SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, we're looking at a pretty special day in Scripture. This is the beginning of chapter two in the book of Acts, and in doing that I reflected back on my life. And I've lived a few years, more than I'd like to admit at times, and have experienced some pretty amazing days in history. I remember as a kid man landing on the moon. Yes, I am that old, and yes, I do believe that we actually landed on the moon, the way some people don't. I believe it's real. I remember the fall of the Soviet Union, uh, the falling of the Berlin Wall. I remember 9-11. It's actually supposed to be there that day. Um, yeah, some pretty powerful moments in history. In my little bit of a lifetime. And then looking back on my life personally, I've had some pretty powerful and special moments. Um marrying Nancy, our wedding day, um, I still can look back on vividly and with incredible and increasing gratefulness. Um, the birth of each one of our kids and their marriages and them giving birth to their kids. I remember the day I came to faith in Christ, truly got the gospel and responded to Him. I remember my baptism. I remember coming up out of the water and what that was, that feeling was like in that experience. I mean, I've been blessed all through my life, and so much to be thankful for. We're looking today at one of the most significant days in history. And there are some big ones along the way, and every single one of those big days in history was a result of God working in history. Biggest of them in some respects was the day he created everything out of nothing. Before that, there was just God, and he literally spoke all that exists into existence. Ex Nilio, it's called. Out of nothing. He spoke it. That was day one, day six, he created mankind. I'm kind of grateful for that, or you and I wouldn't be here today. We're descendants of those first people. God has worked all through history. I mean, mankind fell. We separated ourselves from God. He brought the flood to bear to cleanse it and to reboot, basically, to get a do-over through Noah and his descendants. He delivered the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt.

unknown 2:10

Right?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

The ten plagues, the tenth one being the Passover. He led them out of Egypt. He parted the Red Sea and they walked across on muddy ground. No, they didn't. He walked across on dry ground. Manah in the desert, the pillar of fire and the cloud that he led them through, his protection, his provision for them, into the promised land. And maybe most significantly by a mile, he steps out of heaven and takes on flesh and is born a man. Literally, in order to die on the cross, which he did for you and for me, to pay the penalty that we couldn't pay, the penalty in full for every sin I have ever committed, am committing, or will commit, in the same for you. Paid in full. So there's no double jeopardy with God. He's perfectly just. Your sins can now be separated from you as far as the East is from the West. And he offers us that forgiveness in Christ. He offers us new life, the ability to live that life, the power to live that life, a restored relationship with him. I mean, it's profound what God has done. So Jesus gave his life, he was buried, he rose again from the dead. He spent 40 days with his followers, preparing them for the day that he was heading back to heaven. And to move through life in a way that would bless them and protect them and would honor God and help his kingdom spread through the world. 40 days alongside Jesus, proving that, hey, he's here, he's alive, opening up the very words of Scripture so that they could understand it. God himself is teaching them and unveiling these truths to them for 40 days. Can't imagine how beautiful and wonderful that was. And what were his last words to them? Wow, you will be, not you may be or can be, but you will be my witnesses in all Judea, Samaria, or Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. You are going to be witnesses, and we're going to be his witnesses here. But to wait, that was his command, wait for the Holy Spirit of God. So I can't, like it's hard for me to imagine it, and I try to. Alongside God Himself, risen from the dead, preparing them, and he says, wait. I'm leaving you, and I'm going to send the helper back. I'm sending the Holy Spirit back. Trust me. Think about this for a minute. Trust me. They just walked alongside him, his closest followers, for three years, anticipating the Messiah who's going to restore Israel. They had the wrong expectations, they missed. But then they watched him get crucified. They scattered. They ran. He rose from the dead and they regathered. And now they're in this upper room after Christ has ascended back up into heaven. And he's told them to wait. And they did. How long would you have waited? Jesus just rose from the dead into heaven before your eyes. Next day, come on, God, where's the Spirit of God? Where's the helper? Where's the counselor? Where's the comforter? Who is this? Where is this? Day two? Day three? Day three. That's probably a big day because Jesus rose from the dead after three days, and this is probably the day. Here it comes. Come on, guys. We're praying. We're dependent. We're anticipating. We're not seeing it. Day four? Day five? Day six? Day seven? Day eight? They're staying the course. They are staying together. 120 of them, gathered together, praying, anticipating, increasingly recognizing how empty and dependent they were apart from God Himself. Day nine and day ten. And here he comes. Day 10. I mean, what an amazing day. What we are going to be reading about today is the day that God came literally to indwell you, to indwell me, to bring us to life, to empower us, to guide us, to open up God's word to us. What we're going to read about today is the birth of the church. And it's an amazing day. It's one of the most transformational days in all of history. So let's pick up in chapter 2, right at verse 1. And I want to camp out for the most part on this first paragraph, but we're going to explain the second one at some level as well. It says, when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. In divided tongues as of fire appeared to them, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Whoa. Whoa. Day 10. What we've come to know as Pentecost. Pentah, the word for 50. 50 days after. Depends if you're a Jew or a Christian how we count this, but we end up at the same day, and I'll explain that. Fifty days after the crucifixion of Christ. Fifty days after the Passover. That's when Jesus was crucified. The Passover Lamb, God Himself, was crucified on that day for you and for me. And what this is called is the feast of Shabbat or the feast of weeks for the Jews, for the Hebrews. And it was a feast of weeks, it was a week of weeks. It was seven weeks. Seven times seven is fifty-two? No, I just want to see if you guys are awake. Come on. Seven times seven is 49. It's 49 days plus a day, plus the Sabbath that follows it. And they were commanded by God to observe this festival, the festival of Passover. So in Jewish history, the Passover was that event. It was the tenth plague. They're enslaved in Egypt 400 years. God calls up Moses and says, Go deliver my people. And Moses goes to Pharaoh and says, Let my people go. And Pharaoh says, No. Nine times. And they deliver, God delivers through Moses. This is all God's power and all God's glory. Nine different plagues, each one of them dealing with one of the Egyptian gods, demonstrating God's sufficiency and superiority to those Egyptian gods. And each time Pharaoh says, uh-uh. But the tenth plague, that's a little bit more painful. This isn't frogs or flies or anything like that or water turning to blood. This is the firstborn male in each family being killed by the Spirit of God. And God tells Moses to tell the people of Israel to go sacrifice a lamb, take the blood of that lamb, putting it over the lamentil, over the doorpost of your home, and when the Spirit of God comes and sees that, he will pass over that home. That's where the word Passover comes from. And the Spirit of God came and he did that. And the Israelite families were protected by the blood of the lamb. That sacrificial lamb was pointing at Jesus, who was going to come all those years later to sacrifice his life, his blood for you and for me. And God wanted him to remember that. So God embedded in the life of Israel seven different feasts. There were four of them that were observed in the springtime, there were three of them that were observed in the fall. And each one of them pointed to a significant act of God in terms of his work to redeem mankind. So the spring feast started with Passover. And that's what they're remembering. That's what this feast was all about here that we're reading about today. The very next day came the feast of unleavened bread. Unleavened bread because they got out of Egypt. Get up and go. There's your open door, get out of here. And the bread he didn't have a chance to rise. And it was used to help them remember that. But what the unleavened bread symbolized in the long-term work of God was the sinless life and body of Christ. Leaven, yeast, representing sin. It wasn't present, it hadn't risen, and that's what we're reminded of when we share in the Lord's Supper: unleavened bread, sinless body and blood of Jesus Christ. This was a powerful time of remembrance. Then the next day coincides directly to the day that Jesus rose from the dead. It was the feast of first fruits. That's what the Jews had celebrated for centuries. Jesus ends up being the first fruit, the first from among the dead to live forever in that context, not just in terms of order, but in terms of superiority in his stature. The first fruits was the first fruit that would come out of the springtime harvest. So they would gather their harvest together and they would bring a grain offering to God, the first and best of the grain offering, demonstrating obedience to God, reverence to God, and also trust in God, not knowing that the rest of the harvest was going to come in. Pretty cool stuff. Every one of these days directly tied to the long-term work of God to redeem mankind. The crucifixion of Christ, the burial of Christ, the resurrection of Christ. And now comes the feast of Passover. The feast of Shabbat. And that represented basically an offering of the summer harvest. And part of the offering, what they were called to do, was pretty cool. They would lift up two loaves of barley. So this is not unleavened bread. This is now leavened bread, which represents sin. Why would God have them do that? Why would He have them offer up an offering that represented sin? And two different ones. Well, it's pretty profound, it's pretty awesome. Because when you get this together, it just all glues together and it's an absolute work of God. Those two loaves that they were lifting up, we didn't understand it, quite frankly, until the backside of what Jesus had done. One was for the Jew and one was for the Gentile. And he's offering them up, and now those two people groups, the Jews and the Gentiles, have become one in Christ, indwelled by the Holy Spirit. That feast that they were observing at the same time was also called by God. They reminded the people of the giving of the law. It was the anniversary of the law that was given on Mount Sinai. So over here you've got the law that they're remembering for all these centuries. Year after year after year, God gave us the law. God gave us the law. We are his chosen people. They kind of blew that, by the way. They were his chosen people that they would come to know him and live for him in such a way that the rest of the world would come to know him. They just hung on to him for themselves, which is, truth be told, what most of us do most of the time. But here they have the law, on the anniversary of the law, and now what happens on this day of Pentecost that we just read about? The Spirit of God comes down. And he comes down in a pretty profound way. He comes down, and what they see are things like it seems to be flames of fire, and I don't think it was fire, but that comes down to rest upon each one of them and it fills them. It fills them. They become indwelled by the Spirit of God, children of God at that moment. That's literally what it means to be born again. When the Spirit of God comes to live in you and gives you new birth as a spirit as a child of God. The law and grace. Whoa, this is pretty big stuff. And it's this grace that has united you and Gentile as one people under God. This is Pentecost. But I want you to just take a minute and I want you to park that information and facts, and I want you to think about what that experience must have been like. I was going to have Dean or Adam crank the noise in here. Like a tornado or a hurricane. Can you imagine? Ten days of prayer, ten days of anticipation, and then suddenly the room is filled with this, and you watch this come down, and it breaks out into different tongues of what appear to be fire resting upon and filling and indwelling the people. Wind and fire. Whoa. Well, this is it. This is what Jesus was talking about. And it's absolutely to a Jew powerfully reminiscent of the fact this is God coming and doing this to us because both wind and fire were symbols of God all through the Old Testament. Moses in the burning bush, the pillar of fire at night, and the cloud by day as he led them through the desert. Numbers of different instances of this all through Scripture, fire and wind, and it didn't just come down, it spread out to them individually. And that's profound because to a Jew seeing that at that time, I mean, this is a jaw-dropping experience, but now looking back on this 2,000 years later, think about what just happened. A Jews' identity, for the most part, in their minds and the way they functioned in their culture, was a corporate identity. We are God's chosen people. They went to the temple, that's where they went with God. That was their identity. We are Jews, we are Hebrews, we are Israelites all through different times of periods of time. It was a national corporate identity that they had. And what just happened at Pentecost? God came down, and where did he go? Into the individual believers. Law, grace, corporate identity, and now what he is doing is he has given them a visual reference to the personal living relationship that we have with God in and through Jesus Christ as the Spirit of God comes to indwell you. It's a big deal. What he did for them, he does for you. Now we might not get to see this come down. It may not be visual, or we may not hear it, but the reality of it is just as true. He literally comes to indwell you. It's probably good today that we don't have the fire come down in our heads because I would have lost more hair than this. He's in me. He indwells me. He is the very cause and center of my being as a child of God. It is God in His Spirit that has given rebirth to me. A human being dead in my sin, separated from God, and brought to new life by this Holy Spirit that we're reading about today. And it is the only thing that makes sense of everything when it comes to God. Because if you had even a reasonably healthy view of God, you would understand that He's holy and pure. There is no sin in heaven, and you and I have a bit of a problem when it comes to that because our lives are littered with sin. And there's nothing we can do to get rid of that stain of sin, even if we were perfect the rest of our lives. So God took care of that problem for us. And he isn't just a loving God, he is a perfectly just God. And his justice had to be satisfied, and the only solution to that was God Himself paying the penalty for our sin. That's what Jesus did, and that's why he did it. It's because he chose to love you and to love me. Not because we're lovable, but because he's God. And the price he paid, shoot, I'll get choked up on you. I can't imagine. A pure holy God taking on, forget your sin for a minute. My sin. Make it personal. He paid the penalty for you. Everything you have ever done, are doing, or ever will do, paid for in full. A horrific physical death, but the spiritual penalty he paid, I can't imagine. And he says, here is this gift of forgiveness. Here is this gift of life. Here is this restored relationship with God. Perfectly secure relationship with God. Here's the power to live it out. Here's my word to guide you through it and my spirit to guide you through it. He has given us everything we need for life and godliness now and guarantees our eternal future. Not because of a priest or a pastor or a ritual or your good works or anything else. It's a hundred percent because of him. And it is the only thing that even begins to make sense if we have the humility and the vulnerability to re-examine what we think and why we believe it. Pentecost was an incredibly big deal. The Spirit of God has come down, and He's come to live in people. He's not just with us like He was in the Old Testament. He would come on and be with people for different functions and different purposes for periods of time. He is in us and he will never, ever, ever, ever, ever leave you. And that's a really good thing. And your security and your status as a child of God when you've taken that step is 100% predicated on the character of God, not on your conduct, which is also a good thing, or you'd have no hope. My hope is found in Jesus Christ. It is found in the person and character of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who he is, what he's done, and what he's promised. And he will keep those promises. He's come down, he offers us this personal living relationship, but I want to point out a couple things in here that may get confusing. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. This is not like going down to Stewart's and gassing up your car. Okay? It just is not. It's definitely high octane. It's God Himself. But it is not like gassing up your car. You don't get more of God along the way through life. You don't. What happens is he gets more of you. So when you are filled by the Spirit of God biblically, what it means is that you are yielding yourself increasingly to the person in authority, to the leadership of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in your life. Being filled by God means him getting more of you. And here's good news for that. You have that opportunity every day, every moment of every day, to be aware of him, to yield to him, to be filled by him, and to move forward in his strength and for his glory. You are lacking nothing. We have this incredible, incredible gift of God. And trust me, a little bit of God is more than enough for any one of us. You don't need more of God. You don't need to be filled up that way, to be yielded to him. A conscious decision, conscious awareness of his presence in your life, and dependency upon him, and a commitment to go move in his strength and for his glory as you move out through life. It's awesome what he's done. And you'll see the effects of this, they're immediate, in the next paragraph. So picking up in verse 5, it says, Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And by the way, this feast was one of the three command feasts. There were seven of them every year. Three of them were command appearances by God to the men of Israel, and they would typically drag their families. With them, you have to show up. So people came from all over that part of the world. And at this sound, the multitude came together, so people outside are hearing this inside the house where they were staying, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each one of us in his own native language? Parthenians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotomia, Judea, Capodicea, Pontius and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, or Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God, and all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But with others mocking, saying, Oh, they're filled with new wines. Whoa. Whoa, what an amazing day. First, the Spirit of God comes down, he indwells them, they're experiencing this. Born again, this is the birth of the church, and now they step out these doors, these followers of Christ that have been huddled in this room, waiting for the Holy Spirit for ten days. These same people, by the way, that had deserted Jesus at the cross.

unknown 23:18

Poof.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

I don't want to be killed. I don't want to be crucified. And now they step out into this crowd of Jews, about 200 and some thousand people are the estimates from all over that part of the world. Take a look at this map just to give you a visual for where these people have come from. Those are the people groups that were just referenced in that part of chapter two. It wasn't meant to be exhaustive, but it's indicative of how many people groups had come into Jerusalem that day. And what has happened? They heard these apostles who had now been filled by the Spirit of God speaking to them in their own languages. That's a lot of different language groups that are captured there. Many of you will remember Adama, who was here just a couple weeks ago from Burkina Faso? He spoke seven languages. Fluently. I mean, I can't even fake it. I'm an American. I only speak American. Look at all those languages. These were Galileans. These were fishermen. Okay. These were not the highly educated. They focused in a little area up around the Sea of Galilee. They didn't have a lot of commerce with other parts of the world. They would go down to Jerusalem for the festivals. So they probably had some degree of Greek or Koine Greek, maybe some Aramaic. May have spoken Latin, dealing with a Roman occupation. Pretty limited vocabulary, though, and each one of them are hearing these apostles speak to them in their own heart language. It is an absolute work of God. It was a demonstration of the power of God in the people of God and telling them the mighty works of God. Pretty cool stuff. And what did they hear them talk about? The Yankee score? No. They heard them telling them about the mighty works of God. Huh. My first day out of the box, involved by the Spirit of God, out the door I go, and I'm speaking about the mighty works of God. And I'm awed by that. And I backed up when I read that and I went, huh? What mighty works of God. And I had to think this for a minute. Because if you can't define them, if you can't identify them, you sure aren't going to speak about them. It's a good opportunity to back up and reflect upon the mighty works of God. And not being exhaustive about it at all, but kind of created everything out of nothing. That's a pretty big deal. That's pretty mighty work. There's just God, and we have what we call, or many scientists call, the Big Bang, the beginning of matter as we know it, even the beginning of time. He creates mankind. He floods the earth. He hits a big redo through Noah and his family. He scatters the people groups at the Tower of Babel and gives them those different languages so that they can't communicate with one another and they scatter to their own kinds and groups around the world because they had tried to work themselves up to God in the tower. He delivers the Jews, parts the Red Sea, provides manna, conquers the nations that are there to clear out the promised land so his people could live with him and for him in such a way that the rest of the world would come to know him. Steps out of heaven. He dies for you and for me. It's a pretty big mighty work of God. He sends his spirit to indwell us, bringing life to death. It's a God thing. And you could go on and on and on. I want to encourage you to reflect on some of those mighty works of God. And whether it's knocking down the walls of Jericho or whatever it might be, the Bible is littered, and that is a big theological word. It's littered with mighty works of God that bring glory to God. And the people went out there and they spoke about that to all the people that were there. But you know what else they spoke about? And it doesn't say it, but we know conclusively that they spoke it? This little thing called the gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ. Who He is and what He did for them. And you know how we know that? All you gotta do sometimes is just read ahead a little bit in the Bible because at the end of this very chapter, chapter 2, it talks about how 3,000 of them came to a saving faith that day and were baptized. That is a work of God. And the only way that they could respond to the gospel is if they heard the gospel and they shared. And that really is the message of the New Testament. So as they weren't around preaching, and we read about it in almost every letter of the New Testament, they ministered to people, they dealt with their woes and their ills and healed and they did all sorts of things to correct their thinking. But the primary message all through the New Testament, the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, because that is the news they need to hear. That is the news that they need to be able to respond to. It is the biggest, most important thing in life. And they went out and they shared it. I want to clean up one thing. I'm going to try to do this for you briefly. I wasn't planning on this when I walked in the door this morning, but it was asked this morning just before the 8:30 service. You gotta talk about tongues? I thought, oh, shoot. I wasn't planning on it. Well, it's there. And I went, yeah, it is there, but it's not really the focus of this passage, so I'm only gonna dwell on it briefly. The Holy Spirit came down and the people went out and they spoke in tongues. They did. The word is glassa, it is a known language. That's what the word meant. In all the secular literature in the Bible, it's a known language. They didn't have Italian, French, and German at that time, but they had the different language groups that were there. People heard them in their own language. It's even reaffirming it for us. In almost every case where that word is used in the Bible, it is a known language. But there are one or two places, there might be three, but I think there's at least two, where it speaks of a language that is not a known language like we have here, like the language of angels. And what people today may view as an utterance, speaking in tongues, it's unintelligible language. And I have no doubt that it happened, because the Bible says that it happened. I don't doubt that at all. But I was asked how do we handle that at cross point? So we are not what you would identify as a charismatic church. I am a cautious cessationist. I believe those gifts stopped at the closing of the canon of Scripture. When God gave us his last word, it says that those gifts were given to authenticate the word of God. And this funny thing happened after the last letter was written. For 1900 years, the best historians can tell, there is no reference to these things being practiced anywhere at any time. Until God came back to the Asouza Street Revival in San Francisco in 1906. And he came back to a person that was an absolute wing nut. That's a technical term, you can look it up. He had been run out of San Francisco years before as a snake oil salesman. That literally was a thing back then. He had been involved in a gunfight, and this is who God came back to his new chosen people, effectively, the people of America, the people of San Francisco. Explains a lot about 49er fans today. Sorry. Couldn't resist that one. I totally lost my place now. And it spread through women from church to church, and there was a movement of God. I don't doubt that at all. So I'm saying some of this with tongue in cheek. I don't believe that was God. I don't believe it was God. And you know what? I could be wrong. I could be wrong. And I want to be careful about that. And I want to be humble about that. I have dear brothers and sisters in Christ that have spoken in tongues, that practice that exercise. I don't look at them with judgment, I don't look at them with condemnation. I love them. One or both of us could be right or wrong. Someday we're going to know for sure, and at that point we're just not going to care. That is not going to be the main thing when we get in the presence of God. We're not a church that practices that here, and I wanted to explain how we handle it at CrossPoint because I've been asked numbers of times along the way, well, what do you do if it happens? I shared at 8:30. If somebody speaks in tongues, we shoot them. It doesn't happen again. No, we don't. If it was to happen here, and I don't mean this as a threat, I'm just trying to mean this as in an objective way. We believe that the practice has some biblical grounding, and that there would be one person speaking, that there would be an interpretation that we would identify as being of God. And I would look at the leadership of this church, and I and we would with fear and reverence turn to God and seek his leading and ask for his understanding and validation. Is this of you? And if it was, I will praise God. I will celebrate that and praise God. And if it is not, we're going to gently ask the person to zip it and to sit down because it would be out of order. 90x% of the way it's practiced in our American culture is contrary to the word of God, because you've got multiple people speaking at one time, you frequently don't have interpretations as not of God. Now it might be a sincere experience of the people that are involved in it, but that is not going to happen here. And if we are not unified in our understanding of it being of God, and I believe it's of God, he would bless us with unity and understanding it's his will, then we're going to throttle it back. Because he is not a God of disorder. He is a God of order. We will not condemn the person, we will not shoot the person, but that's how we handle this, and that's how I want you to understand that coming here at a cross point. We love you. We have people here at every service we have that have a history of practicing speaking in tongues. I'm thankful that you're here and part of this church. Grateful that you're here and part of this church. We just want to do our best to humbly and reverently honor God with the way we move through it. But as we hit it, talking through or preaching through scripture, we're going to deal with it in the sections that we hit it. This is clearly, clearly a known language that the people heard that they understood where they were coming from. So, Spirit of God comes down. Pretty cool thing, the people of the world, or that part of the world, had come to Jerusalem and they heard it. The really neat thing is they went back to where they lived, carrying the gospel with them, carrying back with them the news about who God is and what he had done. But these same people, these same followers of Christ, they also got off their backsides and they went to share this news with people around Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Why? Because it matters. Because if people don't hear, they don't have the opportunity to respond to the gospel, and it matters forever. They gave their lives at some level so you and I could sit here today. We wouldn't be here if they hadn't been faithful and courageous and obedient and even in many cases martyred for their faith and sacrifice in going out and sharing the gospel. And he wants us to go out there and do the same thing. In his strength, in his strength, filled by his spirit, yielded to him, trusting in him to do the work. Not trusting in your words, trusting in the Spirit of God to work through you and what you choose to do and are able to share. You can do this. This is not to get something out of you. This message, if you get this right, will change your life for the rest of your life. So, right up until now, this is for the most part, it's been head knowledge. About Pentecost, about what happened that day, about what those people experienced. Here's what changes for you. This is where it moves from head knowledge to life change for you and for me. Truth be told, that's what I'm trying to do, is teach the truth. Most Christians don't think about the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. Truth be told, I don't think about the Holy Spirit in that context on a daily basis. I forget way too often. And I need passages like this to remind me. And I need people like you to remind me as I go through life. We know who he is. We know as a child of God that he indwells us. Why don't we live like that? There's no magic to this, there really isn't. Remember, all it takes is a conscious awareness of the truth, that he's there, that he is who he says he is, and then a yielding to him. And there is the rub. Because we don't much like losing control of our lives, do we? I've got plans. I want to go fishing. I've got yard work to do, people to see, places to go. And we don't like letting our values, our priorities, we don't want God messing with the lives that we're reasonably comfortable with, as much and messed up as they are. It's my life, and I'm just rather have God out here as a piece of it. But the fact is, he is at the center of my life, and he wants me to live that way. So what you have and I have as a child of God is the opportunity to acknowledge what's true. He is indwelling me. And now I've got the ability to choose, consciously choose, to recognize my dependency upon him, to live the life that he's given me to live, and to yield to him, and to choose to trust in him and just to pick myself up and walk out those doors in his strength and for his glory with a sense of expectation, a sense of excitement, recognizing that every little thing I do is an opportunity to bring honor and glory to God and to lead people closer to him. You can do this. This will transform, this will change the way that you live life. It's cultivating that dependency upon the Spirit of God who indwells you. And by the way, if he's not there yet, he's waiting for you to say yes. On his terms, not yours, but on God's terms. 100% faith in Jesus and a life yielded to him and trusting in him. He's waiting for you. And he's waiting for each of us to respond to him as we move through our days. One of the best illustrations of this, um, I heard it, I think, originally from a group called the Timothy Initiative. We're a pretty big fan of that ministry. Um they do publications, but basically they send people all around the world, and the gospel is spreading. Churches are starting very humble ways through the people in those different places. Um, but they talk about this topic, about the spirit of God indwelling us and the opportunity we have, and the illustration they used was of a sailboat. How many of you sailed here today? Okay. We don't do sailboats for the most part. We don't live right down in the Hudson River or out in the ocean. But a sailboat is a good picture of a Christian living without the Spirit of God. Good looking boat. But the sails are tied up and it sits there and it just sits bobbing in the water. Sbob back and forth and get nudged along. The currents, what's going on out there, will sort of get a hold of us. Am I getting anybody seasick? How do you move somewhere in a sailboat? You unfurl the sails. You raise the sails, and it's the wind that carries you forward. That's the power. That's what God is offering to us. What he wants us to do is basically to unfurl our sails in the morning. And that's a confession to him that God, I need you. I am dependent upon you, I'm here. And we raise our sails. I'm available, God. Fill me with your spirit and lead me through the day. Help me to see the people in the world as I go through it. Help me to engage them in your strength and for your glory. God lead me as I move out of here on mission. It's a beautiful picture of what he calls us to do. We don't do sailing for the most part, but I talked about it a couple years ago. I think all of you probably drove here today or were given a ride here today. You head out to your cars, same basic picture as a boat. There's some nice cars in that parking lot. They aren't going anywhere until you turn them on. That's like coming to life in Christ. Now the engine's running, the power is there, the engine's there, the gas is there, you're ready to go, but you don't go anywhere. Why not? You gotta put it in the gear. You gotta put it into gear and you gotta step on the pedal. It takes that kind of power to go. That's a lot like what it is with the Spirit of God. He indwells us. We are creations of God, indwelled by God, but we need to trust in him dependently as we move through life. And as you do, he will increasingly lead you in terms of service to him. Your life will increasingly become more and more like Christ. It's a big part of what it means to grow to become a follower of Christ, is to be led by the Spirit of God. Jesus modeled it all through his ministry, his dependency, and it was through the Spirit's power that he did his work here on earth. And if Jesus needed that, I got news for you. So do you and I. So my encouragement this morning is going to be to cultivate that awareness of the Spirit of God within you, to cultivate and remind yourself of the need for you to be dependent upon Him, yielded to Him, and led by Him as you move through life. And to be excited about the opportunity in front of you because it is a beautiful, life-changing experience, and it's waiting for each and every one of us every day. I want to invite you, if you would, to pray with me. I'm going to ask God to speak this into our hearts and minds. And I pray that we'll respond in a way over and over and over again that honors him and blesses you. So let's pray together. Almighty God, our Father, Lord Jesus, and Holy Spirit, we um again, we just acknowledge you as the one true living God. And I thank you, God, for the way that you've chosen to love us, Lord, for the way that you have provided life and forgiveness and purpose and peace with you and the power, God, to live this life out. And I confess, God, that way too often I live, Lord, in my strength and not yours. And even for my purposes and not yours. And I acknowledge that. And I thank you for your grace that I have in Christ. So, Lord, I'm turning now and I pray that personally and for each person here, that you would bring this message to bear, God, from your word, about the opportunity we have to be filled by you, by your spirit on a moment-by-moment basis, day by day. And God, as we respond to this message in a way that honors you, I pray that you would bless and inspire and encourage each person who's here. And God, that we would walk out those doors today with a sense of expectation, all because of you. We love you, Lord. And as we turn back to you now and worship God, I pray that we would do it as an incredibly grateful people. And I ask that in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.