Church Mission - Part 1

Bryan Chapell: That same Holy Spirit who was working in the life of Christ and the apostles at the time that the gospel was moving forward into a pagan, secular, militantly opposed to the gospel, that same Holy Spirit is ours, promising to be available and powerful to God's people.
Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today's lesson, Pastor Bryan shares from Acts 1. In this passage, Jesus addresses his disciples with the promise that the Holy Spirit will come upon them and they will receive power that leads to a widening witness of the church as they go forth to all nations and peoples. You can find this lesson and many others when you visit UnlimitedGrace.com. And while you're there, look for Pastor Bryan's book, Unlimited Grace. Dr. Chapell reminds us of the power and mercy of God's grace that motivates and inspires us to serve our Heavenly Father. Let's hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the first half of the lesson, Church Mission.
Bryan Chapell: Author Gabe Lyons writes, "I was 27 years old and embarrassed to be a Christian. This was especially odd because I'd been raised in a Christian home, I graduated from a Christian college, and served as a vice president of a prominent Christian organization. By all accounts, I should have been one of Christianity's greatest fans. "Unfortunately, I began to notice that the perceptions of my friends and neighbors about Christians were incredibly negative. They thought of us as judgmental, homophobic, too political, prideful, killjoys who took over every conversation with their own religious agenda. In fact, the past experiences of my friends caused them to run from anything labeled Christian. And ironically, I had come to empathize with my friends. "Having grown up in a Christian bubble myself, I witnessed countless instances when the lives of Christ followers were incongruent with Jesus's call to be loving, sacrificial, unselfish, and compassionate." Well, they're hard words to listen to, but my guess is not exactly contrary to the experience of many of us. After all, just a few weeks ago, we talked about the difference in the experiences of the generations that worship in this church. What it meant to be a generation raised in a time of a Christian majority in the culture and what it's like to be a Christian when you are a minority since your birth in a pluralistic culture. And how that changes your perception of what you say and do and how you are perceived by others. It becomes important for us to think about because we say in the vision statement of this church that our vision is that we'd be a church where God's unlimited grace is inspiring not just all generations, but all peoples to follow Christ. Now, peoples has an "s" on it, and that's not a grammatical error. We say peoples because that's the biblical terminology of people from many different people groups: nations, tribes, languages, ethnicities. All kinds of people groups among the peoples of the world. And we say we're actually trying to be a church where peoples, not just generations, but different backgrounds and ethnicities, colors, demographics, would so perceive the goodness of the grace of God that they would be inspired to follow Christ by worshiping in this church. But how does that happen when you recognize we seem to be every day losing ground in the culture in terms of both influence and perception as being even a positive force in our nation? What I want to say to you today is that this is not beyond the work of the Holy Spirit. He didn't say, "Oh no, we have to give up." That same Holy Spirit who was working in the life of Christ and the apostles at the time that the gospel was moving forward into a pagan, secular, militantly opposed to the gospel, that same Holy Spirit is ours, promising to be available and powerful to God's people. And we need to remember. I think of it in terms of Gabe Lyons's story. He continues, "I was offered a rare invitation to visit the home of a Christian dinosaur, Billy Graham. I carefully explained to Mr. Graham my organization's mission to expose cultural and church leaders to changes in our world and more importantly, the opportunities that lay ahead through different kinds of ministries." Mr. Graham seemed genuinely curious of how young leaders from arts to education and medicine were leveraging their talents for Christ's witness, creating microfinance banks for the poor, building wells for pure water throughout the third world, developing marketing campaigns to increase awareness of adoption, all for the sake of honoring the work and the word of Christ. I explained it to Mr. Graham. Says Lyons, "A smile walked to the sides of the 89-year-old face. Billy Graham said, 'Back when we did those big crusades, the Holy Spirit was really moving, and people were coming to Christ as we preached the word of God. But today, I see evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in a new way. He is moving through people at work and in relationships to accomplish great things as God's people demonstrate Christ to those around them.'" My goal today is kind of simple. It is to say that the wisdom of an old man is not just reminding us of a new way of the Spirit, but of the old way of Christ. And that what Christ is doing in this amazing passage of his Spirit moving the gospel outward from Jerusalem is saying what is promised to any people who would be faithful to his calling in their time, in their generation, and for their purposes. How do I know that Christ is saying, "My Spirit is able to help you and this witness will take hold," because of what he identifies as his expectation? Verse 8: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Jesus is saying first, I simply expect a widening witness of my disciples. This is not a hope. I hope the Spirit may come and your witness will expand. It's not even a command. I command you to take the gospel out. It's simply a declaration. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the world. How is that going to happen? I must tell you, it's pretty clear the disciples do not understand. They are speaking to the risen Lord. They have seen him hanging on a cross and now he is gathered with them while they are holed up in Jerusalem. And when he is with them, they ask a little question, verse 6: "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Lord, are you going to fix everything now? You're the risen Lord, and it's kind of scary to be here in this room in Jerusalem where all the Roman soldiers and the Jews who betrayed you are wanting our blood. Are you going to fix everything right now?" And Jesus responds in verse 7. He says, "It's not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority." This is what Jesus said before he even went to the cross. Remember there were those even expecting then, "You're going to overthrow the Romans, you're going to fix everything right now, the kingdom of God is coming." And Jesus said in Matthew 24, "Concerning that day and that hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the son, but the father only. Therefore, you must be ready, for the son of man is coming at an hour that you do not expect." The goal is not to time the coming of the Lord. The goal is to be ready for the coming of the Lord. And as we are ready for that day, it is not with a sense of, "Can we just kind of hide out until you fix everything?" But rather as the disciples are asking their sheepish little question, "Lord, are you going to fix everything now?" He comes with a lion's roar and he simply says, "I'm not talking about timing. I'm talking to you about your power. "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." How is the kingdom coming? Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth, and you're the plan. And it's going to happen because the Holy Spirit is coming upon you and you will be changed. You will be my witnesses. This is how I will do this great work. And what you see if you can almost imagine is almost the image of David with his sling going up against Goliath. The little boy who thinks, why should I have capability over ability? But there's the great opposition, the opposition to the world, the opposition of the gospel, the opposition to gospel proclaimers. I can't do anything about that. And if you can just imagine David with his sling winding up: first Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth. And Jesus is saying, "This is what the Holy Spirit is going to do in you: cowardly, holed up, scared, wondering what's going to happen. The Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and you shall be my witnesses." I mean, we just almost have to feel it again. I can remember spending the summers on my grandparents' farm in Tennessee and learning from a cousin how you could take apples and put them in a sling and wind up and go. The first target of course is just the hen house because you can hit that. It's just big enough and close enough. But once you get good, you start aiming for the roosters. And then when you really see how far that thing can go, I mean, you can go over the fence, you can begin to shoot for the cows. I could hit Holsteins with winesaps at 70 yards. And you begin to see that what Jesus is saying is it's not Holsteins, it's the whole world that I'm opening before you. No boundaries, nothing's going to stop you. This expanding work of the Spirit is simply the declaration of God that is going to happen through his people. Jerusalem, where the Jews are? Yeah, sure. But that's just the leaders. Judea, where the Jewish people have long awaited the coming of the Messiah? You're going to expand to there. And then Samaria, where the half-breeds are? The people who were Jews who married to the pagans and then set up their own place of worship? You're going to take my gospel there to the place of prejudice and hatred and ancient antipathies. And beyond there to the ends of the world. Do you understand that for a Jew, there were only two kinds of people in the world? Jews and everybody else. Clean people, covenant people, and dogs and unclean people. And Jesus is saying to your people and more people and people you don't even want to deal with, that's where my gospel is going. Now what I hope you have some sense of, this is not news. While the disciples have not gotten it, they've not really understood, it's been the plan since the beginning.
Guest (Male): You're listening to Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. Would you say that you're burdened by some chains of addiction, some patterns of sin or habits of apathy? Would you like to be set free from that and enjoy joy, peace, true satisfaction? Well, the good news, it's possible. Pastor Bryan says so in his book, a powerful book titled Unlimited Grace. And based on Pastor Bryan's decades of teaching the good news of Christ and his amazing grace, this book Unlimited Grace will take you on a personal journey to discover how grace not only frees you from the guilt and shame of a sinful life, but also provides the daily fuel you need for joy, which is your strength as a Christian. Request your copy of Unlimited Grace, that's the title of the book, when you go online to UnlimitedGrace.com. The web address again, UnlimitedGrace.com. And now more from Bryan Chapell on today's Unlimited Grace.
Bryan Chapell: And Jesus is saying to your people and more people and people you don't even want to deal with, that's where my gospel is going. Now what I hope you have some sense of, this is not news. While the disciples have not gotten it, they've not really understood, it's been the plan since the beginning. What did God say to Abraham? "I will make you a father of many nations." In fact, a multitude of nations. I expect for my message, my covenant to extend, to expand, to be widening all the time. And to David as he begins to fulfill the Messianic purpose of the kingdom of God, what did God say to David but that "I will give you a universal and eternal kingdom that will go from sea to sea and to the end of the earth"? And after David, the prophets begin to say to the people of God as they are looking forward to that eternal and universal Messiah's kingdom, what will happen? Isaiah says, "God will bring offspring from the east and from the west. He will say to the north, give up, and to the south, do not withhold. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth. "Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, who I formed and made." All created in God's image are summoned to the gathering of the covenant people of God. North and south, east and west, from afar. Bring them in. My covenant is expanding. It's this widening purpose of God that he declared from the beginning that he's been working on since the earliest days. It's not just the prophets, it's Jesus himself as you consider who accompanied him on his ministry and to whom he ministered. Yes, he ministered to Jews and to a Samaritan woman and made an example of a good Samaritan. And ministered to a Syrophoenician woman who said, "Lord, I know you shouldn't help me, but can't even the dogs have bones from the master's table?" And he said, "I haven't even had such great faith in Israel." As he's expanding, expanding. As a Roman centurion, an enemy and oppressor, seeks Jesus for the help of a child, Jesus helps. As the one who came to be king of the Jews, he's showing the kingdom is far larger than the Jews. It is a widening kingdom. It's the very structure, as it were, of what Jesus is saying when, having exhibited what his kingdom is to do, what does he say to his disciples? "Go therefore into all the earth." Doing what? Teaching the nations that they are to be my disciples and I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth. It is a widening, widening understanding of what God will do through his witnesses. The very structure of the book of Acts for those of you who like studying is just being laid out in verse 8 of chapter 1. "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem." Now what's going to happen? The Holy Spirit's going to come upon you. And you may remember that there was that time at Pentecost where there were the flames of fire and the sound of rushing wind and the apostles begin to preach in such a way that everyone is hearing in their own language. And the thousands and thousands of people who have come to Jerusalem, Jews from the different nations of the world, begin to hear and be convinced and be converted. And thousands are added to the church and there were added to the church daily such as those who were being saved. So that by the time you get to chapter 6 of the book of Acts, even the priests of the Jews are being converted. And then the officials have enough of that. And so the highest officials begin to say, "We got to stop this movement." And so what do they do? They arrange for the martyrdom, for the slaughter of Stephen, who even as he is being stoned, his cloaks are held by a man named Saul, one day to be named Paul. But that same Saul begins to participate in such persecution that what happens next is the Christians move outside of Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria. And there is a man named Philip who in Acts chapter 7 begins to speak to an Ethiopian eunuch. Not a Jew, an African. And one who is a eunuch who by the standards of the Jews would be perceived as unclean, not able to be in the temple of God. And that same one having heard from Philip says, "What keeps me from being baptized in the name of this Jesus?" And Philip says, "Not a thing." And the gospel expands. And as it expands further and further, we get to Acts 10 and that Peter whose confession Jesus said, "On this I will build my church, your confession of who I am." That same Peter is actually in the home of a Roman centurion. And has God declare from heaven, "What I've declared clean, don't you make unclean." And the gospel goes even to the Romans, even to the enemies of the people by the chief disciple among them. And as the gospel keeps expanding, it goes to Antioch where you have in this little outpost of Asia, a church where they were first called Christians, Acts 11. And we get for the first time a roster of Christians in the church. They're Jews and an African and one from Asia Minor and a Roman and Paul, a monster, and a servant from the household of Herod who had decapitated John the Baptist. They're in the church. They're in the church! As there is not just this widening witness, but you understand a welcoming witness. They're together as the gospel is spreading out. Somehow they're saying, "If I'm in Christ and you're in Christ, we're both in Christ. He died for us all. I'm a sinner, you're a sinner. We are made one in this Christ." And you begin to hear the words of the prophets in a new way as the widening becomes a welcoming. "I will bring offspring from the east and from the west, from the north and the south. Do not withhold. Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the end of the earth. Everyone who's called by my name, whom I created for my glory, who I formed and made. Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old, for I am doing something new," declares the Lord. What is the new thing? It is the gospel going outward and the people inviting others inward. This is totally without precedent among religions, among peoples where ancient antipathies and wars and the heritage would be against one another, never allowing people to come in. But the widening witness is creating a welcoming witness when Paul says to the church at Colossae, "In Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, you're one in Christ." That's a really new thing. My friend, this is Pastor Bryan. I'm so thankful that you've chosen to spend some of your valuable time with me today studying through the Bible. If this message has caused a greater desire for God to well up in your heart, I'd like to pray for you. Heavenly Father, when you sent the love of Jesus into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, you changed us in ways that still amaze us. We love Jesus more than anything. We find ourselves strangely at odds with the world and even with some Christians because we not only love Jesus, but we love what and whom he loves. We love the unlovely, the destitute, the despised, and the forsaken. How did this happen? It happened by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit that is even now proving his presence by changing our affections. We're not perfect yet, but we're on a different path and we pray that you would help us to walk it. Where we stumble, forgive us, and by forgiving, make us even more intent to honor your Son. For we offer this prayer of thanksgiving and obedience, in Jesus' name, Amen.
Guest (Male): That's Pastor Bryan Chapell and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace. If you've missed anything that you'd like to hear once again, just visit UnlimitedGrace.com. Please be sure to join us next time as once again we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by his unlimited grace. This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace Media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.