The Power of the Gospel: Part 1 | Is This Thing On?

What is the Gospel, and how does it advance in our world today? In this insightful message, Pastor Travis Aicklen dives into the Book of Acts to explore the undeniable power of the Gospel. Whether you are a longtime believer or just exploring faith, this sermon challenges us to understand how the Holy Spirit moves and how different people respond to the Good News. Tune in to the full message to discover how God might be calling you to reach the people in your own life.

Key Points

• Honoring the Word: Believers are called to pray that the word of the Lord speeds ahead, but we must also ensure it is honored and never watered down just to attract a crowd (2 Thessalonians 3).
• The First Sermon: After the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, Peter preached the very first Christian sermon in Acts 2, boldly declaring Jesus as both Lord and Christ to a diverse crowd.
• The True Response to the Gospel: A genuine encounter with the Gospel leaves people "cut to the heart," which leads to repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Spirit, and joining a devoted community (Acts 2).
• Different Paths to Faith: Using Acts 16 as a model, Pastor Travis highlights three distinct ways people come to Christ: through intellectual reasoning (Lydia), supernatural power encounters (the enslaved girl), or witnessing authentic Christian character in the midst of trials (the Roman jailer).

Conclusion & Call to Action

Take a moment to consider the people in your life—are they looking for a logical appeal, a demonstration of God's power, or an authentic example of Christian living? Listen to the complete Sunday 7-26-26 AUDIO.mp3 track to equip yourself for the harvest. If this message encouraged you, please like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it!

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:41

Hey, my name's Travis, and I'm one of the pastors. I bring leadership to our pastoral team here, and we're really glad you're here. We are going to be studying the scriptures. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in front of you. And you can go ahead and grab it. You can even mark it up, make it your own, take it home. We're going to be in the book of Acts, chapter 2. You're going to get to some normal names towards the end of your Bible, names you recognize Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, these names you're familiar with. As you get to some weird names, you've gone too far. But right in between, you're looking for this book called Acts, which records the Acts of the Apostles. And we're going to be in chapter 2, but I'm going to start actually in 2 Thessalonians 3, but I don't want you to turn there because it's just a brief thing I want to mention before we start this morning. 2 Thessalonians 3 says this. Finally, brothers, pray for us. And pray for us that the word of the Lord may do two things here: speed ahead and be honored. This church was planted in a matter of weeks, and Paul was pretty thrilled, pretty thrilled that the Word of God sped ahead, really, really having some tremendous effects in the city, but also the Word of God was honored. Anytime something speeds ahead and grows significantly, it can be tough to honor either the culture that you have or the place that you've been. Have you ever experienced this in business before? Where your company goes through a year of considerable growth and you're having a hard time honoring the customers you have and honoring the culture that you've built. The business is growing, it's speeding ahead, but you're having a hard time honoring who you are and who you want to be. Have you ever experienced this on a staff where your staff grows considerably, but you're having a hard time retaining the culture and DNA? Sometimes as things grow, they get diluted. Sometimes when things speed ahead, we have a hard time honoring who we are and what we know to do, right? I know that some of you have probably been in churches where growth dilutes. And I, you know, I've heard the things before, like, oh, they're just serving Christianity light down the street, you know? Where in order to grow and speed forward and advance significantly, you have to compromise. Water down the word of God. You can't honor it. I've also been in some churches before where they have a ton of honor for the word of God. They uh they obsess about getting it right and in the process never get going. Have you ever seen that before? They want to conserve, they want to preserve. And the church can sometimes become a museum where we tell stories about what God once did. And these churches and these people are incredibly faithful, but they aren't fruitful. And being fruitful is a part of what it means to be faithful. And being fruitful sometimes means it gets messy. And so Paul's saying this tension exists. I want the gospel to go forth quickly. I also want the word of God to be honored. I want both of these things. And the tension exists today in the church. We want to go forward. We want nothing to hinder the gospel advancing. We want it to go forward and remove every obstacle for people. We also want to honor what the word of God teaches. We don't want to compromise it or water it down, but we really do want to see it work. I know that this will be true on our campuses. If you're here and you're a junior higher, next week, half your campus will be a bunch of seventh graders who don't have a clue. They don't have a clue what your campus is about. They don't know what it's like to be a, I don't know, what are the mascots of the junior highs? A Bronco. What's the visitero? Trojan. They don't even they don't have they don't have a clue what it is to be a Trojan, right? And if you're on a high school campus, a quarter of your campus will be a bunch of freshies who just don't get it. They don't know what it means to be in high school, they don't know where to go, they don't know what to do with themselves. And it's obvious they're wearing brand new clothes, they're scared, they're insecure. And you have to help them. And the whole idea with growth, and I know many of you have seen this in business, but you don't want to grow at a rate that you can't also assimilate people into your culture, or else you end up overwhelmed. And the church experiences this as well. And so for the next couple weeks, what I want to do is this week I really just want to honor the word of God. I want to honor the word of God. We'll read a lot of Bible today, and I want to talk about what the gospel is. And next week we'll also open our Bibles, but I want to talk about how the gospel advances, how it speeds forward, how we see the gospel go forth and have an impact. So this week, what is the gospel? Next week, how does the gospel go forth? If you're here and you're kind of wondering, I think I might want to belong to this church, I would encourage you, if you can stick it out in the month of August, if you can come every week, I think you'll get a really clear idea of who we are and what we're about and be able to make a decision to say, I'd like to be a part of that, or no, I'd rather not uh be a part of what you guys are doing. So this is kind of a huge month for us. So if I were to ask you what is the gospel, how would you answer that? If I were to ask you to summarize what you know, what you believe, how would you answer that? More importantly, if a coworker asked you, and they don't even know the word gospel, but if they asked you, what is it that you believe, how would you answer them? How would you summarize what it is and what it means to follow Jesus? How would you tell the God story? That's that's where we get the word gospel. In English, it literally is the word God spell. How would you tell the God story? There's a lot in the God story, so how would you summarize and succinctly tell the God story? Some of the difficulty with telling this story is that when we refer to the gospel, sometimes people are talking about an event. Like Jesus came in human history. He was crucified, he rose again. Sometimes we refer to an event as the gospel, other times we refer to an achievement as the gospel. His death dealt with Satan's sin and death. So we start talking about what his coming achieved for us, and often we refer to the achievements of the gospel as the gospel. Right? The event is that Jesus came, was crucified, is risen. The achievement of that is our debt has been paid, and eternal life and a connection with God is now possible through Christ. Other times, people don't talk about the event or the achievement of that event. They talk about the implications. So now what? And they would say, so now we need to take up our cross and follow Him daily. But that's the implications of the Gospel. So it gets kind of mixed up. To make it more confusing, all three of those things are included in the Gospel of Matthew. Along with all of Jesus' teachings, his miracles, and really a biography of his entire life. And Matthew's not the only one with a biography. We also have a gospel of Mark and a gospel of Luke and a Gospel of John. So how do we summarize this story? How do we talk about what Jesus has done? The God story. How do we tell it? Turn to Acts chapter 2. As a way of honoring the Word of God, I just want to walk you through the very first sermon preached. The sermon that started the church age, the day when the Spirit of God was poured out, and the disciples of Jesus were filled with the Holy Spirit and with the power to go to the ends of the earth and proclaim. Proclaim good news. So Acts chapter 2, this is the first sermon. This sermon was so effective that we're still here today, thousands of miles away, speaking a different language. But this is the sermon that started the church. This is the first time this gospel is proclaimed to a group of people under the power of the Holy Spirit. Again, preached in Jerusalem. That's the center of religious devotion for the Jewish people. This sermon's preached by Peter, one of Jesus' first disciples. Jesus had died at this point. He'd risen, he had ascended into heaven, and he had sent his disciples into the world. But he said, I want you to wait. I want you to wait till you receive power. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you'll be my witnesses. And Jerusalem, and then Judea and Samaria until the ends of the earth. But don't go until I've given you power. So they waited and then the Holy Spirit fell. And if you've read the story before, it's wild. There's wind, tongues of fire. This is a really ragtag confused bunch of believers. Now they're witnessing Peter, fresh off denying Jesus three times, publicly preached before thousands. Have you ever publicly preached? It's one thing to grab this mic. I know some of you are like, this it terrifies me to do what you do, Travis. The idea that you would get up and grab a mic in here. Getting up and grabbing a mic in here is nothing compared to getting up and grabbing a mic out there. I've only done it a few times in my life. The first time I was in my late teens, I was bothered by the reality that I seemed ashamed of the gospel. So me and a guy named Ryan McRae and Eric Riley decided on a Friday night we weren't going home until we had publicly preached the gospel somewhere. We did this at about 11 p.m. because it took us from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. to work up the guts and psych ourselves up to do it. For Eric, it was the in and out. We pulled up, screed, he hopped out of the car. Hey everybody, listen up. And he started proclaiming the gospel. No one responded. It didn't work, but he did it. And we were like, Yeah, man, you did it. He's like, How'd it go? And I was like, I don't know, it's pretty confusing. I'm not sure anyone's gonna respond. I had to go to Denny's, and then at Denny's, I was trying to figure out how to get the restaurant's attention, so I started clinking my glass like I was making a toast, and then I made a toast to Jesus. And the Denny's waiter was like, Hey man, could you wrap this up? No one repented, no one was baptized. But I don't know if you've ever done this before, but it's really scary. And Peter is fresh off of denying Jesus in a conversation with a girl. Sorry, I said that so derogatory. Now he's preaching before thousands with real boldness, real conviction. What's come over this guy? There's a ton of devout Jews in Jerusalem because there's a major feast. It's like a holy day. It's Pentecost. And again, sermon, this is quite the sermon. This is the sermon that started it all. And this is how Peter starts the sermon that started it all. Standing with the eleven, he lifted up his voice and he addressed them, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. This is a pretty good intro. It's better than mine at Denny's. For these people you're looking at with tongues of fire are not drunk, as you suppose. Because it's only the third hour in the day. But this, what you're seeing, is what was said through the prophet Joel. I think this is epic, and you just can't even make this up. That the first point of the first sermon ever given was these people aren't drunk. And then what's really wild is that Peter says, not because being drunk is bad and forbidden in the Bible, he just says it's too early. It's like nine. It's too early. You don't want to be that guy. I mean, if you're drunk at nine, you got a problem. This is not that. Then Peter pulls this pro-preacher move and he says, what you're seeing is not drunkenness. What you're seeing is actually described in the scriptures. What you're seeing actually isn't crazy if you keep in mind what the prophets have said. If you've come in here and you're new to the faith, what you're seeing here is not crazy if you keep in mind what the scriptures teach. But the world is gonna think this is crazy. I mean, we sing kind of romantic things to God. We claim to take his body and blood. We sing a lot about blood. People here give their money, lots of it. They give their time, lots of it. People here are trying to forgive their enemies and they don't deserve it. People here think that this life is just an appetizer for the age to come. They believe that there's a life beyond this life, and there's more than the material world. People here think there's actually a battle going on in the invisible realm. None of this makes sense, and it'll probably look like drunkenness to you unless you consider what the scriptures teach. And when you consider that, this stuff starts to make sense. If Jesus is who he says he is, and he's gonna do what he said he's gonna do, then what you're seeing here, singing with people you don't know, songs to a God that you don't know, starts to make more sense. This is not drunkenness, Peter says, this is that which the prophet Joel spoke of. And this is what he said, and in the last days it'll be, God declares that I'm gonna pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters are gonna prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men they're gonna dream dreams. And even on my male servants and female servants, in those days, I'll pour out my spirit, and they'll prophesy. So what we're doing here looks like foolishness and only makes sense in light of what the scriptures teach. But the first two points of the first sermon ever given is that no one is drunk, and this is in the Bible. Jesus is the promised one in the Old Testament. It's a great way to start a sermon, but then he goes on to preach these three things that I want to remind you of today. He preaches the revelation of the gospel. That is what God has done. The very first sermon is not about your marriage or your finances or how to raise God-fearing children. The very first sermon has to do with God, who he is and what he's done. But there is a response to this message, and I'll show you what we do in response. And then there are some results from this proclamation of the gospel, and that is what we receive. And I want you guys to take notes because I want you to be able to turn to Acts chapter 2 when a coworker says, What is it that you believe? and walk them through the very first sermon. This is what we believe about who Jesus is, and the bigger story that we're a part of. So the first point is the revelation of the gospel. That is what God has done. He says, Men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. Jesus is a man, but he's not just any man, he's the God man. He's a man attested by God. He's God's man, and God did works through him to validate him. He is who he says he is, the Son of God, and he's gonna do what he says he's going to do. So he is a man who's attested, says Peter. Attested means to affirm. He's the real deal. Peter gets up and he says, God signed off on this guy. He's not a revolutionary or a maverick, he's God's guy. God's established Jesus. He is the Son. God established him with signs and wonders. And these signs and wonders were causing people to wonder, who is this guy? That's the whole purpose of signs and wonders, is to get people to wonder. Like, huh, who is this guy who can forgive sins? Who is this guy? I wonder what he's up to. What authority does he teach with? He doesn't teach like any of the other teachers. He teaches with authority. There's a weight to his words that we don't recognize. That's because God attested to him. There's a weight on what he does, and it's causing us to wonder about his identity. At the very end of the sermon, Peter proclaims in verse 36 so let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him. He's a God-made man, and God made him Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. So he's attested as the Son of God. God signed off on him, and he is Lord and Christ. What is a Lord? That's not a word that we use often. Maybe it's a word that we hear in some sort of period piece. Something different than a savior. We hear often that Jesus is savior, and we love the idea that Jesus would do things for us, but a Lord demands things from us. A Lord is a master, and that word Lord is an exclusive term. Like if he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all. This Jesus is not just the savior of the world. This Jesus is a Lord. He does things for us and he demands things from us. He's Lord and Christ, meaning God's anointed one. God's promised Messiah, the king prophesied by David who would rule the nations, the one who will rule forevermore. Which brings us to another question. Well, what kind of king is this guy? What kind of king is this guy? Is Jesus the kind of king who would send our kids off to war? Is Jesus the kind of king who asks his subjects to make sacrifices while he pads his pockets like some politician? Is that what kind of king we're dealing with? Because if so, no thanks. No, this is a crucified king. He gives his life for his subjects. This is a type of king who bleeds and suffers alongside of us so that those in his kingdom can flourish. Jesus, Peter says, was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. So this king is a crucified king. You killed him, he says. And by the way, he was innocent, but I want you to know this whole time this is a part of God's plan. His life would be a sacrifice. Jesus is paying a debt that we owe, atoning with his broken body for the brokenness of our world. I know that in my conversations with people, sometimes people have wondered about the beauty of the cross. Why do you guys sing so much about a torture device? Why is there so much talk of blood? Isn't this cosmic child abuse? What kind of father sacrifices their son? That's so primitive. That's so 2,000 years ago, this idea of a God who demands blood sacrifice. Listen, someone had to pay because God is just. Again, he is who he says he is. He'll do what he says he's going to do. He is just. Someone has to pay. But God is love. And because God is love, that someone who's paying is God. Sacrificing himself. Jesus is equal to the Father, the second person of the Trinity. He wasn't made to do anything. He willingly raised his hand for this rescue mission and said, I'm your guy. He gave his life. No one took his life. He gave his life as a ransom for many. No one tells the second person of the Trinity what to do. But that's not where it ends. This crucified King, God, in verse 24, it says, raised him up, loosing the pains of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. This Jesus was not just crucified, he was raised. Resurrected. God raised him up. He really died. He didn't faint out, he didn't feign, he didn't pass out because of the pain. He defeated death. He would have to die in order to defeat death. And Peter is now trying to help people understand this because they've seen many people die, and they've not seen many people resurrected. And so Peter, to help people process this idea of a resurrected king, starts to quote a psalm. And King David wrote this psalm, but what Peter's going to say is this psalm isn't about King David at all. King David was prophesying what we now see that Jesus has been raised from the dead. For David says, concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me, for he's at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad, my tongue rejoiced, my flesh will also dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your holy one seek corruption. You've made known to me the path of life. You will make me full of gladness in your presence. What Peter says here to this crowd is this is not David talking about David, this is David talking about Jesus. David's grave is in the city. David did see decay. Jesus is the holy one who will not see decay. Jesus is the one who is not abandoned to Hades. God raised Jesus, and King David was talking about Jesus hundreds of years before this happened. Verse 32 says, This Jesus God raised up, and we're all witnesses, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God. Jesus is exalted. That sounds important. What does that mean? Well, I think the second phrase is probably the most important part. He's exalted to the right hand of God. He's victorious. And it says actually that he's placed his feet on his enemies. His feet are up, and his feet are on his enemies. Jesus of Nazareth, carpenter's son, just crucified on a Roman torture device. He's at the right hand. That guy who is like around 33, who never traveled more than 200 miles from his hometown, the guy who actually never wrote a book, the guy who's actually only been on the scene for a couple of years. That guy's ruling and reigning. The carpenter is ruling and reigning at the right hand of God. And his enemies are a footstool. Who are his enemies? Those Romans who tortured him? Those Jewish religious leaders who turned him over? No, Jesus came for the enemies that source every other enemy. Jesus came for Satan's sin and death, and his feet are up on those powers and principalities. And you know you've done it when your feet are up, not just when you're sitting down. He sat down and then he was like, I think I'll put my feet on my enemies. Those enemies are not the Romans or the Jews. Those enemies are the source of every enemy and all evil in this life. Jesus has triumphed. He's exalted over those things. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he's poured out the Spirit. This that you yourselves are seeing and hearing, this is the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. So he's poured out the Holy Spirit. I love it, man. He didn't parcel it out. He wasn't picky about the distribution. It wasn't like one for you, one for you, one for you. He spreads his spirit abroad. All flesh. All flesh gets the spirit. God's power and presence that was reserved for special people on special days has now been poured out liberally on all flesh. This is wild. So here it is. This is the gospel. This is what Peter preached on the day the church was born. One, attested. Jesus is attested by God. He's not just a man, he's God's man. He's crucified according to God's plan. But then he was raised by God. And now he's exalted to the right hand of God, and now he's pouring out the promised Holy Spirit. Again, the first sermon was not five steps for you to do anything. The first sermon was all about God and all about what he's done. But it does demand a response. The people immediately were like, what do we do? What do we do? In light of what you're saying, in light of the story you're telling us, the God story, in light of this good news, what God has done in Christ, how should we live? What do we do? It warrants a response. And I want you to keep going on. Now then, they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, okay, what now? Like, what do we do in light of what you're telling us about this Jesus guy? Well, the response was that they were convicted, it says here in verse 37, they were cut to the heart. And I think we know what this feeling is to be cut to the heart. To know, like, eh, something's up. To have that alarm going off inside. We also know what it's like to have that alarm going off, know that something ain't right, and ignore it. I don't usually buckle up. I've gotten so jaded over the years that I can actually drive listening to the dinging of the bell. And the people I drive with are like, man, you're sick. Like, your conscience has been severed. Like, I can't believe you can just drive, and it just kind of blends into the music for me. We know what it is to hear those alarm bells and be cut to the heart and convicted and actually do something, change something. We also know what it is to be convicted, that nagging sense, no, that's wrong, and I know it's wrong. And we know what it is to ignore that at our own peril. Well, the group of people who heard this message today were cut to the heart and they were like, No, I'm gonna put my seatbelt on. I'm gonna do something about the dinging going off inside of me. They were convicted, they were cut to the heart. And then it says they confessed their need. So it wasn't just that they felt their need for God, they expressed their need for God. So they confessed that they have need. Then it says that they repented. When we hear that word repent, we think about changing our behavior. It does change our behavior, but before it changes our behavior, it changes our beliefs. We now believe something differently and therefore behave differently. So they have a change of mind. They repent. Then it says that they're baptized. They go, Oh, I'd like to declare that I'm now on team Jesus, so we'll put them under so they're with Christ in his death and bring them up out of the water so they're with Christ in his resurrection life. It's a way of saying, I now identify with the death and resurrection of Jesus. It goes on from there. Can I get number five? And it says that they received the word and the spirit. Up to this point, they're resisting the word of God, and they're resisting the spirit's pull. But now this group of people in response is saying, Oh, I receive the word of God. I know that he disciplines those he loves, and I now know his character and want his correction. And I want his spirit. I'm not going to ignore the dinging going off in my spirit. I want his spirit to lead me and prompt me. And is there a sixth point or no? Oh, yeah. Then they devoted themselves to a way of life. It says in verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers. So we aren't just uh what how do I put this? We aren't just baptized to punch our ticket to the pearly gates. This isn't fire insurance. That's not what this is. They changed the way they lived. They did something, they responded and said, in light of this, the implications of this are that really everything I do in this life has to change. The way I see my time has to change, the way I see my money has to change, the way I see my marriage, the way I see my kids. It's all got to shift if this is the real story, if this is reality for me. Okay. So this group responds by being convicted, confessing, repenting, being baptized, receiving the word in spirit, and devoting themselves to a way of life. I bring this up to say we're still doing the same thing. Here we are, 2,000 years later, in another language, coming to church and going, I feel a little bit convicted. You know what? I'm gonna confess that on the way home, on the drive, with in prayer. I'm gonna get together in my pack and be like, man, when Trav said that thing and we read that verse, that got to me, and I'm not gonna ignore that. And I'm gonna repent, I'm gonna change my mind the way I'm thinking about this. And that might look like baptism if you've not been baptized before. And I'm gonna receive the word of God in my life, not resist it. I'm gonna receive his spirit, his prompting, and I'm gonna do that with a group of people. Here we are. Still doing it, still living out this message. There's some things that result from this message, and again, I I was hoping to help you talk to your coworker, and you're like, bro, we're like 12 points too deep for this to be helpful at all. But I really do want you to see this in the first few chapters so that you could walk someone through it. You really could. It's it's not um magic what I'm doing here. Like you just walk through it and say, This is the message, and this is the way people responded, and then this is what resulted. This is what happened as a result of this gospel, and this is still true today. Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus, for the forgiveness of your sins, and then you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So, one of the results of believing this message is the forgiveness of sin and acceptance as a child of God. And I want to say this because I think this is a really important point. But forgiveness is a means to an end. Forgiveness is not an end in itself. Forgiveness removes the barrier that stands between us and God. What we get when we get forgiveness is reconciled to God. God is what we get when we get forgiveness. Access to Him. We all know what it's like to have somebody that you have beef with. You're not right with them. You know you're not right, they know you're not right, it's not right, but neither one of you know what to do. The last time you tried to talk about it, the barrier was just reinforced, it wasn't removed, and we all know the relief when you finally break through and you get to one another again, and that barrier is removed. We all know that relief. Well, the idea is that we had a beer barrier that we couldn't cross. Christ Himself removed that. We now have access to God. We get God, we can come boldly into his presence because of what Christ has done for us. When there's frustration or unforgiveness in my relationship with Tiffany, and we get to the place of forgiveness, I don't get forgiveness, I get Tiffany again. And I'm now in right relationship and feel the relief of that. We have through Christ the relief of knowing that we're now in right relationship with God. There's nothing that stands between us that his blood hasn't dealt with. They get the Holy Spirit. This is what results, this is what they receive. They receive the promised Holy Spirit. They also, if you read on, receive a new community. Praising God. They find favor with all the people. Verses 44 through 46 describe in this beautiful ideal what Christian community looks like. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and they were eating together and they were praying together. Have you read that before? It'll ruin you. It's a beautiful picture of the church. But the result of this is a new community. But it's not just to be a one big happy family and have these meals together. They also receive a new mission. Grow the family. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved. The people who are going, I feel convicted. I'd like to confess that. I think I'm going to repent. I'd like to be baptized. I think the Word of God and the Spirit of God are pretty cool. And I'd like to devote myself to this way of life. They're being folded in daily to the church. When you ask people to circle up, one of the things I've noticed through the years, if you're like, hey, circle up, everyone circles up facing inward. I've never had a group circle up facing outward. And that's the same true with these communities with church. It's like, hey, circle up, guys. If we did that, if I said to you, hey, we're gonna take this time and circle up, we would all make a huge circle facing inward. And the role of most evangelists and those who are gifted in the church is to get this whole group of people that's facing inward to turn around, remain a circle, and face outward, and look to fold people in. So we have not just a new family, but we have a new mission, and that's to add people to this family. And the last thing is that we have this new hope. And the hope is simple. Jesus will return in the same way he ascended into heaven, he'll return, and he will restore all things. And to find this point, you'd have to read on to Acts 3, to Peter's second sermon. And in Peter's second sermon, he says the things that sound a lot like his first sermon, but I want to point you towards this in verse 21 of Acts 3. Peter, second time around, repent, therefore, turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all things, about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. So there is this new hope. Some of the things Jesus promised you're gonna see right now, like the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, that was prophesied in Joel. Like this holy one not seeing decay, that was prophesied by David. But there's other things that have been prophesied by these prophets that you won't see until Christ returns. As a pastor, I meet with a ton of people who will say to me, even last week, they would say to me, some are brave enough to say it out loud, if God is all-knowing, if he's all loving, if he's ruling, if his enemies are under his feet, if he's victorious and triumphant, why does the world look like a dumpster fire? What the heck is going on down here? How do I reconcile what I see with what you're telling me about who Jesus is? His kingdom's been inaugurated. The kingdom of God has come. But there will come a day where every promise will be fulfilled. And I've got good news for you. You're not the first person to ask that question. In fact, many people in the scriptures ask that same question. Wait a second, if you're on the throne, what's going on? How come you're not answering? Hebrews 2 says this, and I love the passage. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. At present, not everything's the way it should be. At present, not everything is subject to him. And then in verse 9, the author says, but we do see him. We do see him, we see his character, and we trust his promises that one day he'll return and restore all things. For a little while he was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. Right now, we don't see everything subject to him, but there's coming a day where he will restore all things and fulfill every promise. Worship team, would you guys come? So there is the revelation of the gospel, there is a response to the gospel, and there's a number of things that result, and they they still result to this day. But if you go on and you keep reading your New Testament, you'll find that not everyone gets to hear Peter preach. In fact, not everyone is converted through an open-air preaching. Some are. But there are other ways that people receive this gospel, and I want you to start thinking about this because we believe we're entering as a church a season of harvest. We're seeing unprecedented openness in people's lives. And we feel like we've stepped into a season of harvest as a church. So I want you to think about how people receive this. The revelation of God is sure, the response is pretty sure. What results and what we receive is pretty sure. But how people are met by the gospel kind of changes as you read the gospels or as you read on in the New Testament. I was reading Acts 16, and in Acts 16, Paul's planting a church in a city that doesn't have a church. He's planting a church in Philippi. He would later write a letter to them called Philippians. And his first three converts are really interesting. And I leave you with this. But Paul comes into town, doesn't know where to start, and he ends up in a conversation with this woman named Lydia. Lydia is his first convert. And Lydia is a very successful businesswoman. Let's call her Lulu Lemon Libya. Lydia. She runs businesses. She donates to charities. She does yoga. And she meditates to she doesn't know what. She listens to a lot of podcasts. And she's interested in what Paul's saying. And you know what Paul does with her? He appeals to her mind. And he reasons with her. From the scriptures. And at the end of a very logical conversation about who Jesus is, she says, I'd like to be baptized, me and all my household, because I'm the boss. I'm a boss lady. And then he goes, Cool, can we meet in your house? She's like, That'd be fine. Just don't mess up my couch. He moves on. It's just a few scriptures later, and he encounters a slave girl. She's demon-possessed. She's not open to having a conversation. She doesn't do yoga. She's owned. She's being forced to prophesy, and men are profiting off her possession. And Paul doesn't reason with her. He doesn't sit down and make a logical argument with her. There's a power encounter. And she's delivered in that moment. She's set free. And Paul doesn't appeal to her mind, like, hey, I want to show you something in Hebrews. No. There's a collision of worlds. And she's delivered through a power encounter. And Paul appeals to her heart. And sometimes I see people come to faith through an encounter that they can't explain. It wasn't logical. They walked into a room, began to worship, and fell apart. They don't know, they don't have words for it. But they've been met by love and they know it. What's wild is Paul gets thrown in jail for delivering this gal because the guys who owned her were like, now she's not profitable because she doesn't tell fortunes anymore. So they throw Paul in jail. And in jail, he bumps up against the salty, jaded Roman jailer. Like a retired soldier, like he served well in battle and then was given this cush job to retire into. But he's jaded. He's cynical. And he's heard some things and he's seen some things. And you can't play with his emotions or appeal to him through argument. The thing that wins him over is an example. He sees Paul and Silas worshiping in prison and goes, huh. Then an earthquake shakes the prison, the doors come open, Paul and Silas are able to run free. He knows if those guys go free, not just is he gonna lose his job as the jailer, he's gonna lose his life. So in an honor-killing type of way, he's gonna kill himself because he's failed. And Paul and Silas, rather than run away, are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't do that, don't do that, we'll stay. They have every right. God has shook the jail and said, go free. And they're like, no, we're not gonna use our rights to go free. We're gonna stay with this guy. And the example of their Christianity causes the Roman jailer to go, what do I do to be saved? It cuts right through his cynicism. And I want you to think about that because I wonder what it was like for you. If you had to rank those and say, no, coming to Christ was appealing to my mind or appealing to my heart. I I felt something of God's presence. Or somebody modeled this in a way that I just couldn't argue. How would that go for you? What brought you to faith? Secondly, what about that person you know who's far from God but close to you? And some of you know, no, it's not going to be a reasoned thing. It'll be empowering counter with the love of God. That's just where it's at. And some of you know some crusty, like retired CHP officers who are like, I've heard it all. I don't like people who toy with my emotions. Why is it that the Holy Spirit always comes when the drums are at their height? I don't buy any of this. But they will buy a life without hypocrisy. Think about it. Because we're gonna go for that, those people. We are those people, and we're gonna go for those people. And you've got some Lydias in your life, and you've got some slave girls in your life, and you've got some Roman jailers in your life, and we're gonna be praying that the gospel break in and break through. Would you stand?