Growing in the Holy Spirit

Well, good afternoon again, brethren. Glad to see all of you. Welcome again to all of our guests. Glad to have... Looks like we're filling up a little bit here today. We've been... had people gone and, you know, different times, different people gone. And so it's nice to have most everyone here today. At least we got most of our households represented. Maybe not everyone in the household, but most of our households will represent us today. So that's truly wonderful. I hope that you were able to enjoy the service last weekend. It's nice. We don't have too many in double Sabbaths throughout the year, but I guess always on Pentecost. We're going to have a Sabbath day, a regular Sabbath day, and then a Sunday Holy Day service. And so it was really nice to be able to do that, nice to get together with the people in Wichita. And I was thinking regarding, you know, what the day of Pentecost pictures, what it points out. And there are really a number of different things that, you know, we learn as we think about the day of Pentecost.

It involves firstfruits. That's one of the things that involves. And we've heard some about that, and we've thought about that some as well. And also, it involves, you know, the Spirit of God and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Actually, Lowell was talking about this last weekend, and in his message he was talking about how the Holy Spirit works in our lives. And I thought, I want to expand on that today, because, you know, it's something that is really very important. It's very important, it's very significant, and it has a direct meaning to every single one of us. Because it is, in essence, the essence of our lives.

To be able to have, to understand, and to use the power of the Holy Spirit. See, that's what makes us a part of the Church of God. That's what makes us an individual who is set apart by God to have the growth and development in His divine nature, and then to be able to act, to do.

And that's what I mentioned regarding our Kingdom of God seminars. Every one of us needs to be looking forward to that, be praying about that, but be praying that God will use us individually.

He's not just going to use whoever happens to speak, or whoever is setting up things. He's going to use all of us in a way that we should anticipate will be wonderful. That's what we should do. And so I wanted to reflect on, I guess we could give a title of this as growing in the Holy Spirit, because that's really what we want to do.

As we think back, every one of us, at one point, if we have been baptized, and if we have gone through the process of coming to understand repentance and then been baptized, and then following that baptism service, there was another very short service involving the laying on of hands, and then the request of God to grant us the Holy Spirit of God. That's the formula that we find, and it's not technically a formula, but it's a procedure that you find in Acts 2, verse 38, which we'll read a little bit about later.

But see, all of us should be able to think back regarding that time. The God had brought us to where we were actually, as Cleo was mentioning in the sermonette, we were aware of our sins. We were aware of our need to be forgiven. We were aware of the fact that we had, up to that point in our life, been hostile to God. At least that's what it says in Romans, that our carnal mind is hostile toward God.

And we hated that. I hated that. I well knew that. I didn't want everybody else to know it, but I'm sure they could easily see it. I clearly knew it, and I clearly knew that I wanted to be forgiven. And I desperately, desperately needed the Holy Spirit to be able to do anything. As far as I could see, reading the Bible, having the Holy Spirit was imperative. That was an absolute, wonderful blessing to be able to not only receive, but then use the Holy Spirit in my life. And I hope each of us can think back through that for our own lives, because it is an individual thing.

As, again, Cleo was mentioning, we had come to recognize that we wanted to have a right respect for God. Whether we term that fear, I know I was reading in the translation I normally use, and where it described what Jesus had done, it talked about how that He had a reverent submission to His Father. And that's really what we all want to have, because we obviously are in need of help. We are created physical beings, and in order to have eternal life, we're going to have to have the Spirit of God.

If we're going to have eternal life, we're going to have to have this Holy Spirit, and we're going to have to be growing in that Spirit. And so, being respectful toward God, being reverent toward God, and clearly being in submission to God. That's a part of the growth that God starts in us, and that He wants to expand until it's completion.

He's going to complete that task. He started it, we're actively involved with it, and He's going to complete it. So we truly can be very thankful for that. I'd like today to take a look at one of the authors of actually two of the books in the New Testament. You can figure out who that is. You can think of several different authors or writers of the books in the New Testament. And yet, actually, this individual wrote one of the books that we call the Gospels. And he also wrote one of the books that we clearly see as the history of the early Church. And I'm talking about Luke.

Luke, when you look at what we find in the Bible, what you can read in other commentaries about Luke, he's really a fascinating individual. Fascinating in what he wrote down for us. Whether he knew he was writing the Bible or not, which I don't know, whether that would be something that someone such as he would have that knowledge. I would believe that later on, whoever was used, Peter and probably John, to ultimately compile the books that would be in the New Testament. Maybe Luke didn't know at all that what he wrote down, what he put together, what he researched.

Because that's really what he did. Because when we look at Luke, we find that he was not one of the original apostles. He wasn't with Jesus. He wasn't called like the twelve were. He wasn't brought into that type of relationship. We see him writing in the book of Acts. He wrote the book of Luke and then the book of Acts. And perhaps wrote them together because they tie together, as I'll show you today.

In the book of Acts, in chapter 1, he talks about, as Peter was starting in the leadership role that he assumed initially there with the early church, he mentions that there were 120. Now, I don't know whether Luke didn't say that he was a part of that 120. He didn't say he was there at all. He mentioned, just in record, that there were 120 who were believers and who were gathered together and actually in the process of selecting a new individual to take Judas' place. And then we go into Acts 2 and we're on into a different topic here of the Day of Pentecost coming, which I will get to in a little bit. But Luke was not an eyewitness to what Jesus did. So how in the world did he put together what we can see today to be the most complete of all, actually, of the three Gospels who are synoptic? And you can't say it's more complete than John because John is completely different. It's a totally different Gospel that was written by the Apostle John. But of the three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Luke is by far the most complete. It refers to most everything in Matthew and Mark and then adds many other things. And clearly, as we read later, as we see later, Luke was able to travel. He was an educated medical doctor. He was a physician. He was, in essence, a traveling partner of the Apostle Paul. And from some of the things Paul got into, maybe he needed a traveling doctor as well. I don't know.

I know he certainly cried out to God for a lot of help, and maybe that was all he needed. But it does talk about Luke being Paul's fellow laborer. It does talk about Luke being a person that was remaining loyal when Paul was seeing so many turning away from him, not supporting what he had done in preaching the Gospel to the Gentile world. And actually, Luke, I think, was Greek-speaking Gentile from Antioch. So he wasn't around right there in Jerusalem, right at the time of Jesus Christ and at the time when he was working with the disciples. So I want to point out several things about Luke and about the Gospel of Luke and about what he wrote, but I want to tie this in with what he writes about the Holy Spirit. What he writes about how that Holy Spirit worked. How it was that the Holy Spirit enabled and empowered people to do. Because in essence, that's what we can ask God to do today. That's what we should ask that God would do for us today.

I think it's interesting to see when you look at Luke that he was writing a historical record. You know, maybe we could look in Luke 1, the first few verses here. It actually sets the stage. It gives an introduction. It's different than the beginning of Matthew. It's different than the beginning of Mark and, of course, John. Completely different. Because Luke records what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Here in Luke 1, verse 1, he says, "...since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and who were ministers or servants of the Word, I too..." So he's saying, you know, I'm going to put down an orderly account. I'm going to try to make this as clear as absolutely possible. There are those who were eyewitnesses, and I have heard from many of them. I have gathered information. And it appears when you, again, read some of the background of Luke, that he probably had the book of Mark already put together. He probably had that information. Mark's Gospel is actually shorter. It entails a number of things that would appear to have come from Peter that Mark was writing down. Because Mark wasn't directly an apostle. He may have been around. He was much younger. And yet he was reflecting much of what Peter had to tell him about what Jesus did, or what Jesus said, or how this came about, or how this activity occurred, or what happened whenever the storm just stopped. Peter had to have been the one who would relay that information to Mark, who wrote it down. And Luke could actually look back on that, because Luke was writing this later in the 50s or 60s. He wasn't writing it right early. He was writing it probably in the 60s. And it was before the time when the change would occur in Jerusalem into the 70s.

And so that was something that we can tell about the writing that Luke did in this Gospel. But in verse 3 he says, I too have decided that after investigating everything carefully, from the very beginning, from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

He says, I'm writing this down somewhat in a pretty formal format. I'm writing it in an orderly manner. I'm putting on compiling. I'm doing some, you know, investigation. I'm doing some reporting.

I'm gathering information from different people who were eyewitnesses. I'm reading certain records.

And I want you, theophilus, and I'm not sure exactly who theophilus was.

I know he was a, it would appear, a man of note.

That Luke was familiar with, and that he wanted to relay this information on, just to confirm what it was that theophilus believed, even the name, Phylophil.

Theophilus Thistle, the Thistle Sifter. Zipta to Sib. Okay, all of you can, all of you spokesmen's club. I can't even say it hardly. Theophilus Thistle, the Thistle Sifter.

He was, you know, the name implies a lover of God.

You know, that's what the theo is a word that's referring to God.

And yet it implies a lover of God. So it certainly was someone who was a believer, someone probably of, I would say, quite significant, who was maybe a friend of Luke or someone that he was acquainted with.

But it's interesting to see the different things that are recorded in Luke that really are not recorded anywhere else.

You find that Luke records how old Jesus was at a couple of different times. Most of us can even think, you know, we know a little bit about his childhood.

We know almost all of that from the book of Luke.

You know, we don't know too much of anything else. We know he was 12 when he went to the temple. We know he was 30 whenever he was baptized and he was started into his ministry. And we know that because of Luke. You know, it doesn't say that in Mark or in Matthew or John, but it does say that in Luke.

You also find, like I mentioned, more about his childhood here than in any other of the Gospels.

It's interesting that Luke points out that Jesus had interaction with and actually ate meals with a variety of the different people. He wasn't just simply focused on Israel, which he was to a degree, but he was going to be far more expansive than that. And it shows, and I think that since Luke was a Gentile, he certainly had an understanding of the fact that Christ's role as the Savior of the world was not limited to Israel as he had come to understand that himself. And that the role of Christ was one, you know, that was going to be a very important role. It was going to be expanded far beyond Israel and into the Gentile world.

I think it's interesting to see as well in Luke that there's a special emphasis on prayer.

I'm not going to go through that right now. I probably will go through that in the next few weeks, but there's a special emphasis on prayer, even to the point to where some even call the Gospel of Luke the Gospel of prayer. Because there are incidents related here that you don't see in any other place.

You find that Luke records a great deal about the role of women in the life of Jesus Christ.

We realize that there were women. I mean, there were numerous different accounts of women interacting with Christ, and certainly his mother, certainly others, Mary and Martha, we've read about somewhat recently, people that he interacted with.

And yet, you find many of those mentioned here in the book of Luke. You have several miracles that Jesus performed, and there are a lot of miracles that you find in other places, but there are several in Luke that are not recorded anywhere else. And see, he was putting together a thorough and well-researched and documented account of the life of Jesus Christ. And you even find, and I think this is interesting, that many of the parables of Jesus are recorded only in Luke. Even ones that we probably maybe think of as most either significant or maybe stand out because of the story.

There are several of the parables that are repeated, actually, one or two that are repeated in all four of the Gospels. But most of them are only in one or two, and yet in Luke there's a whole slew of them. The prodigal son, the good Samaritan, those are very prominent, very familiar parables, and they're all in the book of Luke. They're not in any of the other Gospels.

So I think you can see the tone with which Luke was writing was one of being thorough and putting together what people needed to know, what theophilus, what he thought theophilus needed to know about Jesus Christ. I want us to turn to the last part of the book of Luke here in chapter 24.

Luke chapter 24 is where I want to pick this up because, and I'm not trying to go through the whole book and point out some of these things that I've just mentioned. I wanted to mention them just so that you would know how it is that Luke seemed to be putting things together in writing, and yet you also find, again, a unique description here in Luke 24. This is clearly after the betrayal, after the death, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and as he was then after his resurrection, appearing to other people. Now he appeared, I think, most of the time to his disciples, but he did appear to some other people. He appeared to others at times, whether they knew who he was or not. And this is what you see in Luke chapter 24 in verse 13. It says, on that same day, two of them were going to a village called Iamus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking to each other about the things that had happened, and while they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, and they didn't know who he was.

And he said to them, well, what are you discussing? And they said, what's the matter with you? Don't you know? Haven't you heard what's been going on here in Jerusalem? Don't you know that they killed someone completely innocent, perhaps they could say, and he went ahead to talk with them about Jesus of Nazareth. Down in verse 28, it says, as they came near a village to which they were going, and walked ahead as if he were going on, but they urged him to stay with them. So he said he would stay. And in verse 30, when he was at the table with them, he took bread, and he blessed and broke it, and he gave it to them. In verse 31, it says, something miraculous happened.

Something beyond the ordinary happened. Now, clearly, it was even beyond the ordinary for Jesus to be there. For him to be, having been resurrected from the dead, and having now appeared whenever and in whatever manner he wished. But here it says, whenever he had this meal with them, he took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. And then their eyes were opened.

They recognized who he was, and then he vanished out of their sight. Now, this was something that clearly Jesus was able to do. He was able to come and go. He appeared to his disciples in several different incidents. He relayed to them what he wanted them to know. He had explained to them what was going to happen and whether they could even believe it or not.

They now had to start believing it. They had to be believers in Jesus Christ, because that was going to be the foundation of their job as Christians. That was going to be the foundational aspect of understanding who it was that they had been working with for several years, that they had been learning from, that they had walked with, that they had seen him perform miracles.

But now they understood he was the Son of God. Now they understood exactly who he was.

And yet here in verse 31, when he opened their eyes, they recognized him and they said to each other, We're not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the Scriptures to us. See here, this is something that these individuals had to acknowledge. Well, he was giving us some understanding of Scripture. See, that's a part of what the Holy Spirit is able to do. A part of how God works with us in giving us understanding, giving us perception, giving us a recognition of even maybe reading Scriptures and causing it to make sense. Whereas in the past, perhaps we may have read Scriptures and not really understood or may have read Scriptures and thought, well, that doesn't make sense. One of the things we find about the Holy Spirit is that it enables us to be able to more clearly understand, perhaps more clearly put together, the different Scriptures that are similar and that show sequential things even as we read through the entirety of the Bible. I want us to drop on down to verse 44 because here he was interacting with his disciples. Verse 36, while they were talking, Jesus stood among them and said to them, peace be with you. They were startled and terrified and thought that they had seen a ghost. And he said to them, why are you frightened? Why are doubts arising in your heart? That's in verse 38. Why are you frightened? Why are doubts arising in your heart? Look at my hands and my feet. See that it is I myself. Touch me and see. And when he said this, he showed them their hands and feet. And while in their joy, in verse 41, they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said, have you anything to eat? And so he gave them, they gave him a piece of fish and he took it and ate in their presence. But he said to them in verse 44, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. That everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled. So here Jesus was telling his now future leaders for the Church of God. He was telling them, that you are being given a foundation, a foundation that I am the focus of. I want you to understand that. I'm going to give you understanding. This is going to be through the power of the Holy Spirit. I'm going to give you understanding of the words of God. And I want you to understand that the veracity of the Old Testament in the law and the prophets and the Psalms is something I'm verifying. And what they say about me, what they point to when they point to me, is something that's very significant for you. And in verse 45, he says, "...in the open their minds to understand the Scriptures." See, that is a wonderful blessing, brethren, that all of us have, through the help of the Holy Spirit, to one degree or another. Some of us may have more of that than others. Surely some of you have more than I do. As far as understanding certain Scriptures, there are some that I'm yet to clearly understand. And I would guess perhaps all of us might say that.

But see, this is one of the ways that he reveals how the Holy Spirit works. In verse 46, he said to them, "...thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." And he said in verse 48, not only are you going to be given understanding of the Scriptures, and that is what we've been given, brethren, an understanding of the Scriptures, an understanding of the parables, an understanding of things that in many ways to many people are just complete mystery. They don't make sense. Not in the way that Jesus says they can and will if we simply ask. But he says in verse 48, "...you are witnesses of these things, and see, I am sending upon you what my father has promised. So stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." So here he's told them that I'm giving you understanding of the Scriptures. I want you to be my witnesses of what I've done and of what is yet to be.

And I want you to stay here in Jerusalem, and I want you to receive what the Father promises.

See, actually, the Holy Spirit is a gift. A gift that the Father extends to us. A gift that the Father gives us and that He promised these disciples and He promises us as well as we'll read here in Acts. So in verse 50, "...when they had let him out, as far as Bethany lifted up his hands, he blessed them, and while he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And so they worshiped him, and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God." This is a concluding statement that Luke makes to his Gospel. He has already recorded the understanding and the reporting that he had compiled and put together about the life of Jesus, but here he was relaying something that was extremely moving and extremely uplifting to those disciples who at this point were really just waiting. What's going to happen next? What is going to happen? Because they had seen Jesus taken. They had seen Him betrayed. They had seen Him put to death. They had seen Him resurrected from the dead, and now He is telling them, I'm going to commission you. I'm going to direct you to do the job that I want done on this earth, and it's going to be done through you, and it's going to be done through the power of the Holy Spirit. So if we turn over to Acts 1, Acts 1 actually in a sense is, you know, you can see this is kind of a conclusion. Well, we read in the last part of the book of Luke, and then it picks up here.

It kind of goes over the same thing here in the first part of the book of Acts. And so here in Acts 1, it says, in the former book Theophilus, or in the first book, Theophilus, Luke is still writing, in the first book Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did, and I taught from, or all that Jesus did, and taught from the beginning until the day when He was taken up into heaven after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom He had chosen. To here He again is relating what it was that Jesus had said and done, and what it was that He said the Holy Spirit would do. After His suffering in verse 3, He presented Himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about what? Speaking about the kingdom of God. See, that's what Jesus was teaching and preaching the disciples about. He was teaching about the kingdom of God. He was teaching them about what the gospel was, what the good news was, what it was that they had to extend to others.

And of course, in a sense, perhaps our kingdom of God seminars have that name or title because that's what we believe we should be teaching. That's what we should be preaching, the kingdom of God. And of course, about Jesus Christ as the king of that kingdom. In verse 4, while staying with them, He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.

And so this is what again He related in the last part of Luke. And this, He said, is what you have heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now. And so Luke again relates what it was that Jesus had said. I want you to wait. I want you to just wait until the Father is going to extend the promise. He's going to give that promise Holy Spirit. And of course, we know over in chapter 2, verse 1, on the day of Pentecost, was when that was going to happen. But in the meantime, in verse 6 of chapter 1, when they had come together, they asked Him, well, Lord, is this the time when You're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? And He said, it's not for You to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by His own authority. And so here He points out that, well, no, that wasn't exactly what I'm going to be doing right now. And actually, you know, the completion of that job, the completion of that task, is something that the Father controls. And we want to be appreciative of that. But in verse 8, He says, you're going to receive power. You're going to receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you are going to be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. See, now, I don't know what the ends of the earth were at that time. And I know that the disciples, as they were going about doing the work of God, you know, they did that in different locales. And perhaps in many ways they went to many different areas. But I can't imagine, you know, that their ability to reach the entirety of the ends of the earth, you know, is even near what we have today, you know, through what we can do through radio, through television, through media, through the internet. You know, the way that we are able to reach the world as they are directed here to do is just astounding today. But He says, you're going to receive power from the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You're going to be My witnesses. And in verse 9, when He had said this, as they were watching, He was lifted up and the cloud took Him out of their sight. And while He was going, they were gazing up into heaven. Suddenly two men in white stood there and said, Men of Galilee, why are you standing looking up into heaven? This Jesus, whom you have been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven. And so as He had this last interaction with His disciples, He was taken up into heaven. He referred to this in the last part of Luke. You know, those are kind of parallel sections here. He expands on it a little bit more right here.

But that's what we anticipate Christ doing when He returns. He's going to be returning to the earth. He's going to be coming back in a similar way. And of course, He's going to be coming back to solve all the world's problems. He's going to be coming back to set things right and to give people insight into exactly what type of life does God want everyone to live?

So it says in verse 12, they returned to Jerusalem and they entered the city. They went into an upper room. It enumerates the disciples here. And in verse 14, it says, all of these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.

See, how was it that this interaction with Jesus Christ, how was it about this awaiting the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? How was it that this affected these disciples?

Well, see, they had been eyewitnesses and first-hand accountants of what it was that Jesus had been doing. And yet now He's gone. You know, they probably, and I would guess just from what little we have recorded about it, you know, they asked Jesus to teach them to pray. But I don't think we see a lot of record of them praying, at least not during the time when Jesus was right there with them. But after He was gone, I think they saw a need to pray. After He was no longer there, after He had ascended into heaven, you know, they saw a reason to pray. And it says after this, they were constantly devoting themselves to prayer together with certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as His brethren. So this was the way in which the disciples were cultivated. The way in which they were developed. The way in which they were groomed.

To do the job that in some ways was going to begin here in chapter 2, verse 1.

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.

And it filled the entire house where they were sitting, and divided tongues as a fire appeared among them. And the tongue rested on each of them, and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance.

As the Spirit gave them that ability. Now it says, of course, this is a summary of what it was they saw. Something that was supernatural, something that was far different than any of our experience.

You know, because this was the beginning of the New Testament church. This was an emphatic beginning to the group who would later be called Christians. But it says in verse 5, Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.

And at this sound the group gathered and bewildered because everyone heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they ask, are not all of these who were speaking Galileans, and how is it that we can hear each of them in their own native language? And so the miracle that God was performing was not just sending, you know, somehow, you know, fire upon their head. Not just sending this mighty gust of wind, which, you know, maybe they've seen tornadoes before. You know, at least they, you know, they had this mighty gust. But within the, you know, the power that was extended at that time and the disciples being filled with the Holy Spirit, they were able to speak in a way that others could hear and understand.

And it says down in the latter part of this, in their own language in verse 11, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. And so all were amazed and perplexed, saying to the other, what does this mean? And of course, those who didn't want to believe, sneered and said, well, they've got to be drunk. You know, they've got to be, you know, inebriated. They're not making any sense. And yet the fact could not be denied that the Holy Spirit was now being infused into the church. It was now empowering those who were going to initially be a part of the church of God. And as we see in verse 14 going on down, we see Peter starts speaking in a way that was completely different. You know, he'd asked a lot of questions. He'd made a lot of bold statements. He'd been quite forward. He'd actually been put into his place by Jesus more than once.

He had said things that he wished he hadn't said. He probably felt like he, you know, opened his mouth and changed feet numerous times. This wasn't the case any longer.

This was something that was, you know, he started talking and explaining.

Explaining what it was that was occurring. And of course, he says in verse 17, this is what is spoken of by the prophet Joel. In the last days, God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and among your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. He says in verse 22, you are Israelites. I want you to listen to what I have to say. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders and signs that God did through him among you. As you yourselves know, this man handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you have crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. These Israelites were having to face the fact that they had just killed the Son of God. That they had turned him over to the Romans. Yeah, they got the Romans to kill him. They got kind of to slough it off to someone else.

But Peter was having to point out to them, well, your actions and your sins have brought about the death of Jesus Christ. And of course, down in verse 37, when they heard what Peter had to say, when they heard the inspired speaking that Peter extended to them at that time, something that I'm sure he was probably amazed about in his own way. Maybe he was surprised that he was even saying these things to these people, but at this point, God had already opened up power from on high.

God had already made available the Holy Spirit, and he was inspiring people, in this case, to be able to speak and preach and teach the deeds of God. In verse 37, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart. See, it touched their hearts. See, I think we can think back and maybe think about how it was that we felt, how it was that we were brought to awareness of how much we needed to be forgiven. How much we needed God. How much we needed God's help.

And certainly, we could read and see that, well, the Holy Spirit is what I need, but what I need to do is clearly to turn from my sins. So they said, Brethren, or they said to Peter, Brethren, what should we do? And Peter said, well, repent. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off everyone whom the Lord your God will call to Him. And so he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, Save yourself from this corrupt generation. And so those who welcomed his message were baptized. And that day, about 3,000 people were added, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

So this was a miraculous beginning. This was a marvelous beginning, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It caused Peter to be completely different. It caused the other disciples to have a to be excited about what God would do, because in this case, God turned the hearts of 3,000 people to Him. And then it says, they, being the disciples, devoted themselves, I guess others with them, to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and the breaking of bread and to prayer.

See, how was it that the Holy Spirit affected these initial Christians? Well, it caused them to want to learn more. It caused them to want to be taught. It caused them to want to fellowship with one another. It caused them to want to break bread. I mean, what do we do when we come here for services? We usually eat something. We usually fellowship with one another. We should be praying for one another, and we do that. We're concerned about each other. We're following a pattern that is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and it says in verse 43, All came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.

And all who believed were together and had things common.

Down in verse 46, day by days they spent much time together in the temple. They broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the good will of all people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

So this is what the Holy Spirit is described as being able to do. It's able to transform the hearts of men. Able to transform the hearts of the apostles, of the disciples, those who came to a recognition of their need for forgiveness and to be able to strengthen and empower.

Actually, when we follow this on, a little further, if you go over to chapter 4, you find that Peter and John, they're persecuted for what they're having to say. And whenever they were released, verse 23 of chapter 4, after they were released, they went to their friends and reported that the chief priests and elders had said to them that they shouldn't be teaching in the name of Jesus.

And when the church, the people that they went to, their friends, those whom they loved, when they heard it, they raised their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything in them, it is You who have said by the Holy Spirit through David, why do the Gentiles rage? Why do the people imagine vain things?

Here, they were able to see that while we're being told, don't preach, don't teach, don't proclaim the kingdom of God, don't proclaim Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world.

And then they said, well, we have to decide whether we should do what He told us to do and what He inspired us to do, or whether we should do what the Gentile rulers are telling us to do.

And so, in verse 27, in this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, people of Israel gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, to do whatever Your hand and plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look at their threats and grant to Your servants to speak Your Word with all boldness.

See, this is what the disciples came to see, that while we're being told to do one thing, by our Lord and Savior, and by the One who has granted us the Holy Spirit, and yet we're being told not to do that by others, and so we're going to need to have strength. We're going to need to have power. We're going to need to have courage. We're going to need to have boldness. And so, it says, Lord, look at their threats and grant to Your servants to speak Your words with boldness while You stretch out Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of our holy servant Jesus. And it says in verse 31, when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. To hear this is Luke's account. As he wrote about the life of Jesus, as he wrote about what Jesus said His disciples would do, and right toward the very end of the book, how He would inspire them to wait and then receive the Holy Spirit. And as they received the Holy Spirit, it would transform them. It would transform their lives. It would transform their mind. And it would cause them to act and actually to speak boldly the words of God in preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. And as you can see in the descriptions here, and we won't have time to read more today, but as you can see in these descriptions, God answered those prayers.

He heard them. He caused them to be moved with the Holy Spirit. He caused them to look to Him, to trust Him, to be encouraged by Him. And it's actually an amazing account of how it is that the Holy Spirit was working with them initially and how I think we should ask that God will stir up that same Spirit in us. He has granted us that same Spirit. He's given us the Spirit of God to give us eternal life, to give us salvation, and to empower us to grow in His divine nature.

That's an entirely another topic, and I'm not trying to focus on that, but I'd like for us to realize just what it was that He did with His Holy Spirit as He began the church. How it was He empowered the church to reach out to others, to be concerned for others, to appeal to others, and then to nurture others as God changed their mind and brought them into a relationship with God that we enjoy and that everybody really needs. That's what we are looking for. That's what we want to do, and we need that same type of courage, that same type of boldness that's mentioned here in the preaching and teaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. So I hope that all of us will ask God to stir up His Holy Spirit that is in us. It is a spirit of power. It is a spirit that is able to achieve things that would be beyond our normal ability. That's something that we can be thankful for. We're not limited to our own physical limitations, but we can do great things. We can reach out to others with concern and love and the care that comes again from the Holy Spirit. What He really tells us is that every one of us needs to grow in the Holy Spirit. First of all, we need to believe that He has been merciful to us in giving us that spirit. So we don't want to have the doubts that the disciples actually initially had. They didn't know for sure what to expect. But see, our belief that we would receive the Holy Spirit is based on the Word of God. It's based on God's inspired Word that He would give us the promise of the Father, that He would give us the gift of the Holy Spirit. And we need to be thankful for that. But that we need to grow from there in the fruit of the Spirit. We need to be filled. Here it's talking about being filled with the Spirit.

In another verse, and I won't go to that now, but in another verse you find in Romans, it talks about us being led by the Spirit of God. That would imply that we certainly want to follow the lead. We want to follow the lead of God as He directs and guides us. And as we draw close to Him, even as, again, was earlier mentioned, drawing close to Him every day. Every day we get up, we have an opportunity to draw close to God. We have an opportunity to be infused with more power from the Holy Spirit. And as we do that, as we are asking to be filled, as we are asking to be led by the Spirit of God, I think we'll find that God can perform miracles, even as we read about here in the book of Acts, He can perform miracles beyond what we might even imagine, beyond what we might even think needs to be. Let's see what God is going to do. You know, we're yet to see. But we don't want, you know, to be not asking for His help, or not asking for His Spirit to be expanded. And I think above all, as we see these things happen, as we see God working in our lives and in the work that the church is doing, we want to appreciate. Appreciate the fact that God is using us to be able to achieve a wonderful work. A work that He says, you know, is a marvelous work and one that can be reaching, you know, far-reaching in this world. And certainly, as we know today, the ability of the, you know, the communication networks that we have today is extraordinary. But I hope that this does help us in seeing how it is that Luke was writing about these things, how he wants us to be inspired by the words of life and that we can, you know, be stirred up about the fact that God has given us His Spirit. He wants us to use that in achieving and accomplishing His work in this age.