Born Of And Empowered By

Some of you may have noticed that I replaced my little old blue convertible with a little old red one about a year ago.

It’s still not the car Annette fell in love with and married — I’m pretty sure that I came with the car, rather than the other way around — but after she followed me home from work the other night, she finally admitted that this, too, is a pretty car.

Now, you should note that it’s taken her almost a year to come around to that recognition. At first, it was simply “better than the Z,” which was a car that she hated and would only ride in when I gave her a guilt trip about it.

You see, she loved the old Toyota Celica that we traded for the Z, and it took less than five trips in the Z for her to decide that it would never be as comfortable, as fun to ride in, or as practical as the Celica had been.

And a simple mistake on my part almost doomed the new used car to the same fate as the Z.

We were heading to Ocracoke last year, less than a month after we’d driven it off the used-car lot, leaving the Z to be somebody else’s problem. The top was down, the music was up, and everything was going just fine.

After we’d crossed the bridge onto the Outer Banks, we came to one of the stoplights there before you turn onto Route 12. While we were stopped, I reached down into the passenger floorboard for a drink, and when I sat back up, the light was green, and we took off.

But, instead of the quick acceleration we’d become used to, the car suddenly seemed sluggish. The engine was racing, but we were going only 15 miles an hour.

“Oh no,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“I have no idea!”

“Great,” she said. “No wonder we got such a good deal on this car. It’s got some kind of problem.”

So, I pulled off the road and into a parking lot. And we fiddled around with various buttons and knobs, and I pulled out the owner’s manual, and we tried to figure out what was going on.

Finally, I put it into park, turned off the engine and said a short, silent prayer: “Lord, PLEASE don’t let us have to call a tow truck out here!”

And then I turned the car back on, put it into drive and we took off with everything working just the way it’s supposed to work. Don’t tell ME God doesn’t answer prayers!

Now, some of you already may have figured out what was going on, but it took me some time before I finally discovered it.

My car has the ability to drive like a regular automatic, BUT it also has the ability to be shifted like a manual transmission (but without the clutch).

And all it takes to switch from automatic to manual is to bump the gearshift to the right or the left while it’s in drive.

When I’d leaned over to get my drink, my leg had hit the gearshift and bumped it into first gear, which is why I couldn’t get us going any faster than 15 mph, even though the engine was racing.

I was in manual mode — and was supposed to be shifting gears — when I didn’t even realize that existed. Everything was under my control, and I was failing miserably.

I’m taking a big risk telling you all this, because if Annette finds out I can drive this little old red car like a race car, she might take it away from me.

But what happened to us on that trip to the Outer Banks is a good illustration of one of the main points in our study of the church today.

You might recall that we’ve talked about the church as having been created by Jesus and launched with a sermon. We’ve defined the church as the one, holy, little-c catholic, apostolic New Covenant community of the Spirit.

We’ve described its three purposes: worship of God in the Son; discipleship of believers; and loving the people God loves. Connected to its purpose, we’ve talked about the church’s responsibilities as the embassy for the Kingdom of God.

And we’ve talked about the images of the church that we’re given in the New Testament: a collection of sheep into a flock that follows the Good Shepherd; a kingdom of priests to God; the bride of the Bridegroom, Jesus; the temple of God built with the stones of believers placed upon the foundation of the Apostles and the cornerstone of Jesus Christ; the body under the authority of Jesus, its head; the collection of branches attached to and abiding in Jesus, the True Vine; and the new creation of Jesus, the Last Adam.

Believe it or not, we ARE turning into the home stretch of this long study. For the next few weeks, we’ll look at the Holy Spirit’s role in the church, and then we’ll conclude this series with a walk through the Book of Titus.

Now, I know this has been a long series. We’ve had 15 messages so far, and we still have several to go before we’re done with “The Church — Revealed.”

But it seems to me that Liberty Spring Christian Church is at a turning point in its history, one that’s been coming for some time and one that was hastened along by Covid.

The truth is that churches around the world are experiencing many of the same challenges that we have faced. There has been something of a winnowing of the church in the past couple of years, perhaps a pruning.

I believe most of us here today have a true desire for the church — for THIS church — to bear great fruit for the Kingdom of God.

And so, I think it’s useful for us to take our time to think through what Scripture has taught us through this series and try to understand the direction in which God is now leading us.

I asked the Zoom Bible Study to think about a couple of questions on Wednesday.

Here were the questions I gave them: If you could order your life any way you wanted to order it, how would you do so? And related to that, if you could order the church any way you wanted to order it, how would you do so?

I told the group on Wednesday that the answer to both questions SHOULD be the same for people who follow Jesus in faith. We should want to order both our lives and the church in the way that GOD wants them ordered.

And so, what I have been trying to help you see during these past few months is that God has given us through His word — if not a blueprint, then at least a clear sketch of the church’s purpose, its mission, and even its design.

And as we prepare to move into the Book of Titus, where the Apostle Paul gives some specific directions as to how the church should be ordered, it will be extremely helpful for us to remember this one thing: Anything we do as the church in our own power is destined to turn out very much like my car when I didn’t know I was supposed to be shifting gears.

The church gets its power in this sin-broken world not from us and all the hard work we might do, but from the Holy Spirit, through whom the church was born and in whom the church gets its power.

Turn with me to Luke, chapter 24.

Now, in this chapter, we read about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we see Him walking with two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we see Him reveal Himself the the Eleven and eat with them, and then we see Him ascend back to Heaven in His glorified body, where He now awaits His Father’s command to return and retrieve all who have followed Him in faith.

But before He ascended, He reminded them that they were to be be His witnesses after He was gone. “You are witnesses of these things,” He tells them in verse 48.

Luke 24:49 NASB95

“And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

“Behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father,” He says. But what was that promise?

It was the promise of the Holy Spirit, the Helper.

Jesus knew His disciples would miss Him when He returned to Heaven. He knew they might even feel lost without His physical presence among them.

But He told them that having the Holy Spirit would actually be BETTER for them than having Him there. With the Holy Spirit, “the power from on high” indwelling them, they would go on to do even greater things than He had done, Jesus said.

In other words, they would reach more souls for Christ. They would preach to greater crowds than He had. They and those who came to Christ through them would proclaim the message of a Savior who had died for the sins of mankind and whose resurrection guaranteed the promise of eternal life for all who believed in Him.

And this message would go out to Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth.

And that’s just what has happened during 2,000 years of Christians spreading the gospel. But it’s important for us to note that even after giving them His marching orders, Jesus told His disciples to wait.

Wait in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high. Wait for the Holy Spirit, because you can’t do this on your own. Everything will stall, and you won’t even know HOW to get it into second gear.

And so, as Luke continues his account of these times in the Book of Acts, we come to chapter 2, where we see the disciples now doing just what Jesus had said to do — waiting in Jerusalem. Look at verse 1 of Acts, chapter 2.

Acts 2:1–4 NASB95

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

What we have here in these four verses is the birth of the church.

Now, the rest of this chapter records Peter’s great sermon to the Jews in Jerusalem and the miraculous conversion of 3,000 persons who recognized the hopelessness of their position as sinners and repented from their sins and turned to Jesus in faith.

Then we see some of the marks of the early church, as those new believers experienced unity of faith, unity of love, and unity of mission.

And in the rest of the Book of Acts, we see the exponential growth of this new church and its spread from Jerusalem, into all of Judea and Samaria, and toward the remotest parts of the earth.

But the church was born in that upper room in Jerusalem, when the Holy Spirit came in tongues of fire upon the 120 or so people gathered there.

They began speaking languages they hadn’t known before, and Peter — the same Peter who had denied Jesus three times — preached with authority and courage to the same people who had demanded that Jesus be crucified just a few weeks earlier.

What was it that had changed Peter so completely? Warming his hands over the fire as Jesus was being questioned by the priests of Israel, Peter had denied Jesus in the flesh. But now, standing near the same spot, he preached in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And the contrasts should not escape our attention.

In the flesh, Peter was weak and afraid. In the Spirit, he was strong and courageous.

In the flesh, he gave up his opportunity to be a witness on behalf of Jesus, and so Peter at least indirectly contributed to Jesus’ death. But in the Spirit, he bore witness to Jesus, and so led 3,000 people to faith in Him, taking them from death into eternal life.

In the flesh, he had used his sword to cut off the ear of one of the servants with the men who arrested Jesus. In the Spirit, he used the sword of God’s word to pierce his listeners to their hearts and to bring healing to 3,000 people who otherwise might have succumbed to the disease of their sins.

We cannot expect to bear fruit for the Kingdom of God if we pursue the bearing of that fruit in the flesh. Only empowered by the Holy Spirit can we ever accomplish the spiritual victories for which we were made into new creatures.

The Spirit seals and indwells and sanctifies believers. He encourages and corrects and prays for us. And He does all these things for the church, too.

We should not miss the fact that all of these roles of the Spirit are life-giving, life-sustaining, and life-fulfilling roles, at least in the sense of true life — life in the presence of and in fellowship with God the Father, God the Son, and the church that glorifies them.

And it’s appropriate that the Holy Spirit’s roles in the lives of believers and in the life of the church are all about life, because, as Jesus said, “It is the Spirit who GIVES life.”

We see this all the way back in the creation account in Genesis, chapter 1.

Genesis 1:1–2 NASB95

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

One thing that’s wonderful about verse 2 here is that we see two of the persons of the Trinity operating together.

And when we look at what the Apostle John wrote in the introduction to his gospel, we can see that all three persons of the Trinity were working together to create the heavens and the earth and all that is in them.

Remember what the Apostle John wrote?

John 1:1–4 NASB95

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.

So, God created all things through Jesus. And God’s breath, which in the Hebrew language is a synonym for “Spirit,” gave life to man, whom God had formed from the dust.

And so, there is a sense in which every human on earth has physical life by the common grace of God through His Holy Spirit.

But Jesus had something even more important in mind when He said, “It is the Spirit who gives life.”

We all know John 3:16. Most of us learned it as children. Even people who aren’t Christians can recite the verse. But that verse was just part of an important dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, the Pharisee.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus one night — and in the Gospel of John, that signifies that he was in spiritual darkness — and he admits to Jesus that His miracles suggest He has been sent by God.

Jesus answers — we’re in John 3:3 now — “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again [or born from above] he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus isn’t sure what Jesus is talking about. “How can a man be born when he is old?”

And then, picking up in verse 5:

John 3:5–8 NASB95

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Only those born of water and the Spirit can enter the Kingdom of God. Only those born from above can be saved.

Everyone who exists has been born of the flesh. We all exist physically.

But what Jesus is trying to make Nicodemus see here is that the greater spiritual realm that is represented by the Kingdom of God requires a spiritual birth that can only take place through the Holy Spirit.

We physical creatures who inherited spirits of death because of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden must receive spiritual life in order to be a part of God’s kingdom. And the only way to receive spiritual life is through the life-giving Holy Spirit.

And as verse 8 says, the world can see the effects of the Spirit working within us — they can hear the sound and see the changes — but the lost world can’t fathom His purposes in us.

The world can’t understand what we’re all about, what the church is all about.

And the fact of the matter is that we don’t often make it very easy for them to understand, because we often don’t get it ourselves.

Instead of proclaiming a message of God’s grace poured out at the cross of Jesus so that we sinners could be saved, we let the world think that we believe we somehow deserved salvation.

We who were so recently clothed in unrighteousness like to show off our new white robes, giving the impression that we’ve somehow cleaned ourselves up.

Instead, we telling the world that even our good deeds are but filthy rags, if not for the cleansing power of the blood Jesus shed on the cross.

Instead of telling the lost that they are dead in their trespasses and unable to save themselves, we try to push morality on them and get THEM to act the way CHRISTIANS are supposed to act.

This is the church working in the power of the flesh. This is the church stuck in first gear, because we don’t even know we’re supposed to be shifting gears.

But we are CALLED to work in the life-giving, life-sustaining, and life-fulfilling power of the Holy Spirit. HE is the one who can empower you as Christians and we as a church to be different from the world.

As we walk in the Spirit — led by the Word of God and in fellowship with Him through prayer — we can be a church that bears abundant fruit for the Kingdom of God.

THIS is our calling. THIS is the true life of branches that abide in the True Vine. THIS is how stones will be added to the temple being built to God. And as we consider how our church will look and work in the future, THIS should be what drives us.

But what about you? ARE you a branch from the True Vine? ARE you a stone being built into God’s temple?

Have you received eternal life — life in the presence of and in fellowship with God and with Jesus? Have you received this precious gift of life from the life-giving Holy Spirit?

Every one of us is born into sin. Every one of us has inherited that spirit of death from Adam. And every one of us confirms our birthright as sinners by sinning against God, by failing to reflect the perfectly righteous character of the God who created us in His image.

We all have sinned in great ways and small ways. And in doing so, we have all rebelled against the King of the universe.

And the punishment for this treason, for rebelling against any king, has always been death.

We’ll celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence tomorrow. The signers of that document knew that if the new nation failed to secure the independence they had declared, they would be put to death for their rebellion.

Likewise, the punishment for rebelling against God is death. The wages of sin is death.

And so, when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they brought physical death into the world. But they also brought spiritual death, the promise of eternal separation from fellowship with God and the curse of eternal suffering in hell upon their physical death.

But God loves us. And God is gracious. And so, He sent His unique and eternal Son, Jesus, to live a sinless life and to give Himself for us as a sacrifice on the cross.

Jesus hung on that cross, taking upon Himself the punishment that we deserve for our rebellion — the physical torment AND the spiritual separation from the Father with whom He had been in eternal and perfect fellowship.

And He did this so that we who could not save ourselves could be saved.

And then, to prove that He could keep His promise of resurrection and eternal life for those who follow Jesus in faith, God raised Jesus from the dead.

Since that first sin in the Garden of Eden, God has been working to redeem fallen mankind. He has been working to rescue the very rebels whose sins condemned His Son to death.

In a very real sense, God has been working since the Garden of Eden to rescue YOU. He reaches down, even this very minute, to grab onto you and pull you up from the mirey clay and set your feet on a rock.

Will you reach back up to Him now? Will you place your trust in Christ and Christ alone to save you from your sins? Will you accept this gift of LIFE from the life-giving Spirit of God?

If you want to do that today, please come and talk to me during this next song.