The Real Church of Acts

Reference

Book of Acts

Pastor Shannon starts his series on how to be the REAL body of church according to the books of Acts.

What if there was a book of the Bible that describes the “Real” church? It would be a cool thing to study because it would tell us all about the wins and losses of people who were trying to do this:

Matthew 28: 19-20

Jesus told the believers to go out into the WHOLE world and make disciples, baptize them, and teach them His ways. That seems like a simple task right?

Well, Jesus was just murdered for making disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them! It was NOT a simple task back then, and it’s NOT a simple task now.

It would just be nice to have a roadmap of how accomplish the will of Jesus.

I have GOOD NEWS! One of the first disciples of Jesus thought it might be a good idea to record how it went in those early days. He wrote the book of Acts which records the “acts” of the first church! It would be better to call it the Acts of the Holy Spirit. The empowerment of the Holy Spirit is mentioned 56 times in the book of Acts, more than any other book in the Bible. It’s important.

I want to take the coming weeks and walk through this book. I think it will help us know our role in the Great Commission given by Jesus to His followers.

We need to get this right. Jesus told us to put His kingdom first and the book of Acts helps us to know what that might look like. The book of Acts will help us not get funky.

Main line denominations, the Charismatic Movement, and I would even say some Pentecostal churches have gotten things wrong, and they ended up in the weeds of what God intends for us when it comes to moving in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. There are others who get it wrong by saying the Holy Spirit empowerment was only for that time - cessationist believe that what God did in the book of Acts was for that time only. That’s not true.

The Holy Spirit is the one who draws people to Faith in Jesus

John 16:8

That has never stopped so why would the gifts of the spirit stop?

1 Corinithians 12: 7-11

These gifts of the Holy Spirit are for NOW. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

We are going to study this thing together to find exactly what the Bible teaches about how the church is supposed to operate. The Holy Spirit was not just to empower us during a church service. He has come to empower us to do the work of Jesus in the world!

I was listening to a sermon last week and the Pastor described what it’s like to work in the Ministry of Jesus. He said it’s like being on a high dive, but in the pool there’s no water. You have to jump in faith knowing that the water will appear. Faith is the key. Jumping is the key. Sometimes the water doesn’t show up until you almost hit the bottom!

When you operate in the gifts of the Spirit, it’s like jumping from a high dive. You move in faith trusting that the Holy Spirit is able. Some of us are afraid because we don’t want to look foolish.

One thing we will see in the book of Acts is that God asks so many of his people to do things that seem foolish. But when they took a step of Faith the world was changed.

So, as we study the book of Acts on Sunday morning, I encourage you to study it during the week. Ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you as you read. Write down questions about the things you don’t understand. I believe the Lord is building something in this church.

But the way God builds things is through OUR HANDS. He says, don’t do it by your own strength, but by my Spirit. That doesn’t get us off the hook of physically doing the work, we are just doing it by His empowerment that comes through the leading of the Holy Spirit. EVERYONE who’s part of the church has a part to play. We are all on equal footing. No one is greater than anyone else. We are servants to Jesus.

Let’s go to the book of Acts.

Acts 1: 1-5

Sometimes we forget that after Jesus was resurrected that He stuck around for 40 days teaching His followers. We don’t know exactly what they were taught, but I know they were a whole bunch different than before the crucifixion. Instead of running away, they were now united together.

In verse 4 Jesus told them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the Holy Spirit. He told them that they were going to be Baptized with the Holy Spirit. What does that mean?

Baptism is being immersed or covered in something.

I love chicken wings. Sometimes I baptize my beard and fingers in buffalo sauce. That’s a really bad example of baptism, but it give you a picture of covering.

We baptize people in water to show that they are immersed in the forgiveness of Christ and they come out of the water symbolically as a new person.

Here’s a question…can a person be saved without being baptized in the Holy Spirit?

YES! Of course they can. The Holy Spirit had filled people before and when you give your life to Jesus that was by the work of the Holy Spirit drawing you to God.

Remember John 20:22

Jesus breathed on the disciples to Receive the Holy Spirit. They were committed followers of Jesus who recieved the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

But what is this Baptism of the Holy Spirit all about? It’s about the empowerment to do something supernatural. The Baptism is the POWER covering to do what you cannot do in your own strength.

Don’t get weird about the word Supernatural. I’m not talking about those spooky ghost hunter shows or some psychic hotline. I am talking about when God does something that you can’t do! He is not bound by the natural. We are. When we are empowered by the Holy Spirit then the SUPERNATURAL CAN HAPPEN.

I remember one time I had a dream. It was really strange and about specific people. It was a warning about very specific events that were going to take place. When I woke up, I called those people and it turned out that the dream was REAL! It gave them an encouraging word to carry on according to God’s will.

I can’t take credit for that dream. In fact, at the time I wish I didn’t have it because if I was wrong I was going to look really foolish. But you see, one of the empowerments or gifts of the Holy Spirit is knowledge of things you really couldn’t know unless the Spirit revealed them to you.

It was beyond my natural ability to see their situation, but God wanted to give them a message. He just happened to use me because I’ve been empowered or baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Let’s keep reading:

Acts 1: 6-8

The disciples were still thinking about the Kingdom of God in the natural. After 40 days of being taught by Jesus they were still asking about Israel getting a King. Jesus told them to chill out and stop worrying about the physical stuff and He told them to start focusing on the REAL Kingdom of God which is rooted in the Good News of Jesus.

He told them that the Holy Spirit was going to give them POWER to be a witness to the whole world. Remember these guys needed power. After Jesus died they were afraid that they’d be next! If they were going to fulfill the command to be a witness then they needed supernatural power.

Let me ask you, Has Jesus’ objective gone away? Does Jesus want us to focus on our own lives or the Kingdom of God? Did Jesus only promise the Holy Spirit to those followers so they could spread the Gospel, but now we are on our own?

No to all of the above.

Matthew 6: 33

Jesus wants us to work in HIS kingdom. We can only do that EFFECTIVELY when we allow the gifts of the Spirit to operate THROUGH us. We must be immersed or baptised in His power and authority.

On our own we are puny and ineffective.

Skip ahead to Acts 19 and we see a group of people NOT empowered by the Holy Spirit. They were trying to operate in their own strength.

Acts 19: 13-15

You CANNOT operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit unless you are empowered by the Holy Spirit. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues. Are all from Him. If we try to manufacture these gifts then it gets real strange and WRONG.

We are going to talk so much more about this in the coming weeks. But for today, I just want you to see one more thing.

On the day they Holy Spirit empowered the church to operate in these gifts they were all gathered together, in a room, waiting, and praying.

Jesus told them to do this…to wait, to pray, to believe.

This is what I want from our church. We need to be people who are not tossed on every wave of doctrine, but we wait on the Lord which means that we are to look to Him and the TRUTH of the WORD for our compass. We need to be people who pray - which means that we don’t do ONE thing in our own strength, even Jesus prayed to ask the Father what to do each and every day. We need to be people who believe - we don’t have to have the answers to every question, but we are connected with the one who does! We need to trust Him and know that He is faithful.

So we have this roadmap of how God intends for the church to operate. We have examples of how the Spirit of God has moved in the past. Here’s what I think - if we study this we can build a community empowered by the Spirit of God to change our world. More than anything else I want people to be saved. I want people to know the Jesus who gave His life for them.