The Spirit-Empowered Church

I want to start this morning by asking you to imagine that you were in the story…

Not like a tourist or time-traveler just spectating

I mean really there as one of them.

You followed Jesus for three years.

You heard the Sermon on the Mount with your own ears.

You watched Him feed thousands of people with a child's lunch.

You were next to Jesus when Lazarus walked out of the tomb still smelling like decay.

And then you watched them crucify Him.

And miraculously you saw Him alive.

You ate with Him.

You touched Him.

He walked with you and talked with you for over a month after He was supposed to be dead.

And then, standing on a hill outside of Jerusalem, He tells you to wait.

To go back to the city and wait, because something is coming.

And as He blesses you, He ascends into the sky, disappearing into a cloud.

So, as you were told to do, you go back to Jerusalem.

And you wait.

What are you feeling in that room?

What are you expecting?

Do you even know what you're waiting for?

The past few months we've been following Jesus through Luke's Gospel

Learning His way, His values, the Kingdom He proclaimed.

That was Volume One.

Well, this is Volume Two.

Same author, same story, same Jesus

but now the Way He lived is about to be unleashed through the people He left behind.

And it begins with a promise.

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." -Acts 1:8

Luke is telling us exactly where this story goes before it even begins.

But here’s what we need to notice:

Jesus doesn’t say "Go build a great church."

He doesn’t say "Go create an awesome strategy"

He doesn’t say "Go develop a strong program."

He says you will receive power, and then you will be my witnesses.

See, the Church doesn’t begin with human initiative. It begins with divine promise.

Nobody in that room organized this.

Nobody planned a launch Sunday.

God started the Church.

And what He started, He intends to empower and sustain.

Hold onto that because we're gonna come back to it.

Now we come to the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2.

Pentecost was already a major Jewish festival

So Jerusalem was packed with Jewish pilgrims from across the known world.

And Luke will tell us they came from at least fifteen different regions.

Every culture, language, and color of skin imaginable was represented in those streets.

And on that day, the disciples were all together in one place.

“And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” -Acts 2:2-4

Now, I want to be careful here, because we can get so caught up in the spectacular nature of what is happening that we miss the real point of this moment.

These weren’t some mysterious, indecipherable sounds.

These were actual human languages..

The languages of the pilgrims standing outside in the streets. People from Egypt to Rome, and everywhere between.

Every one of them heard the disciples declaring the mighty works of God in their own native tongue.

And I think that's significant.

Because language first divided humanity in the Tower of Babel story.

In Genesis 11, humanity, full of pride, united to build a tower in an effort to make a name for themselves

And because of this, they were scattered.

God confuses their language.

One language becomes many and this group of people is divided and dispersed across the earth.

Well, right here, Pentecost is the reversal of Babel.

At Babel, God scattered a people building for their own glory.

At Pentecost, God gathered a people to proclaim His.

The Church is, from its very first breath, the anti-Babel

It’s a community that exists not to make a name for itself, but to declare the name that is above every name.

Many languages. Many cultures. Many skin colors. Many backgrounds…

United in one Gospel. One Lord. One community.

So Peter stands up and preaches.

And I love that some in the crowd thought they were drunk

But Peter does something remarkable.

He doesn't give them a self-help message.

He preaches Jesus — crucified, resurrected, and exalted.

He connects what they are witnessing to the ancient prophecies.

And then he looks at the crowd, which would have been filled with people who shouted to crucify Jesus, and says:

“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” -Acts 2:36

And it says they were cut to the heart asking “well what do we do?”

And Peter answers:

“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. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.” -Acts 2:38-39

I want you to notice something here

Peter doesn't just offer forgiveness.

He offers the Spirit.

He is saying: what you just watched happen to us… that power and presence

that’s available to you.

All of it. Because of Jesus.

Think about what that promise contains.

Forgiveness of sins — yes.

The presence and power of the Holy Spirit — yes.

And something else.

Something we don't talk about nearly enough.

“So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” -Acts 2:41

Added….

Added to what?

To the Kingdom. To the family. To the Church.

Baptism is not just a transaction between you and God.

It is the moment you are incorporated into God’s Kingdom.

When you come up out of that water, you don’t just get forgiven

you get family!

Three thousand people. In one day.

From fifteen different regions.

Different languages, different backgrounds, different stories.

And suddenly… one Body.

That’s the power of the Gospel.

Not just to save individuals, but to form a community that the world cannot explain apart from God.

Now before I get to our key text, I want to pause and say something about the Spirit's movement in history.

Because what happened on Pentecost did not happen only once.

Maybe you’ve heard of the Cane Ridge Revival in the 1800’s,

thousands gathered in the Kentucky woods, people weeping, crying out under conviction, and being transformed.

Or maybe, The Welsh Revival of 1904

a young untrained man (should be noted that most revivals have been spearheaded by young people) named Evan Roberts, begins preaching, and within months over 100,000 people had come to faith across Wales.

And there are many today

scholars, ministers, and ordinary believers, who believe the Spirit has been moving in similar ways in the years since pandemic.

Whether we are in the middle of a genuine revival or at the beginning of one, I don’t know

But what I do know is: the God of Pentecost has not retired.

The Spirit who descended like fire is still burning.

He moves when and where and how He wills…

and I don’t believe He’s finished!

So for me, the question isn’t whether He will move.

The question is whether we will be positioned to move with Him.

Will we as a church raise our sails to be moved by the Spirit’s powerful wind?

Now, this brings us to our key passage.

Acts 2:42–47

These six verses, to me, make up one of the richest passages in all of Scripture.

Luke paints a portrait of what the Church looked like in its first days

not as an ideal to admire, but as a picture of what happens when the Spirit is genuinely present in a community.

Read this with me:

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

And it wasn’t just Christians saying this…

Look at what this Roman spy, sent by Caesar to infiltrate the church, reported back to the emperor:

“They love one another, and he, who has, gives to him who has not, without boasting. And when they see a stranger, they take him into their own homes and rejoice over him as a very brother. And if there is any among them that are poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food. Such, O King, is their manner of life, and verily, this is a new people, and there is something divine in the midst of them.”

This is what the church has looked like from the beginning

A community, a family, that is so different that the only explanation is “something divine in the midst of them”

Can people say that about us?

So today, I want to anchor on three things in this passage

1. They Were Devoted (v. 42)

The very first word of verse 42 is the key to everything else:

"devoted."

The Greek word there means “to persist”.

To hold fast.

To continue steadfastly and refuse to let go.

This is not the word you use for something you attend when it’s convenient or when the schedule allows.

It’s a commitment word.

They were devoted to the apostles' teaching

the Word of God.

To fellowship

To the breaking of bread — the Lord's Supper, the shared table, the regular act of remembering what Jesus did.

And to prayer

These weren’t four items on a church calendar.

These were four practices that formed their life.

And notice what those practices produced:

awe.

Signs and wonders.

A community people were drawn to.

Daily growth.

You can’t manufacture awe.

You can’t program signs and wonders onto a calendar.

These things happen as a consequence of a community genuinely devoted to God and to one another.

The early church was not a community that had programs about devotion.

It was a community that couldn’t help but be devoted.

2. Their Life Was Held in Common (vv. 44–46)

Look at verses 44 through 46.

“They had all things in common.”

They were selling possessions to meet one another's needs.

They were in the temple together and they were breaking bread in each other's homes.

This isn’t a monastery or a commune.

This is a community of people so convinced that the resurrection had changed everything (including their relationship to money, to possessions, to time) that they genuinely reorganized their lives around each other.

I am not suggesting that every healthy church must sell all of its members' property.

But I am suggesting that the radical generosity and radical togetherness of this community should make us uncomfortable with how easily most modern Christians can go a whole week without their faith meaningfully touching anyone else's life.

And despite how radical it was, this church was attractive, not because of its building or its music or its production value

but because of what its life together looked like.

Because when you encountered these people, you could see that something had happened to them.

Something you couldn't explain with sociology or good intentions.

Which raises the question I want to press on us this morning:

Is the life of this church — our life together — compelling enough that someone on the outside would want to know what makes us different?

Not "do we have good programs?"

Not "is our worship service well-produced?"

But is there something happening here — in the way we care for one another, in the way we give, in the way we show up — that cannot be explained by community spirit or good values alone?

That is the question I find myself asking when I read Acts 2

3. The Lord Added (v. 47)

The last line of this passage is both the simplest and the most important.

“And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

Notice the subject of that sentence.

Not the apostles. Not the church. Not a strategy or a campaign or an outreach program.

“The Lord added.”

Growth in the early church was the work of God.

The church's responsibility was not to produce growth.

The church's responsibility was to be faithful — devoted, generous, together, praying, worshipping — and God added.

Now I’m not saying the church should be passive.

The early church was anything but passive.

They were proclaiming, serving, giving, praying boldly, and willing to suffer.

But the source of growth was always God.

Human faithfulness was the occasion for divine activity.

There's a story in the Old Testament where the prophet Elijah, stands on a mountain, confronted by hundreds of prophets of a false god named Baal.

The challenge is simple: whichever god sends fire from heaven is the real one.

And before Elijah prays, he digs a trench around his pile of wood.

He stacks the wood and then pours water over all of it three times — until it's completely soaked and there is no natural explanation for what is about to happen.

Then he prays. And the fire falls.

Elijah didn’t produce the fire. But Elijah stacked the wood.

We can’t bring the fire. But we can stack the wood.

We can be devoted to the Word.

We can show up for each other.

We can give generously.

We can pray with expectation.

We can welcome the stranger, care for the widow, and reach toward the people no one else is reaching for.

We can raise our sails. And trust the Spirit to bring the wind.

And in this congregation, I believe God has been doing exactly that.

Our leadership has been prayerful about what it would look like to invest more deeply in our next generation

to make it possible to pour into our youth in the way they need.

About what it would look like to be more present and engaged in the community around us.

Not as programs or strategies

But as acts of faithful expectation… wood stacked by people who believe the fire is coming.

Because we believe the God of Pentecost is still in the business of adding and transforming

Now, let me bring us back to where we started.

You’re in that upper room.

You’ve been waiting.

And suddenly the wind comes, the fire falls, and everything in you knows that nothing will ever be the same.

Three thousand people are added in a single day.

And within weeks, a community has formed in Jerusalem that the world has never seen before

people from every background and language and story, devoted to one another and to the risen Christ, living in a way that makes the watching world stop and ask, "What is happening here?"

That is the Church Jesus intended.

Not a building. Not an organization. Not a club for people who agree about doctrine.

A living, breathing, Spirit-animated community that bears witness to the resurrection by the way it loves.

And here’s what I want to leave you with today…

the question I want you to carry into this week and into this entire series:

Are we willing to be the kind of community the Spirit would move through?

Not "are we doing the right things?"

Not "are we saying the right words?"

But are we the kind of community that looks like Acts 2?

Because if we are — or if we are willing to become that — then I believe the God who added three thousand in one day at Pentecost is not finished adding and transforming.

The Spirit is still moving. The fire still falls.

The question is whether the wood is stacked.

Let's stack it together.

In a moment we're gonna sing, and I don't want you to let that moment pass without responding to what God is doing in you right now.

Those three thousand people on Pentecost didn't have it all figured out.

They were just cut to the heart and they responded.

So as we sing, I want to speak to three people.

If you've never been baptized, today would be the perfect day to be added to that number.

The promise still stands.

If you were once devoted but somewhere along the way drifted, today is a good day to come back.

There is no shame in recommitting your life to God and His people!

And maybe you don’t need to, or aren’t ready, to make a declaration but you're carrying something heavy

That is enough of a reason to come forward.

That’s what this community is for.

However the Spirit is moving in you don't let the song end without responding to this invitation.