SIGNAL CHURCH CAPE TOWN
Julie Williams:- Build: Spirit-Filled & People Filled Church Pt.5.
Thanks everyone. I'm hoping to do this in record time and then get back to some worship, which you'll see my message kind of leads into. But thank you for having me up here and welcome if you're new, you very welcome. The church that God is building is a growing church and so it doesn't exist just for the people that are in it but for the people that are yet to join it. Otherwise we should all just go to heaven right now, right? So welcome. If you're new, if you're looking into the claims of Christ or you're new to church or you're coming back to church after a long time, you're welcome here. So we're in a series called Build where we're looking at the kind of church that Jesus is building and there's so much that is not being built in this time that we live in, right? There's so much destruction and deconstructing and it feels like there's so many things that are crumbling and yet there's this promise that Jesus says, if you can go back to the first slide before this one, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Isn't that amazing? There is one thing that is growing and getting stronger and more beautiful and is on the up and it's God's church. No, it might not seem like that sometimes but a reminder that this is still God's bride and Jen said it beautifully in a prayer meeting a few months ago, she felt God remind her my church is still my best idea. Church is still God's best idea and a reminder that when we speak about the church, we're not talking about this whole or signal, we're talking about us as living stones, we are the church. It's not a time that we that we come to, it's not a venue, we are the living stones together, we make God's bride the church and not just our church signal but the church, the wider body of Christ together, we are the church that Jesus is building and it is the hope of the world, it is beautiful and eternal and I must confess that at times I have not thought about that about God's bride and about the church, in fact there's been times in my journey where I just wanted the bride, groom Jesus, nothing to do with his bride and yet I'm so grateful that God has been so gracious with me and with his bride and goodness he's more gracious than I am and he is at work in me and in the wider body of Christ to wash her and to make her holy and beautiful and ready for her bride, groom. If God isn't finished with his bride, how dare we be? I really feel that this morning for as friends that some of us even in this room I just speak like I'm with Jesus, I'm not sure about the church but if if Jesus is not finished with his bride, how dare we be? If he's dedicating his time to making her beautiful and stronger and healthier, what else could we do with our one and only lives then join him in some way doing that too? Sure and so this series we've spoken about that there's 20 aspects to building a church that Jesus is building and it's almost like 20 colors and we've got 20 colors in a pastel box and these amazing artists all related to me are busy putting together a picture that just is is showing in real time that every church is an expression of of Jesus's bride but we get to use different amounts of the colors, hopefully all of them but but that's what the beauty of diversity in the body of Christ is that some some will use a lot of one color a little bit less of the others and that's what makes us different. So we're going through these 20 different aspects and last week Dave had the privilege of sharing about about the church being a supernatural church and a spirit filled church and Tyran and I were actually in Joabuk but we heard how the spirit decided to rock up and do more of a show than a tell and there was such a sense of God in the room filling his people and leading the meeting and as a bridge between that week and this week and what I'm gonna be speaking about I'm gonna ask my dad so this is a very family orientated meeting to come up and and share with us an experience that he had a few weeks ago as a means of demonstrating a church and a people that are spirit filled and spirit led. Welcome dad this is Keith. Thank you Julie. God is good yes. And I am just excited to say to you that it doesn't matter whether you are 7, 17, 27, 50 or in your 70s or 80s God can use you and that's just what I want to share with you over the next couple of minutes that as Christians I am totally convinced that with the Holy Spirit we have an unfair advantage over everybody else but we don't realize that and sometimes you've got to get to my age to actually not try it but test it to see the power in the name of Jesus. Okay and as you can probably see those of you who know me I'm not a quiet man but in this particular incident I was lost for words and I just want to quote from from John 14 16 to 20 where Jesus says I will give you a helper the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive whom the world cannot receive because it does not know him so my question to you is if you know God then this will make sense to you right. For our sins my beautiful wife Jo and I we run a little restaurant in Constantia and Constantia it's a wine farm and about five weeks ago I'm sitting inside at my little desk there and one of the waiters runs in and says Mr Keith there's a guy there are two ladies and a guy sitting at a table outside and we think that he's died so I thought well that's a little bit different you know I've handled complaints and stuff in the restaurant business I just hope it wasn't the food but anyway I was lost for words and I'm a pretty good organizer so as I'm going outside I said to this guy Joel how long has he been like this he said Mr Keith he's actually been like that for about five or six minutes so I get outside there's this table of three and week we full so I pull up a chair next to this this guy and he's he's slumped he's an elderly gentleman and of course his wife and daughter are really weeping she's just wiping his his mouth because doesn't look that great and they just saying daddy we love you and whatever whatever so I I said do you mind me asking what his name is and they they told me and I'm gonna call him John so I sat next to him and I try to find his his pulse and there was no pulse I put my hand behind his neck he was rigid he was ice ice cold and as far as I was concerned he was definitely not with us the mum actually said are you a doctor and I said no we just happened to own the place and and she said well do we get a an ambulance do we what do we do so now I'm trying to think of what do you do do I go and get a blanket do I whatever so to buy some time I said do you mind if I pray for John and she said no please weeping go ahead so I kept a my my hand behind John's neck and I've laid my hand on his chest and I was going to pray a little eulogy prayer along the lines of thank you for John for the husband he's been for the dad he's been and we just thank you Lord that we know where he is all those lovely Christian things and as I opened my well before I actually said anything I just said thank you Jesus thank you Jesus because I didn't know how I was gonna do this thing and the words that came out of my mouth were John this is not your time John this is not the time for you to go and in the name of Jesus I ask that you have life breathed into your lungs and the blood in the veins of your body will bring life to you thank you Jesus thank you Jesus thank you Jesus that's when I say that's all I did and I'm quite expectant you know I've gone over this a hundred times and I looked at him and he sort of half burped and half coughed like that his eyes opened he looked straight at me and I said John you've left us full some time he said yes I know he turned around he looked down in front of him they'd had a cheese platter he picked up a piece of cheese and away we go so I've been in touch with the the the daughter and apparently from there they we had to pick him up we got some very strong guys to carrying him to a car which they brought in he was in hospital for a couple of days but he's he's fine now but the key to this folks is that the truth is that the key to unlock the Holy Spirit is the name of Jesus and we just sung it over and over again and I was very reflective for days after this in fact joy you know thought there was something wrong with me and I came across this little quote by Maya Angelou who was a civil rights activist and author and she said listen to this the legacy your legacy is about every life you've ever touched every life you've ever touched so I say to you touch people today with the name of Jesus Wow that's quite a story right we I just have to tell you we don't have those stories every week in our family this is not how we normally roll but I just love it because it's such a beautiful picture of a spirit-filled life right it's just ordinary people used by God and that brings me to my first point I've only got two the church that Jesus is building is spirit-led and people filled and I just felt such a sense of what God wanted to do this morning is unify and bring things together that we sometimes see as separate and and and under this point there's a sense of we can kind of think that that the church must either be all about God and the Holy Spirit or all about people and what we can do you know and yet God is bringing these two things together a spirit-led and people filled I'm going to read a portion of scripture and then unpack it quickly Acts 2 verses 1 let's read it when the day of Pentecost came they were all together in one place and suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them each of them all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them now they were staying in Jerusalem God fearing Jews from every nation under heaven when they heard the sound a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language being spoken utterly amazed they asked on all these who are speaking Galileans then how is it that each of us hear them in our native language Parthians, Medes and Illamites residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia and the parts of Libya near Serene visitors from Rome both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongue amazed and perplexed they asked one another what does this mean some however made fun and said they must have had too much wine then Peter stood up with the eleven raised his voice and addressed the crowd fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem let me explain this to you listen carefully to what I say these people are not drunk it's only nine in the morning no this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel in the last days God says I will pour out my spirit on all people your sons and daughters will prophesy your young men will see visions your old men will dream dreams even on my servants both men and women I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved wow this is the word of God friends and it is living and active I just just want to pause and just just imagine what these people were going through the church of Acts is not just the church that was it's the church that is and that could be and and and some commentators say that this group of 120 I don't know if you if you remember the story they have seen Jesus be crucified then resurrected then he spent some time with him then he got risen up into the clouds and he said wait here for me and it's been 10 days I mean for all we know they thought wait here for me it was maybe like a few minutes right like 30 minutes and then they must have thought okay let's go let's go somewhere let's go wait in a room somewhere can you imagine 10 days of waiting with 120 people a motley crew of men and women and different kinds of people together that must have been quite testing and one commentator that I read said that in those days they weren't really houses and rooms big enough for 120 people and so they were probably based on some other verses before that they were probably in one of the outer courts of the temple okay so there they are in one of the outer courts the smartly crew getting a bit fractious waiting for what Jesus promised would come the gift of his holy spirit and at the end of Pentecost the Jewish festival there's a sound of rushing wind and that must have kind of rang some bells for some people in that room from from their Old Testament Torah readings the wind the breath that was breathed over Adam that breath that went over the valley of the dry bones and they rattled and came to life and there's a wind again in this room an audible sound of something that you can't see but you can feel and then there's this picture of tongues of fire resting on each of them wow that's that's that's that's got beautiful interweavings with some Old Testament stories and yet never on all of them there was there were sacrifices in the holy of holies once a year and once a year one man could go in there after he'd done enough preparation and and maybe he would live and he would go and bring a sacrifice into the holy of holies into the space where God existed on planet earth just once a year just one man and here we have all these people with the flame like that flame that came down when Elijah was praying over those sacrifices I don't know if you remember that story and a flame comes and and and devours his sacrifice as a means of showing that the the God of of Baal was meaningless and powerless compared to God and now there's a flame on these living sacrifices and not on one but on everyone it says on all of them not just a few holy chosen rollers in the front seats on all of them there's this flame and one commentator said we often get caught up in thinking about the power of the Holy Spirit but it's got a really purifying effect too which which which which harkens back to the Old Testament and this this temple ritual that was actually just a foreshadowing of what was to come these living sacrifices being risen up in power like dry bones being purified and empowered by this holy fire of the Holy Spirit over each of us and all of us ushered into the holy of holies just imagine in that room that was in the outer courts there was the still this restricted holy of holies room and yet God's spirit was palpably over all of them in that room spirit-filled and people-filled it's it's so surprising and and yet it's the church friends and it's what we still get to live in is a church and a body that God is building that is full of his spirit and full of people too he doesn't just come by a spirit without us he uses us one another and might I say under this point spirit led and people led there's gifts of leadership that God gives to the church as well as other gifts and and when we think about all of us you know every one of them in the room you can think oh well then we don't need leaders we can all just be doing our own thing right but God's given gifts of leadership to the church so that we can all be going in the same direction and that we can catch some people at that are new and then we can get everyone on the same mission together but the church was never meant to be a bus where the leaders are the bus drivers and everyone else gets to sit back it's more like a fleet of bicycles where there might be some people that are just taking a bit of the wind at the at the at the at the front and and bringing a bit of streamlining and momentum but every single one of us is meant to do the work and be the church there's a place for leaders but there's a place for every one of us it's a different kind of leadership to any other leadership and power structure that out there it is serve and hearted and it's empowering of everybody else in in in later books of the Bible pool will say that these gifts including leadership were given so that the whole body every other person can be equipped to do their work so the the work of the leaders isn't to do the work and monopoly monopolize the ministry it's to it's to let it go it's to release it so that every single person in this room is released to do the work that God has appointed for you to do in the power of the spirit not on your own but in the power of the spirit and so this first point I just hope you see this unity that God wants to bring between the spirit and his people there isn't meant to be this mediator separation of a priest or a person it's God's people full of God's spirit do you see that it's a spirit-filled people filled church but but there's something else that's happening here and it's that Jesus is building a beautifully diverse church and by this I mean that this church when God's spirit is on us it unites people that in any other place or context you could not possibly imagine together and in X2 you read about all these different kinds of people being brought together from every corner of the world literally and yet they come together in wonderment because they hear their language being spoken and the wonders of Jesus being spoken and and one of the commentators that I read said there was never a more cosmopolitan time in Jerusalem then on the day of Pentecost because that was when all these Jews came from everywhere and it was people who would never normally be together right they didn't even speak the same languages and yet they come together and one commentator says that they said but are not all those who speak Galileans you know you've we've just read that and he said they said this this is quite significant because people from Galilee were known to be uncultured and poor speakers this was all the more reason to be impressed that they could speak so eloquently in other languages Galileans had a difficulty pronouncing guttural sounds and the habit of swallowing syllables when speaking so they were looked down upon by many as being quite provincial and yet here they are speaking the wonders of God in whole bunches of different languages and and and what what is so beautiful is that John Start one of these commentators says that the blessing of Pentecost was a deliberate and dramatic reversal of the curse of Babel and I don't know if you know that story in Genesis 11 where all these people get together and they go let's make a great name for ourselves let's build up our name and ourselves by building this great tower we are unstoppable together we can reach heaven we can basically be Godlike is what they were saying and then God basically sends his spirit and he divides them by giving them multiplicities of languages and they all look at each other and they can't understand and they are divided and they are scattered across the earth so what's so beautiful about this story is in both Babel and in this Pentecost story there's lots of people right lots of people and in both stories this group of people want to reach heaven want to do something that transcends their normal lives and in both instances the first group of people are all speaking one language but here's the difference in the story of Babel it's people directed and people centered it's about man's initiative to reach heaven and greatness to show how great we are it's a top it's a down top initiative right it's totally different in the day of Pentecost with this 122 it's a top down initiative it's heaven coming down to earth it's God initiated secondly in Babel it's similar people they all speaking the same language but when they speak in different languages they are completely scattered and divided what's miraculous about Pentecost is that these are different people drawn in completely different people such a diverse crew and yet there is unprecedented unity amongst them which we with the rest of acts will will lay out the miracle one commentator said is the reversal of the tower of Babel in God alone can the many come together fruitfully as one wow this is what sets us apart friends as the church not not anything else but the fact that only by God's Spirit could such a motley crew come together and genuinely love one another and glorify God in that Jesus says how will they know that that that you have sent them God but by the way that they love one another so what kind of different people is God bringing together every possible kind different races cultures languages political ideologies different genders men and women no longer at war with one another but interdependent and deeply sacrificial and servant-hearted different classes of people different life stages and ages of people young and old married and single Joel's prophecy so beautifully articulates this right God's heart is that he would pour his spirit on all people and together we would be unified and the last thing I want to say under this point is that we live in such a super fragmented world friends that says oh if we just can find your group of people and and and and siphon out all the people that are different to you that that don't serve you that aren't good for you that ultimately you will be happy and how's that working out for us on on social media all these more and more fragmented groups how's that working out for society in general even in when I think about age groups we live in a society in an age that is more siloed than ever before we we might be here in this room but but teenagers hang out with teenagers and and middle-aged people hang out with middle-aged people and and and we do that through every age group and yet that was never God's heart or plan and one of our values as a church is intergenerationalness not just multi-generational oh look we're all here together apart and this goes for all diversity no we're here and we together together knitted together really leaning on one another and and serving one another but also being served by one another the kids that are upstairs right now having church and being the church we need them as much as they need us you know that friends it's not just that we fulfilling a service so that the parents can be down here listening they are the church they are being church not of tomorrow today and similarly older people here you're not the church of yesterday you're the church of today and tomorrow that that that scripture in Joel it says old men will dream dreams and dreams are about the future right and isn't that beautiful that that that the older generation don't just get to dream dreams for themselves and for the next three dreams there's a there's a sense of a legacy right of actually building something that you might actually not live to see the fruitfulness of the fruition of old men may I just give you and women older people permission to dream you have permission to dream big dreams your time is not up yet older people dream dreams and not just for yourself but for younger generations lay down your life and see how it will be resurrected up and younger people there's not a lot of you guys in the room I mean I'm talking about young kids they're up there but teenagers and 20-some things also see visions and prophesy not just over your own kind of age group but over the church and over people of every kind of type and age group we need you we desperately need each other this is what God intended with this motley crew this bride that he's bringing together that we would be spirit filled that we'd be people filled and that we would serve one another and be interconnected and deeply unified no matter how different we are friends we called to this kind of church a church that is diverse and yet unified that is spirit filled and empowered and led and also people led and filled this is the church that Jesus is building and I just felt during the worship like we we before I get there let me just put up one last slide practically you know we can think about this in terms of oh that's great yeah I'll think about that practically this is a way we can be intergenerational and serve one another our kids ministry is exploding can we just actually give God a hand for that this is amazing we've got over a hundred signal members that are under 18 you wouldn't think that right looking around there are over a hundred signal members under the age of 18 we average 60 of them every Sunday they're 27 adults currently volunteering on our kids church roster and to run our ministry in a way that's sustainable and life-giving we need 24 more volunteers to join a kids team and 16 people to join a stack down and pack up and pack pack around team now these teams we help out like once every four to six weeks and I'm on this team and I can tell you it's a joy it's wonderful to see what God is doing in different age groups it's not so much serving as as being more interconnected and there's so much life in it so if that has kind of sparked anything in you and you just want to see what are the kind of different roles and how often could I could I volunteer there are QR codes on the back of that wall there for each one of the different groups and ministries involved and kids ministry and if you just scan that with your phone it'll take you to the actual rosters and you can see the gaps and and fill in your details and get involved we would love our church to be more interconnected in that way is that all right great and and it doesn't have to be that often friends but together we are the church that Jesus is building and finally I just wanted to bring this together by reading something that Taren actually showed me earlier this week written by a 23-year-old person that isn't a Christian but is reflecting on who generation I think sorry let me just go to the beginning of it I think this point can be a bit labored sometimes but religious faith has collapsed and many trends and movements have moved in to fill the void and then she talks about what those are and she says but I really don't think it's an exaggeration to say that a significant majority of young people now interpret their lives and emotions and relationships through a therapeutic lens this is how many of us make sense of loss of love of hurt now we refract our relationships through therapy speak we define ourselves by our diagnoses I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this but my worry with this new faith is that it wrenches aspects of religion from the inconvenient parts the parts we need most because where is God in all of this who is God well we are the divine we are the deity so obviously she's talking about in this kind of a new religion of self we have the omniscient power it's hard to put this into words but I think in some ways what we actually want is to be humbled people say Gen Z follow these new faiths because we crave belonging and connection but what if we really crave guidance I think we underestimate how hard it is for young people today to feel their way through life without moral guardrails and guidance to follow the whims and wishes of our ego because look our mental health is collapsing we feel lonelier than ever we feel hopeless about the future despite the wellness industry with with trillions now despite the constant mental health campaigns none of it makes a dent if anything we feel worse and what's telling is that the decline in mental health is worse for the least religious which now happened to be girls and young women plenty of research shows that religious people are happier more connected and better protected from the pressures of modern life so maybe we can replace some aspects of religion we can find community with our church we can be absolved from guilt and shame and therapy we can find peace and calm by putting our faith in the universe but what seems very difficult to replicate are the demands on the self and not your needs and feelings but all the ways you fall short and fail to put others first it's a life devoted not to feeling better but being better not to better thoughts but better actions instead we fear nobody now we need last no forgiveness but what if that's what we need most what's also missing from this new religion I think is a sense of stability of being part of something bigger something more enduring I think young people today are desperate for deeper connection I sense it everywhere everything is so empty and effervescent a feeling that we're all clowing for something anything that's permanent something that lasts our entire lives are just a collection of things sorry I'm just lost my place our entire lives are just a collection of things that can crumble at any moment we keep our options open we play it cool we try out different places and try on different identities and if we take the message of therapeutic culture seriously enough we are in danger of ending up a well-adjusted person not dependent on anyone nobody reliant on us with nothing to lose we are looking though for something we can place our feet on that won't fall away wow that's a go called India fray and I think she just so beautifully articulates and what the church has to offer right even though she hasn't found it there's a place for the church that no other therapy group movements can take and it's got space for everyone and every generation and every kind of person friends and it starts with us a motley crew kind of surprisingly finding ourselves in the holy of holies you know there's 120 people they didn't expect what was going to happen to them the wind and the fire and the baptism of fire and yet after that they were unified and then scattered across the world and it's the same with us 2,000 years later so can I ask the band to come up and I just feel like we were halfway through our time of being rebaptized by this fire in the holy of holies not for power's sake for purifying reasons and for empowering us not just the leaders in the front for every single one of us to be unified together to feel like we are one and to be sent out on a mission each one of us into our schools into our work passes into our homes and into our lives with this glorious glorious news that anyone who calls in the name of Jesus can be saved and join this amazing most beautiful most enduring community that is happening on planet earth