In the Book of Acts, in this chapter, in chapter two, he, the author that's writing this, there's a man named Luke, and Luke was writing this for. He addresses it to a specific person whose name was Theophilus. And we don't know if that's a guy's name or just kind of a title. Like, if you were somebody that loved to read books and was always had your nose in a book, we might call you a bookworm, right? Theophilus is a Greek word that means a lover of God, somebody that loves God.

So it could be titled or addressed to all those of you who love God. You know, this is a book that was written for you. And he says, theophilus, I wrote my first book, the Gospel of Luke, so that you would know that all that Jesus began to do and to teach. But he says in this book, the Book of Acts, he says, I'm writing to you so that you can know what that continuation of that story was. And the interesting thing is there's never, at the end of the Book of Acts, there's never anything that says the end.

It's not. It suggests that there's an ongoing work of the ministry of Jesus Christ that is going on, but it's through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so when we look at the Book of Acts, when we read it, we should recognize that we are a part of that story, that God was beginning to do something in Jesus, and that through the coming of the Holy Spirit, that they celebrated on Pentecost or took part in on Pentecost, and we commemorate today, I should say, through that, we are part of the ongoing story of the work in this world that Jesus Christ is doing through His Holy Spirit. So we're going to look in Acts, chapter two, I'm actually going to read quite a few verses today. I'm going to read the first 21 verses, and then I'm going to skip down a little bit later on in the message and read some more.

So if you've got a Bible with you, if you open it up to that, that's fine. I know we've got some in the racks on the pews. And also you maybe have an app on your phone and you could follow along. But I'm going to be reading from something called the Net, the new English translation. Now, by the way, this is 50 days after Easter.

So last week we looked at the Ascension of Jesus, where he ascended into heaven. That was 40 days after Easter. So Jesus had been dead 40 days, or he rose again three days later. And then 40 days later, he ascended into heaven. And now this is 10 days after that.

So when the day of Pentecost had come, they the believers, the disciples of Jesus. And by the way, it's not just his 12 apostles. This is all those who were the believers in him. There was 120 of them and they'd been praying and fasting for 10 days. I didn't get very far before I start like giving you commentary on this, did I?

They had been praying and fasting for 10 days. Now, I don't know if that was 10 straight days where nobody ate. Like a room of 120 people not eating. Somebody's going to get hangry with each other, I think, except that the Spirit of God was already with them. See, Jesus had breathed on his disciples before he had ascended into heaven.

And he says, receive the Holy Spirit. They had already received the Holy Spirit, but there was what we call an infilling of the Holy Spirit, a filling up of the Holy Spirit for a specific task in a specific moment. The Spirit of God fills us when we are born again, when we are saved, the Spirit of God fills us. But then we are infilled or kind of filled up with the Holy Spirit at specific times for a specific task or ministry that God has given to us. And so that's what they're going was going to happen here.

So when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a violent wind blowing came from heaven and filled the entire house where they were sitting. And the tongues, spreading out like a fire, appeared to them and came to rest on each one of them. That's why our lighting up here is all oranges and reds. It's the color of fire.

Fire. Unless you have those really awesome fires that burn like blue and green and white, those are fun fires. Anyway, the tongues spread out like a fire and appeared to them and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven residing in Jerusalem. When this sound occurred, a crowd gathered and was in confusion because each one of them heard them speaking in his own language. Completely baffled, they said, aren't all these people who are speaking Galileans? Which I'll translate that for you, means rural, small town, hicks, uneducated. That's what Galileans meant to them.

It was an insult, a little bit like they didn't mean it in a Mean way. It's just kind of like saying, like. It's kind of like how Wesley Chapel looks at Zephyr Hills. You know what I'm saying? They kind of look down their nose just a little bit over here.

Although Zephyr Hills has come up quite a bit in some of their housing, and the prices reflect that, you know, oh, my goodness, it's expensive to live here now too, you know. But anyway, so they said, aren't all these people just Galileans? How is it that each of us hears them in our own native language? And these people speak up, they start representing, like, where are you from? And they start all saying where they're from.

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and the province of Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya near Cyrene. And visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, meaning people who had come to the Jewish faith. They weren't Jews by birth, but they decided they wanted to worship the one true God of heaven. So that's what a proselyte is. So both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them speaking in our own languages.

What about the great deeds that God has done? All of them were astounded and greatly confused, saying to one another, what does this mean, by the way, there's going to be two questions that are asked by the group of people that hear this. The first question is, what does this mean? We'll get to the other question later, but it says, others jeered at the speaker, saying, they're drunk on new wine. Yeah, because people get smarter when they drink, right?

You know? So Peter stood up with the 11, raised his voice and addressed them. He said, you men of Judea and all of those who are living in Jerusalem right now, know this and listen carefully to what I say. In spite of what you think, these men are not drunk. It's only nine o'clock in the morning.

Of course, somebody I once heard said, you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. So I guess that goes out the window there. But anyway, he's saying, like, no, we don't start that early. Like, that's not what this is. He explains it.

He says, this is what was spoken about through the prophet Joel. In the last days, it will be that God says that I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream Dreams even on my servants, both men and women. I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. And I will perform wonders in the sky above and miraculous signs on the earth below.

Blood and fire and clouds of smoke. And the sun will be changed to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now there was four. I'm.

I'm done reading at this point for a minute. There were four things that start with the letter S that happened here. They saw or suddenly this suddenly happens. They didn't have like a timeline. They just knew.

Jesus had told them, stay together, stay in the upper room. Which, by the way, we believe the upper room wasn't in a house. It was actually a space in the upper walls of the temple complex. They had multiple stories there, and they had like meeting rooms and banquet rooms where people could stay there for certain things. Religious gatherings.

I don't know if you could rent it for a birthday party or a Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know about that. But they had these rooms. And so we believe that these believers in Jesus were staying in one of these rooms. And they called it an upper room because it's up higher than the rest of the temple.

And you can look out and see the crowd that has come there to worship. Coincident, well, not coincidentally, by the will of God, this is happening during the feast called Shavuot. And that was where they celebrated that God had given them the law through Moses, that they had celebrated and not done so well with observing throughout all their history. And so as they are commemorating the giving of the law now God is on this day giving them his Holy Spirit, the law that is written on their hearts, the law of love, this Holy Spirit bringing that to life. And so on the day that the Jews are gathered from all over the world, just as they had been at Passover when Jesus was killed, now this feast is being celebrated.

And so there's travelers that are Jewish or converts to Judaism who have traveled from all over the place. As we read that thing with all the different places they came from, and they've traveled into Jerusalem, and so they are gathered there. And many of them have come to the temple to worship. And as they're worshiping at the temple now, the Holy Spirit has, has, has fallen on these people and filled them. And like I said earlier, you're always filled with the Holy Spirit for a specific time and purpose.

And the purpose that the Holy Spirit gave them was to speak the glorious things about Jesus Christ to all those who were there and to speak it in the languages that they understood, the languages that they comprehended, their native tongues. And the beautiful thing about it was the people said, these men are ignorant Galileans. And yet I can understand what they're saying. Has anybody been in, like, I call it the Deep south, like, not geographically. I mean, like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, and you meet somebody that's kind of grown up there their whole life, or maybe you go up to the hills, like West Virginia, you know, and you go up in there and you're talking to some of these mountain folks and you're like, I don't understand the word you're saying.

You ever met them? Yeah, right. Like, we're talking with Liz and Wanda recently about, like, Puerto Rico and how some of the different parts of the kind, the island there, have, like, different ways of speaking. You know, I'm like, it's the same, you know, in the. In the States, you know, like.

Like, you go in different regions and it's like, I don't. I don't know how to even talk to you. Like, we don't. We're using the same language, but it ain't the same language. And so Galileans, you know, they're like, I shouldn't be able to even understand you.

Like, normally I can't understand a word you're saying. Like, even when if we spoke the same language, we're not speaking the same language. But now I'm hearing you in my native language, I don't understand it. How can this be? This is truly baffling to people, as it should be.

And some people, their best idea was that they said, I think they got drunk. I think they got into the wine early. No, no, I promise you, that doesn't make your recall better. Have you ever heard of somebody saying, I don't remember that I was drunk? It does not help your memory.

It doesn't help the mental acuity. And yet that was what some of these scoffers said. It's amazing how many times that we see God at work in somebody's life, and yet people say, no, that wasn't God. I can explain it away with this or with that. We're so slow to believe that God is going to do great and amazing things in our life.

But I want to tell you that God wants to do more in your life right now, today, than you ever dreamed or imagined. God wants to do more through his church than we could ever think possible on our own. We look at a day today where it's like, people are sick, people are traveling, and we look at the attendance and we think, how can we go out and do anything, make any kind of a difference in the world? I tell you we can, because the spirit of God wants to fill us for his purposes. One of the beautiful things that's been happening here the last few weeks or last few months is I've been noticing.

I don't know if you have, too. I've been noticing a diversity in cultures and in countries of origin and languages and in ethnicities, and I love it. It's something that I've heard a lot of church leaders say. Like, you know, here's what I believe God's will is for his church. And I say I love it.

In fact, I don't think segregated churches on Sunday morning is a good reflection of what heaven will look like. I don't think segregating. Now, I understand language barriers and all that, but when we segregate by just culture and natural national identity and all these things, I don't think it's very, very much a reflection of what we'll see in eternity. I don't think that's how God created us to be. And so I've.

I've longed for something like that. And yet at the same time, it's like, how do you force it to happen? You can't really. It's almost impossible. And yet God is doing something here, and I love that.

And so as we celebrate that, I think it's a. It's a shift in the way a church looks and in the way a church operates. And that was what was going on on the day of Pentecost. Now all of a sudden, instead of them saying, well, you guys are gan, so we stay away from you. We live down in Egypt, so we're staying away from those who are from Rome or from Asia.

Like, we're all so different, so we're just going to separate ourselves. And then all of a sudden, they hear everybody preaching the same message in all of their languages. And God was uniting his people under that one thing. And so what they were being united by was hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ, folks. That's what our city needs.

That's what our nation needs. You know, some of you know this, but some of you don't. My family and I this week, we spent three days and came back yesterday. We spent three days in. We flew out of here.

We went to Washington, D.C. for two days and Philadelphia for one day. And it was Kind of a nation's history kind of tour. We do things quickly. We pack a lot into those three days, man.

We saw Smithsonian museums, kids stuff. We went to. Yeah, we went to a kids museum. We went to all the national monuments. The Washington Monument, Korean War Veterans Memorial, which I hadn't seen yet.

The Vietnam Veterans wall, World War II Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument. Didn't. Didn't get tickets to go up in there. We got a White House tour. We signed up through our Congresswoman, Laurel Lee, and we were able to go in inside the White House.

I mean, we didn't see anybody famous at all whatsoever, you know, but it was. There were pictures of them, so that was neat. But just being in those rooms, knowing that some of those rooms. I mean, there was one room we were in that later that day, the President was having, like, a dinner there with a whole bunch of people or a press conference thing, and it was like, wow. We were just there a few hours ago, and now there's all these important people showing up there.

Apparently the Chancellor of Germany, who's only been in office in Germany for a month, he was in town because we were told by the Secret Service as we exited, he's like, you guys have to go that way and don't stop until you get to that road. We have the Chancellor of Germany here, and we can't have people wandering around like, okay, there's little old me and all these important people doing all this important stuff. So that's really impressive, you know. But then at the same time, we're walking around through the city and we're driving around through the city, I noticed so much of what was celebrated there. I mean, of course, it's.

It's Pride Month. Like, that was a constant reminder, I saw, you would think, on the nation's capital, you'd see a bunch of American flags. I saw more rainbow banner flags than I saw American flags hanging off of businesses and buildings and stuck on windows. And it's like, okay, well, that's one value that they seem to have. But the thing that I noticed the most as I reflected on it after our first night in town was I noticed that there was just an entire attitude of arrogance and pride.

Like. Like the. The word pride being, I say, hijacked by the. The. The rainbow movement.

People is. Is a terrible word. In fact, I believe it's a. It actually shows a little bit of their heart. We're taking pride in something other than what God called us to be.

We're taking pride in our lifestyle rather than taking Pride in serving God. And so it shows what's going on there. But the rest of Washington D.C. it seemed like there was so much that reflected a position, a power, influence. It wasn't even wealth.

I didn't see ostentatious displays of wealth like you might see in a lot of downtown areas of certain cities. I didn't see expensive sports cars that cost 2, $300,000. I didn't see limousines. I think I saw one while I was there. I wouldn't want to drive a limousine around those streets anyway.

Those are some crazy drivers, I'm telling you. It was ridiculous. But what I did notice was the power, the position, the influence that gets peddled, that gets dealt. Everybody wants to show their, their level, that they have over everyone. And so through all that I realized like, this is what makes our nation run.

This is what our nation is turning, the wheels of our nation are turning on. This is the track we're going down. And I look at that and I look at all these things going on in a city like that and I think, what a place that needs the gospel of Jesus Christ. We say we're a nation built on honoring God, but I don't see many vestiges of that that were happening there. I don't know what happens behind the closed doors.

I have some ideas about it and I don't think I like a lot of what goes on there. But I don't think that we're really tapped into what our nation was founded on anymore. And there needs to be a resurgence of that, a revival of that. Amen. There needs to be a move of the spirit of God, not just in, in the city we live in or the state we live in, but it needs to infect those that are voted into positions of power or those who are, what you might have heard, like the deep state, the people that regardless of the four or six year election cycles, these are the people that stay in power in office buildings for 20 or 30 years that are running.

All the stuff that happens in between presidents and representatives and congressmen and women. But I look at that and that's some of the report of what I saw in our nation's capital. It's a beautiful place. It's a humbling place to think of. Especially when we were up in Philadelphia and standing in the Independence hall where members that had written the Declaration of Independence, that were writing the Constitution, where they sat in those chairs in that same building that we were standing in.

There was a sense of hallowedness there, a sense of of just like awe over the history that had taken place there, that wrote the path that this nation was rolled out on. And there's something beautiful about that. I bought some prints made on a printing press that was in Benjamin Franklin's printing shop. Like, how cool was that Is amazing. And yet at the same time, I look at where we're at now and I think we need a move, a filling of the Holy Spirit in the church people today more than ever.

Because what needs to be happening, the power needs to come from the Spirit of God, through the people of God, and not through those that are, that are in these elected offices. The people of God need to rise up to our place that God is calling us to be. And God fills people with his Holy Spirit for a specific purpose and every time. And so our prayer should be that God would fill us not for what our wants and wishes are, but for the, for what his Spirit desires to do in and through us. Now I want to look at a couple more verses and it's, it's starting down.

In verse 37 through 41, Peter had preached. He had spoken to the people. He told them when, when they had, remember they had asked that first question, question, they said, what does this mean? Like what we are witnessing here? What is the meaning or implication of this?

So he tells them about Jesus. He says that, that what they, first of all, what they had seen was the infilling of the Holy Spirit, like the prophet Joel had said. But then he starts talking about Jesus. He says who Jesus was and he says, and you killed him. That's what he says.

And so he says, but death didn't hold him. He was raised from the grave and he is ascended to the right hand of the Father. He is Lord and Christ. So now verse 37. When the people heard this, they were distressed, greatly distressed.

They said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what should we do? Peter said to them, repent. And each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.

And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, save yourselves from this wicked and perverse generation. So those who accepted his message were baptized. And that day about 3,3000 people were added to their number. Now Peter was the guy who previously to this, his, his. He had a really big mouth because like he was always Sticking his foot in his mouth.

You know, he's always saying something that. It's like, why would you say that, Peter? Every now and then he got something really correct. Like, every now and then he would nail it. Like when Jesus is taking his disciples to this place that was a den of iniquity and wickedness and idol worship, he goes there and he says, who do these say that I am?

And they start throwing out these ideas. And Jesus says, but who do you guys say that I am? And Peter says, you're the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus says, ding, ding, ding. You got it right, Peter.

You finally nailed it, Peter. You got it right. And so, Peter, you. You have figured this out. Now, Peter, interestingly enough, a lot of.

Like the Catholic Church, for instance, says that Peter was made at that point the. The head of the church or the first pope. The interesting thing is Jesus didn't say it that way. They were actually standing on a rock overlooking the city of Caesarea Philippi. He says, peter, you're a rock.

That was what Peter's name meant. Might have meant dumb as a rock. I don't know, you know, like. Like if somebody said, man, you're dumb as a rock, like, could be, but. But he says, peter, you're a rock.

Like, you're solid, you're trustworthy. Which is interesting because, you know, not long after that, Peter would deny knowing Jesus when Jesus was on trial. But he says, peter, you're solid. But I'm telling you, on this rock. And I think he was pointing to the place they were standing on, this rock.

I'll build my church. In other words, this place that had the most evil, despicable types of worship. I'm not even going to go to explain them right now, but the most evil, despicable kinds of idolatry and, and sinful worship that that was possible was what was happening there. And Jesus said, I can even build my church on this place, on this rock. I can build a church here.

They had passed three temples on the way in, one of which was to Caesar, by the way, like a. A man. You know, they were. They were. Had a temple to a guy that was alive.

I mean, this was how ignorant and foolish these people were. But Jesus says, even on this rock, I can build my church. So I don't think Jesus was calling Peter the head of the church there. But interestingly enough, at one point, Peter does kind of take over leading the church as far as, like, make kind of making the decisions when questions would arise. And the guy that had been leading it up until that point before he was killed, was James, who was the brother of Jesus at the time Jesus was saying this at Caesarea Philippi.

He, James didn't even believe his brother was the Messiah. Like it's his brother, you know, it's kind of hard to trust him to be the son of God, you know, you're like, well, we have the same mom. He's like, yeah, my dad's different, you know, my father's God. By the way, that's a weird conversation. Have you ever thought about that?

If anybody ever had adopted kids, at some point you might tell them, like, you know, like, hey, by the way, you're adopted. You know, you have to figure that conversation out when it's right. A little awkward, kind of weird one to have with Jesus. Like, by the way, Joseph isn't your father, you know, like, what? Yeah, who is he then?

Like it's is God. He's like, I don't even know how that's possible. You know, it's like so probably weird conversation. Okay, you guys aren't getting. You're not as excited about that as I am.

That's fine. So. So anyway, this is how my brain works, though I think in between the lines quite a bit, I have all these questions. Tom and I were talking about questions and he had a couple for me and I was like, I've got other weird questions. Like when they buried Jesus, he had been on the cross naked.

They wrapped him up in cloth. When he rose again, what was he wearing when he came out of there? Like he didn't come out looking like a mummy probably all wrapped up in strips of cloth. He found some clothes somewhere. Did the angels bring him some clothes?

I don't know what it was, but shortly after he comes out of the tomb, Mary's laying there looking for his body and she thinks he's the gardener. So he had some kind of clothing on cuz he didn't freak her out looking like a mummy, you know. So anyway, those are the things my brain thinks about. And so it helps me to understand the scriptures better because I know to ask questions. If you're not asking questions about the Bible, you're not reading it like deeply enough.

Like read it until you've got questions about it. Questions that you don't have an answer for. All right, I'll move along. So Peter, Peter kind of becomes a leader after James. James had been leading the church.

After Jesus ascends into heaven, his brothers believe in him and James leads the church and then When James's head gets removed from his shoulders, he, he can't lead anymore. So Peter takes over. And Peter is the leader of the church from that time on. And so now that started here in Acts, kind of where Peter like rises to the top, so to speak, like the cream rising to the top. He says, okay, in chapter one, here's what's been going on.

They realized that one of the disciples, Judas, had betrayed Jesus. Then he hung himself, so he can't be an apostle anymore. But they KNEW they needed 12 apostles. 12 is an important number. There's, you know, there were 12 tribes of Israel, so there's going to be 12 apostles over the church and there's, they need another one.

So Peter starts quoting scripture, these obscure verses from the Old Testament. I don't think he did that out of his own smarts, his own thinky, thinky part. I think it was the Holy Spirit that had already been given to Peter and the other apostles by Jesus, breathing and giving them the Holy Spirit. And so Peter rises up and he says, guys, we've got to replace Judas. Judas went and did what he did.

We knew he was going to because the scripture said it. It's like, what? Just a few days ago, you guys didn't even believe that Jesus was risen again, even though the scriptures said he would be. But now all of a sudden Peter's like this Bible scholar that's going back and saying, yeah, obviously Judas was going to do that. It says it right here and he quotes it, he says, and we also have to replace him because there's this other part and he quotes another one from Psalms and it's like, wow, Peter, where did this come from?

Dude, it came from the Holy Spirit. And so Peter, he, he stands up, he rises up, they do what he's saying. They nominate another guy to be the, the 12th apostle. And so now they've got this 10 day period where everybody's been praying and fasting. And then the Holy Spirit falls on them.

Tongues of fire, the room shakes, there's smoke. They're like, people are thinking, should we call 91 1? What's going on? No, this is the Holy Spirit. Are these men drunk?

No, this is the Holy Spirit. So Peter preaches this sermon. 3,000 people get saved. Why they ask that second question, that important question. Did you see it, brothers?

What must we do? What do we have to do? Given this message of the gospel that we've heard in our own languages, and now that we've heard you preach to us, we, what must we do? In light of what we've heard, in light of what happened to Jesus. But what God was doing through that, what must we do?

Peter just said, your only job is to repent of your sin. Your job is to repent of the sin that you have in your life. Now, the interesting thing to me is that so often, if you see somebody that you know, they're not following Jesus, you know, they're not a believer in Christ, it's easy to point out their sins, the things that they are doing wrong, right? You've seen this, right? You've seen people.

You're like, shouldn't be doing that. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't have said that. It's easy to point out people's sins. It's easy to know them.

It's easier to know them about other people than it is about yourself, you know? And so it's easy to look at people's sins, and it's easy to. To say, okay, they ought to repent of that. They got to stop doing that. And yet that's not the thing that Peter points out.

He says, it was your sins and mine that put Jesus on the cross. If you hadn't been a sinner, Jesus wouldn't have needed to die. But that's not the thing to repent of. In other words, your family members, your friends, your neighbors that aren't following Jesus Christ, you don't have to worry about all the stuff they're doing wrong. The only thing that they need to repent of is their unbelief in Jesus Christ as Messiah.

They must first repent of that. Until that happens, we don't worry about all the other stuff. We don't worry about the other things that they're doing that are against the will of God. The first thing that needs to happen is they need to repent of their unbelief. They need to repent of not believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

In the end of things. That is what we are judged on, is whether we have received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and allowed his Holy Spirit to give us new life. We call that rebirth, being born again. If you've never been born again, if you've never said Jesus Christ, I recognize that I have sinned, that that sin puts you on the cross, that it breaks the heart of God when I do this, and that it has put a barrier between me and my ability to have a relationship with you. I want you to remove that sin from my life, forgive me of my sins, and, and renew Me, restore me, recreate me.

May I be born again. You have a new spiritual birthday when you're born again. And at that point, you are walking with Christ. Now we call it becoming a Christian, getting saved, getting born again, whatever terms you put on it. And through that, you have this new life that starts at that moment when you're born again.

The Holy Spirit enters you. You have, like Moses wished would happen, a portion of the Spirit of God living in you. You have the Spirit of God living in you, giving you now both the comforting presence of Christ in your life, but he's also convicting you of sin. See, all those things that the rest of us saw that you needed to stop doing because it's not in the will of God. Now, it's the Holy Spirit's job to show those to you.

But the beautiful thing is he does it on his timing. There's things. If I sat down, if I followed you for a week, or you followed me for a week, we would each be able to point out a whole bunch of stuff we say. I don't think you should do that. I've got a verse.

Great. There's one preacher I listens to. He says, neat. He says it in such a mocking way. I love it.

He's like, neat. What's the Holy Spirit saying to you? See, part of the Holy Spirit's job in your life is to convict you of sin. But he does it in his order, in his timing. Now, the thing that you must be able to do or get ready for and tune your ear to is hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to you.

Just like in a crowded room, the people that are closest to you, a spouse, a child, whatever it might be, you can pick out their voice sometimes. Or in a sea of children, you can hear your kid. Except when they all start whining, then it all just sounds the same. Like, oh, my goodness, do you ever stop whining? You know, and then.

Then God's like, do you ever stop whining? Okay, okay, I got it. God speaks to me like that a lot. He did that the other day. We're sitting there, and it was just yesterday morning, actually, and Emma's doing something I didn't want her to do, and she just kept pushing the line and still, like, about to do it anyway.

And I. Then I gave her a reason why it benefited her not to do it, and she said, oh, okay. And she sat back up and was obedient a little bit. But the thing was, she wasn't really obeying me to Obey me. She was doing it because she thought it benefited her.

And I said, hey, you're not being obedient because Daddy said so. You're doing it because it was optimal for you. Oh, I hear you, God. See, so many times God will say, I want you to stop doing this. I want you to not do that.

And I just keep on doing it my way. And then finally I get convinced. Oh, but maybe, you know, maybe if I stop doing this or if I do that, then. Then it'll be better for me. And he's like, no, it should have started with obedience.

Yes, there are positive benefits when we obey God. His law gives us life. His. His commands are life giving to us. And so when we do that, we experience the joys and benefits that God gives to us.

And yet our first step should simply be to obey Him. When he tells us to do it, we obey. So the Holy Spirit is speaking to us. He's telling us how to live. He's calling us to walk in holiness and in faithfulness.

And so we must obey that Peter. He shows that one central sin to the people. And in that one day, 3,000 of them get born again and get baptized. Can you imagine how long it takes to do 3,000 baptisms? I mean, I bet those.

Those believers were tired. They must have been just. Just. Oh, man. Donkey.

And raising up. Go on out. Next one. You know, people are like, I guess I'll drip dry. We didn't bring extra clothes for this.

You know, praise God. Praise God. What a beautiful thing. And yet it didn't stop there. You see, the Holy Spirit keeps working throughout time and throughout the times of his people.

Those folks that were visiting there, they leave and they go home. They go to the lands and the countries and the places that they came from, and they start finding others that had received Christ or that had heard the message. Or they start preaching it to people who were not believers in Jesus. And they start preaching to them, and they start getting saved. And they say, now what do we do?

I guess we have to start meeting together every week. So they meet in each other's homes, and they begin sharing things with one another. Oh, you have a financial burden. Let me help you out. Oh, you're hungry.

You don't have enough food. I have extra. You can have it. Oh, your clothes are ragged and worn out. You know what?

I just bought some new clothes that I really didn't need. Here you go. You can wear these. You can have these, whatever it might be. Oh, your car is about to fall apart with 350,000 miles.

I've got one that's still really good, and I don't even drive it anymore. It's yours. They started doing these things for one another. And it wasn't this idea of, like, Marxism, where everybody had to be equal and even. It was this idea of saying, those that God has blessed, he has given them the ability to be a blessing to those who are in need of it.

And as that was happening, what began to take place was this culture of love and giving and acceptance that they all had for each other was so great and so amazing that all those on the outside of them started recognizing it and saying, we want that, too. We want to be part of a group like that. And so it says, the Lord began adding to their number every day. People who were being saved, people who were being born again because of the love that the people within the church had for one another, the acceptance they had of outsiders because of all of this people. People said, we want to be part of that.

Very quickly, the church grows to over 5,000 people. And then it just keeps growing from there. And the church of Jesus Christ has spread throughout the entire earth in the time since then. And yet there's still such a need for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be preached and presented to people with the power of the filling of the Holy Spirit. And that is what Jesus is calling us to do today.

Today our response is to be willing to listen for the Holy Spirit's voice, to speak to us, to guide us, and to show us who he is calling us to go out to. To declare the gospel. So the question is, none of us, by the way, none of us is beyond the ability to be obedient to God. I don't care what age or physical limitations we might think we have. The idea is, is that God is still working through us to save people.

He has chosen the church. He has designated his church to be the primary vehicle for salvation and discipleship and evangelism for those who are coming to Christ. He has no Plan B. The church is his mode to accomplish his mission to reach the lost. Amen.