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Book: Acts
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Acts 1:8 The Work of the Holy Spirit
Intro. Intro. Jesus had told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the
promise of the Father that He had been talking to them
about. God had promised to pour out His Spirit on all
flesh, even their sons and daughters would prophesy. Jesus
said, "John baptized you with water but you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit in a view days. Jesus for
forty days after His resurrection had been appearing to
them in different situations and in different places, He
had been talking to them about the Kingdom of God. It was
His desire that they be sustained in this hostile wicked
world by the hope of the coming kingdom of righteousness,
peace and joy. So the disciples asked Him if He would at
this time restore the kingdom to Israel. Basically will it
be just a few days until you set up the kingdom? Jesus
passed off the question as irrelevant to the subject of
the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What Jesus was talking
about was the power they would receive after they were
baptized with the Holy Spirit.
I. "But you will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you."
A. This power of God given to the believers is what sets
Christianity apart from all other religions.
1. Sidhartha Gautama who was named Buddha by his
followers, lived some five hundred years before Jesus,
he espoused a very good way of life, which was known as
the Eightfold path.
a. Knowledge of truth.
b. The intention to resist evil.
c. Saying nothing to hurt others.
d. Respecting life, morality and property.
e. Holding a job that does not injure others.
f. Striving to free one's mind of evil.
g. Controlling one's feelings and thoughts.
h. Practicing proper forms of concentration.
e. Buddha said, "Don't do to others what you would
not want them to do to you."
f. He taught that Nirvana could only be attained
when you broke all attachment with worldly
things.
2. Less than 100 years before Buddha their was a Chinese
philosopher known as Confucius who taught high moral
character which he called the gentleman. Confucius
taught "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to
others."
3. Both of these men pointed to a good path of life. They
basically taught that the spiritual life is superior to
the physical life. That our problems largely stemmed
from our overwhelming desire for material things.
4. These are similar to the teachings of Jesus who said,
"It is the Spirit that makes alive, the flesh profits
nothing." Jesus took the negative sayings of Confucius
and Buddha and put it in a positive form. "Do unto
others what you desire to be done unto you."
B. Though there are many similarities between the philosophy of
Confucius and the religions established by Buddha and Jesus,
the vast difference between them is, though they all pointed to
a spiritual path Confucius nor Buddha could offer power or
ability to walk that path.
1. When Buddha died they cremated his body and sent his
bones to his followers which were kept as sacred
relics, and it was felt that through his bones and his
statues powers were imparted.
2. When you see the path, and even desire to walk the
path, unless some power is imparted to do so, we find
as Jesus said to Peter, "The spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak."
3. Or as Paul declared, "To will is present with me, but
how to perform that which is good I find not. Oh
wretched man that I am."
4. To know the right path and to desire to walk that path,
but yet not have the capacity or power to do so can be
extremely frustrating.
C. Jesus not only pointed to the right path, He promised that He
through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit He would give us that
power to walk that path. "You shall receive power after the
Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto
Me."
1. That is our lives would become a witness of Him.
2. People would see Him in us as we became,
a. Loving as He is loving.
b. Forgiving as He is forgiving.
c. Tenderhearted as He is tenderhearted.
d. Kind as He is kind.
e. Pure as He is pure.
3. The scriptures tell us that Jesus was a true and
faithful witness of God.
a. He was able to say, "If you have seen Me, you
have seen the Father."
b. He said, "He that seeth Me, seeth the Father
who sent Me.
c. Paul said of Him that He was the image of the
invisible God.
d. In Hebrews He is called the express image of
His person.
II. The disciples when they received the power of the Holy Spirit would be
witnesses unto Him both in Jerusalem and Judea, and Samaria, and unto
the uttermost parts of the world.
A. So was it always to be, the power of the Holy Spirit upon our
lives gives us, His church, the power to walk the path and the
ability to be what God wants us to be.
1. Witnesses of Him in our community, spreading from there
to the surrounding communities, going from there to the
surrounding territories, and ultimately to the whole
world.
2. The book of Acts tells us of the witness of the church
first in Jerusalem, then to Judea, Acts 8, then to
Samaria as Philip went to Samaria and preached Christ
unto them. Then to the uttermost parts of the earth,
chapter 13.
B. Thirty years ago God called us to Calvary Chapel to begin to
minister to a group of twenty five people in attendance on our
first Sunday morning service, which was the first Sunday in
December 1965. Most of us went to lunch together after church
at the local Sizzler's restaurant on 17th Street in Costa Mesa.
1. God began a work of His Holy Spirit in our hearts and
lives
2. We started studying through the Bible on Sundays, and
we began home Bible studies almost every night of the
week in various books of the Bible. On Saturday nights
the men gathered in the little sanctuary on Church
street for prayer meetings, and the women started
intercessory prayer groups in various homes during the
week.
D. After about two years we outgrew the little chapel in Costa
Mesa, and began to look for a site to build a larger facility.
E. We finally moved to the Newport Harbor Lutheran church where we
had Sunday afternoon services while we waited for the Lutherans
to build their new facilities, they also allowed us to use the
church on Thursday nights for our week night Bible study. It
was at this time that we began to reach out to the Hippies.
F. After a year in the Lutheran Church they had not even begun
work on their new sanctuary, and we had begun to outgrow that
facility, it was then that we purchased from the Santa Ana
school district the old Greenville country school, that last of
the one room school houses in Orange County. It was out in the
country at the corner of Greenville and Sunflower streets in
Santa Ana. The school was torn down, and the materials
including the tile roof were largely used to build a new little
chapel seating 300 people. As we built the Sunday School
annex, we used the former floor joists of the old school
building for the roof joists for the classes. As we were
finishing the roof joists we were one short and I said to
Jim Diemer our builder, it looks like the Lord miscounted we
only have 127 rafters and we needed 128. He said, I think I
know where there might be one more last Sunday when it was
raining, I took one of the 2x12s to cover a mud hole, and he
went over and dug it out of the mud, and we discovered that we
had exactly enough planks for the roof joists.
1. During this time I started a home Bible study for young
people in a home in Mesa Verde that soon outgrew the
home so we brought lamps to the concrete slab that we
had poured for the chapel and held the Monday night
classes there on the concrete slab.
2. During this period of time the church continued to grow
so by the time the chapel was completed and we moved in
for the the first Sunday's service the chapel was
overflowing and we had people sitting on the floor.
a. My impression was grand opening, everyone loves
a grand opening, next Sunday we will be down to
where all can be seated comfortably.
b. Contrary to my expectations the church was
overflowing the following Sunday and we had to
bring in extra chairs and seat people in the
foyer and the aisles.
c. We then went to double services that were soon
over crowded, then to triple services, then we
moved out the walls doubling the seating
capacity, next we set up 500 chairs in the
patio each Sunday to accommodate the people. In
two years the chapel was totally inadequate to
accommodate the crowds so we began again to
look for property.
d. God by a miracle provided for us to purchase
this property on the corner of Fairview and
Sunflower just one block away, and we put in
the parking lot, and put up an old circus tent.
After the Saturday night prayer meeting of the
men we went over to the tent where they were
securing the last of the 1600 chairs, as I
stood on the platform and looked over the sea
of chairs, I said to one of the church elders,
"How long do you suppose it will take the Lord
to fill these seats. He looked at his watch and
said, I guess about 12 hours. 12 hours later
every seat was filled and people were standing
around the edges of the tent.
My impression was, this is very interesting, we
go from three to two services, and everyone
comes to the first service. There will surely
be no one here for the second service this
morning. To my amazement, when the second
service began at 10:30 again every seat was
filled and we had people standing around the
edges. We had to add an addition onto the tent
and placed 400 more chairs in the tent. We
started to build the present sanctuary and the
first unit of Sunday School classes.
G. It was about this time that we started outreach Bible studies
in our Judea. Jeff Johnson started a Bible study in Downey. He
had been one of the biggest drug dealers in Downey but had
found the Lord here at Calvary. Some of the students from San
Diego State who were driving up each week started a Bible study
in San Diego and requested that we send someone down to
minister to them so we commissioned Mike MacIntosh to go down.
H. Chuck Jr. had been teaching a Bible study for young people in
Riverside in an Episcopal church, and he felt called of God to
start a church in Yucca Valley, so we sent Greg Laurie to take
the Riverside study.
I. Raul Reis had found Christ and started a Bible study in his
Kung Fu studio in West Covina and we began in earnest to reach
our Judea.
J. About this time Wayne Taylor started his fellowship in Seattle,
Chuck Jr. had moved on to Yuba City, and Lewis Neely started
the work in Sacramento, as we began to reach our Samaria. Jon
Courson left the Jr. High ministry to move up to San Jose and
then on up to Applegate Oregon. Bil Galatin had moved back to
Victor New York, Joe Focht to Philadelphia, Skip Heitzek to
Albuquerque and Tom Stipe to Denver, as we reached further into
Samaria. Today in the listings of the 25 largest churches in
the United States, 9 of them are Calvary Chapels.
K. Frank Robles moved to Alamos Mexico to start a Bible College to
train future missionaries for Spanish speaking countries and
starting a fellowship there.
I. Many of our young people felt called of God to go to other
parts of the world so that today we have missionaries in
Africa, China, Korea, Japan, Philippines, Guam, Australia,
Singapore, India, South and Central America, England, Europe,
and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Ukraine.
J. This past summer hundreds of young people committed their lives
to serve the Lord at our beautiful youth camp at Green Valley
lake. Our Bible school is at capacity for the facility at Twin
Peaks, and we have over 1500 students in training in the
extension campuses around the world.
III. What can you say? Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and
forever.
A. In our study of John 21 last week we remember how the disciples
went fishing at the suggestion of Peter on the sea of Galilee,
and they fished all night and caught nothing. In the morning
when Jesus stood on the shore and called out to them asking if
they had caught anything, when they responded no, He commanded
them to cast their nets on the right side of the ship and they
would find. They obeyed His command and immediately the net was
so full of fish, they could not draw it into the ship. When
John saw that the net could not be drawn because of the
multitude of fish, he said, "It is the Lord."
B. After you have been fishing for many years and pulling in empty
nets, when once your net becomes so full you cannot pull it
into ship, you know that there can be only one reason for it,
"It is the Lord." To God be the glory great things He has done.
C. By the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, this
church has become a witness of Jesus Christ, both in our
Jerusalem, and Judea, then into Samaria, and now to the
uttermost parts of the earth.
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