Hope Church LV Sermons
World Changers
I want to put a quote up on the screen and it's one that if you've been a part of the Hope family for any length of time at all, you have seen this quote before. It's one that I love. It's one that has deeply impacted my life personally. It's by a man named William James and here's what he said, "The great use of a life is to spend it for something that outlasts it. The great use of a life is to spend it for something that outlasts it." And I don't know where that quote hits you today. I don't know where it finds you or where you're living or how it impacts you, but when I first read that a number of years ago, when I first saw that for the very first time, my heart just completely wrapped around it. Everything in me just said, "Yes." Say that with me today, "Yes." Everything in me responded that way when I saw that, "I want my life to matter. I want my life to count for something. I want to live my life. I want to invest my life in something that is going to outlive me." In the opening pages of the Book of Acts, we read the story of a small group of people. And when I say small group, it was a lot less than what's sitting in here today. It would fit in about half of one of these sections. The opening pages of the Book of Acts, this small group of people, wrapped their hearts around a mission that they'd been given by Jesus Christ to plant a church. Now it was just no ordinary church. It was the first church, the first New Testament church that had ever existed on planet earth, the first New Testament community of believers. And he called them to do this in the city of Jerusalem. This small group of people took very seriously this mission. They wrapped their hearts around investing and giving away their lives for something that was bigger than them. And on what we know from Christian history is the day of Pentecost. Simon Peter preached the gospel, and the Bible tells us that on day one of their church plant, 3,000 people trusted Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. Now I don't know how you measure success in the arena of church planting, but I want you to know, I think that's pretty successful. That's a pretty good day one. That's a pretty awesome Sunday number one. I don't think you'd have to send out mailers to get people back on Sunday number two. If 3,000 people come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior on Sunday number one. By the second gathering, the second Sunday, the Bible tells us that they once again preached the gospel, and this time there's so many people responding that they cannot count even all the women and children. They just number the men, and there are 5,000 men. So get this. We're two weeks into a brand new church being launched in the city of Jerusalem, and somewhere between 15 and 20,000 people have not just filled out a card and checked a box. 15 to 20,000 people have completely and utterly surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ, followed him publicly in baptism, began living out their Christian faith in community going house to house during the week. I mean something radical was happening in Jerusalem. Those and historians tell us that within 6 months, 100,000 people in Jerusalem had been born again into a new relationship with Jesus Christ. You know, one of the biggest problems we face as the church in America, we don't even expect God to do that anymore. What if in 6 months we could say 100,000 people in Las Vegas? It didn't just attend an event. I'm talking born again. Radical life change, following Christ in baptism, beginning to live out Christian community day in and day out. You won't talk about changing our city, hey, they couldn't call a sin city very long. Our reputation would start changing as Christ and his church began to saturate this valley. We just came through 16 weeks of studying through Hebrews 11 and the first part of Hebrews 12 about the wonderful miracles of God, and here's what we walked away with understanding. The same God that is the God of Moses and Abraham and Sarah and David and Joshua and the people of God, the same God that was their God, the same God that was sitting on the throne in Acts 1 is the same God that is sitting on the throne today. He has not changed. Let's go on to tell us that within 40 years of the day of Pentecost, the gospel had reached every corner of the known world. Today there are over 3 billion people in the world that have little or no access to the gospel. What if? What if in our generation it could be said that the gospel has now reached every person known on planet earth? I'm not talking about the strength and strategy of a church. I'm not talking about the resources and insights of a church. I'm talking about the majesty and glory and power of the God of heaven. You want to talk about changing the world? Today there are roughly close to one billion professing evangelical Christians in the world. If you count all those that just claim the name Christian, there's almost 2 billion. Every one of us that are born again today, every one of you sitting in this room today that claimed to be a follower of Jesus Christ can trace your faith back to the radical surrender to the mission of this small group of people sitting in Jerusalem. We sit here today in the trail that they blazed. Just a handful. When I understand that and when I first discovered that about this group of people, I had to ask some questions, what was it? Was it that they were just an incredibly creative and smart group of people? Was it that they were just people of significant influence and resources? Well, it didn't take much of a study of the people that were in that group to come to the conclusion and that is definitely not the answer. As a matter of fact, this group of people was mostly old salty fishermen cheating tax collectors and born-again prostitutes. I mean, that's not a group you'd say, "Hey, we're going to turn the world upside down with this crowd." You'd have looked at them and said, "Wow. We need to punt and start over." The first Sunday of February, 2001, 18 adults gathered in my living room and I shared with them what I just shared with you, 18 adults wrapping our hearts around the vision. That God had called us here to be about planting a church in a city that would wrap its arms around this city and from this city be a launching pad to touch the ends of the earth with the gospel. You think the numbers are staggering to you? You should have seen the faces of the 18 people sitting in my living room. We more resembled the group in the book of Acts. Just a small little band, half of us southern boys been transplanted in the big city, still had starry eyes. We turn to the first chapter of the book of Acts, that's what I want to ask you to turn today. Acts chapter 1, if you have your Bible, if you don't, we're going to put these words on the screen and we read some verses and from those verses we drew a few principles that I believe are characteristics that enabled them to be so used of God to change the world. And it's the same characteristics that you and I need to have, that we need to have as a family of faith, if we're going to continue to embrace the mission. When we move into that next campus, listen to me, we have not arrived. If you think for one second that moving in a permanent campus somehow means mission accomplished, you've missed everything about what Jesus called us to. It's a tool, that's it. There are some heart characteristics here that we must wrap ourselves around. It's who we are, but we've got to be reminded of these things, especially as we make this move because it's so easy. The natural tendency of the flesh is to drift away from the character and the mission of God. So I want us to read these verses and I want to draw a few characteristics out of them. We could literally stay here all day. There's so many here. I'm going to try to limit it to just four, but let's read together. The first account I composed Theophilus about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up to heaven after he had been by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen. To these he also presented himself alive after suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of 40 days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. Gathering them together he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father promised, which he said you heard of from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they'd come together, they were asking him saying, "Lord, is it at this time that you're restoring the kingdom to Israel?" He said, "It is not for you to know times are epics." It's a good word for us, which the Father's fixed by his own authority, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and all today and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth. After he'd said these things, he was lifted up when they were looking on and the cloud received him out of their sight and as they were gazing intently into the sky as he was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky?" This Jesus who's been taken up from heaven into you will come in just the same ways you've watched him go into heaven. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. When they had entered the city they went up to the upper room where they were staying. That is Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, the son of Alpius and Simon, the zealot, and Judas, the son of James. Try to do that five times. These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. Let me give you four characteristics. Here's the first one. They had a faith that produced obedience. Let me say it another way. They trusted God and did what God said. I know that sounds simple, but in the church in America today that's radical. We're just going to trust God and we're going to do what he says. Let me show you how they did that here in these verses. Remember the context? Jesus told them to go to a city and launch this mission to touch the ends of the earth. What city did he tell them to go to? Say it out loud. Jerusalem, right? You do remember what had just happened in Jerusalem, right? Forty days earlier, they'd taken a vote on what they believe about Jesus in Jerusalem. Forty days earlier, people had lined the streets of Jerusalem and screamed at the top of their lungs, "Crucify Him!" Forty days earlier, they had run Jesus through a series of mock trials and crucified Him on a cross as a common criminal. You did not have to do any demographic research to understand what Jerusalem thought about Jesus or the gospel. Jerusalem wanted nothing to do with Jesus Christ. So if you'd pulled that little group together and passed out index cards and said, "I want you to write down the top three cities. You'd like us to go start our new mission in," let me tell you what city would not have even made the top ten, Jerusalem. I mean to go to Jerusalem meant we may die. I mean they just crucified Jesus, we're not even Jesus, what are they going to do to us? To go to Jerusalem meant they could lose everything that they had. To go to Jerusalem meant they were risking the lives of their family and their friends. Jerusalem meant laying everything on the altar. But the Bible says in verse 13 that they went to where? Jerusalem? Why? Because of what He said. Let me tell you what that tells us about them. They didn't make their decisions based on their feelings. Because I promise you it didn't feel good to go to Jerusalem. They had to step over their feelings to get to Jerusalem. Feelings were a big mountain in the way. They didn't make their decisions based on their opinions if they had sought counsel from the group and said, "Hey, everybody give us your opinion. The opinion poll would not have led them to Jerusalem." They didn't make their decisions based on their circumstances because the circumstances were screaming, "Do not go to Jerusalem." You're going to talk about a closed door. They crucified the leader. Door closed. But they just trusted God and did what He said. Let me tell you what that tells me about them. They heard God. You see this kind of faith demands intimacy with God in order to stand up and trust and follow Him. We must have clarity in what God is speaking into our lives. They heard God speak and I think therein is one of the major problems with the church in America. We've lost the ability to hear from God. We've got so much in the way of resources and programmings and strategy, talent and gifts and abilities. We can keep doing church in America for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks where the God shows up or not. They had a faith that produced obedience. Let me tell you the second thing they had. They had a passion that produced unity. Look at verse 14, it says, "These all with one mind," everybody's on the same page. That's miraculous in and of itself. You would have just followed me around one weekend and hear all the different opinions and opinions. It's amazing. It's too hot. It's too cold. It's too loud. It's too quiet. It's too short. I mean, it's just amazing. And people say it in the kindest, sweetest ways and you try to be as kind and sweet as you can. You don't definitely know what you're thinking in your mind, but here's the church the Bible says, "These all with one mind," and the Greek it literally means they had one passion. It means that they'd all wrap their hearts around something to the degree that nothing else trivial mattered anymore. I'm not saying that as the church in America, we don't have passion. We have passion. The problem is we just all got passion about different stuff. Somebody's passionate about this type of ministry. Somebody's passionate about this area of ministry. Somebody's passionate about this style. Somebody about this other style. Somebody's passionate about this particular theological truth. And somebody else is passionate about this particular theological persuasion. We all got passion, but when our passion is not united around one thing, passion can be something that divides and not something that unites. The Bible says they'd wrap their hearts around one thing. What was it? I believe the key is in chapter one, verse three. I know you thought I was going to say verse eight. Everybody loves verse eight of chapter one. It's like the verse. When you preach chapter one, you just focus on verse eight and the rest of it's just in there for support, right? But you can't get to verse eight without reading verse three. Verse three says, "To these he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many convincing proofs of pinging them over a period of 40 days." What's he talking about? Jesus, after his death, burial and resurrection spent 40 days making appearances to the disciples. In small groups, sometimes in large groups, but for 40 days, his last physical presence on planet earth, he spent 40 days getting in front of that little group of people. Look what it says. Seeking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. You know what that means, right? For 40 days, Jesus kept preaching the same sermon over and over. It didn't matter how big or how small the audience was in front of him. He just kept saying the same things over and over and over and over. Listen, if you come to hope for 40 days and you hear me preach the same, listen, you won't even come three times in one weekend to hear me preach the same sermon. 40 days, and Jesus just kept talking about the same thing over and over and over. Listen, either he lost his mind or he was trying to make a point. I think he's trying to make a point. I think he was saying to them, "If you forget some stuff, don't forget this." And that should not surprise us because in Matthew 6 and verse 33, he said to seek first the kingdom of God, meaning that the kingdom of God is to be the absolute number one priority in our lives. Everything else revolves around that. And you know what's tragic in the church in America today? We don't even know what the kingdom of God is. Much less to say it's the number one passion that we've wrapped our hearts around. Let me give you a definition of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is God's sovereign activity in the world, resulting in people being in right relationship with himself. Read that off the screen with me. You ready? One, two, three. God's sovereign activity in the world, resulting in people being in right relationship with himself. It's the big picture. It's the picture of God's global mission. God is alive and at work all over the world and his activity is drawing men and women from every tribe, every tongue, every people and every nation into a right relationship with himself that will climax one day with the glorious second coming, the return of our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes back to this earth. And the Bible says then we'll be around the throne in heaven, every tribe, tongue, people and nation as the kingdom of God. Meaning that in heaven there'll be no hope church, it'll be the kingdom. The church is a temporary necessity, a temporary tool that God and his sovereignty has established for the gathering place to teach people about the kingdom and as a launching pad for the expansion of the kingdom. That's the only reason we exist, listen, we don't exist just so we can be a holy huddle in Las Vegas where we can come together and meet everybody's needs and care for everybody and hear the word of God and worship know God brought us together that we may touch this city and the nations for the glory and honor of God. Let me give you two realities of a church that wraps its heart around the kingdom. Number one is that they understand that their calling is not to a church but to a city. When a church has a true kingdom mentality, they understand that the focus is not them but the city that God has birthed them in. God put us here on mission, here's what that means. As a church, we are God's missionary in the city of Las Vegas. Now think about this, if you send a missionary overseas, you plant them in a country that doesn't have access to the gospel or doesn't know Jesus and the missionary and his family spend all their time inside their own house, reading the Bible and singing and praying and worshiping and meeting each other's needs and caring for one another, making sure nobody gets overlooked, making sure everybody's got everything that they need taken care of, writing programs to help them develop spiritually and get more Bible knowledge and theological understanding. When we bring those missionaries home, we bring them back home and send somebody else, right? Because missionaries don't go to spend all time in their own house. We're a missionary put in this city to wrap our arms around this city for the glory and honor of God. A second reality of a kingdom mentality is understanding that everything God is doing in my life locally is connected to his activity globally. What God is doing in our fellowship locally is connected to the big picture of what he's doing globally. I just had the privilege a few weeks ago to travel to the country of Egypt. The week before we flew to Egypt, 26 people were killed in the protest riots outside the hotel there in the square where we were going to be staying. When we got to Egypt, we didn't know what to expect. We did not know whether the pastors and church leaders would come because for Christians to travel at that time in Egypt, and still, it's a risk. You got in your car and you came to church this morning. You didn't even think about a risk. We knew when we got there, we may show up and it may be empty. The year prior, we'd had 700 pastors and leaders come and taken us four years to get to that point. We didn't know what would happen this year. When we got there, there were almost 700 pastors and leaders again and we were scheduled to start every morning at nine o'clock preaching and at eight o'clock they would start singing. We'd start preaching at nine and run all day. We'd quit preaching at ten o'clock at night. They would stay singing, praying and praising until two and three o'clock in the morning. I've never seen anything like it. A desperation for God, a hunger for truth. You couldn't, literally as few of us, we taught, I taught so much, I had no voice left. As we were leaving the embrace of these men and women of God, you could feel it in their embrace. It's like they've been waiting and waiting for years for someone to come. You see, when God birthed our church, He knew what was going on in Egypt, He didn't catch Him off guard. Seeing God's doing in our life locally is connected to the big picture of what He's doing globally. And if we don't keep our eyes on that, it's a passion that can produce unity. Third thing, they had a desperation that produced prayer. Look back at verse 9, I love verse 9 and 10, it's funny stuff. He says, after He'd said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on and the cloud received Him out of their sight. Now, we've read that so many times in the Bible that we just read right through it like it's just normal. You do understand what just happened, right? Jesus just looked at this, get the picture of this group of people. I mean, this was like the land of misfit toys. And He looks at this little group of people and He says, "Here's the plan. I want you to go to Jerusalem. And from Jerusalem, I want you to go to Judea and Samaria. And from there, I want you to go to the ends of the earth, places you don't even know exist. And after He said that, as if that wasn't enough of a bomb in the room, the Bible says He started floating. And I mean, not just kind of like they do down here on the strip where they, you know, deceiving, levitate a little bit. I'm talking about like real life, floating all the way up through the clouds until they couldn't out. You're sitting here like us. Well, if I started floating, you're going to react. And if I just go straight through the ceiling and just keep on going, I got your attention, right? Listen, what verse 10 says happened next? And as they were gazing intently into the sky, let me tell you what that looks like. And the implication of the text is they didn't move. And if what happened next had not happened, I believe they'd have died right there, and you'd have found all these skeletons with their jaws wide open. But look what happens next in verse 10, "Behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. God said to two angels, 'Would you go down there and tell them to move along?'" Look what happened. Verse 11, they said, "Men of Galilee, what are you doing standing and looking in the sky?" And everything changed with the next statement out of their mouths, "This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in just the same way as you've watched him go." And verse 13 says, "They went immediately to Jerusalem, and they ran up into an upper room, and crammed that little crowd in that upper room, and put together a committee to begin to develop a strategy on how they could impact..." Was that not what your Bible says? Now, what does it say happen next? They were devoting themselves to prayer. They got on their face before God. This was no "God bless all the missionaries" type brand. This was some people on their face before God saying, "God, the only way is you." Lord, we've counted up, we've got, is not going to happen. This mission is dead out of the starting gate if it's up to us. Lord, only you. The Bible says they devoted themselves. They begin to cry out to God. 11 years ago, almost, we were a desperate group of people, 18 adults believing God had called us here to join in something that was bigger than us. We started prayer walk in this city. We prayer walk 50,000 households on the south end of Las Vegas. We prayed up and down every street. We prayed two things. God opened their hearts to the gospel and raised up labors for the harvest. Your house existed in 2001. On the south end of Las Vegas, we walked up your street and we prayed over it. We took the Las Vegas phone book. We prayed through the phone book every name three times. If your name was in the Las Vegas phone book, we prayed for you three times in 2001. And two prayers. God opened their hearts to the gospel. Lord, raise up labors for the harvest. Listen, if we think for one second, that now that we're getting the building, we don't need God, God help us. Ian Bowne said, "The story of every great Christian achievement is really the history of answered prayer." Are we a praying people? Let me give you the answer to the question. Are you a praying person? The church prays when you pray. You are the church. The church doesn't exist over at 850 East Cactus. You the church. The last thing that they had, and I'll close with this, they had a... They had the Spirit that produced power and the Spirit that produced power. I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of stuff in Acts chapter 2 that we just can't explain. And whole denominations are divided over what happened in Acts chapter 2. Can I just be totally honest with you? Nobody knows for sure. And we're going to get to heaven with our brothers and sisters in Christ and somebody's going to be wrong and it might just be us. Let me tell you one thing I know for sure. On that day, the church was empowered like it had never been before. We're opening the doors of a new facility, wonderful, listen to me. All that is is a sail. The boat's still not moving if the wind doesn't blow. May the Spirit of God, let me tell you what we need. We need a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God that empowers us to carry out the mission of Jesus Christ in this city and the nations for the glory and honor of God. Francis Chan wrote a book called The Forgotten God. It's a great book. If you've never read it, I highly recommend it. Here's a quote out of this book I want to close with. He said, "When I read this book of Acts, I see the church as an unstoppable force. The church was powerful and spreading like wildfire, not because of clever planning, but by a movement of the Spirit, riots, torture, poverty, or any other type of persecution couldn't stop it. Isn't that the type of church movement? We all long to be a part of. I don't know where you are, but I can tell you my heart says yes. For the glory and honor of God in our city and among the peoples of the earth. May He use us to change the world." [BLANK_AUDIO]