves smoke, involves fire.
10:25: There's this intense manifestation of the presence of God.
10:29: If you're on the same Bible reading plan that a bunch of us are, where we're reading through Numbers lately, Numbers 9.15, we just read the other day.
10:37: On the day that the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony.
10:45: And at evening, it was over the tabernacle like the appearance of fire until morning.
10:52: So God brought the Israelites out of Egypt.
10:54: They were in the wilderness.
10:55: He gave them instructions on building the tabernacle, which is basically a tent temple.
11:00: And in the center, there's the part where God's presence is made manifest.
11:06: And God's presence would hover over this cloud by day, fire by night.
11:11: And you could know that God was there because he was revealing himself as present in this place.
11:18: Or 2 Chronicles 7.
11:20: Now that's about the replacement for the tabernacle.
11:33: In Moses' era, they had the tabernacle in the wilderness.
11:36: They kept the tabernacle until the time of the third king of Israel.
11:42: That's David's son Solomon who built the temple.
11:45: That was the permanent built of stone temple in Jerusalem.
11:48: And when they dedicated it to God and said, it's finished, it's set apart for you, God, God manifested his presence in glory again with a fire-like presence.
12:01: Fire came down from heaven.
12:04: Time and again, with the dedication of the tabernacle, with the dedication of the temple, it's almost like a remembering or a reenactment of Moses' encounter on Sinai.
12:16: Patrick Schreiner, a Christian seminary professor, writes, Luke employs the imagery of wind and fire because both recall the arrival of God's presence.
12:28: When God would appear in the Old Testament, his presence would most often be accompanied by a storm or fire.
12:34: This most often occurred in relation to the tabernacle or temple.
12:37: Israel's tabernacle and temple were built according to the pattern Moses saw on Mount Sinai.
12:45: When Israel met with God in the temple, it was like they were recreating the Sinai scene.
12:50: The presence of wind and fire signaled the powerful presence of God with his people.
12:56: Therefore, when Luke records that the disciples at Pentecost heard wind and saw fire rest on them, he communicates that God's presence has arrived in a new way by the Spirit.
13:09: No longer was God's presence only accessible to the high priest once a year in the Holy of Holies.
13:15: Now fire rested on each believer, empowering them with God's powerful presence at all times.
13:22: God's people are now the mobile temples, carrying God's presence with them wherever they go.
13:29: And God's people would need God's presence because he was calling them to be witnesses to the whole world on his behalf.
13:39: End quote.
13:41: That's what's going on here.
13:43: If you were a believer in God in the Old Testament era, and you wanted to worship God, you want to come before God, you had to go to the tabernacle from the time of Moses to the time of Solomon.
13:54: And then you had to go to the temple from the time of Solomon to the time of Jesus.
13:58: That's where God would manifest his presence.
14:00: You weren't allowed to just go worship here, there, everywhere.
14:03: It was restricted to the one place.
14:05: And in that place, you had the temple courts, then you had the Jewish-only area, and then you had the actual temple where you had the holy place, and then the inner part of the Holy of Holies.
14:15: And only the high priest could get in there, and only once a year.
14:17: And there had to be blood sacrifices, and it was a huge deal.
14:20: You couldn't simply come into God's presence.
14:23: But now, there is no stone temple.
14:28: There is no tent temple that only one person has access to once a year.
14:35: Now, people, specifically Christians, are the temple.
14:41: 1 Corinthians 3, verse 17.
14:44: Paul's writing to the church in Corinth, and he says to them, Now, the you there is plural.
14:51: He's saying, y'all, all you Christians together, you are the temple of God.
14:56: We, together, as believers, are the temple of God.
15:00: And in that same letter, three chapters later, chapter 6, verse 19, he says, That's singular.
15:10: He's saying, each individual Christian, God lives in you.
15:14: God's Spirit is present in you.
15:16: You, as an individual believer, are a temple of God's Holy Spirit.
15:22: Now, look again at verse 3.
15:25: And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
15:32: It's not enough that there was a manifestation of fire in their midst.
15:36: God went out of his way to say, each individual person gets fire.
15:41: You get a fire.
15:42: You get a fire.
15:43: You get a fire.
15:44: You get a fire.
15:45: Right?
15:45: They each have this fire-like manifestation above them.
15:48: To make clear that it's not just a lot of them.
15:50: It's not just, well, you know, the apostles were there, and maybe they got it, and no one else did.
15:55: But say, each of them individually got in on this.
15:59: Each one of them was now the dwelling place of God with mankind.
16:04: That's an astounding reality.
16:08: Every genuine Christian has the Holy Spirit living within him or her.
16:13: Each and every Christian is a temple of God where God himself, God the Holy Spirit, dwells.
16:20: Think about that.
16:21: Look around.
16:22: The people around you in this room who are believers in Jesus are temples of the Holy Spirit.
16:27: Now, one thing I want to point out, if God, the Holy Spirit, lives in us, we need to recognize that we're not talking about the power of God in some kind of abstract force kind of way.
16:41: We're talking about the person of God.
16:44: The Holy Spirit is not just some ability of God, like, I don't know, divine electricity that enables us, but rather it is part of the Trinity.
16:55: It is one of the three persons of the triune God who himself personally lives in us.
17:03: We dare not dishonor God by treating him as an it.
17:09: But he is a him.
17:11: He is a person.
17:13: He is a thinking, cognizant, rational, articulate person of the Trinity.
17:20: And in fact, if we don't get that right, we're denying the doctrine of the Trinity, which is a tier one, top level, get that wrong, you're in heresy realm.
17:32: Like, this is really, really important.
17:34: And ironically, there are groups in some Pentecostal circles, not all of them, but some, where they say, no, no, no, that's not a person of God.
17:44: You've got God the Father, you've got Jesus the Son, but you don't have God the Holy Spirit.
17:47: Spirit's just God's power, generically, an it, a thing, not a who.
17:53: That's heresy.
17:54: We can't go there.
17:55: We're talking about God himself living in his people.
17:59: God himself turning us into the temple where his presence is made known.
18:05: Now, they've been waiting for this.
18:08: Not just the coming of the Holy Spirit, as amazing as that is, but for him to empower them for witness about Jesus.
18:16: Remember, Jesus said over and over in John's Gospel, he will remind you about what I taught.
18:22: He will give you power for witness, and so on.
18:24: The point is, the Holy Spirit's job is to be this blinking sign that points to Jesus over and over and over and says, turn to Jesus.
18:32: Look at Jesus.
18:33: Understand who Jesus is.
18:35: Jesus is center stage.
18:37: And the Spirit's job, in large part, is to turn attention to Christ.
18:42: Acts chapter 1, verse 8.
18:46: Again, 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 to the ends of the earth.
18:57: Is that what happens?
18:58: Absolutely.
18:59: You look at verses 4 through 11.
19:00: And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
19:10: And, we're told, there's folks in Jerusalem from all over the place, from all these different regions, regions which Carl so graciously read aloud.
19:17: And I will yield to his pronunciation of them all instead of reading them out loud.
19:22: And so, there's all these different people, groups speaking all these different languages in Jerusalem.
19:28: And as the Spirit enables the disciples, they then are able to share about Jesus in the language of all these different folks.
19:35: It would be like if suddenly, instead of there being all English speakers here, there was 15, 20 different languages.
19:41: And the elders could all talk to each person in their own language, speaking Spanish to the Spanish speaker, speaking Swahili to the Swahili speaker, and so on.
19:50: That's what God empowered them to do in this instance.
19:53: And the people are amazed.
19:54: They're like, how are these Jews speaking all our different languages?
19:58: What in the world is going on?
20:00: They were amazed and astonished, verse 7 tells us.
20:03: And what were they telling?
20:05: In our own tongues, verse 11, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.
20:12: Now, we're not going to go there today, but in the very next section of Acts 2, we're going to get to see Peter explicitly preaching with the power of the Holy Spirit.
20:21: And it's all about Jesus.
20:23: He doesn't get off into the weeds.
20:24: He sticks to Jesus.
20:26: The Spirit enabled them to bear witness about Jesus by speaking in the languages of many other people groups, because that was what was needed in that instance.
20:35: That's exactly what it was supposed to be about.
20:41: That's what God's purpose was in giving them the Spirit.
20:46: When you get to verse 41, Acts chapter 2, 41, if you skim down, you can see it.
20:51: 3,000 people get saved.
20:53: I like the way that John Piper writes about it.
20:55: He says, it is a feast of harvest in Jerusalem.
20:58: And on this very day, Jesus pours out the Spirit in extraordinary power, and 3,000 people are harvested from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God.
21:09: That's glorious.
21:10: That's amazing.
21:11: Sometimes I've read through there and I've seen all 3,000.
21:13: I'm like, why don't we ever see 3,000 people get saved in a day at church events?
21:17: That'd be cool.
21:18: Well, first of all, God can do that.
21:22: And maybe he has done that at other times that I'm just not aware of.
21:26: But God was doing a special harvest on the harvest day to manifest the power of the Spirit.
21:32: That's astounding.
21:34: He wants us to get that.
21:35: Now, I want to give a little rabbit trail here, a little disclaimer.
21:41: When different Christians and different Christian groups talk about the Holy Spirit, they often use a lot of the same words but mean different things by them.
21:51: And so I want to clarify this.
21:54: Baptism of the Holy Spirit and filling of the Holy Spirit are two of the most common ways of talking about it.
22:01: Acts 1, 4, Jesus said, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
22:05: Not many days from now.
22:07: So that Pentecost coming to the Holy Spirit is referred to the baptism of the Spirit.
22:11: Acts 2, 4, when it actually happens, verse 4 says, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
22:18: And yet when we get to 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13, where Paul is teaching the church in Corinth about spiritual gifts, he said, for in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.
22:30: Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
22:34: So in that verse he's saying every Christian has been baptized into the Holy Spirit.
22:39: That's common to all believers.
22:40: If you're in the body of Christ, if you're a believer, you're in the body of Christ, and you have been made to drink of that one Spirit, you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit.
22:48: So baptism of the Holy Spirit, according to 1 Corinthians 12, 13, is something that is a universal experience for every genuine Christian.
22:56: Some folks, in some circles, will use baptism of the Spirit to refer to a particular empowering of the Spirit subsequent to conversion.
23:08: That's not how I understand it.
23:09: That's not how I'm going to talk about it.
23:12: But I agree that that happens.
23:15: God does sometimes empower his people post-conversion in a particular moment in time, particular power for a particular purpose.
23:23: That does happen.
23:24: And we are to, in an ongoing way, pursue that kind of empowering of the Holy Spirit.
23:30: Ephesians 5, 18.
23:32: Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.
23:36: Instead, be filled with the Spirit.
23:39: What's that about?
23:40: He's saying, don't get drunk on wine.
23:43: Why?
23:43: Because it leads to debauchery.
23:45: Debauchery is bad stuff.
23:46: When you get drunk on wine, you tend to do stupid, bad things.
23:49: Right?
23:49: Why?
23:51: Because the alcohol begins to take control.
23:54: You yield your self-control to the alcohol.
23:57: And Paul says, don't do that.
23:59: You yield control to alcohol, you're going to end up choosing sinful things.
24:04: Don't go there.
24:05: Instead of yielding control to alcohol, be filled with the Holy Spirit.
24:10: That is, yield control of your life to the Holy Spirit.
24:13: Let Him guide you.
24:14: Let Him be in charge.
24:15: Let Him empower you.
24:17: Let Him be in charge.
24:17: Let Him be in charge.
24:18: Let Him be in charge.
24:18: That's what we're talking about when we say, be filled with the Holy Spirit.
24:22: And the way that Ephesians 5, 18 talks about it, it's an ongoing thing.
24:26: Be filled with.
24:27: Like, keep on being filled with.
24:28: In an ongoing way, be surrendered to the Holy Spirit and be empowered by the Holy Spirit.
24:34: That's what we're commanded to do.
24:36: So baptism is the event on the front end when you become a Christian where the Holy Spirit takes up residence in you.
24:43: The ongoing empowerment and guidance and leading of the Spirit is what we call being filled with the Spirit.
24:52: Now, Acts 2 is putting both of these together because both are happening in that instance.
24:58: That's how I understand it.
24:59: That's how our past denominational affiliation has understood it.
25:03: And that's how I'll be talking about it as we move forward.
25:05: Be filled.
25:08: Keep on being filled.
25:09: Keep on being empowered by.
25:12: I have an electrical problem at my house where something's goofy and it keeps shorting out and I have to try to replace it.
25:19: And I didn't grow up with a tech fix-it family, so I make sure to pull the breaker.
25:25: I don't touch nothing electrical until I know for sure the power is out.
25:29: And how do I do that?
25:30: I plug something in and then I flip the breaker until the lamp or whatever goes off.
25:35: I know that there's no power because the thing isn't working.
25:39: But imagine if I said, hey, Brian, I need help with my electrical stuff.
25:44: I know there's no power to the outlet because the light's not turning on.
25:49: And he looks at it and he's like, your lamp isn't plugged in, Dylan.
25:51: I'm like, well, duh, but I plugged it in last week and it didn't.
25:55: And so it should still work, right?
25:58: No.
25:58: You've got to keep the item plugged in if you're going to get it to work, right?
26:02: That's how, I'm no expert in electricity, but I'm getting a nod from the electrician.
26:07: If you want a plugged electronic to work, you've got to keep it plugged in.
26:12: You and I as believers are meant to stay plugged in to God's Holy Spirit, to stay filled with the Spirit, to stay surrendered to Him so that we be guided and empowered by Him.
26:22: We ought to seek that.
26:24: Now, it says be filled with the Holy Spirit.
26:26: It doesn't mean somehow get a larger, measurable quantity of Holy Spirit stuffed in you.
26:32: You can't do that.
26:33: That's not a thing.
26:34: It's saying stay surrendered.
26:37: Become increasingly surrendered.
26:40: Open hands, whatever you want, God.
26:41: You enable, you guide, you ask me to do anything you want me to do.
26:44: Just enable me to do it.
26:47: Have your way in me, oh God.
26:49: That's what we're called to.
26:50: And what is one of the central realities of that?
26:54: It's witness.
26:57: Now, it's fun when we look at them doing it then and say, yes, Peter gave the world's greatest sermon and 3,000 people get saved because the Holy Spirit's at work.
27:05: That's awesome.
27:06: But here's the reality.
27:08: Every one of you in this room who is a believer in Jesus is meant to be empowered by the Holy Spirit for witness today and every one of us is meant to be sharing with our neighbors, coworkers, friends, family, etc.
27:21: The mighty works of God centering in Jesus Christ.
27:24: Every one of you has been conscripted by God as an ambassador for Christ.
27:29: That's our job.
27:34: That's our calling by God.
27:36: Which is why we say here at Faith Chapel that our mission is for every believer to become, make, mature, and multiply fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ.
27:45: Our mission is for everyone in every seat in this church who is a believer in Jesus to be sharing their faith with people.
27:52: To help those people grow up into Christian maturity and then to repeat the process.
27:57: I'm going to pick on Katie for a second because I know she lets me do that.
28:03: She hasn't been a believer all that long.
28:05: Handful of years now.
28:07: And she is busy making disciples.
28:12: And when you sit in Sunday school, she engages with the Word and she is understanding it and sharing.
28:21: If a five-year-old Christian can do it, the rest of us have no business saying that's too hard for me.
28:27: Because you know what?
28:28: The Holy Spirit lives in you.
28:30: And He will empower you.
28:35: Paul told Timothy, don't let anyone look down on you for your youth, but set an example for the believers.
28:42: Let's apply that to Katie this morning and say, look at Katie.
28:46: Be like Katie.
28:47: Follow her example in this.
28:49: Love Jesus.
28:51: Follow Jesus.
28:52: And help others to do the same.
28:54: Bear witness.
28:56: We're going to answer to God when we stand before Him for this.
29:00: In fact, the final marching orders that Christ gave the church, Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20, the Great Commission.
29:06: And notice the beginning of this and the end.
29:09: Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth is given to me.
29:15: Jesus has all authority.
29:16: Then He gives the actual commission.
29:18: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
29:26: Again, one of those reasons that we need to understand the Spirit is a person, just like the Father, just like the Son.
29:30: Teaching them to observe or obey all that I have commanded you.
29:35: And then the other end.
29:37: Behold, I am with you always to the very end of the age.
29:40: Jesus is with His followers always, even to the very end of the age, until His return.
29:46: Well, I've got news for you.
29:47: Jesus is not with me physically.
29:49: He's at the right hand of God.
29:51: So in what sense is He with me always?
29:53: The Holy Spirit.
29:55: He who has all authority is present by His Spirit in our lives.
30:02: And this authority and presence of Jesus is shared here for the very point of disciple making.
30:09: Bearing witness and maturing people in Christ.
30:14: Our primary marching orders center on Jesus.
30:19: They're given to us by Jesus.
30:21: They're empowered in us by Jesus' Spirit.
30:27: I want to reread a portion of that quote by Patrick Schreiner and leave you with this encouragement.
30:33: God's people are now the mobile temples, carrying God's presence with them wherever they go.
30:42: And God's people would need God's presence because He was calling them to be witnesses to the whole world on His behalf.
30:54: I'm going to lead us in a moment of prayer.
30:56: And I ask that you would bring that before God and ask God where He's calling you to be a witness.
31:03: To whom He's calling you to be a witness.
31:05: And to give you faith and power to do it well.
31:09: Father, I ask right now that you would impress upon us what each of us need in a personalized way.
31:19: In the way of encouragement or conviction.
31:23: In the way of strengthened faith and guidance.
31:28: That we would know what the next steps of faith-fueled obedience need to look like.
31:36: And that you would enable us to lean on you for that power.
31:46: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
31:49: Amen.