We Are Witnesses
For today. So let's take a moment. Let's pray and invite the Holy Spirit into the preaching of God's word. Heavenly Father, Lord, we ask that You would be with Pastor Cameron this morning, that You would fill him, and that You would give him the words to speak, Lord, that You would be faithful to your promise to make sure that your word would not return void, Lord. That you would make us willing listeners receptive to your word and to your teaching.
Speaker 1:Lord, we ask that you would be working in us as we seek to hear from you today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Speaker 2:Amen. Good morning, Conduit. How are you this morning? Good. It's good to see you.
Speaker 2:In case you do want to text pastor Luke's personal number, it is 614556. I don't let you guess the other four. It'll be fun to see. Well, I'm really excited to start this series this morning. The book of Acts will be here for the next fifteen weeks, so settle in.
Speaker 2:All spring and summer, we're going to be here in the book of Acts. Preaching straight through a book in the Bible is really probably my favorite method of preaching. And this would maybe be a good reminder for you if to bring your own Bible with you. I know a lot of you read your Bible on your phone. That's okay.
Speaker 2:But if you a personal paper copy, flesh and blood copy of the Bible, I'd encourage you to bring that with you to follow along with us, to learn along with us, be transformed along with us. And of course, like pastor Luke said, those scripture journals as well will have that. I usually preach out of I think you maybe know or notice or maybe you don't. I usually preach out of the NIV version. Through this series, I'll be preaching out of the ESV version so that if you have those journals, it follows that version.
Speaker 2:Okay? We have the book of Acts here, and Acts is in the New Testament of the Bible, which is the back half of the Bible, and it is the book that immediately follows the gospels. So four guys writing an account of their experience with the life and ministry and teaching and miracles, the death, the resurrection of Jesus. And then immediately following that, we have the book of Acts. Now it's believed, commonly believed, and understood that Luke, the writer of the gospel by the same name, is the author of the book of Acts, and it's sometimes referred to as his second gospel or Luke, the Gospel of Luke part two.
Speaker 2:It carries on the ministry of Jesus. And in fact, Luke is very clear about this in the beginning of the book of Acts. He says in Acts chapter one, he says, In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach. Then he goes on to talk about all of the things that he began to do and teach. He says he did all of these really incredible things, but maybe he snuck into that phrase there, that first verse, something that I think is significant to understanding the context and the direction of all of the book of Acts.
Speaker 2:And he says here, I wrote to you all of the things that Jesus began to do. There was a certain part of Luke's understanding of Jesus' ministry, what Jesus himself said, and then what came afterwards, where it's almost like Luke was kind of building up the reader to think like, I wrote to you all that Jesus began to do and say, but wait, there's more type of attitude. And now in the book of Acts, we're going to talk about all that there is that was more, because there is more. And that's really what he sets out to do in communicating in the book of Acts. He tells the story.
Speaker 2:Luke is going to tell the story in the book of Acts of the more that happens when Jesus promised to the disciples to leave so that the Holy Spirit can come actually comes true. That's the promise. Jesus makes a promise to His disciples. We really see well laid out in the Gospel of John sixteen:seven, where He says this to His disciples. He said, Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.
Speaker 2:It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And then he goes on to tell the disciples all of the ministry or some of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's gonna convict the world of truth.
Speaker 2:It's gonna reveal the truth of God's word. And so what Jesus once promised His disciples again, in a moment where His disciples were kind of like in the Gospel of John, Jesus told His disciples, Hey, I'm going to die. I'm going to be raised from the dead, and then I'm going to leave. And in a moment of panic, they were like, Lord, we will do whatever it takes to not let this happen. What whatever happens, you can't this can't happen.
Speaker 2:This can't be the way. This can't be the plan. And what Jesus says to them is like, not only is it the plan, it's actually a good thing, and it's to your advantage. It's to it's it's gonna be a good thing for you that I leave and go back to my father in heaven because when that happens, then the helper, some of your translations may say, the comforter, the advocate, the counselor, the Holy Spirit will come. The book of Acts is in many ways the story of Jesus' fulfillment of that promise or the promise of Jesus the fulfillment of Jesus' promise.
Speaker 2:That Jesus left and the Holy Spirit comes and fills the church. And now what happens? What's the second part of that story? What's the greater part of that story? Now, I'm sure that it was probably a little bit confusing for the disciples to hear that it was actually to their advantage that Jesus was going to leave.
Speaker 2:But what Jesus began in his ministry was the basis then for what the church would carry out and carry through in history. I can imagine, or I guess I try to imagine how they must have been feeling about, Jesus leaving and about him essentially, like in Matthew chapter twenty twenty eight saying, hey, go into all the world, teach them everything that I have commanded you, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and I will be with you always. I can imagine that maybe they have that in mind. Jesus leaves, and then they're like, okay, I guess we gotta somehow, someway pick ourselves up out of our disappointment, out of our fear, out of our failure, and we gotta go somehow do this thing in our own power and with our own gifting and with our own strength and with our own resources. And somehow, I don't know, we'll just make it happen.
Speaker 2:They don't just go into the whole world, preach the gospel, and baptize people. There's just one problem to that whole narrative. Really clearly in the scripture, all of the disciples were absolutely terrified after Jesus died. And even after he was resurrected and began to appear to them, there was still kind of this under the surface doubt, uncertainty, what next? Is this really what is supposed to go?
Speaker 2:How it's supposed to go? Wrestling with their own failure. But what Jesus already knew the disciples were about to experience is that, yes, the commission to go out into the world remained the same, but when the disciples probably thought, well, man, we gotta go out and do this all on our own, Jesus had a different plan. What Jesus already knew the disciples were about to experience, they weren't going to be sent out alone with Jesus just as a memory, but still full of fear in their lives. God wouldn't be right next to them in Jesus, but God would fill them with his very presence and power through the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:They would be filled miraculously and powerfully with the Holy Spirit of God, and it would be that filling that became then the power and growth of the church throughout the generations, even now until today, this day, 04/26/2026. This is what the story of Acts is all about in general terms. It's the story of Jesus' promise to send the Holy Spirit coming true, being fulfilled. It's the story of a people who were once really confused and scared and uncertain about their role and place in God's kingdom becoming an unstoppable force of godly power for the world around them. It's the story of how people who were once separated by both cultural and religious values now were brought together in the name of Jesus Christ for the sake of being witnesses about him or for him to the entirety of the world.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite parts or favorite like themes throughout Acts is that there's no attempt to hide the humanity of it. Acts is not this super, really polished version of what it means to follow Jesus. It actually depicts the real life struggles of men and women doing their best to remain faithful and follow the cause to spread the kingdom. It's about the missteps of the church and the people in it, it's about the victories. It's about the tension of relationships within the church, and it's about the beauty of community.
Speaker 2:It's about the power of the gospel, overcoming everything that the world and the enemy throws at it. And there is so much for us to learn through it, especially in this season that we're in here at Conduit. This morning, we're gonna read the first 11 chapters or first 11 chapters. First 11 verses. First 11 verses of Acts chapter one.
Speaker 2:So if you have your, bible, you can follow along with me. It'll be up on the screen for you if you don't. 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. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 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.
Speaker 2:For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the holy spirit not many days from now. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It's 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. 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. 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?
Speaker 2:This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. So here we have this, like, beginning account in Acts of Jesus speaking once again to the disciples who were in fear. He was eating with them, and he says essentially these words. Hey guys, I don't want you to leave Jerusalem yet. Like, don't go anywhere, don't do anything, don't kinda like it's almost like don't get too big for your britches.
Speaker 2:Just hold tight for a few moments. You're now going out to conquer the whole world. Stay put for a moment. And I you have to imagine a little bit that the disciples were like, well, I mean, I thought Jesus, we were, like, supposed to go and get after this thing. I thought, like, this was the point.
Speaker 2:But trusting in Jesus and trusting in what he saw and trusting what was to come, I think Jesus recognized that they're that they were still living. These disciples were still living in both fear of what had happened to him and what could possibly happen to them, as well as shame. They had all but abandoned him. They had left Him to walk the road to the cross alone. They did not join Him at the cross.
Speaker 2:They denied knowing Him. One of completely betrayed Him, and there was this sense of like, can we even do this thing? Are we even worthy to do this thing? Does God have we disqualified ourselves by our doubt and our betrayal and our denial? Like, who are we to even carry on this message?
Speaker 2:Who are we to even carry on this ministry? We don't have our leader, we've failed and are disqualified, we're not capable or articulate, or you name the excuse. It could have all been going through their minds. Both fear and shame have this really, both sinister way, that they usually make people shrink and hide from the things that God is calling them to and preparing them for. But what Jesus also recognized, I think, here in this moment with his disciples is that they were still they themselves were still struggling to understand with clarity kind of like the purpose and the ultimate plan and vision for his ministry.
Speaker 2:What we see in the gospels pretty continually is the disciples' insistence that Jesus take his rightful place as the king of Israel, To lead not a spiritual revolution through humility, repentance, and obedience to God, but lead a political revolution by leveraging the large crowds of people who had been drawn to Jesus and his miracle working power and used those large crowds to overthrow the Roman occupying government and reestablish the Jews and the nation of Israel as their king. And you see this all throughout the gospel. There was this kind of like wrestling between the spiritual power that Jesus brought in his incarnation and the worldly power that the disciples and his followers wanted him to take up, wanted him to grab hold on, wanted him to step into. Just, hey, Jesus, just be the king that we really need you to be. Not the king of heaven, but the king of this world.
Speaker 2:Why do we think that? Well, you can see even in verse six here of Acts chapter one that as Jesus was the glorified resurrected Jesus, who had defeated death by the power of the spirit and was there before them, the only thing that they had in response when Jesus said, Hey, want you to wait here for a minute. What did the disciples say? Oh, is it at this time that you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Like, wait, wait.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. So this is now, Jesus, when you're gonna do the thing that we've been asking you to do the whole time? Now that you're resurrected, now that you've defeated death, you're back. Like, yeah. Now we're gonna now we're gonna retake over, and we're gonna establish the kingdom for Israel.
Speaker 2:Are you going to do it now? Are you gonna do it now? Jesus' reply to them really I mean, he kind of, like, almost flippantly answers the question really quickly, but then says something that completely changes the direction that the disciples are thinking or going. He says this in verse seven. He said to them, listen, it's not for you to know the times and the seasons that the father is fixed by his own authority.
Speaker 2:I think this was a pretty nice way of saying like, stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. The kingdom will be restored to Israel when the Father has determined that it will be restored to Israel, and no man, not even the son, Jesus says earlier in the gospel, knows that day. So it's for any man to know the days or times that the Father has fixed by his own authority. And then he says this in verse eight.
Speaker 2:Well, let's say this first. It's clear that the disciples' focus was on on like, think about you're you're afraid. You're overwhelmed. You've gone through this, like, whirlwind of three years, and then the guy that you thought was gonna, like, become king over the kingdom of the world here and retake Jerusalem and the whole nation of Israel back from the Romans. And then he was like, chill, guys.
Speaker 2:Stay in your lane. Like, we're not talking about this. This is not what we're doing here in this moment. And so the disciples were like, well, fine then. Just get us up out of this place.
Speaker 2:Like, can you just reestablish the kingdom already? Because we certainly don't know what to do next. We're afraid of what's gonna happen to us. We know certainly what the possibilities are because we just see saw you Jesus go through it. Bearing the same fate that you that you suffered is not something that we're really excited to do.
Speaker 2:Their focus was on Jesus really saving them up and out of the world that they were living in, a world where they were experiencing fear, the possibility of retribution, persecution from others, and really an unknown future. But Jesus' plan for the disciples, for his followers, was so much different than than them just getting to escape the pressure of the world and becoming a part of this worldly kingdom that Jesus would establish. It was completely different than this escapist mentality. In verse eight, he says, 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. You see, the disciples wanted Jesus to save them out of the world, out of the fear, out of the overwhelm, out of the persecution, out of the possibility of being, like, killed by the Romans themselves.
Speaker 2:Jesus, would you just take your power now and would you assert it in the world? But Jesus' response was completely different. Jesus basically said, Not only only am I not going to save you out of this world by restoring whatever version of a kingdom you think you need, not only am I not going to do that, I'm going to put my power inside of you so that you can go out and transform the world that you're afraid of into my kingdom. Not only am I not saving you from this world, I'm sending you out into it. Not only am I not gonna establish a kingdom that makes you powerful and gives you all of the things that you think you need, no, I'm gonna put my power inside of you so then you go out into that big, scary, overwhelming, persecuting type of world and transform it by being my witness.
Speaker 2:Now I wanna be perfectly honest with you. I can relate with the disciples here in a lot of ways. There's this sense I think maybe probably we all do in some ways. Sometimes I experience this type of desire to be like, oh, man. The things that are ahead of me, the things that I'm facing, the things that I know that are coming, or the things that I I am in right now, I have feel like I have no resource to deal with, no power to deal with, no plan, no sense of like, I can do this.
Speaker 2:And what I would really like, Jesus, is if you could just like snap your fingers and make all those things go away. Just restore the kingdom again, Jesus. Just all of the things that I'm afraid of, all of the things that are come like, could you just take care of it? I don't wanna it's so much easier for me to just, like, escape, To run away, to bury my head in the sand, to not actually, like, contemplate how to move forward in the power and presence and faith of the Lord? I feel this a lot, like, as a parent.
Speaker 2:I don't know about you all, but, like, parenting's hard. It's an issue one of my maybe kids are facing. I don't know how to address it. I don't know how to manage the feelings that they're experiencing or that I'm experiencing, and sometimes it's just easier to bury my head in the sand and just hope and pray that they get what they need from somewhere else. That's easy, though.
Speaker 2:That's like just like la la la la la. I'm just and just essentially hoping that God would snap his fingers to save me out of a moment where I don't know what to do, and I don't have any power to go forward. You ever feel that way? Anything in life, just like, Lord, could you just, like, never? Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Could you just save me out of this, Lord? Could you just do it? I can't do it, Lord. Would you just do it?
Speaker 2:Now I have also both seen and experienced personally what I would call miraculous intervention moments where it does seem like God just flips the switch and everything is turned on its head and changes all in a moment, and God unequivocally, all the time does do that. But listen, I like that too. That's what I want. Right? That's what I want all the time.
Speaker 2:Lord, can you do it like that in this moment? But listen, I'm gonna be honest with you, at least in my life, so much more often, God has saved me not from the situation, but God has saved me from my desire to run away and instead invited me to receive his power for the situation, his presence for the situation. See, God has power available to address any and all moments of fear, of anxiety, of depression, of overwhelm, of the unknown. No matter what the situation, God is ready to fill you with fresh power to experience freedom, to experience life, to experience purpose. This is exactly what Jesus invites his disciples into as well.
Speaker 2:Essentially saying, Hey, I want you to stop worrying about escaping for a moment. Stop worrying about establishing your own kingdom and who's going to be most powerful in it. I know you're overwhelmed now. You feel incapable of anything but fear, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, he says in Acts chapter one verse eight. And the word for power here is the word dynamis.
Speaker 2:We get many words are built off of it in the English English language, but the the thrust of the word here, the word dynamis or power, is meant to describe not this kind of, like, gradual welling up or even this kind of timid expression of courage, But the word dynamis is a sudden, environment shifting, almost explosive like moment in time, that type of power. Not like not like the slow moving torquing power, but like this explosive power, something that almost comes out of nowhere and that shifts the environment so dramatically that there is no reasonable or worldly explanation for it. The disciples fear that they would share the fate of Jesus turned into this explosive form of boldness to then face the very same people that Jesus was killed by and proclaim the very same message that Jesus proclaimed, that He is Lord. We're going to see that in the next few weeks as we see just what happened when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the believers, on the church. It's important to talk about like where power comes from or where this particular power comes from.
Speaker 2:If Jesus is saying, Hey, look, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses. When it comes to when it comes to power and when it comes for the for the type of power that Jesus is talking about here in Acts chapter one, we have to recognize that it is something that we are going to have to receive. Meaning that the power that the disciples would need to step from their place of fear into the place of faith was something that they were gonna have to receive from outside of themselves. It wasn't something where they were gonna, like, rah rah themselves into a different form of personality. It couldn't be manufactured, and it wasn't going to be found from within themselves.
Speaker 2:It wasn't like a, Listen to this podcast. Read this book, and then you will you will come to understand and locate your power within yourself. Jesus was so clear. The power that you need to do the things that I'm calling to calling you to do does not come from within you. It is something you have to receive from me.
Speaker 2:It is only something that you can receive. But it also wasn't just some personality characteristic that they were suddenly going to develop, where, like, oh, wow. That that person is really a powerful person now. That's a part of just who their personality is. It wasn't didn't have anything to do listen.
Speaker 2:It had nothing to do with them. The power that was going to be in them had nothing to do with them. It had everything to do with who it came from and what it was, and that would be is they would have power not because they just had power. They would have power because they would have the Holy Spirit. It wasn't some personality thing that they were, like, stirring up within them.
Speaker 2:It was the reception of the Holy Spirit of God himself in them and through them that was and would be the power for what they needed to do. Now listen, we're gonna talk a lot about the Holy Spirit in the next fifteen weeks. A lot about the Holy Spirit. And so I don't wanna preach a whole sermon on the theology of the Holy Spirit right now because we're gonna get to a lot of it. Okay?
Speaker 2:But in in terms of just like a, you know, one one more time introduction, who is the Holy Spirit? We do not believe that the Holy Spirit is some kind of, like, impersonal force or the weird part of God. But we Holy believe that Spirit, we believe scripture describes the Holy Spirit as being the third member of the Trinity, fully God, present at creation, alive in the church, and that you and I, we are indwelt by His presence when we come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul says that it was the says that the spirit that lives in us by faith in Jesus is the same spirit that raised him from the dead, Romans chapter eight verse 11. It's the Holy Spirit is like, it's that kind of power.
Speaker 2:It's the kind of power that brings life when there was only death. We I'll read to you quickly our doctrinal statement on the Holy Spirit. We should have it up here on the screen for you this morning. Pastor Luke preached on this at the beginning of the year. You can find it on our website and in the booklet in the back about where we stand.
Speaker 2:It's our doctrinal belief, our doctrinal statement on the Holy Spirit. Certainly, is not all that the scripture talks about the Holy Spirit. And like I said, we're going to talk more about it, more about him as we proceed through the book of Acts. So we know that only power going to come not from within themselves, but through the Holy Spirit. The question then becomes, well, why do the disciples need power?
Speaker 2:What power for? Why even need do it? You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses. Hear this really clearly. The purpose of Holy Spirit power is to witness to the person and work of Jesus.
Speaker 2:Jesus himself said the purpose of the power is so that you can be my witnesses. You will receive power. 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. There's no separation here. Notice that Jesus says here, you will be, whose witnesses?
Speaker 2:My witnesses, his witnesses. Right? Jesus is saying, the power is for the purpose of witnessing to me or about me. You will receive Holy Spirit power not to advance your own agenda, not to push along your own plans, not to promote your own vision in the world or for the kingdom or for the church. You will receive Holy Spirit power to be a witness for me, Jesus says.
Speaker 2:Just like in a common court of law today, if you were called to be a witness, you would be called to tell what is true about what you have seen, about what you have heard, and about what you have experienced, to bear faithful testimony about those things. See, power from the Holy Spirit is so that we can bear faithful testimony of what we have seen, heard, and experienced with Jesus. That our lives would then become a megaphone of God's grace. They would become a megaphone of God's freedom, of God's love. Being a witness is not some attempt to kind of whitewash our stories with spiritual platitudes and niceties, but to highlight that even in my life, even in this guy's life, Jesus has set me free.
Speaker 2:Jesus has brought me from darkness to light. Jesus has brought me from death to life. Jesus has brought me from despair to hope. He has brought me from depression to joy. He has brought me from fear to faith.
Speaker 2:Let me be a witness of what Jesus did in my life. Let this be the testimony that the world hears about him. This is the purpose of the power of the Holy Spirit filling your lives, is so that you can witness to the world what you have seen, heard, and experienced Jesus do in you. Question then as well, all right, well, do we do this? Well, Jesus doesn't leave that answer that question unanswered as well.
Speaker 2:And he says this, he says, You're gonna do it in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. I really got a little graphic here that maybe helps explain that. So listen, this is purposeful here because where were these disciples currently located? They were located in Jerusalem, this central city. Right?
Speaker 2:So he's like, Where are you going to be my witnesses? Where are going to be my witnesses right there in that city that you're in? The people that are closest to you. Right? And then, I I I don't want you to think that that's just enough because you're then it's gonna be Judea, and Judea was the kind of like the the next outer ring of the region that they were in.
Speaker 2:K? You know your Bible maps, you can go in the back of your Bible and see this. Judea was just a little bit further out from Jerusalem. And even then further out from Judea was the area of Samaria, right, where Jews didn't go in Samaria because it was full of Samaritans. Right?
Speaker 2:And so Jesus was giving them this picture of, Well, first, you're going to be my witnesses in the place that's closest to you, where you are. And then you're gonna branch out a little further, and then you're gonna branch out a little further. And in case you think I'm leaving any place out, and then it's gonna be, you're gonna receive power from the Holy Spirit so you can be my witnesses even to the ends of the earth. Anywhere, everywhere, always. You see, Jesus had a plan.
Speaker 2:Jesus had a vision for what it would look like for his disciples to carry on his ministry. It wasn't, and it wasn't for them to hide themselves away, to live in fear and shame, and to never speak his name to the outside world again. We might say something similar to like, It has never been Jesus' plan for the church to hide themselves away in fear or in shame and to never speak his name to the outside world again. I don't want you to miss this. Jesus' plan for the spreading of the gospel to every corner of the earth is the powerful witness of those who are filled with the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:This was the plan. This is what Jesus like, I mean, can we make it any we can't make it any more simple. Right? You will receive power from the Holy Spirit. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Speaker 2:The plan was always for me, for you, for us to receive power from the Holy Spirit so that we could testify to the world that we find ourselves in, that there is a holy God that stands in judgment over sin, but offers life and life abundantly to those who call on Jesus by faith. Now I'm gonna be honest, I've never been to Jerusalem, and I've never been to Judea, and I've never been to Samaria. I've been to the ends of the earth type of places before. Been to some of those outer places. But it's kind of hard for me to relate to, like, I don't really know what Jerusalem's like.
Speaker 2:I don't know if the people are like there. I don't know what the people in Samaria are like. I don't really have, like, a good strong heart connection to that message of you will be my witnesses in Judea and Samaria and Judea. It just kinda doesn't, like, feel like, well, okay, I get it. But but let me tell you what.
Speaker 2:I know what Jamestown is like. I know what Chautauqua County is like. I've been to lots of places and cities in the Northeast. And maybe the Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria ends ends of the earth graphic or idea doesn't really hit home for you and maybe not really hit home for me, but there's maybe another graphic that maybe hits home just a little bit easier. It's like, where has Jesus planted this church?
Speaker 2:Where has Jesus established this community? Where has Jesus called a people by faith to his name? You see, sometimes I look at places like Jamestown. I've listen, I've been pastoring in Jamestown and Chautauqua County, this region, for the last twenty one years, lived here virtually my entire life. And sometimes I look at this place, and I look at the brokenness, and I look at the pain, and I look at the deception that people are under, and I look at the darkness that kind of just feels like it spiritually sits over this area.
Speaker 2:I look at the bondage that people are in, the death that they experience, not death of their bodies, but death of their souls before their bodies ever give up. And I'm just like, God, it's it's too much. It's too big. I am afraid. I wanna hide myself away in this building.
Speaker 2:I fail too much. I've betrayed you too much. I've denied you too much. I don't have the gifts. I'm not articulate enough.
Speaker 2:I'm not smart enough. I don't have enough plans. I don't know I can't do this, Lord. I see it. I understand it.
Speaker 2:I get it. I can't do it. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jamestown, in Chautauqua County and in Warren County, in the Northeast, and even to the ends of the world. It's not too much. It's too much if we're ready to tackle it under our own power.
Speaker 2:In Acts chapter one, next week, we're gonna learn that, like, just after this moment, there was about a 120 believers in Jesus kind of, like, left after the dust all settled. There's about a 120 of them left in that in a in a big upper room, they were trying to decide who was gonna replace Judas and all of this, and the Holy Spirit came upon them in power on the day of Pentecost. And some two thousand odd years later, from 120 people who received power when the Holy Spirit came upon them to be witnesses, there's a world population of Christianity now of 2,400,000,000. There's more than 120 people in this room. It's not because they had superior strategy.
Speaker 2:It's not because they had great marketing in the early church. It's not because they were like really leveraging the algorithm. They didn't have anything. They were simple women and men filled with the power of the Holy Spirit who went out into a world that was blind, declaring, in Jesus you can see. You see, Jesus, God has brought us and planted us in Jamestown, listen kind to it, for such a time as this.
Speaker 2:When you think about January, all of the comparison numbers up here are, like, so small. We maybe worship with, like, I don't know, 275 ish to 300 ish on an average Sunday here. There's only as of 2024 was the census, there's only 29,000 people in Jamestown. So you take 300 to 30,000, that's a pretty good percentage. There's only about 150,000 people in combined Chautauqua and Warren Counties.
Speaker 2:Only about 150,000. There's about 57,000,000 people in the Northeast. And there's about 8,300,000,000 people in the world, I say our odds are awesome. Not because the number makes sense, but because the power is still the same. And God is not only is he willing and ready, He is eager, and He is eager to activate the outpouring of the Spirit upon a people who will faithfully carry His witness to the world.
Speaker 2:The vision, of course, is big. You heard a little bit about the vision last week that we have moving forward in the next few years, to expand our capacity here so that we can reach more people. The provision is big. Where the vision is big, the provision is plentiful. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now lives in us, Paul says.
Speaker 2:There is nothing that the power of God cannot do. And so I am ready to like stand my feet in a place, not a fear or hiding away or protecting what we have or wanting some version of the kingdom of God that Jesus himself is not ready to establish. But I just want power from him to do what he has called us to do, to be witnesses in the time, in the place, and the moment that he has called us to do it for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of Jesus, and for the sake of the world that we live in. Would you join me in that? Let's pray.
Speaker 2:Lord, I believe in your power, the power of God through the Holy Spirit to bring revival and faith in Jamestown and beyond. Lord, would you fill us with your Holy Spirit? Lord, not for our own vision, not for our own strategy, not for our own plans. Lord, would you fill us with the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can be your witnesses, that we can proclaim what we have seen and heard and experienced Jesus do in our lives, that we can, like those 120 believers did two thousand some odd years ago, just carry faithfully and boldly the witness of your resurrection power. Lord, I believe that for Jamestown.
Speaker 2:I believe that for Chautauqua County. I believe that for Warren County. I believe it for the Northeast, Lord. I believe it for the to the ends of the earth That we do not have to be resigned to be just a people that come and comes and goes here and not here one day, Lord, but that we can make an eternal impact in Jamestown. Lord, I pray that you would fill us with your power so that we can make eternal impact in this region.
Speaker 2:Not for our own name, Lord, and not for our own reputation, but for the name of Jesus, Lord. Let what we do here, Lord, overflow with many expressions of thanks to you. Lord, fill us with your spirit that we may be bold and have power. In Jesus' name, Amen. For this very reason, I bow my knees before the father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being.
Speaker 2:So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints. What is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Speaker 2:It's kind of you are loved. Be blessed. Have a great week.
