The Divine Design of Jesus Christ's Church:
- SUPERNATURAL : I will build...
- PROTECTED : My Church...
- UNSTOPPABLE : The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail...
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!
-
00:00-00:03
All right, who's ready to turn to God's Word today?
00:05-00:07
Open up your Bibles to the book of Acts.
00:07-00:11
We are starting our new ministry year for this year.
00:11-00:12
We're starting that today.
00:13-00:18
This year, as I'm sure you can tell by our signs, we're going to be walking through the book of Acts.
00:19-00:24
And our goal this year, Lord willing, is to go through Acts chapters 1 through 12.
00:25-00:31
If you've been with us for any period of time, you know the last two years our church has gone through the gospel of Mark.
00:32-00:39
And we've been with Jesus on tour, following his ministry and hearing his teaching and watching Jesus at work.
00:39-00:47
And then last year, last year, we talked about Jesus being three things.
00:47-00:48
You remember what the three things are?
00:49-00:55
He is the Lord, He is the Lamb, and He is the Life.
00:57-01:01
So after two years through the Gospel of Mark, the question is, now what?
01:01-01:02
Where do we go from here?
01:04-01:14
And the only logical place to go is through the book of Acts, because the book of Acts in your Bible tells us what happened to the disciples after Jesus resurrected.
01:14-01:16
So look at Acts with me, chapter 1.
01:18-01:20
This was written by Luke, who wrote the gospel according to Luke.
01:23-01:39
He picks up the account here, verse 1, "In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up after he'd given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
01:40-01:49
He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
01:50-02:30
And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, "You heard from me, "for John baptized with water, "but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit "not many days from now." Verse 6 says, "So when they had come together, they asked Him," let's just pause here for a second, "they being the disciples," if you can put yourself in this scene, imagine that you're one of the disciples.
02:30-02:31
I'm not Judas.
02:31-02:32
Okay, don't imagine that you're Judas.
02:33-02:39
Never imagine that you're Judas, but imagine that you're one of the disciples and think of what you'd seen in the past three years.
02:40-02:51
You saw Jesus Christ and you weren't too sure about this guy at first, but then you saw healing people, and you saw him teaching things that have never been taught before, and drove the people coming after him.
02:52-03:02
Then they got him, and they arrested him, and they beat him within an inch of his life, and they crucified him, and you thought it was over.
03:04-03:05
Then he resurrects.
03:05-03:06
You don't believe it at first.
03:06-03:17
You're like, "I'm not too sure about that." But then he shows up to you many times, and he teaches you, and you were able to touch him and you ate a fish dinner with him on the beach, right?
03:17-03:18
Like at the end of the Gospel of John.
03:19-03:20
Think of everything that you saw.
03:22-03:24
Now you get to this point, as they gather together.
03:26-03:27
What would you ask Jesus?
03:29-03:31
Well here's what the disciples asked him.
03:31-03:44
"Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" You're like, "Well that's kind of a weird question." And actually, if you're one of the disciples, it's not a weird question at all.
03:46-03:50
Why were they asking if Jesus was going to restore the kingdom to Israel?
03:52-03:55
Well, they knew their Old Testaments, and I know many of you know your Old Testaments.
03:56-04:10
Just to get us all caught up to speed here, throughout the history of Israel, cover to cover in your Old Testament, God had promised that He was going to send a Messiah, a Christ, an anointed one, a savior.
04:10-04:12
Do you know the first reference to that?
04:12-04:13
Do you know where you can find the first reference?
04:14-04:16
It's actually in Genesis 3.15.
04:17-04:26
When sin had first come into the world, God had promised that the offspring of Eve, the eventual offspring of Eve, was going to crush Satan.
04:28-04:29
That's the first promise.
04:29-04:40
And throughout the Old Testament, there's promise after promise that God was going to send a special person who was going to be a savior to his people.
04:42-04:48
He is one who would suffer, and he is one who eventually would reign over all the earth.
04:48-04:53
But here's the thing, and you've heard me teach on this before, but I'm going to give you some scripture so you can look this up.
04:54-04:55
A couple of references here.
04:58-05:09
Isaiah chapter 53 says that the Messiah would suffer, But then Isaiah chapter 62, as you go through these chapters, talks about the Messiah reigning over all the earth.
05:10-05:12
Same with Zechariah chapter 12.
05:13-05:16
If you read Zechariah 12, it says the Messiah would suffer.
05:17-05:23
And then Zechariah chapter 14, it says the Messiah would reign over all the earth.
05:23-05:35
So if you can put yourself in the place of the disciples here, everything they read in the Old Testament said the Messiah is going to come and the Messiah is going to suffer, and then the Messiah is going to reign over all the earth.
05:35-05:42
He's going to be this king who lives here and rules and restores Israel.
05:44-05:44
Okay, so you with me?
05:45-05:52
They're like, the disciples have seen everything that Jesus went through, and how many times do you think in Jesus' ministry they flop back and forth?
05:52-06:05
We saw it, like, you're the Messiah, well, we're not sure, and we wanna believe, but now they arrested him, and now they killed him, and we want to believe and now he's resurrected, so surely he's the Messiah." And back and forth and back and forth.
06:05-06:10
And I believe at this point, when you get to Acts chapter one, they were 100% convinced.
06:11-06:14
Like rose from the dead, like how are you going to top that one, right?
06:14-06:15
You rose from the dead.
06:15-06:22
You have to be the one that God has promised our people for generations, you have to be him.
06:23-06:24
So here's our question.
06:25-06:30
God's word says that you were going to come and suffer, But then it says that you're going to reign over all the earth.
06:30-06:33
So, that's going to happen now, right?
06:33-06:34
Like when's that going to happen?
06:37-06:39
Jesus gives the answer maybe that they weren't looking for.
06:40-06:55
Verse 7, "He said to them, 'It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.'" Jesus said the schedule is in the Father's hands.
06:57-07:05
You see, there's obviously going to be some period of time between the suffering and the reigning of the Messiah.
07:06-07:09
The problem was the disciples thought that these two events were back to back.
07:10-07:26
And Jesus actually taught them that there's going to be a period of time between the suffering and reigning, or what we say in the church, between his first advent and his second advent, or his first coming and his second coming.
07:26-07:31
There's a period of time, and that period of time is what we call the Church Age.
07:33-07:34
In fact, Jesus taught all about the Church Age.
07:34-07:53
We did a whole sermon series on Jesus' teaching on the Church Age in Matthew chapter 13, but today I want you to turn back to Matthew chapter 16, because this is going to be sort of a flashback, sort of an introduction to everything that's going to be before us in the book of Acts.
07:56-08:09
So Jesus is saying, before He comes back, before He reigns over all the earth, some things are going to happen, and we're going to live in the church age.
08:11-08:17
I just want us to see today to kick off our series, some incredible things that Jesus said about the church.
08:19-08:24
And baseball fans, sort of like Babe Ruth calling a shot, remember?
08:25-08:32
We go back to Matthew 16 and Jesus is like, "Here's what the church is going to be like." And now we live in 2015 and we're like, "Nailed it!
08:32-08:33
He nailed it!
08:34-08:38
He called it exactly how it's going to be." Let's look at Matthew chapter 16.
08:39-08:41
We're going to pick up in verse 13.
08:42-08:45
Okay, so flashback from Acts chapter 1.
08:45-08:57
It says, "Now when Jesus came to the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say that the Son of Man is?' He certainly knew what his enemies thought.
08:59-09:01
His enemies were like, "Yeah, you're Satan.
09:01-09:05
You're basically Satan in human form." That's what they said about Jesus.
09:05-09:09
"You drive out demons by Beelzebul," which was the name for Satan.
09:11-09:12
That's not what Jesus was talking about.
09:12-09:16
He was talking about word on the street, general population, what's the buzz.
09:18-09:21
Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
09:21-09:25
Son of man actually was Jesus' term about himself, talking about his humanity.
09:25-09:30
Somewhere like 80 times in the New Testament, he's referred to as the son of man.
09:30-09:34
That comes from Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14.
09:35-09:39
The Messiah is called the son of man.
09:39-09:40
Jesus talking about himself.
09:40-09:42
Who do people say that I am?
09:42-09:50
Verse 14, "And they said, 'Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah are one of the prophets.
09:52-09:53
Okay, so we're going to play a game.
09:56-09:57
What do these three people have in common?
09:58-10:03
John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah.
10:03-10:05
Why were those answers given?
10:05-10:06
What do those guys have in common?
10:07-10:08
Have any guesses?
10:10-10:10
They were all prophets?
10:11-10:11
Yes.
10:11-10:13
One of the things, they were all prophets.
10:13-10:13
True.
10:13-10:14
What else?
10:15-10:16
Yeah, they were all dead.
10:17-10:18
That was another one.
10:18-10:19
Interesting answer, right?
10:19-10:20
Who do people say that I am?
10:20-10:26
"Nah, people think you're a dead guy." Obviously a resurrected dead guy.
10:27-10:29
At this point, John the Baptist was beheaded.
10:30-10:57
Elijah and Jeremiah were long dead, but there were people that were like, "Yeah, people think you're like this," taking those two things, "People think you're like this great prophet that resurrected from the dead." But there's one other thing that you might not know that they all had in common, and All three of those guys were believed by Israel to be the forerunner of the Messiah.
10:58-11:05
The Old Testament talks about, God says, "Before his Messiah comes, he's going to send the forerunner ahead." What's a forerunner?
11:06-11:07
What in the world is a forerunner?
11:07-11:20
Back in ancient times, when a king would travel, there'd be a lot of dangers in the road, and they needed to make sure that the road was safe and clear and smooth so that as the king traveled, he wasn't going to encounter any problems.
11:20-11:22
What does the forerunner do?
11:22-11:29
The forerunner was the guy they sent ahead of the king, and his job was to make sure that the way was clear, that the way was safe, okay?
11:29-11:38
He'd just go ahead of the king, like coast is clear, path is clear, and God says that before the Messiah comes, he was going to send somebody ahead.
11:40-11:47
Well, if you would have asked Israel in the first century, "Who's the guy that God's going to send ahead, they would have had three answers.
11:47-11:48
One is John the Baptist.
11:50-12:01
He was turning Israel upside down with his fire and brimstone preaching, baptizing in the wilderness, wearing the camel's hair, clothes, eating the giant bugs.
12:01-12:06
He was an interesting guy, but he was the forerunner of the Messiah.
12:06-12:09
Jesus even called that, but here's the problem, he's dead.
12:09-12:15
So there was this belief that John the Baptist came back from the dead and somehow he was Jesus.
12:17-12:18
Elijah is another one.
12:18-12:22
Actually the Old Testament prophesied that Elijah would come before the Messiah comes.
12:23-12:35
And Jesus actually said that John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah, but Old Testament Israel and the first century Israelites held on to this belief that before the Messiah comes, Elijah's coming, Elijah's coming.
12:35-13:03
And they're like, "Well, yeah, people think you're Elijah." Like, "Well, where does Jeremiah fit into that?" Well, actually, this is an apocryphal legend, not verified in history, not verified in scripture, but this is a legend from the Apocrypha that right before Babylon conquered Israel, legend has it that Jeremiah took the altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant and he hid them on Mount Nebo.
13:04-13:21
This legend has it that Jeremiah was like, "Babylon's coming," grabbing the important furnishings of God and hid them, but there was this legend that before the Messiah comes, Jeremiah was going to come back with the ark and put it back in the temple, like Messiah's on the way.
13:23-13:42
Now do you see the common thread here? Jesus says, "Who do people say that I am?" and they're like, "Well, they don't think you're the Christ, but You're the guy that's going to lead the Christ in.
13:42-13:42
Isn't that interesting?
13:44-13:46
So Jesus turns to them.
13:48-13:49
Verse 15.
13:51-13:53
This is one of the most important verses in the entire Bible.
13:53-13:58
This should be highlighted, underlined, and you should have like a book lamp shining on it at all times.
13:59-14:01
This is one of the most important verses in the Bible.
14:01-14:03
Let's get off the word on the street thing.
14:03-14:13
Jesus turned to his disciples and he said, "Who do you say that I am?" That question is the eternal game changer.
14:14-14:20
Because what you believe about Jesus Christ is the most important thing about you.
14:22-14:27
What you believe about Jesus Christ is the most important thing about you.
14:29-14:41
Because at the end of the day, at the end of your life, when you stand before the Lord, He's not going to ask you where you worked, how good were you at your job.
14:41-14:46
He's not going to ask you what kind of a person your grandma thought you were.
14:47-14:52
He's not going to ask you how much money you made or how much money you gave to charity.
14:53-15:00
He's not going to ask how many little old ladies you helped across the street or how many times you donated to the local Salvation Army.
15:01-15:02
Or he's not going to ask those things.
15:04-15:14
The most important question, the question that your eternity hinges on is this question, "Who do you say that Jesus Christ is?" That's the question that you have to answer.
15:14-15:17
I remind you that not answering is still an answer.
15:19-15:21
An answer of indifference is still an answer.
15:23-15:28
An answer of, "Jesus is just all right with me," isn't the answer either.
15:31-15:33
He's either Lord of all or He's not Lord at all.
15:34-15:35
But you can't sit on the fence.
15:37-15:59
Jesus turned to His disciples in this pivotal moment in His ministry, in the pivotal moment of their discipleship, and He said, "Who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, he was often the guy that sort of spoke up for the group, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
15:59-15:59
This was a good time.
16:00-16:14
Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." You see the difference between Peter's answer and the other people's answers.
16:15-16:16
Who do people say that I am?
16:16-16:22
Peter's like, basically, he's like, "Well, people think you're the forerunner of the Christ." Who do you say that I am?
16:22-16:30
Peter's like, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Don't get tripped up by son of God.
16:30-16:35
Some people believe that son of God means that Jesus is less than God.
16:35-16:37
That's not what that phrase means at all.
16:37-16:43
To say that I am a son of the gods or I am the son of God is claiming divinity.
16:45-16:46
And that's what this expression meant.
16:47-16:52
Peter was saying, "I believe that you are God in the flesh.
16:53-16:53
You're the Christ.
16:55-17:03
You're not just some guy, you're not just some eloquent prophet, you are the one that we've been waiting for.
17:05-17:07
You are the incarnation of Almighty God.
17:07-17:09
You are the son of the living God.
17:12-17:24
Peter gave his answer representing the group and Jesus answered him, verse 17, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona." Like, what's Simon Barjona?
17:24-17:27
Well, that just means Simon the son of John.
17:29-17:52
"For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." Notice it wasn't Peter's intellect, it wasn't the disciples' reasoning, it wasn't their intuition, it wasn't as if the disciples sort of huddled up and, you know, had all kind of, you know, pie charts and graphs and genealogies and they said, Well, let's try to figure out who we think this Jesus is.
17:53-18:00
Jesus flat out told them, this was revealed to you by the Father in heaven.
18:02-18:05
The question is, well, how does God reveal that?
18:07-18:16
You know, if God revealed to Peter that Jesus is the Christ, how did God reveal that?
18:17-18:26
You know, was Peter like laying in the grass one day and he looked up and God wrote it in the clouds like, "Dear Peter," or "Dear Simon," whatever.
18:27-18:30
"P.S. Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ.
18:30-18:32
Love the Father." He didn't do it that way.
18:35-18:35
How did he do it?
18:37-18:40
Well, the answer is just very simple.
18:41-18:45
He revealed that Jesus is the Christ through Jesus himself.
18:46-18:57
The truth is, when you examine Christ, when you take time to examine the person of Jesus Christ in God's Word, God will reveal to you who Jesus really is.
18:58-19:02
That's why Romans 10.17 says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the" what?
19:03-19:12
"the Word of Christ." When you spend time in God's Word, you understand who He is, you're exposed to the truth of the realities of Jesus Christ.
19:14-19:15
That's how God reveals.
19:17-19:20
It just so happens that Peter was with Christ in person.
19:22-19:23
Jesus goes on.
19:24-20:39
He says, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." you might not see in English here, is this is actually a word play that Jesus was using. He says, "I tell you, you are Peter." The word there is "petros," and "petros" translates to "little rock." Okay, "little rock." He says, "but you are a little rock and on this..." Now the word for rock there refers to a bedrock, a huge rock. So Jesus was saying, "Can I tell you that you are a little rock and on this big rock I will build my church." Now this verse has caused all kinds of problems, controversies, I should say, over the interpretation. You know, some people believe that what Jesus was doing here was installing Peter as the first Pope.
20:40-21:00
The church is going to be built on you, Peter, and the belief is he was the first Pope and he sort of passed the baton to the next one and passed to the next one and there's this succession and there's some churches that believe that Peter is the foundation that the church is built on. But then some people say, "No, no, no, It's not Peter's not the foundation.
21:01-21:04
It's the confession that he made that's the foundation.
21:06-21:08
And you're like, well, what do you believe about that?
21:08-21:15
Well, I don't really see much controversy here to be honest with you because the Bible answers the question.
21:16-21:18
Write this reference down, Ephesians 2.20.
21:21-21:45
Ephesians 2.20 says that the church, listen to this, The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. So when you ask what do I believe about this, you know, on this rock I will build my church, letting Scripture interpret Scripture, I believe that...
21:45-22:03
I want to read this because I want to be very careful how I worded this so there's no misunderstanding. Jesus is the cornerstone and the church is built on people believing and proclaiming that great confession. I'm going to say that again.
22:06-22:12
In a sense you could say I don't think it's an either or, I think it's a both and. Is it built on Peter or is it built on the confession?
22:13-22:23
It's kind of both. The church is built on people believing and proclaiming that great confession.
22:25-22:39
So as we prepare for Acts this year, before we get into that, I want us to just this morning look at three things that Jesus was saying about this church that He was talking about here.
22:39-22:45
This church that was going to exist between His first coming and His second coming.
22:47-22:51
Jesus says a lot in just one verse.
22:52-22:53
On your outline, jot these things down.
22:53-22:55
The divine design of Jesus Christ's church.
22:56-23:03
This year we're going to be talking about the birth of the church, the Holy Spirit, bringing the church into existence.
23:06-23:15
I really felt like if we were going to do a whole year on the church, we should start by talking about how did Jesus describe it before it even existed.
23:16-23:34
me? The divine design of Jesus Christ Church, number one, the church is supernatural. The church is supernatural. This all comes from verse 18. It's supernatural. Look, first, Jesus says, "I will build.
23:36-23:44
I will build." Did you see that? "I will build." Who builds the church? Who builds the church? Point to who builds the church. Jesus builds the church.
23:44-23:49
He said, "I will build." See, this isn't a flesh and blood thing happening here.
23:50-24:04
And actually, the literal translation, taking the verb tense into consideration, Jesus was saying here, "I will continue to build the church." Okay, it's not like, "Someday I'm going to do this and be done." It's a continual thing.
24:04-24:06
"I will continue to build the church.
24:06-24:10
This is something I'm going to be, a project I'm going to keep working on.
24:11-24:18
I will build this church." I want you to note that the church is the only thing on earth that Jesus says he is building.
24:19-24:27
Not a business, not your card club, not your softball team, not your para-church ministry.
24:28-24:31
There is nothing wrong with any of those things, okay?
24:31-24:37
There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but Jesus never promised to build those.
24:38-24:41
The only thing on the earth that he promised to build is his church.
24:43-24:51
So we can never ever arrogantly say regarding this church, hey, look what I did, look what I did.
24:53-24:58
I baptized these people, I saved these people, I grew these people.
24:59-25:01
And so arrogant when we say things like that.
25:03-25:04
Shamefully, I hear pastors say that.
25:05-25:08
And if I say that, you have my permission to correct me.
25:09-25:12
And you choose the level of harshness that you deem necessary.
25:13-25:19
But when I start talking about, "I saved these people, and I did this, and I did that." Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
25:20-25:21
Who's building the church here?
25:22-25:22
Who's building the church?
25:23-25:25
Jesus is building the church, okay?
25:27-25:32
If I start competing with him for credit for it, he might remove me from my position.
25:33-25:36
Because I don't know if you know this or not, but God doesn't like competition.
25:37-25:39
The truth is I'm not trying to build anything.
25:39-25:41
I just want to cooperate with Jesus as he builds.
25:43-25:51
Harvest Bible Chapel, we can build something here or he can build something here, but both of those things can't happen.
25:53-25:54
It's a supernatural thing.
25:55-25:56
Jesus said, "I will build.
25:56-26:02
I will build." Secondly, the divine design of Jesus' church is supernatural.
26:02-26:03
Secondly, it's also protected.
26:04-26:05
It's protected.
26:06-26:16
He says, "I will build," and notice Jesus doesn't say, "The church." "I will build a church." He doesn't say that.
26:16-26:16
What does he say?
26:17-26:20
"I will build my church." Whose church is it?
26:21-26:32
That's why, you know, I don't want to correct people who come across like a jerk, but sometimes you're like, "Do you go to Jeff's church, or what about John's church, or what about Kent's church?" Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
26:32-26:33
It's not their church.
26:34-26:44
If I dropped over dead this afternoon, you would be like, "Well, I'm going to miss going to Jeff's church because now they can't be there anymore because it was Jeff's church." This is not Jeff's church.
26:45-26:49
Jesus said, "I will build my church." This is Jesus' church.
26:51-27:08
When the disciples heard this, understand when Jesus said, "I will build my church," They weren't immediately thinking of stained glass and steeples and pews and hymnals and you know, filthy potluck dinners and stuff like that.
27:09-27:19
That isn't what they were thinking about when Jesus said, "I'll build my church." Actually the word here translated, the Greek word is ekklesia.
27:21-27:21
Ekklesia.
27:22-27:31
Jesus said, "I will build my ekklesia." Ecclesia, literally it translates to "called out ones." Called out ones.
27:32-27:34
People that he calls out of the world.
27:35-27:41
In general terms, it just means assembly or congregation or the word that I like to use to think of the term.
27:41-27:42
It's a team.
27:43-27:46
Okay, so it's not like I'm going to build this building structure.
27:46-27:59
What Jesus was saying in this passage is, "I will build my team." It was later translated "church" in your Bibles because that is the term associated with this assembly that he's talking about.
28:02-28:05
So not only is it supernatural, he'll build it, but it's protected.
28:05-28:08
Jesus said, "It's my church." And you know you protect what you own, don't you?
28:10-28:18
You protect your children, you protect your pets, you protect your stamp collection, or your iPhone, or your sports car, or whatever.
28:19-28:23
And the Bible says that Jesus is very protective of His church.
28:24-28:35
In Revelation chapter 2 verse 1, the Bible says that Jesus Christ is walking among His churches, constantly walking through His churches, evaluating.
28:36-28:37
That's what He's doing.
28:38-28:39
He's doing that right now.
28:41-28:43
Satan is always trying to destroy the church.
28:43-28:45
We've seen it in ancient Rome.
28:46-28:50
Hero in the first century, Julian the Apostate in the fourth century.
28:50-28:54
Even from the very beginning of the church, Satan has been trying to destroy it.
28:55-28:58
Take it all the way up to 2015.
29:00-29:03
Satan is still trying to destroy the church.
29:04-29:10
Everything from taking the Ten Commandments down from schools to banning prayer to ISIS to...
29:10-29:12
Did you see this thing last week?
29:13-29:14
The shooting in Oregon.
29:15-29:47
you read about that? You know something the news didn't tell you? I saw some news articles where they're like, "Apparently the man had some, he had some problems with organized religion," and that's not true. One of the eyewitnesses said that he went in and asked, "Are you a Christian?" And when the people said, "Yeah, they're a Christian," he shot them in the head. He moved on to the next person, "Are a Christian, if they said "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" or whatever, he shot them in the leg.
29:48-29:54
But the news doesn't talk about that because that doesn't help the agenda.
29:56-30:09
But make no mistake, Satan's constantly constantly trying to do things to get the church off the rails, off track, off focus, whether it's external things or as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, internal things.
30:09-30:12
Satan wants to stop the church.
30:12-30:14
He wants to hurt the church.
30:16-30:25
Nations and kingdoms and dynasties and emperors and rulers have all come and gone throughout history and the church of Jesus Christ still stands.
30:26-30:27
And it always will.
30:29-30:30
Why is that?
30:31-30:32
Because this is Jesus' church.
30:34-30:41
And when the enemy thinks he's going to do business with the church, the reality is he's He's going to do business with the one who owns the church.
30:44-30:45
Nothing's going to stop the church.
30:46-30:46
Nothing.
30:48-30:49
Because it's protected.
30:50-30:53
It's protected, and that ties into the third point.
30:53-30:58
Not only is it protected by Jesus, but the third point is the church is unstoppable.
30:59-31:00
The church is unstoppable.
31:03-31:16
Jesus said, "I will build my church." Look at this next phrase, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." I used to have this wrong idea of this verse.
31:16-31:26
I had in my mind for some reason that like what this meant was that the church was constantly going to be attacked by hell.
31:27-31:32
And what Jesus was saying was even hell can't knock the church down.
31:32-32:11
Did anybody else ever think that? Like, the church is sort of on the defense here. There's sort of a problem with that line of thinking, is people don't usually fight with gates. Did you notice that? Did you notice that? Like, you never see armies outfitting themselves with gates. Like, you know, "We're going to attack this nation, and okay, let's run through our inventory of weapons that we're going to use to take the enemy down and okay who's got the gate? Unscrew it from the fence and let's go we got a war to win. You don't fight with a gate, right?
32:13-33:02
You don't fight with a gate. So when we have we've been thinking wrongly about this. The church isn't on defense, okay? The church isn't on defense. Satan's not standing outside you know whacking us in the knees with his gate or whatever. The And here's the picture. You see, the church is about glorifying Christ and seeing people born again and transformed. And what Satan wants to do is put a fence around it. He's saying, "I'm gonna put a gate around the church and stop the praise from rising. Stop this church from glorifying Christ. I'm gonna put a gate around the church. I'm gonna hold this thing in." And Jesus is like, "That is not going to happen. The church is going to plow through the gate. That's what's going to happen.
33:03-33:07
The gates of hell won't stand against the church marching ahead.
33:09-33:42
Try to stop the worship, try to stop the conversions, try to stop the baptisms, try to stop the testimonies. It's not going to happen. It is not going to happen. And the end. That the church is going to advance clear until the last day when Jesus Christ comes back himself to take the church to be with him forever. Until that day, the church is going to advance. Every quarter of the globe, the church is going to advance.
33:44-33:48
The gospel will be proclaimed over all the world. Nothing's going to stop it.
33:48-33:52
We have proof of that. God wrote the end ahead of time.
33:54-33:59
Spoiler This happens to me a couple times a year, where-- did you ever try to DVR sports?
34:00-34:07
And I'm sure you're like me, that you DVR something, and you have a meeting or something, maybe you're teaching one of your classes.
34:07-34:09
Or I'll set the DVR for the penguin game.
34:10-34:15
I'm a nervous wreck all night, because I'm like, nobody talk about the penguins!
34:16-34:16
OK?
34:17-34:19
And like, seriously, I've been like, in the car, on the way home.
34:20-34:21
I'm like, radio off.
34:21-34:22
I'm like, I won't even scan.
34:23-34:32
I won't listen in case, like, between songs on the country station I don't listen to, that they don't accidentally say, well, the Penguins are looking good tonight against the flag.
34:32-34:36
I don't want to know how the Penguins look because I'm DVRing the game.
34:37-34:39
And I'm a nervous wreck.
34:41-34:45
And I don't do it very often because I always find out ahead of time.
34:46-34:47
I always do.
34:47-34:49
Somebody innocently-- usually it comes through text.
34:50-34:50
And that's the thing.
34:50-34:52
The text will pop up on my phone.
34:52-35:53
you know, a buddy from high school or a sister-in-law that loves the penguins or whatever, and it'll be like, "Oh my gosh, did you see that?" And I'm like, "Oh," you know, or my buddy be like, "I can't believe the penguins put up five goals this period." Like, "You ruined it. You ruined it." If you just think about that for a second, let's pretend that we've DVR'd the penguins and they beat the Flyers like eight to nothing. And it would happen. Let's say that we find out that they beat the Flyers eight to nothing. Like I DVR'd the game and now I found out they went eight to nothing, but sitting at home on my DVR is this penguin game. And you go home, you know the score, you know the Penguins won, you sit down, you can't sleep for whatever reason, and you've already done your prayer and Bible study, and you're like, "I'm just gonna flip through the channels, "and nothing's on TV." And you're like, "You know what?
35:54-36:08
"I'm just gonna watch the game." Now, as you're watching that game, there's a chance that you might get so caught up in what's happening in the game that you might start sweating, like, "Oh my gosh, Sidney Crosby just took a terrible hit.
36:08-36:22
"There's no way that he's gonna continue in this game." Or, "Wow, the Penguins are really looking in the first period. There's no way that they're going to win this game. Meanwhile, like, well, I know what's going to happen in this game because I heard the results.
36:22-36:33
I'm just watching the replay. And there's a sense in which church, you're like, well that's stupid. Who's really going to fret about the game if you know the ending?
36:34-36:49
It's not so silly when you think we do that as a church all the time. We get so worried and so concerned. Oh no, they're going to pass this law and and churches gonna have to close their doors. Right? Like Congress is gonna stop the church.
36:49-37:16
Come on! Come on! But what if what if they pass this law that makes it illegal to whatever whatever whatever? Like Jesus is up in heaven like, "Oh my gosh! I said the gates of hell wouldn't stop the church but I wasn't expecting this." Do you think he's worried? Do you think he's worried? How many people think that Jesus is worried. He's not worried. In fact, he wrote it down how it's all gonna end.
37:16-37:51
Like, look guys, did Jesus say things were gonna get better or things were gonna get worse? Which one did he say? He said things were gonna get worse, right? But in the middle of the world getting worse, this church was going to shine and grow in the midst of it. And it doesn't matter how much stronger Satan tries to make his gate, whether it's a law that's passed or whatever, it doesn't matter how much stronger Satan tries to make the gate, history has proven, and history will continue to prove, that the church will continue to plow through every gate that Satan puts up.
37:52-37:53
It's going to happen.
37:55-38:08
As silly as it would be to worry about the penguin game, you deviate from the result, sometimes we're silly, church, when we start fretting about world events happening around It's just going down exactly how he told us it would.
38:09-38:12
So as we close, go back to Acts chapter one.
38:13-38:16
You know, Jesus made these promises about the church.
38:16-38:21
It's supernatural, I will build, it's protected, my church, and it's unstoppable.
38:21-38:22
The gates of hell shall not prevail.
38:24-38:31
Now let's get back to this scene, Acts chapter one, verse six, and the disciples are standing with Jesus resurrected.
38:31-38:36
Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?
38:38-38:41
And his answer was, "Not for you to know.
38:42-38:52
The times are in the Father's hands." But in the meantime, Jesus had already promised that he's going to build this church.
38:52-39:07
And I wonder if some of the disciples at this point, at this point, I wondered if some of the disciples thinking about this promise thought, You know, I can understand a supernatural, protected, unstoppable church if Jesus were sticking around, but He's leaving.
39:09-39:15
So how can Jesus build the church, protect the church, and advance the church if He's going back to heaven?
39:15-39:16
How can He do that?
39:17-39:21
I mean, it would be one thing if He was here, but He's leaving.
39:22-39:24
Well, the answer is in verse 8.
39:26-39:27
And this is our verse of the year.
39:29-39:47
Jesus said, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." Here was the answer.
39:49-39:51
How is this thing going to happen, Jesus?
39:52-39:55
Jesus said, "You will receive power.
39:57-40:01
You will receive power." Because the truth is, Jesus will be here to build the church.
40:02-40:04
He's going to be doing it through you.
40:06-40:08
The Harvest Bible Chapel, Pittsburgh North.
40:09-40:16
Who is ready to start on an adventure through Acts to watch how the promise of Jesus Christ unfolds?
40:16-40:44
start that journey. Here's a better question. Who is ready to receive that power and to be a part of the adventure? Who's ready to say, "I don't want to just read about it, I want to do that, but I want to be a part of it." Who's ready for that? Who's ready for that? What a glorious opportunity we have for a few years on earth to impact eternity by playing on a team that can never lose.
40:46-41:15
Church, you are called to be a part of the most powerful thing on the earth, and that's the church of Jesus Christ, built by him, protected by him, and advancing by his power. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the glorious promise of your Word, and Father I thank you that the church doesn't depend on me and my personality and my ability and whatever.
41:15-41:40
It doesn't depend on people here who, while so greatly used by you, they are not the assurance of the church being built. Our assurance is in the promise of Jesus Christ when he said, "I will build my church." Father, you know we live in a day where even things like ethics and morality and right and wrong are just thrown out the window.
41:42-41:52
And people who stand on truth, like us, are branded the bigots and the haters, the intolerant.
41:54-42:03
Father, it's real easy to look at our circumstances and look at our culture and get on CNN .com and turn on the news and it's easy to get caught up in that.
42:04-42:14
While things are really out of control, Father, you have made a promise that even the gates of hell won't stop your church from advancing.
42:15-42:18
We are privileged to be a part of that, Father.
42:20-42:37
We just ask that we would be people who gladly receive and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit that you promised, and that this year this would be a church that continues to, even more so mightily displays the power of the Holy Spirit.
42:38-42:43
Father, we want to, by your grace, by your power, see a lot of gates torn down.
42:45-42:46
And it's all to your glory.
42:48-42:51
In celebration of the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 1:1-8, Matthew 16:13-18
Who did people think Jesus was? Why did they think He was Someone to usher in the Messiah, but not the Messiah Himself? Why do you think people have wrong views about Jesus today, despite what the Bible actually reveals (Hint: read verse 17)?
What did Jesus mean by "on this rock I will build my church"? What is the rock? (Hint: read Ephesians 2:20)
Explain the phrase "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it". What practical effect should that have on your faith?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for this to be a big year of growth for our church.