5/25/14 YEAR OF EQUIPPING TO SERVE

Acts 1 - The Launch of the Church

    How in the world can we do it?  This is a real challenge.  This question and statement have been asked for many situations.  When there is something new we want to learn, we can take a class, or watch a video or read a book.  We can’t just say that it’s impossible.  We have to be willing to learn.
    Some times we can learn from someone who doesn’t know our own specific specialty. For example, here’s a story of a group of ER docs who learned from a Formula One Team.
    What could a team of medical doctors possibly learn about practicing medicine from a Formula One racing team? If the doctors remain teachable, maybe they could learn a lot. That’s what happened at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. After completing a twelve-hour emergency transplant, the head doctor watched a Formula One race. As a car pulled into the pit, he noted that the crew changed the tires, filled it with fuel, cleared the air intakes, and sent it off in seven seconds.
    It struck him that it often took thirty minutes for his team of doctors and nurses to untangle and unplug all the wires and tubes and transfer a patient from surgery to ICU. He wondered if a racing team could teach a hospital how to run an emergency room.
    Imagine the pushback from the highly trained medical staff when the McLaren and Ferrari racing teams showed up to advise them on how to improve their emergency services. After all, what did they know about surgery or patient care? Nothing. But what did they know about speeding up complex processes? Everything.
    As a result, after visiting with the Formula One racing team, the hospital staff initiated major changes, including better training, new procedures, a step-by-step checklist covering each stage of the handover, and a diagram so that everyone knew their exact physical position as well as their precise task. It almost halved handover errors.
    The hospital team’s problems were solved by a group of people who knew nothing about the practice of emergency room medicine. But the Formula One team’s expertise allowed them to easily spot what the hospital tribe had missed. And the medical team had the humility and teachability to learn from the outsiders.
Larry Osborne, Innovation’s Dirty Little Secret (Zondervan, 2013), pp 130-131
    Here’s an insight: no matter who we are we can learn and things we do can improve.  Here’s an illustration of how quickly they can change the tires on a race car.  (Video) Wow, that’s amazing.
    Now, let’s look at the beginning of the church.  We recently celebrated Easter.  We rejoiced at the victory Jesus won over death and the grave.  What He did was amazing.
    Then, we read that the command was given to the church to go out and spread the good news.   It would do no good for Jesus to come and die on the cross if no one heard about it.  We are told God expects us to be involved.  We are to build the church, spread the gospel, do God’s work.  And the big question comes up: HOW?????
    Another thinking point: how did they do it right away at the beginning of the church?  They had no history.  They had no organization or structure.  They had no financial backing.  They were starting from scratch.
    That is the story we find in the Book of Acts.  We find the story of the triumphant spread of the Gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit.  God equipped and empowered the believers from the beginning.  He is still doing the same today.
    Jesus left this world and returned to heaven forty days after the resurrection.  In Acts 1 we se this story.
Acts 1:9-11 NIV
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
    Jesus came to the world and left in miraculous ways.  He was born without a human father and welcomed with a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.  He returned to heaven by simply lifting up out of their sight.  He left with the promise that He would return some day.  We look forward to that day with excitement.  Yes, some day we will see Jesus.
    We know that the early church shocked the world with their message.  We read:
Acts 17:6 NLT
6 Not finding them there, they dragged out Jason and some of the other believers instead and took them before the city council. “Paul and Silas have caused trouble all over the world,” they shouted, “and now they are here disturbing our city, too.
    Another translations says they turned the world upside down.  How did they do it? How did the early church make such an impact?
    Let’s go back to chapter 1.
Acts 1:8 NIV Jesus said:
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
    The power of the Holy Spirit was promised to the church.  We are enabled to do what God commanded and what the world needs more than anything else through the power of the Spirit of God.  The Spirit empowers us to DO God’s work.  The church spoke the Word of God with boldness because of the Spirit.
    This key verse tells us we will be used by God where we live and spreading out to around the world.  We as believers become the carriers of life and hope.  People will know the forgiveness God offers through our work.  And it will accomplish eternal purposes because God does the enabling.
    Here’s another key the early church learned to win the spiritual battle.
Acts 1:14 NIV
14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.
    The church learned to join together constantly in prayer. The Greek word here is that they joined together in the same mind or spirit.  The believers faithfully joined together in one accord, in one mind, obeying Jesus’ command to wait for the Father’s promise of the Holy Spirit.  They were totally focused together in prayer with extraordinary unity and purpose.  When God’s timing came they were clothed with supernatural, tremendous power.  The experience of receiving the baptism in the Spirit empowered them to do God’s work.  God’s people got together and prayed.  This was not the only time they prayed.  We see throughout the Book of Acts that the church prayed.  They prayed with power and things happened.
    Acts is a history book.  It tells the opening chapters of the church.  The book is still being written in the sense that the church is still alive and well.  What was the purpose?  Why did Luke write?
    At least some of that answer is found in two parts.
    He shows how the gospel of forgiveness and eternal life through belief in Jesus was spread capably beyond the Jews who first believed to the Gentiles.   They faced severe opposition and persecution.  Yet, they saturated most of the Roman Empire.
    The Holy Spirit played a central role in the believers’ lives and purpose.  This book emphasizes the importance of the baptism in the Holy Spirit to empower the church to spread the message of Jesus.  The baptism in the Spirit was the normal experience in early Christianity.
    For us today in western Wisconsin:  What God started He will complete.  The last thing Jesus promised as He left this earth was that believers will receive power for service.  We will serve Him and win the world because of God’s empowering.
Discussion:
Who was Jesus talking about in Acts 1:8?
I’m going to give you a hint.
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
You = YOU!!!!  God wants to use all believers.
What parallels can you see between the situation the early church faced and what we face today?
Can we expect to see a spiritual breakthrough in western Wisconsin?
What must we do to see the breakthrough come?
Let’s pray specifically for the spiritual breakthrough.  Praying with faith and expectation that we will see it, that we will disturb our cities for Jesus.