The Power to Change

PREACH TO THE CHURCH, BUT PREACH FOR SOMEONE ELSE WHO IS ALSO WATCHING

Acts 2:37–38 (NIV)

When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Introduction

Church, I’ve got a hot take this morning. Are you ready for it?

We all know how to lose weight and live a healthy life.

Let me pull on this thought so that you can agree with me.

There are two things absolutely necessary to lose weight and live a healthy life.

Is it absolutely necessary to use pre-workout?

Is it absolutely necessary to drink raw eggs?

Is it absolutely necessary to wear Lululemon and have a subscription to a Pilates Studio, Rush Cycle or Orange Theory?

The obvious answer to all of these questions is ‘no’. None of those are absolutely necessary.

There are only two things absolutely required.

Eating good food and regular exercise.

And by good food, I don’t mean food you enjoy eating, I mean food that is good for your body.

It all comes down to a good diet and mobility. That’s it.

So knowing what to do is not hard. But do you want to know what is hard? Doing it.

Oh it’s so hard to eat a salad when it’s 55 degrees in San Diego! What is going on with this weather anyway? My mind tells me to eat a salad, but my body is checking the freezer for any left over tamales from Christmas!

Why?

Because knowing what to do, and having the power to do it is two different things.

That is why the “miracle pill” industry is booming! People would much rather bypass a good diet and exercise and just go for the miracle pill. .

Transition

Now church, we know the miracle pill doesn’t exist. And we know that the power to change is hard. But I’ve got good news for everyone in the tent today! When we say ‘yes’ to Jesus, he gives us the power to change.

Hello Holy Spirit

Let’s go back to some of what we talked about last Sunday. When we make Jesus our Lord, he comes and he saves us; he rescues us. We do this by first, out of genuine belief in our hearts, we make a declaration with our mouth. Now what we are saying, and what we are believing are united. When this happens God begins his saving work in our life.

Well, let me take you deeper into some of the things that are happening that we cannot see.

When we say, “Jesus, you are Lord of my life, come and sit on the throne of my life,” Jesus supernaturally enters your heart. You’ve have made him your Lord, and you are now reconciled to Him as his son or as his daughter.

But here’s the amazing thing that happens…

Jesus doesn’t come alone.

Throughout the scripture we read about God the Father, and of course we read about Jesus, and then we also read about the Holy Spirit as well.

So that sounds like three entities, people, or beings that we are dealing with. What does the scriptures teach about them?

Early in the scriptures we read this verse.

Deuteronomy 6:4 (NIV)

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

So, the scriptures teach that these three are all one.

Now, in keeping with the theme of our series, It’s Not Complicated, I’m going to quickly get to my punch line.

When we said yes to Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit.

And that’s incredible news! Because the Holy Spirit doesn’t come to take up passive residence in us, but John teaches us what the Holy Spirit is doing within us.

John 16:13 (NIV)

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

The Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth.

Let’s go back to my analogy from earlier in this message. There are people selling miracle pills in place of what we know to do, and that is diet and exercise. In the same way, the reason the Holy Spirit takes us residence in us is to lead us to truth. When we are led to truth, we are led away from lies.

That’s the good news of the gospel message!

Sitting here today something inside you is leaning in and that’s the Holy Spirit telling you that truth is being proclaimed!

In the same way, those of you who received Jesus last week, and there were MANY OF YOU, you had moments this week when you were saw or you heard something and you KNEW that it wasn’t good for you! Listen to me, that’s the Holy Spirit at work in you! At first you might have thought, “oh that is just a feeling,” but it is MUCH MORE than a feeling. The Holy Spirit is actively working in you now to help you make the changes that you need to make.

This is why we receive Jesus.

For years many of you tried to make these changes and you couldn’t do it before. But now that the Spirit of God is living in you, it’s going to show you red flags. It’s going to put a holy caution on the inside of you.

You’ll walk into rooms and you’ll know immediately that you should probably leave.

You’ll be having a conversation with coworkers and it’s not going to agree with the Spirit of God living in you.

Listen to the Holy Spirit.

And just know this… the more often this happens, the easier it will be to hear from Him and the better you will be at responding to him.

He’s speaking to you. He’s leading you. He’s guiding you into all truth.

The Text

And this is what was happening in our passage of scripture in Acts. We read that in Acts 2 there was a powerful moment when the church was Baptized in the Spirit. That’s a message we will get to in this series. And as this happened, it caught the attention of thousands of people.

Peter then seizes the opportunity and begins to preach about Jesus to this crowd. He begins by telling them that Jesus is Lord, and it demands a response from them.

What happens next?

The Holy Spirit begins to lead that crowd into a moment. A man cries out, “So what can we do now?”

And this is where we have the foundational message of the church. Peter tells them that they need to repent, and they need to get baptized.

Repent

Let’s start off by talking about repentance.

Repentance is a decision to turn away from your current lifestyle, and make a decision to follow Jesus.

I want us to think about this in a very natural and practical way, because again, it’s not complicated.

When we were living life on our terms, we were walking in a direction. The direction of our life does not naturally walk towards Jesus. We don’t accidentally become a follower of Jesus. We naturally walk in the direction of our values, our ambitions, and our desires. Not all of those are bad. Some are. But they don’t naturally move us in the direction of Jesus.

To repent is simply to decide, now I’m going to walk in the direction of Jesus.

And repentance is not walking in the direction of Jesus on Sundays, and walking in a different direction on weekdays.

Uh oh… Let’s got there for a minute.

If I wanted to get in my car and head somewhere that I don’t know exactly where it is, I put the address in my Apple maps, and off we go. Notice I said Apple and not Android. It matters.

When we receive Jesus and make him Lord of our life, we make Jesus our destination.

But if once we get in the car, we ignore the directions and begin taking streets we feel like taking, we may never make it to our destination.

If we say we have repented, we can only head in the direction of our destination.

Now, there’s been times when I’ve ben driving and I missed a road because I was too caught in the most amazing and significant conversation with my bride, and I unintentionally missed the turn. But GPS is so gracious that it will reroute me and get me back to my destination.

That’s one thing.

It’s another thing to KNOW which direction you are support to be headed, and you KNOWINGLY go in the wrong direction. You even say, “oops.” But you don’t mean it. You don’t mean it one bit.

I would say, you’re no longer headed towards your destination, and you need to stop and ask yourself where am I going?

You cannot play games with God and believe that there are no consequences. Remember, the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth. What I love about truth is it always comes out. Truth stands on its own.

And one more thing about the Holy Spirit and repentance. We think of repentance as a one time moment in a service. I believe that it begins as a one time event, but true repentance is a lifestyle.

Let me for one moment talk to the people here today who are not newly saved. For those of you who recently made a decision to follow Jesus, just listen in to what I am about to say to all of our ‘saved folks’.

In prayer, we should constantly be examining our hearts. Our lives. Our decisions. Our motives. We should be constantly coming back to the Holy Spirit and asking him to help bring everything into the light so that we can deal with the things hidden deep within our hearts. There are many things hidden in our souls that need constant examination. This is not a one time, ‘once saved always saved’ club that we are signing into. We are followers of Jesus who are closely following the way of Jesus, and the way of Jesus was frequent retreats into quiet places and surrendering his will to the will of his father.

So, let me close this thought about repentance be reiterating that the Holy Spirit comes into our life and he leads us to repentance.

Baptism

Now the second thing that Paul teaches is that when we have received Jesus, and when we have made the decision to repent, or to walk in the direction of Jesus, what should come next is baptism.

Baptism is from the Greek word bapto, which means to dip.

This was a custom that has it’s roots in Jewish law as an act of purification. There are commands in the law that a person needed to be immersed in water as part of ritual purification processes.

So in the life of Jesus, when his cousin John the Baptist emerges he is leading people to repentance and baptism. This was called John’s Baptism. It was a baptism of repentance. This was the same ritual that Jesus followed when he was baptized by John, and then later he commanded his followers to continue doing.

Mark 16:15–16 (NIV)

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Matthew 28:19 (NIV)

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Jesus taught that baptism was a command for his believers to follow. This ritual is in line with taking what was once a personal and private decision, to follow Jesus, and now making it public.

Why do we take our faith public?

There’s more to come with subsequent messages, but here are some.

We are now being baptized into the body of Christ, the church, and we are united with them in this act.

Just as in previous cleansing ritual, the scriptures teach us that baptism forgives our sins by washing them away.

Baptism is a form of uniting with Christ in his burial and resurrection.

In fact, Peter writes that water baptism saves us.

1 Peter 3:21 (NIV)

and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

And so we teach water baptism here at Lighthouse as your next step after you have received Jesus. And, we have water baptisms next month on our calendar, and we’re excited about it. It’s April 24, and if you have never been water baptized we would love for you to take this next step in your walk with Christ.

And I’ll close with this simple, yet practical explanation of why this public act is so important. There is a lot of data that points to decisions that are made public have far greater impact than decisions made solely in private. Now, that’s secondary to everything we read in scripture, but if there’s someone wanting a less spiritual reason, there you have it. It’s a communal act and we invite you to bring your loves ones, your friends, and every you know to join you on this new journey of following Jesus.

Conclusion

When we go back to the day that Peter preached this message and invited everyone around to take their next steps the scriptures record that 3,000 people went public with their faith and made the decision to be water baptized. That’s an incredible moment in the church, and it was truly the momentum, the critical mass that was needed to propel the church for now over 2,000 years.

Think about that. 3,000 people made a decision to follow Jesus, repent, and be water baptized, and 2,000 years later there are millions who have followed their example.

Now let me make that personal to you.

When you make this decision to follow Jesus, repent, and be water baptized, you have the power to change the trajectory of a lot of people around you. For one, your immediate family that will come after you are going to be impacted by your decision. Beyond that, you’ve got friends, extended family, and co-workers who are going to want what you’ve got.

Listen to me, your singular act of obedience may not change the world, but you will change someone’s world. Someone will change as a result of you stepping outside of your comfort zone and taking your next step in your journey of following Jesus.