When most people think about change, they think about surface issues. Most New Year’s resolutions are about fitness or finance. I want to lose weight, eat better, exercise, and save money – exterior things. If life were a car, we’d spend all our time on the paint job. We can even parent this way – focusing only on the outward behavior of our kids. But God wants change to go deeper. Let’s go “under the hood” and examine the first Christians to learn how God can really change us, not just on the outside but on the inside as well.
When a car sits, the tires warp and go flat. The battery dies, the breaks rust, the fuel pump breaks down and animals move in. Cars are made to move. As we go “under the hood” in Acts to look at the early church we find the same thing. Christians aren’t just saved to believe something; we are created to do something. Move! What is God calling you to do?
Acts 1
Speaker: Bob Kadlecik
All right, well, I am excited about this series because it has nothing to do with cars. It really doesn't, right? This is just kind of a figure of if you wanted someone to talk to you about cars, it would not be me, okay? But this is just a picture of the church and what God wants from us and the engine of the church, we're going to talk about that in a few weeks, is the gospel and that the foundation is the chassis. You don't know what that is, I'll have a picture later to show you, but so we're going under the hood and we're going to talk about the early church because the first 30 years of the church is recorded in a historical document called Acts and it's written by Luke who is one of, if not the best ancient historian. He describes what the mast of a ship looks like, he nails exactly the name of the type of leader and political office of some very little known ruler on an island, it's a really accurate book and actually Luke wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else. And Paul wrote the most books, he wrote 11 books, but Luke wrote two books that were just really long. And the first one is the book of Luke and then Acts is the sequel and so we're going to start at the beginning of the book of Acts, he says in my first book I told you Theophilus, the man he's writing to about everything Jesus began to do and teach and he went to original sources, he seemed to interview Mary, the mother of Jesus and he asked people about what happened and where and he faithfully wrote it down and then in the book of Acts you'll see he'll say they and then at one point in the book he'll start saying we because he was actually there and then he'll move back to they and quoting what other people told him and so he says until the day he was taken up, so I wrote previously about what Jesus did and taught until the day was taken up into heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instruction through the Holy Spirit and next Sunday we're going to look at Acts chapter two then and talk about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is like the battery or the spark that is needed to start things going and to move and to do what God wants and he says so during the 40 days after he suffered and died he Jesus appeared to the apostles from time to time and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive and he talked to them about the kingdom of God and so here's the foundation of Christianity or if you're a car this is the chassis, that's what the chassis looks like, there's an engine in there too but just ignore that, the foundation is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead then Christianity is just a bunch of random pieces of thoughts and ideas that is really worthless just like a car, if you have a car without a chassis you don't have a car, you have parts, you have a junkyard maybe of stuff but the death and resurrection and here's the thing about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, everyone who knew Jesus best, everyone who was closest to Jesus and who left us a historical record about him said that he claimed to be God and not a God like the trees are God and we're all God and the rocks are God, no he claimed to be a personal God who created the known universe and who talked to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, that God, that's the God Jesus claimed to be and so that means he's only one of three things, he's either a liar and the worst kind of liar because most of his friends who believed him died and were beaten and whipped and suffered terribly because they believed he was God and so he was either an evil liar or he was a lunatic and I've met crazy people but I'm looking at crazy, no, not right now but to have someone really crazy that thinks they're God, that is another level of crazy like it's one thing to be like you know a little bit emotionally unstable or maybe to hear things or see things but to think you are God, that's a level of crazy and to have such a following and to speak with such wisdom and to have a movement that continues centuries after you're gone and you're just crazy nuts, that doesn't seem to be an option so the only other option we have is that Jesus actually was Lord, not a liar, not a lunatic, he was Lord and that's the foundation of Christianity and so continue to read once when he was eating with them, he commanded them do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised as I told you before, again he's talking about the Holy Spirit and he says this isn't going to get started, you know I've had, how many of you have had your battery die in your car, almost universal, yeah most of us, nothing happens right, you need that and he's saying you've got to wait for the Holy Spirit, John baptized with water but in just a few days you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit and we'll talk more about that next week so when the apostles were with Jesus they kept asking him Lord has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom, Jesus was setting up a spiritual kingdom on earth and the disciples were interested in the political, physical kingdom that he will set up when he returns and so they're saying when is that going to be and he replied I'm not telling you, the Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times and they're not for you to know, in fact if he had told them you know it's going to be 2000 whatever years from now, I mean what would they have done, they've been like this is crazy so a lot of times there's a good reason why we don't know everything we want to know but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses telling people about me everywhere in Jerusalem throughout Judea in Samaria and to the ends of the earth. There's no such thing as a Christian at this point, Christian was a name that the opponents of those who are following Jesus Christ used to kind of make fun of them, it means little Messiah and so they're like oh you're a bunch of little messiahs running around and so before we were called Christians there was a number of things that Christians were called and this is one of them and that's witnesses, we are witnesses and can you be a witness if you never witness, I don't think you can and so from the very beginning there is this movement idea where Jesus is saying I want you to to start in Jerusalem, that's where they were when he was talking to him, there were about a half mile outside the city and he said you need to be my witnesses here in Jerusalem, Jerusalem was one square mile and then also in Judea, Judea was the region Jerusalem was in, it was about 8,400 square miles about the size of northeast Pennsylvania and then in Samaria, Samaria was a smaller region inside of Judea that had a different culture, a different ethnic group, a different religious makeup and he says you need to be reaching other cultures even inside of Judea locally that would be like maybe learning how to speak Spanish and trying to reach Hispanics in northeast Pennsylvania or the southern tier of New York and then to the ends of the earth that would be so one square mile, 5,000 or 8,400 square miles, 57 million square miles. So how do you go from one square mile to being a witness over an area of 57 million square miles? You got to multiply and you got to move, you got to move, in fact there was such a resistance against us in the early church and I think now in our church as well in the modern church, Jesus had to send, God had to send persecution to Jerusalem, apostles were killed, other people like Stephen who was a servant in the church, a deacon, he was murdered, others were jailed and whipped and beaten and it was only then that they're like you know what? Maybe we should leave Jerusalem and they were scattered all over the Roman Empire and they started taking this message other places because I think you know Satan's one of his best strategies with us is paralyzation. It's circle the wagons and let's just all enjoy and love each other and let the world burn but we got each other, we got something good going on, let's just focus on us and let's just stay here but Jesus from the beginning he's like no my heart isn't for just Jerusalem. He would say to us today my heart isn't just for Montrose or for Hancock or wherever you're watching online today he says my heart is for the world and that means you got to move and that means you got to multiply and for so long I think the church has become a monument and not a movement. In fact a lot of you you know of churches just like this one right they're surrounded by what, graveyards. Does that like evoke, now this is a beautiful building, it's a monument right and eat and baptist church surrounded by a graveyard because there was and there's nothing wrong with that and they really back in the day they were thinking you know what this is an important reminder of eternity to go to church and be reminded yeah there's cousin John and there's my uncle Joe over there and that's his headstone and that's where I'm headed and how should I live in this life because I'm not going to be here long and so there's good things about it but I think that there's this this petrification instead of the electrification of the church and one of the things that has been could be an accusation and a criticism of Bridgewater is we don't invest a lot in buildings. This is not a beautiful this does not look like that, in fact when we built it someone said hey did you see the new township building that they're making out in Bridgewater, is that where they're going to put the salt for the roads you know and no that's our church we need a sign you know we need to put actually there was a sign up people don't read but you know and so you know even talking about cars right if you don't drive a car what happens to it the battery dies the tires rot out the brakes rust up the fuel you know pump like I don't even know what happens to it but it doesn't work it starts to leak you know and you look at it some of you some of you car guys are like oh man look at those muscle cars you see potential okay yeah and there's potential there but if those things have been sitting there since 1976 like there's there's not anything going on with those cars alright and and this is so many churches in our area and in our world that we've become a monument and God wants us to be a movement this church Bridgewater church started in 1809 and in the very beginnings of this church it was a movement and here's what the the first pastor of Bridgewater church was David's stomach this is not a picture of him but here's what he said when he came to to Montrose back in 1808 he was doing he was saved seven years but six years before that he was a moonshiner he's made moonshine out of grain or whatever you make moonshine out of anything probably and selling it and making money and advancing in the world of that day and then he got saved he gave up drinking and making alcohol and he decided he wanted to be a pastor and he started going around to homes and preaching and he came to the home of a civil war captain retired captain Bartlett Heinz there was a log cabin he had in Montrose and Bartlett invited some of his friends and neighbors to his house and David's stomach came in and he preached to people and then it snowed and he got snowed in they got like three or four feet of snow in that I think it was in March and he couldn't get his horse out you know like there's no and so he was there for an entire week and preached the entire week and and just built relationships and was so like struck by the desire of these people in Montrose to follow the Lord that a year later he came back but this is what he said when he was there the inhabitants and period in general to be as wild as the vast wilderness around them so this was like when you think of like you know the the wild west that was Montrose in 1808 you know and and then in the next in the first 20 years after starting this church we helped start seven other churches locally including first Baptist of New Milford and a bunch of others before we even had a building we met in a home and then we met at the courthouse and then after 20 years we actually got our own building and then five years after that David's stomach started Dimick Baptist Church which just donated their building back to us to help restart another congregation there and so this is about a movement right and so that's what we want to do and back in 2011 we had over 400 people at our old office building we use now 107 Church Street and we had three services and we're running out of room and we thought we need to reach more people for Jesus Christ so what do you do when you want to do that in your church you build a bigger box that's what you do right and so we looked into building this building and it was going to cost over three million dollars and we looked into whether we could raise money for that and we did you know a study over months of time and asking people and we realized that we could raise probably a couple hundred thousand dollars over a three to four year period of time which is not three million and it's not even enough for a deposit and so we realized we can't build this was before gas royalties kicked in in the area this is God's plan sometimes God's plan is that you don't have what you think you need because he has something better for you different for you and so we said well what do we do we know God wants us to move he wants us to multiply he wants us to reach other people for Jesus Christ but we don't have any room and we came upon this wonderful idea let's kick people out no let's multiply and send a bunch of people to Halstead to have another service there and and we'll have Phil and Preachers and Pastor Brett went out and Pastor Andrew went out and I went out and we had a missionary John Collins from Word of Life and we said how why don't you preach over there and we'll pay you a little bit for that and and then Kyle Landis was over there and and and in 2011 we started with 50 people about 20 some of which were children we started a new congregation in Halstead and then in 2013 South Festival Baptist Church came to us and said we're dying we we want you to come and help us and merge with us and take over our church and and help us out and so we did that in 2013 and sent only 25 people there to help that church get started and then Conklin began 75 people from Halstead went to Conklin now do the math we sent 50 people to Halstead and then they sent 75 to Conklin what kind of math is that that is God's math yeah you know and how many people are there you know there's over 300 people in Halstead now even minus 75 you know and and so then Conklin started and and Pastor Barry got that going and then 2016 Pastor Rich Clark left here with 75 people to Tunkannock and I saw there's a couple of you that are visiting from there and that's awesome to have you back and then 2017 we merged with Ross Corners which gave us a much better facility and a much better location and it also gave us a really great pastor in Jeff Shrekngost who is at Ross Corners Baptist Church and he is still on staff with us and then just last fall Hancock began with just a handful of people just a couple families from Halstead again went out to Hancock and so this is what God wants us to do as a church he wants us to move in fact if our if what we're doing can be done by us we're not we're not doing enough we're not aiming high enough we need to be the kind of church that's going to fail spectacularly if God doesn't show up right and so and so this is what and it's comfortable what how many people do you think we would have here in Montrose we had about 425 on average in 2010 how many people do you think we'd have here if we never went and never sent people away and never tried to multiply you know what I think I think we'd have the exact same number maybe less but we had 425 in 2010 and we send people away to Halstead and we send people away to to to to Vestal and we send people away to Toncanic and now all of Bridgewater together is over 2,000 people plus the people watching online and and that's the math of multiplication that's God's math that's what he wants to do not just as a church but as individuals as well because not only does our church need to move but our church is just a bunch of people it means you need to move and and maybe God is calling you here in the town you live in whatever town that is whether it's Brooklyn or whether it's you know Kingsley or whatever you're coming from Montrose or maybe God wants you to move and be a part of our new Elk Lake campus it's going to start endemic or or maybe God wants you to go to another country and and to the ends of the earth there's a man who grew up in this area who is in prison right now in a foreign country and I won't say his name and I won't say the country but the reason he's there is because he he wanted to bring God's word to the ends of the earth and and is God calling you to do that is God calling your son or daughter to do that and would you give your stamp of blessing on that praise the Lord you're going to a country where you might get beaten up or jailed for telling people about Jesus Christ I'm so proud of you or would you be like no don't go stay make money give it to other people who will go do that God's plan is for us to move and to go and sometimes that's other places sometimes that's right here if you're not doing it here then you shouldn't even think that you can do it somewhere else and here's again that verse you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you can you do this on your own can you lead anyone to Christ no and I'm sure most of us here we have people in our minds in fact that's what that card is about as you came in you got a little card and it said pray invest invite whether you're in Hancock or whether you're here you got that card if you're online you can just get a sheet of paper from anywhere just write down want to encourage you write down three names of three people you're going to pray for every single day that God wants you to go to and talk to you about Jesus and to pray for that and to invest in them and you know how can I spend time with this person how can I invite them maybe to church invite them into a spiritual conversation you know you can say man I'm going to have cancer surgery soon oh is that scaring you well it does scare me but I have this peace because there is a time in my life when I ask Jesus to be my savior and I surrendered my life to him that's the gospel invite people to respond have you ever done that oh yeah yeah yeah I did that oh great great because boy it changes your life doesn't uh yeah everybody thinks they're saved until they realize they're not not everybody but a lot of people um until they have but but yeah to be witnesses I just want to encourage every single one of you put three names on that card and be praying about this for the rest of August and into September who does God want you to go to in fact I read a statistic this was 15 years ago the statistics so I'm sure it's worse now unfortunately but the statistic was 53 percent of Christians have not shared the gospel with anyone in the last six months so a majority of Christians haven't shared what I just talked to you about boy you need to ask Jesus to save you and then you need to surrender and give your life to him and make him your lord but here's the thing you're probably like oh yeah 53 percent actually I always thought it was a lot lower it's actually 53 percent of Christian pastors have not shared the gospel with anyone in the last six months no wonder that the church in America is a bunch of monuments right and not a movement because if the pastors aren't doing it and I have a confession to make before I came here as your pastor when I was up in Johnson City and in the first several years of me being a pastor that was me I'm sure there was one or two periods where I went six months or more without sharing the gospel with anybody because it was all everybody I knew was a Christian everybody I worked with was a Christian because I was a pastor you know and and and all my friends and all my and and I had no opportunity and I hadn't invested in people who didn't know Christ and and it was hard to meet my neighbors and and and we need to go and I'm so thankful that that is not a pattern in my life anymore and I have so many opportunities to talk to people here's the thing spiritual conversations are just important conversations talk to anyone about something important and it's probably a spiritual conversation you know I've noticed that you have just a really strong moral compass where does that come from that's a spiritual conversation even if the person you're talking to doesn't even realize it and and that's what God is calling us to do we're going to talk more about this in a couple weeks about how how do you share the gospel I don't want to like make you all feel guilty that you're not doing this but you don't really know how to do it but you can even go on YouTube and you probably find gospel presentations but we'll talk about it more in a couple weeks after saying this he Jesus was taken up into a cloud while they were watching and he could no longer see him and as they strained to see him rising into heaven two white robed men suddenly appeared among them men of Galilee they said these are angels why are you standing here staring into heaven Jesus has been taken from you into heaven but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go I love this because they're basically like you know blowing a whistle shows over time to get out of the pool like it's time to move like all right yep yep there he goes okay quit standing here like you know and and we do need to in great anticipation wait the return of Jesus Christ but he doesn't want us to leave here today like this waiting that way here's how you wait for Jesus' return you get moving you get going you start loving other people this takes risk to love other people you will your heart will be broken you you will look back at certain investments you made with people and you'll say boy that was a phenomenal waste of time nothing ever happened from that I got hurt but you know what it's worth it is worth it in fact I tell people this about finding a church home it is hard to find a church home you go to one church and you're like man this is a cult go to another church and you're like this place is dead like I like does that does that guy even have a pulse like how long has he been sitting there like you know and and and then you go to another church and you're like this is just weird you know and and it is hard to find a spiritual family anything worth doing is often difficult at times but it's worth it to be a part of a movement of God changing the world who are you influencing most of Acts chapter one starting in verse 12 all the way to the end is all about leadership they're saying Judas Oscariot he betrayed Jesus Christ he turned away from the faith we need to replace him with either justice whose other name was Barcibus or with Matthias and how do we do that and they're quoting the Old Testament about the importance of leadership a lot of you are you know this this is like yeah church leadership that's not me but here's the simplest best definition of leadership I've ever heard a leader is someone who one or more people is following and and I think all of us here lead in some way and you know you lead by example you lead at work you lead in your family you you lead in your neighborhood maybe in gathering people together if you say hey let's all come together for for a cookout you know the end of August and they show up that's leadership because they followed you they listened to you and so we need to use whatever influence God has given you for Jesus Christ maybe it's with other believers right to say hey I want to encourage you to these these three that got baptized you know to to that was a leadership moment for them they were saying to everyone here and I know there's a bunch of you who have not been baptized they're saying you know what do what I I'm doing follow me as I follow Jesus Christ and that's what God's calling us to do to be an influence in the people he's put around us drop me down in you know 19 out of 20 churches and if I were to invest almost 20 years in another church 19 out of 20 times probably more do you know what would happen absolutely nothing because you can't steer a parked car and and I just praise the Lord so much for this church because we're we're moving we're going somewhere and my leadership and the leadership of Pastor Josh who's our lead pastor and the other pastors like Pastor Brett who was up baptizing earlier like like we're not perfect and we make mistakes and that but but we're at least moving and and and going in the direction God wants us to I just want to encourage you to continue to do that I'm going to close in prayer we're going to have a closing song if you want to pray with someone if you've never surrendered your life to Jesus Christ and never asked him to be your savior and to pay for your sins on the cross encourage you come forward and and and we'll pray with you about that maybe you want to come forward and say I want to I want to make a commitment to a living breathing human being that I'm going to talk to these three people text me this week and ask me if I'm praying for them every day and if I reach out to them and try to have some kind of conversation or some kind of contact with with with these three people that I wrote on my card whatever you need prayer for feel free to come forward and we'll pray with you heavenly Father I just thank you so much that Jesus was a goer he left heaven to come to earth because there's no way we were going to heaven and God help us as a church to go because there's no way people are just going to come to this church not people who are far from you it's they're not even thinking about it so God help us to go to them help us to be like Jesus Christ help us to grow and become more like Jesus and to make a difference in people's lives around us that you've put across our path in Jesus name we pray amen you can stand as we get ready to sing this last song I love how it describes the miraculous thing as God has done in our lives and wants to do in the lives of people who don't even know him yet
