00:00: This is the Word of God from Acts chapter 1.
00:05: If you'd like to follow along, turn to Acts chapter 1, verses 1 through 11.
00:18: In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
00:32: 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.
00:42: And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
00:58: So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
01:04: He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, 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.
01:23: And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
01:29: And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?
01:39: Then this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
02:00: This morning is kind of a special day that doesn't happen all the time.
02:05: We're starting a new sermon series.
02:07: I know some of you have enjoyed giving me a hard time about how long we were in the book of Romans, but the book of Romans is just that good.
02:16: This morning we get to start a new series, and we're going to be looking at the book of Acts.
02:20: Acts is the story of God's work in the days of the early church.
02:27: And in chapter 1, we start off not where you might expect.
02:34: I used to think that the first section, these verses that were read aloud, that this was about Jesus' ascension.
02:42: This was about Jesus, after being resurrected, ascending to heaven, leaving the earth, going back to heaven.
02:51: It's not, but I thought it was.
02:54: Now, in my defense, Acts chapter 1, as you just heard read aloud, does recount Jesus' ascension.
03:00: In fact, right away, it's mentioned in the very first sentence of the passage.
03:06: Then in the second sentence, verse 3, we're told a little bit about what happened after the resurrection, before the ascension, how Jesus was manifesting himself, revealing himself to the disciples, and proving in a variety of ways that it really was him.
03:21: He really was resurrected.
03:23: And then we get to verse 9, and it describes Jesus' ascension.
03:28: Like, this is how it happened.
03:29: This is what took place.
03:30: And then we get a couple of verses that explain what was witnessed.
03:35: The angels come, and they say, hey, why are you doing this?
03:38: This is what happened.
03:39: And this is what to expect later on, that he's going to return, just in the same manner you saw him go.
03:45: So you can understand my confusion why I thought this first section in Acts was about the ascension.
03:54: But honestly, the ascension of Jesus is the occasion of the passage, not the point of the passage.
04:04: For example, if you ask a kid, what's the Old Testament book of Jonah about?
04:09: They will probably say something like, it's about a big fish swallowing a guy.
04:13: Why?
04:13: Well, it's not.
04:16: That's not really what the book of Jonah is about.
04:19: Now, it has that in there.
04:20: It's part of the story.
04:21: But the book of Jonah is actually about God's compassion and mercy on all peoples, not just the Jewish people.
04:33: Similarly, the beginning of the book of Acts opens with the story of Jesus' ascension, but it's not about his ascension.
04:41: So what is it about?
04:42: Let me explain it using automotive imagery.
04:47: A couple months ago, we had a car that was acting up.
04:50: Jonathan described it to me as, it's kind of stuttering.
04:54: All right, well, we'll get it into the mechanic out in Suamico.
04:58: And so I begin driving it to Suamico.
05:01: Carrie's following me in the other vehicle so that we can get me home afterwards.
05:05: And she's like, are you going to go in town or are you going to go on the highway?
05:08: I'm like, I don't know.
05:09: We'll see how this goes.
05:09: So I start driving.
05:11: And it's not driving right, but it's going.
05:15: And I'm getting along.
05:16: And, you know, I'm doing 30 and 30 or 35 and a 35.
05:20: And it's all right.
05:21: It just kind of feels off.
05:23: But I'm thinking, hey, I can drive.
05:25: I'll go ahead and take the highway.
05:26: It had no sense dragging out of the trip.
05:28: So I get on the highway.
05:31: And as I went up that hill ramp to get on 43, I knew I had a problem.
05:38: Because going up that ramp, trying to accelerate, the car was like, no.
05:44: No, you're not going to go that speed.
05:48: So I'm like, okay, easing off the gas pedal, trying to coax it up the hill.
05:52: And if you know anything about going from Webster Avenue to 43 westbound, what's the next thing you're going to encounter right away?
06:02: The bridge.
06:03: The Leo Frigo Bridge.
06:04: Which is not a bridge like this.
06:06: It's a bridge like this.
06:08: Right?
06:09: You go up over that hill.
06:11: Now, when I say you go up over that hill, I mean you do.
06:13: Not that I did.
06:15: I'm chugging along and I'm trying to coax it up to highway speed so I don't get mashed by oncoming traffic.
06:20: Or not oncoming.
06:22: Traffic passing me.
06:23: I was in the correct lane.
06:24: There's no oncoming traffic.
06:25: So I'm trying to get up this hill.
06:27: And the car's like, I'll give you 25.
06:30: If you're nice to me, I might let you go 30.
06:34: But you're not doing 70.
06:36: And the more I'm trying to get it up this hill, the more it's like, nope.
06:39: And it's slowing down.
06:41: It's slowing down.
06:41: I'm putting on my hazards.
06:43: Carrie's behind me with her hazards thinking, what's he doing?
06:46: What's going on?
06:47: I can only imagine the things going through her head.
06:51: And I was literally to the point of thinking, I'm not going to get up the hill of this bridge.
06:55: I'm going to have to literally pull over on the side of the road, on the highway, on the bridge.
07:02: Because I literally can't get up the hill.
07:06: It was that bad.
07:07: There's just no power in the engine of this car.
07:11: Do you ever feel like you've got power issues like that?
07:18: Like there's just not enough oomph under the engine in your life to live the way that God is calling you to live?
07:25: That the Christian life sometimes feels like, that's just too hard.
07:29: I don't think I can do that.
07:32: That's too hard for me to live the way that God wants me to live.
07:37: Or like maybe you're like, you know, I can kind of do day-to-day Christianity, day-to-day living as a believer.
07:44: But man, there's some things that God wants me to do that just, I don't have the strength for that.
07:50: I don't know, things like evangelism.
07:54: Anybody feel like that's harder than everyday Christian living?
07:58: Show of hands, yeah, yeah.
08:00: You know what?
08:01: You're right.
08:03: There are aspects of the Christian life for which we are simply not prepared without special empowerment from God.
08:15: We kind of sang about that this morning.
08:16: We said, the strength to follow your commands could never come from me.
08:21: Implicit in that is the confession.
08:23: I don't have the power.
08:24: I don't have the strength within myself to do that.
08:29: And outreach, whether it's evangelism or missions, doing gospel, Jesus sharing locally, evangelism, or to some other people group elsewhere, missions.
08:40: We don't have the power in and of ourselves for bearing witness about Jesus in that way.
08:48: And that is what this opening section of the book of Acts is about.
08:54: It's about Jesus' disciples needing power for witness and God providing the solution to that need.
09:04: Turn your attention to verse 8.
09:06: Jesus said to them, 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 ends of the earth.
09:24: I've heard that verse talked about so many times.
09:30: It's a great verse.
09:32: But most of the time when I've heard that talked about, people were talking about these concentric circles.
09:37: They were saying, okay, the disciples, when they heard this, they were in Jerusalem.
09:41: So when Jesus said, you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, he meant you're going to be my witnesses locally where you are.
09:50: And that's fine.
09:50: That's true.
09:52: And you're going to be my witnesses in all Judea, which is like the second ring of this concentric circle, saying you're going to be my witnesses in the surrounding area.
10:00: So if, for example, Green Bay were our Jerusalem where we live, then maybe the greater Green Bay area or Brown County might be our Judea, where there's lots of people who are more or less like us who live in this area.
10:15: Now, I say more or less like us because, you know, you go to other parts of the U.S.
10:21: and you're like, what is that?
10:24: Anywhere in the deep south, you're going to encounter stuff and you're like, what are they talking about?
10:30: They ordered a Coke and they got an orange soda.
10:32: What is that?
10:33: It's a totally different place and culture.
10:35: Or you go to the Pacific Northwest or the New England area, you go to California, and there's such differentness.
10:42: But here in Brown County, people are more or less like us.
10:45: The third ring is Samaria, which in Israel context was a little further away, and it was filled with people who weren't primarily overwhelmingly Jewish.
10:58: It had people who had been, who had emigrated to the area, forced emigration by previous empires that had moved people around.
11:09: And there was kind of this blend of Jewish people and non-Jewish people and a blend of non-Jewish faith and Jewish faith.
11:15: And it was all kind of mixed up in a melting pot kind of way.
11:18: And so they were a little different.
11:21: And Jesus said, you're going to bear witness there too.
11:22: That might be like us bearing witness to Southerners or going out to Wyoming and sharing Jesus with a cowboy or Valley Girls or California or wherever.
11:37: Some place different, but still kind of in our greater geographic area.
11:43: And then finally to the ends of the earth, like everywhere else.
11:45: These concentric rings.
11:47: And Jesus expected his disciples to represent him, to witness about him in this ever-growing sphere of influence.
11:56: But I so rarely have heard people talk about the first half.
12:01: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
12:05: Now, Jesus is saying this after his earthly ministry, after the cross, after the tomb, after the resurrection, but before he returns to heaven.
12:17: He says, this is yet to come.
12:20: And you're going to get power when the Holy Spirit comes.
12:27: That power has a purpose for witness.
12:31: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
12:38: And you will be my witnesses in these places.
12:42: The power is for the purpose of witness.
12:47: That is the calling of God on his disciples, especially, and in a somewhat unique way, his 12 apostles and then this larger group of disciples.
12:59: But by extension, even to us today, the power of the Holy Spirit is integrally linked to our representing Jesus to the world around us.
13:11: That's the connection that's being made here.
13:13: Now, the book of Acts was written by a fellow named Luke.
13:16: It's the first sermon of the book of Acts.
13:17: I've got to tell you who wrote it, right?
13:19: It's written by a guy named Luke.
13:20: He was a physician, a doctor, and a traveling and ministry companion of the apostle Paul.
13:25: And he wrote not just the book of Acts.
13:27: He actually wrote two New Testament books, the book of Luke and the book of Acts, which is interesting because that means he wrote 25 to 30 percent of the New Testament.
13:38: These are longer books.
13:39: And that also means he wrote more of the New Testament than any other individual author.
13:47: Paul wrote more letters, but they tended to be mostly short.
13:50: And so actually Luke wrote more of the Bible than Paul did.
13:53: He wrote more of the Bible than John did, who wrote John, 1, 2, 3 John, and Revelation.
13:58: Because Acts and Luke are longer.
14:00: So he's a major source of the New Testament teaching that God has given us.
14:07: And we're helped to understand this connection between the Holy Spirit and power for witness concept if we look at both of the books that he wrote.
14:16: He ends the first book, the book of Luke, and begins the second book, the book of Acts, in a very similar way.
14:24: Luke chapter 24, verses 46 through 48.
14:29: And notice all the stuff he has there.
14:53: He says this gospel message about Jesus dying and rising from the dead, that's part of what needs to happen.
15:01: You can tell that story.
15:02: You're going to call people to repentance so that they can be forgiven of their sins.
15:08: You're going to proclaim this not just as a general truth that this happened to Jesus and you need to turn and repent, but that it should be in Jesus' name, that it's tied to Jesus.
15:19: You can't have this except by Jesus.
15:21: And this needs to go out to everybody, to all nations, all people groups.
15:25: And it's going to begin in Jerusalem.
15:28: Just like we saw those concentric circles in Acts 1.8.
15:32: And he says to his disciples, you are witnesses of these things.
15:35: Then Luke tells us that Jesus said, the very next verse, verse 49, And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.
15:55: Saying, I just told you what you're going to be doing, but not yet.
15:59: Not yet.
16:00: Stay in the city and wait for power from on high.
16:04: Don't do it until then.
16:06: You ever give instructions to your kids?
16:09: We have to make sure to be clear.
16:11: I want you to do this, but don't start yet.
16:13: Let me get to the end of the instructions before you do this.
16:17: I've got to get the whole thing set up for you or this is not going to go well.
16:23: See a couple of parents leaning over and talking to their kids.
16:27: We do that.
16:29: We want to jump the gun.
16:30: Jesus says, you've got to wait.
16:31: You're not ready to go out and tell the world about me until you get power from on high.
16:36: The way that Luke ends Luke and begins Acts kind of reminds me of a two-part TV series.
16:49: You've got two episodes that you end on a cliffhanger and you have to come back for episode two.
16:54: Or a two-part movie.
16:55: I'm not talking about sequels.
16:57: I'm talking about two-part movies.
16:58: Like the more recent Dune movies, part one, part two.
17:01: They were like one movie cut into two parts.
17:03: Right?
17:04: And typically, the second movie begins with kind of a little overlap of where the first one ended.
17:10: So you can kind of pick up right where you need to be.
17:12: That's what Luke's doing.
17:13: He says, I need to make sure you understand.
17:15: There's three pieces.
17:17: There's the witness charge that Jesus gave his disciples to tell the world about Jesus and the good news about Jesus.
17:24: But they're not allowed to do that until they get power.
17:30: And that power from the Holy Spirit is somehow connected to Jesus' ascension.
17:37: Those are the overlaps that we get when we look at how he ends the one and begins the other.
17:44: Now, why does Luke connect these two things?
17:47: The power from the Holy Spirit and Jesus' ascension.
17:50: All he's doing is repeating what Jesus taught.
17:54: Jesus makes this connection.
17:56: Not Luke.
17:57: Luke's just repeating it.
17:59: In John chapter 14, verse 26, Jesus was talking to his disciples, getting them ready for the cross and his departure from them.
18:06: And he said, So Jesus promised, while he was on earth with his disciples, that the Father, God the Father, would send the Helper or the Holy Spirit.
18:26: And that this Holy Spirit would be sent by God the Father in Jesus' name.
18:32: So there's a Father piece and there's a Jesus the Son connection.
18:36: And the role of the Holy Spirit that he was going to send was a teaching role and to remind them about Jesus and what he had taught.
18:46: We'll fast forward to chapter 15, also verse 26.
18:49: He says to his disciples, But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
19:04: And you also will bear witness because you've been with me from the beginning.
19:09: So again, he talks about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God being the Helper.
19:12: But this time he says, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit.
19:15: First time his Father is going to send him.
19:16: This time Jesus says, I'm going to send him.
19:19: But each time he ties it both ways.
19:21: First time, Father is going to send in my name.
19:25: And he says, I'm going to send.
19:26: He comes from the Father.
19:28: So there's a unity at play here.
19:31: He says, the Spirit is going to bear witness about Jesus.
19:34: That repeats what he's already covered.
19:35: But he says, but you're going to bear witness too.
19:38: You're going to represent me to the world.
19:40: And then the next chapter.
19:45: Ooh, doozy.
19:47: 16, 7.
19:48: John 16, 7.
19:49: Jesus says to his disciples, it is to your advantage that I go away.
19:58: If I'm a disciple, I'm like, whoa, time out.
20:01: If I get to be with Jesus in person, in the flesh, and he's working miracles, I don't see how him leaving is in any way going to be advantageous for me.
20:13: I would say he's wrong except he's Jesus.
20:15: And I know that when you say Jesus is wrong, you get yourself in trouble.
20:19: Right?
20:19: He says, it is to your advantage that I go away.
20:23: For, here's why, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you.
20:30: But if I go, I will send him to you.
20:34: So, Jesus is saying, what you're going to need is not me on earth.
20:39: You're going to need the helper, the Holy Spirit.
20:41: And I got to go back and send him.
20:43: If I don't go, he doesn't come.
20:45: And you need him at this stage, not me.
20:49: So, you see the connection between Jesus' ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit?
20:57: He's like, I got to go so that he can come.
20:59: We're not both going to be here at the same time.
21:02: He's going to take over in your life in continuing the work that I, Jesus, have begun in your life.
21:09: How can that be better?
21:13: The passage doesn't say.
21:14: Looking at the rest of scripture, I've got a couple thoughts on that.
21:17: Number one, location, location, location.
21:21: Right?
21:21: Isn't that what they say in real estate?
21:22: It's location, right?
21:23: When Jesus was on earth, where was he?
21:27: One place at a time.
21:29: In that he's God, he's omnipresent.
21:31: But in his taking unto himself human nature, in how he engaged the world as Jesus, God's son, he was limited to one place at a time, one conversation at a time.
21:44: But when the Holy Spirit comes to take over the work of Jesus on earth, he isn't limited to one place at a time.
21:54: He can be everywhere all at once.
21:56: He can be working in Brad and still have attention left over to help me.
22:02: Right?
22:03: That's amazing.
22:05: He can be at work in every one of us.
22:06: Every one of us can be praying and the Holy Spirit can be involved in that simultaneously.
22:11: No slowdown.
22:13: No bottlenecking.
22:15: Secondly, location, location, location.
22:18: Jesus' engagement with the disciples was external.
22:25: The Holy Spirit's engagement with disciples is internal.
22:29: John chapter 14, verses 16, 17.
22:34: Jesus said, I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper, the ringer of the Holy Spirit, to be with you forever.
22:41: Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him.
22:46: You know him, for he dwells with you.
22:49: Right?
22:49: The Holy Spirit was dwelling with the disciples at the time.
22:51: And will be in you.
22:53: So there's a transition at Jesus' ascension and ascending the Spirit.
22:57: He's like, he's not just going to be at work with you.
23:00: He's going to come inside of you.
23:02: He's going to enter into you and live in you.
23:06: Later, in the New Testament, after the coming of the Holy Spirit, we read about that reality in a number of places.
23:13: For example, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 19 and 20, which we actually looked at last week.
23:18: He says to the church in Corinth, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?
23:25: Like, don't you know that the Holy Spirit actually lives in you?
23:28: Therefore, your body is like a temple because the temple is the thing, the place where God's presence is inside of that?
23:34: He's like, so you're a temple because God's Spirit is actually inside of you.
23:38: Or Romans chapter 8.
23:40: Who wants to go back to the book of Romans, right?
23:41: Romans chapter 8, verses 9 to 11.
23:43: Paul's explaining repeatedly about the role of the Spirit in living in Christians, dwelling in Christians, he says.
23:51: And then he says, verse 9, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
24:00: Let me translate that.
24:02: If the Holy Spirit does not live inside of you, you are not a Christian.
24:07: Every genuine Christian has the Holy Spirit living inside of him or her.
24:15: Always.
24:17: At this point in church history, that is true.
24:23: And God's Spirit has been commissioned by God the Father and God the Son, that is Jesus, to empower you to tell others about Jesus.
24:34: Jesus, that's an amazing thing.
24:41: We had to switch the website recently and get new email addresses recently.
24:48: I knew it needed to happen, but I didn't know how to do it.
24:53: And so I had to go to someone else and say, can you help me?
24:58: And Steve was like, yes, I can.
25:00: Now, Steve is a tech maestro.
25:07: He's like, oh, that's really easy.
25:08: And then he shoots off his email.
25:10: I'm like, okay.
25:11: And I'm like, puddling, pudtering through it and trying to figure it out.
25:15: I'm like, okay.
25:16: And then I was able to update my email address, but only because I had Steve's help.
25:19: I couldn't do it.
25:20: The Holy Spirit lives in you to enable you to do what God wants you to do, specifically witness.
25:31: Now, what I'd really like to do is take a long look at lots of scriptures that explain the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life.
25:38: But we're not going to do that.
25:39: And all God's people said, amen.
25:41: The reason we're not going to do it is because as we go through the book of Acts, that's a big part of what we're going to see.
25:48: We're going to see how the Holy Spirit is at work, not only in the apostles, but in the early church at large.
25:54: And how this is so significant in the work of God, not only for witness, but in bringing Jewish and non-Jewish people together in one body.
26:03: And God is at work equally in all peoples.
26:07: So suffice it to say this morning three things.
26:10: Number one, we Christians are inadequate to do evangelism and missions in our own strength.
26:19: Two, because God sent the Holy Spirit after Jesus' ascension, all Christians today have the Holy Spirit living within them.
26:29: And three, the Holy Spirit's job, in part, is to empower you for successful Christian outreach on behalf of Jesus.
26:43: Think about what that means.
26:44: That means that if Christians are faithfully representing Jesus to people, there will be some success.
26:56: Not because you're impressive and powerful and capable, but because the Holy Spirit is.
27:02: If a Christian is walking in fellowship with God day by day and representing him accurately to the world around them, and there is no fruit, then the Holy Spirit has failed in his job.
27:17: And that's not a possibility.
27:19: I find that encouraging because it says God will produce fruit as I cooperate with the work that he's doing in me to represent him to the world around us.
27:30: We, the people in this room, the believers in Jesus gathered in this room today, you have a commissioning from God himself to carry the good news of Jesus to the people of Green Bay and Howard and Suamico and Ashwaubenon and Bellevue and so on.
27:46: We are commissioned for this, and we are empowered for it by God's Holy Spirit.
27:54: I told you I was having trouble with that car.
27:56: I was driving.
27:56: I didn't think I was even going to get up the hill.
27:58: I had to get off the highway.
28:01: There's no way it was going to give me 70 miles an hour.
28:03: And you don't want to be doing 25 in a 70.
28:08: So I get off the highway.
28:10: I limp along at inadequate speeds to the mechanic.
28:14: I'm thinking the car is done.
28:17: The mechanic calls me.
28:18: He's like, it's an ignition coil.
28:23: Deep inside the engine, there was a lack of power because the ignition coil had died.
28:30: It wasn't producing the spark that would produce the explosion that would power the car.
28:35: There was some power from the other coils, but there wasn't enough power without that one dead engine.
28:44: And so once the mechanic put inside, deep inside my engine, this new source of power, I drove home on the highway.
28:54: 70.
28:56: Okay, 75.
28:58: No problem.
29:00: Right?
29:01: When God puts his spirit inside you, you will have the power you need to do what he calls you to do.
29:09: I can't help but think in my recent Bible reading being in the Old Testament, I can't help but think of the story of Moses in the wilderness.
29:18: Exodus 3, Exodus 4.
29:20: It's the burning bush encounter where God manifests himself as a burning bush that doesn't burn up.
29:24: And he says, basically, Moses, I'm sending you to Egypt, and you're going to lead my people out of slavery in Egypt.
29:29: And I'm going to do miracles.
29:31: It's going to be really cool.
29:33: Really cool is the paraphrase.
29:34: And then in chapter 4, after hearing all this, Moses, verses 10 to 14, Moses said to the Lord, Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.
29:51: Then the Lord said, Who has made man's mouth?
29:54: Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind?
29:56: Is it not I, the Lord?
29:58: Now, therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.
30:02: Speak.
30:03: Moses is like, I'm not, I don't talk goodly.
30:07: God's like, yeah, I made your mouth.
30:08: I can help you get the right words out.
30:10: Don't worry about it.
30:11: I got you.
30:13: Verse 13.
30:15: But he, Moses, said, Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.
30:21: If I ever wanted to kick somebody for whining, it might be this moment with Moses.
30:27: God says, I'm going to be with you.
30:29: I'm going to empower you.
30:30: I know you can't do it on your own.
30:32: No, I'm going to, that's why I'm going to be with you.
30:33: That's why I'm going to enable you.
30:35: Oh, man, make somebody else do it, Jesus or God.
30:39: Do you ever feel that way about evangelism?
30:42: God says, I'll give you the strength.
30:44: I still don't want to do it.
30:48: Make Pastor Dylan do it so I don't have to.
30:51: Make Courtney do it.
30:52: Can't Courtney do all our evangelism?
30:57: No.
30:57: What is God's response when Moses says, Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.
31:04: Verse 14.
31:06: Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.
31:08: I don't want to anger God by refusing to believe that when he promises to be with me, when he promises his grace and strength and power will be sufficient.
31:25: I don't want to anger him by saying, Nuh-uh.
31:28: And refusing to obey.
31:31: I want for me and I want for you.
31:33: I want for every Christian in this room this morning to say, May it be so.
31:38: Do to your servant as you have said.
31:41: Use me, Jesus.
31:42: Use me, Father.
31:44: Spirit, give me the strength.
31:46: Give me the words.
31:48: And let's go do this.
31:51: I can't promise that every encounter you're going to have is going to just be some wonderful conversion encounter.
31:56: I'm lying to you.
31:57: But I do promise you this.
32:00: If you are walking in right relationship with the Lord.
32:04: And you step out in the obedience of faith to represent Jesus to the world around you.
32:09: There will be fruitfulness.
32:14: There will be fruitfulness.
32:17: I don't have a lot of confidence in you.
32:19: No offense.
32:21: But you're only a little bit better than me and I'm really unimpressive.
32:24: But I have confidence in the Holy Spirit.
32:27: That's where our confidence belongs.
32:29: Amen?
32:30: Amen.
32:33: Don't be afraid to tell others about Jesus.
32:35: You're not on your own.
32:36: You're not left to your own strength and your own power.
32:39: It's not dependent upon you to cause other people to come to Jesus.
32:44: God's Spirit is going to do that through you.
32:48: Our job is to live on mission.
32:51: To keep focused on completing the mission that Jesus has called us to be about.
32:58: To make disciples of all nations.
33:01: To, as we say here at Faith Chapel, To make, To make, Mature, And multiply Fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ.
33:10: To make, To make, So, To make, To make,