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CrossPointe Community Church
P O Box 126
Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
CALL TO WORSHIP
Then He (Jesus) said, “When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And He said, “Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day. It was also written that this message would be proclaimed in the authority of his name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem: ‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’ You are witnesses of all these things.”
“And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.”
Luke 24:44-49
SCRIPTURE
In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach until the day He was taken up to heaven after giving His chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. During the forty days after He suffered and died, He appeared to the apostles from time to time, and He proved to them in many ways that He was actually alive. And He talked to them about the Kingdom of God.
Once when He was eating with them, He commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift He promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking Him, “Lord, has the time come for You to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”
Acts 1:1-8
He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be My witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Now, who will want to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way. Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, than to suffer for doing wrong!
Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but He died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but He was raised to life in the Spirit.
I Peter 3:13-18
SERMON
Perspectives on Pentecost Power, Part IV
Randy K’Meyer
Bible commentator J. Vernon McGee was in Pasadena on New Year’s Day 1941 watching the Tournament of Roses Parade when a beautiful float covered with thousands of American Beauty Roses suddenly sputtered and then stalled, as believe it or not, it had run out of gas. The whole parade following came to a halt and was held up until finally, someone was able to get a can of gas to the disabled vehicle.
There were two amazing ironies that day: One was that the theme of the parade was, “Be prepared.”
And two, you’ll never guess who entered and owned that float? The Standard Oil Company of California, whose main product is gasoline. McGee said, “If there’s one float that should not have run out of gas, it was the Standard Oil Company float.” 1
Mark Mittleburg, author of How to Build a Contagious Church, writes,
We all believe in it. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who genuinely believed in the Bible but didn’t believe in evangelism. When you embrace the truth of God’s Word, it’s pretty difficult to discount its call to reach lost people. It’s on our bulletins, in our hymns, and throughout our creeds. It’s posted on our marquees and peppered through our statements of faith. It’s emphasized in our theology books, praised in our seminaries, and encouraged in our pulpits. Most Christian leaders list it as one of their ministry’s top priorities. There’s little ambiguity or doubt that this is central to what we’re supposed to be about. The irony is that while many of us are in churches and denominations that have a rich heritage and strong reputation for evangelism, in many cases precious little is actually happening. Let’s be honest: in most ministries very few lost people are actually being reached for Christ.” 1
In other words, the church resembles the Standard Oil float that has run out of gas. For with all the power of the Holy Spirit freely available all the time, the church just doesn’t seem to be getting the job that Jesus gave us to do done.
I listened to a podcast this past Thursday titled Why Very Few Churches Do Evangelism. The presenter said, “Conversion growth (how many people are coming to Christ as a result of the church’s overall efforts) has been declining significantly.” He relates that churches that keep statistics on this reveal that ten years ago the average church had 50 members for every new person coming into the faith, whereas today, the average church needs 100 people to reach one person for Christ. And in many, many cases no new persons are reached for Christ. 3
And yet, Jesus told His disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be My witnesses, telling people about Me everywhere.”
And that’s just exactly how things played out. Jesus told His disciples to remain in Jerusalem for the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the tenth day of their wait, the Holy Spirit came to them, and guess what didn’t happen?
The text doesn’t say, quoting from Acts 2, “what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. Everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit” and began to cook casserole dishes so they could hold a pot-luck dinner at which a good time was had by all.
The text doesn’t say, “what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began” to discuss amongst themselves whether or not once you were saved you were always saved or whether you could sin away grace and lose your salvation.
The text doesn’t say, “everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit” and began to divide the church into grade levels and they invented Sunday School.
It doesn’t say “everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit” and began to elect leaders to make decisions in the best interest of the church. It doesn’t even say “everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit” and began to break out in songs of worship and praise.”
But what does it say? “And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking.”
What did they speak? Verse 11 tells us they began speaking “about the wonderful things that God has done” in Jesus, the Christ. And they kept right on speaking through the rest of the Book of Acts.
Don’t get me wrong, I know worship is important! And so is Christian education and leadership and giving and I’ll even throw in a pot-luck dinner once in a while. The vast majority of things we do in the church are extremely important, but I think we do well to recognize that on the Day of Pentecost God sent His Holy Spirit to His people to enable them that the Spirit enabled them to fulfill their God-appointed task of telling others the old, old story of Jesus and His love.
‘Well, yea, that was then and this is now; surely Jesus didn’t mean us, did He?’
Were you aware that the last words of Jesus as recorded in all four gospels agree with today’s key verse that it is His intention that His people be His witnesses? If at any point, Christians and/or the church would have stopped speaking about Jesus, we would not be sitting here today.
I mention church because the Church itself plays a huge role in speaking about Christ. Every so often I will preach a message concerning the church as the evangelist. But today, I am speaking to us as individuals.
‘But I don’t fancy myself being a witness for God. I don’t have the knowledge, why I don’t even know who wrote the four gospels. I haven’t been around the church long enough to represent it well. I’m just new to this stuff, give me a break; talking about faith is pretty intimidating; And I don’t want people to think I’m a holy roller.’
Relax; let’s recognize that some of us are way down the road and have lots of experience with being a witness and know just what to say and when. Some have been around the church for a long time, but we have a tendency to unplug our hearing aids when we hear the preacher begin to talk about this. And others among us are new, new to the faith, or perhaps, new to a church that embraces this kind of thing.
Wherever we happen to be on the faith-sharing spectrum, this means two things:
First, accepting the Biblical truth that the Lord of the Church desires for His people to be witnesses to what He has accomplished. (Do you agree that this is true?)
Second, although there is nothing to prevent any of us from engaging in telling others about Christ today, all of us can learn how to improve our skills to make us more proficient witnesses tomorrow.
Some of you just attended Jim Brandenburg’s class on witnessing on Sundays in May. Bully for Jim and bully for those of you who availed yourselves of that opportunity!
Matthew Weber and I are preparing a course in Christian Apologetics. When we are ready, I am going to invite some unbelieving friends I have made in Chippewa Lake to meet Matt and me at The Village Inn for a discussion group. However; before we launch, we’d like to offer the same opportunity to you. So on Sundays July 16 and 23, he and I will be offering our material which will cover philosophical approaches to belief in God, what the scientific community is saying; how creation, biology, astronomy, and astrophysics all point to God, the literary evidence for historical Jesus, and evidence for both the death and Resurrection of Christ.
Peter says we must always be prepared to give an account of the hope we have (3:15).
This material will help in being prepared. Being prepared for what? To tell others about what Christ Jesus has done for us.
That’s what Peter adds after the admonition to always be ready.
Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but He died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but He was raised to life in the Spirit.
I Peter 3:18
Did you notice what precedes Peter’s admonition to always be prepared? “Revere or dedicate your lives to Christ as Lord.” For Peter, there is a direct link between being dedicated to the Lord and speaking on behalf of the Lord. Doesn’t it just make sense that if I am dedicated to something, I will be willing to speak about it?
I think it’s also important to note that Peter places this admonition in the midst of a paragraph about suffering; specifically suffering negative consequences for being a witness for Christ. It’s no coincidence that the word for ‘witness’ is the same word, depending on the context, which is translated as ‘martyr.’ In other words, those who are serious about witnessing were willing to sacrifice their careers, their reputations, and sometimes their very lives in order to do so.
If you dare read it, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs gives hundreds of accounts of Christian people who were martyred by the Romans for refusing to back down when government officials ordered them to stop speaking about their faith in Christ.
They took their lead from Peter and John who in similar circumstances said, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than Him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20)
Are we being called to give our lives? Thankfully no; but we are called to sacrifice our reputation if need be. We should not allow our concern for what others might think about us to interfere with our greater calling to tell others about what Jesus has done for us.
And I am challenging all of us to grapple with that; to pray about that and make a decision about that. Because as long as our reputation remains more precious to us than our calling to go into all the world to tell the old, old story, then we do resemble that disabled Standard Oil Float in the Rose Parade.
I close with an illustration about the Titanic. Catering to the rich and famous, the luxury liner was advertised as “unsinkable.” On Titanic’s fateful night, many of the passengers, who somehow still believed the advertisement, refused to get in the lifeboats, even though they were clearly told the ship was going down. Other passengers were unable to enter a lifeboat because of the selfish privileged who felt no concern for anyone but themselves. Those first-class passengers feared that added weight in the lifeboats might jeopardize their chance for survival. As a result, many of the ship’s lifeboats, which were made to hold up to 60 people, rowed away with only 15 people aboard, leaving hundreds stranded on the rapidly sinking liner.
But that wasn’t the end of the tragedy. A greater calamity occurred after the Titanic slipped into the Atlantic, as hundreds of people struggled to stay afloat in the frigid water begging and screaming for the lifeboats to come back and pluck them out of the water before it was too late. And most heartbreaking of all, many of those lifeboats were within earshot of people crying out, and yet they remained where they sat. Records show that only one went back. But it was too little too late.
You and I are aware of people who are sinking; or as Paul writes in Ephesians, “without hope and without God” (2:12), and need someone to throw them a life preserver.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be My witnesses, telling people about Me everywhere.
Acts 1:8
Always be prepared to share the reason for the hope in you.
I Peter 3:15
1 J. Vernon McGee, Through the Bible with J. Vernon McGee,
[Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, ©1984].
https://www.cleoejacksoniii.com/my-ongoing-thoughts/running-on-empty
2 Mark Mittleberg, Building a Contagious Church,
[Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, © 2000]. Page 20
3 Thom Rainer, Church Answers, Episode 22, May 25, 2023
Why Very Few Churches Do Evangelism | Church Answers