Sermons
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Acts
Acts 2:42 speaks to the community we long for, but does this in a surprising way. Not by focusing on building better community. in order to get to the community we long for we need to understand the nature of conversion. Only the truly converted individual finds in the church the community he longs for. Genuine Conversion Forms Genuine Community.
What does Christianity offer that no other religion or worldview does? The Resurrection - if Christ has not been raised "then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain." We proclaim the resurrection of Christ - God’s answer to Man’s sin, God end to Man’s search, God’s attestation of Christ’s Lordship.
Acts 2 is the moment when the church together is baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now what does that mean? and what does that mean for us?
Some see this moment as repeatable, they speak about the baptism of the Spirit as an experience that is available to us today. I want to be careful and precise in our understanding, which means we have to note that 1) nowhere in the Bible is the phrase “baptized in the Spirit” used except when speaking of this moment in Acts, 2) in not other time in the Bible does the Holy Spirit come upon the church in the same way as it does in Acts 2. There are other fillings of the Spirit both in Acts and elsewhere in the NewTestament, but there is no other fire. So what is the baptism of the spirit and what does it signify? What does it mean for us?
What Do You Do When You’re Not Doing Anything? In our culture, we're not very good at pausing. Yet what we do in our downtime matters. As we continue the series we began last week in the Book of Acts, we see the Apostles in a moment of pause. Yet these apostles had been trained by Jesus, and they knew what to do when they were doing nothing; Christ’s People Fill Period’s of Pause With Prayer and Preparation.
"Is the gospel for people like me?" - I've often heard this question asked, especially in sharing the gospel with people from different backgrounds. Many people think that Christianity is a Western religion for Europeans, yet in the ancient world the perception was exactly the opposite. To the Roman "European", Christianity was an Eastern, Jewish religion. The Book of Acts was written to one such Roman believer to assure him that Christianity was indeed a faith for all people. In the Book of Acts, Jesus continues his ministry through His Spirit-empowered church to save people from every nation for the glory of God.
