Jesus told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received power from on high to become his witnesses. That kind of power is exactly what is needed in the church today. Welcome to Part 1 of a short series called “Tongues of Fire: The Early Church.”
Pure Life Ministries Podcast
Tongues of Fire: The Early Church Part 1
Hey, this is Patrick with Pure Life Ministries. When our hearts are truly transformed by God, significant changes should be occurring in our lifestyle. But this goes far beyond just stopping porn use or avoiding illicit scenes in movies. How we spend our time, where we go, what we pursue in life, everything, should be radically altered as we begin to walk on the narrow way. And many Christians just don't think deeply enough about the way they live, and it's not uncommon for those in the church to base their daily decisions off the media and the culture rather than on the moral principles of Scripture. We want to see that change. Please join us on Saturday, October 12th at 10am Eastern on our YouTube channel for another episode of Pure Life Live. I'll be sitting down with Pure Life's President and Founder, Steve Gallagher, and our Executive Director of Counseling Programs, Jordan Yoshimine, to discuss the influence of the media we ingest, the limits we should put on our devices, the impact of spiritual atmospheres in and out of the home, and much more. Our hope is that this will help you learn to lead a lifestyle that honors God and helps you get free or stay free from sexual sin. We'd also love to respond to your questions about this topic, so send those to live@purelifeministries.org. Jesus told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received power from on high to become his witnesses. That kind of power is exactly what's needed in the church today. Welcome to part one of a short series called Tongues of Fire, the Early Church. Here we go. Steve Gallagher has joined me in the studio, Steve is the founder of Pure Life Ministries. Steve, good to see you again. Glad to be here, Mike. Steve, we want to talk about an eight-week series that you did on the Early Church. Steve, you started your first talk in this series, The Commission of the Church, by looking at the books of Luke and Acts. Tell us a little bit about the relationship between these two books. Well, obviously, they were both written by Luke, the physician. And unlike the other gospel writers, Luke wasn't an eyewitness to the events of the life of Jesus. He wasn't there then. He was a Greek living probably in Philippi. And he also wasn't around during the early years of the church. So he acted primarily as a historian, which meant that he had to go and get accounts from other people. When he wrote these two books, he did it as a two-part history of the church. That's basically what he was doing. So part one was the story of Christ, which is the book of Luke. And then part two was how the story continued forth after Jesus died. That's how it was first passed around as a two-part book. Well, you mentioned in your talk that there were three purposes Luke had for writing the book of Acts. Talk about those. Well, the first thing is he says it right in his opening remarks in the book of Luke. He said so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. He was referring to this man Theophilus, who apparently was some kind of Roman official or whatever. The way he was giving him the story, that was number one, his second purpose, which was kind of the same thing, was he was providing a historical accounting of what happened, how Christianity began and how it grew from there. But also the third thing was he was really attempting to justify Christianity to the Roman world because that was the world he lived in in that day. And he was trying to present a credible, believable accounting of what this Christianity is and why you don't need to fear it. Well, we love stories and we love the development of characters in the story. I love the way that you brought out the leading character in the story of Acts. Talk about that. Yeah, the book of Acts is almost like a play, if you can imagine it that way. And you've got these two leading characters. First you have Peter, who dominates the scene in the early part of the book and dominates the scene in this series on the early church. He is the main person, but of course the book of Acts continues on from there. So the second leading character becomes the apostle Paul and the focus shifts from Peter to Paul, but really the leading character in the story in Acts is the Holy Spirit because it is the Holy Spirit who inspires. It's the Holy Spirit who leads. It's the Holy Spirit who is presenting Jesus Christ. He's operating through these men and he's operating in circumstances. The Holy Spirit is the leading actor in the book of Acts. And chapter 1, Jesus is giving his final instructions to the disciples right before his ascension. Scripture tells us that there was 40 days of him appearing to his people. So we know that during that 50 days between Passover when he was crucified and Pentecost, when that great outpouring happened, the first 40 days Jesus is presenting himself to his people. So we know that this ascension happened 10 days before Pentecost and that's just very interesting that that's when Jesus gave his instructions to the disciples and then they continue waiting on him for the next 10 days. And not only his instructions, but he also made a promise to them. Yes, he promised them that if they would wait on the Lord, if they would seek his face, that the Holy Spirit would come upon them, would empower them and make them witnesses throughout the world. That is the great commission to go into all the world and make disciples. And this part of Christianity, which I'm afraid is often lost in the church as weak as it is, but this is a major role of Christianity is to go forth as a representative of Jesus Christ. In other words, the way that you live your life should make a loud statement to people that I fully believe in Jesus Christ, I obey him, I live my life in such a way to reflect his character and his nature, that my life makes that statement everywhere I go. And that is part of the great commission. Then, as I live my life that way, I pour myself into other people, people who are just coming into the faith and I disciple them. I help them to mature in the faith. Yeah. And that certainly is what we see being lived out in the early church and how we long to see more of that today. Yes, we do, absolutely. I want to ask you, did the disciples play a part in bringing this about, or was this a sovereign act of God? This is always one of the big questions regarding revival, because this was the mightiest revival earth has ever seen as far as I'm concerned. Is it the Lord just sovereignly acting, or is it that people pray and do the right thing to bringing it about? And if you listen to Charles Finney, that's what he would say is that it's just a simple formula. It's no different than a farmer going out and throwing seed in the ground and watering it. If you do that, you're going to have results. That's what he basically used to say, I'm not so sure about that. I understand what he's saying, and there is truth to that, but to battle through on your knees to bring about something like a mighty revival requires a real touch from God. And in this particular case, Jesus told them what was going to happen. So there was an expectancy building up. They knew what to do, that they were going to go wait on the Lord, which is what they did for 10 days. And at the end of that 10 days just happened to be on the day of Pentecost, the Lord came forth. Was it because of the disciples' prayers and waiting on the Lord? Yes. Was it a sovereign act of God? Yes. It was both. Yeah. You know, in our current culture, we find it so hard to wait on the Lord for anything. But again, we're in a time where we really desperately need an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Well, what does God want us to do? Well, he wants us to pray, he wants us to be doing the things that we're so supposed to be doing, but it's going to be an act of God, a sovereign act of God, that he's going to pour out his spirit in these last days. So tell us exactly what did happen on that day. Well, as I said, these 120 people have been waiting on the Lord for 10 days, praying, casting, probably spending time in the Word, probably spending time in silence, reading Scripture, you know, doing spiritual things for the most part. And on the day of Pentecost, as they're gathered about, you know, maybe there was a little bit of anticipation because it was such a special feast day, but there was no guarantees that anything was going to happen that day. But the Lord knows how far he can stretch us. And if he would have gone past 10 days, I have a feeling people's hopes would have started diminishing and fading and maybe they would have started losing that sense of anticipation. But anyway, yeah, on the day of Pentecost, all of a sudden there's this rumbling, maybe they heard it from a distance and it got louder and louder. But all of a sudden, the whole place is filled with the presence of God. And just like a fire gets so hot that flames dance around outside of the wood, you know, that's the way it seemed in the spiritual that there were these flames of fire dancing around these people and the Lord pouring himself out on them, in them and through them. Whatever was going on, it just gripped the people of the city. And before you know it, thousands of people are gathered, like just imagine Tiananmen Square in Beijing, you know, where all these thousands of people started pouring out, you know, and they had those demonstrations and so many years ago. But I think it was kind of like that where something so exciting was happening. Thousands of people start coming out and Peter gets up and boldly begins to preach. I want to hear that sermon. Well, I mean, we have, if we have it written down, but I want this, I really do want to see the instant replay of that one. Well, just looking at the highlights that Luke gives us, it's pretty impressive for the guy's first sermon, you know, because your first sermon, usually your, your awkward, you're not sure what to say, you know, you're kind of stumbling through it, but he got up in the power of God and gave a powerful message. But more than it being a like an inspired message, saying the right things much more importantly was that the presence of God had so filled the atmosphere. His words were so convicting. They went into people's hearts because of the presence of God being so strong that 3000 people got saved that day. Mm. You know, we hear revivals. We hear of moves of God and sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't, you know, in our current day, but we can know, I think more clearly, by the fruit later on of what happens, what happened following this revival. That really is a good point, Mike, because, you know, when people come to the Lord through a powerful conversion, I'll take my wife as an example. She got saved at the tail end of the Jesus movement days in the late 70s. And I don't know how to explain it, but I don't see those kind of conversions anymore. I mean, you just don't hear about people being powerfully converted and just being on fire for the Lord right from the beginning. There is something when a revival is taking place that people get so dramatically affected. And then it comes out in the way that they live their lives. And as you read through the rest of Acts two, you see that the people were meeting together regularly. They were sharing their possessions with each other. You know, some miracles happen. Yeah, for sure. Get people to do that. You know, they were spending a lot of time in prayer and in Bible study, just all the markings of people who are on fire for the Lord. It wasn't just that they got saved and went back to basically the same old lifestyle with a few alterations. No, they got powerfully saved and went out and changed the world. Man, oh, that the power of God would come down like that today that we would see that kind of dramatic conversion of souls. It's going to happen, Mike. I don't know when exactly, but it is coming. All right, that's it for part one of Tongues of Fire, the early church. God bless. We'll see you next time. 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