I'm still thankful to Cornerstone Church, especially the men who operate the PA who keep us functioning. Would you please turn your Bibles to the book of Acts, chapter 1? We'll read the first 14 verses. While you're turning, let me tell you a couple of stories. When Jesse Mercer Southern Baptist, Calvinistic Baptist, patriarch, was editor of the Christian Index. In 1839, he had his associate editor write an editorial regarding why they were going to serialize the 1689 Second London Confession in the Christian Index, which is the oldest Baptist newspaper and Christian newspaper. in the United States, still being published today. And in that introduction to serializing the 1689 Confession, the associate editor said, all regular Baptists in Georgia, and indeed the South, hold to the 1689 Confession or their own local paraphrase or rewrite of it. And he said, so that Baptists would have the confession of faith in an inexpensive format to give to others as well as to educate themselves, they were going to serialize the 1689 Confession on a monthly basis in the Christian Index. That was in 1839. 16 years later, in the Flint River Baptist Association, which is one in our near geographical area, the question was brought up among Baptist ministers, can a man be considered an Orthodox pastor, an Orthodox Christian, if he claims to hold to the five points of Calvinism, but does not preach them. In other words, he professes to hold to the five points, he just never gets around to preaching them. It was the unanimous consent of that local association that no, a man could not be considered orthodox who only claimed to believe them, but who did not preach them. If you go into a nearby city of Noonan, Georgia, a city of perhaps 40,000, at First Baptist Church's original building, which is still standing next to the gleaming new superstructure. They tore out pages of the original covenant book, these giant log books that might be a couple of feet high and a couple of feet wide, and they put them under plexiglass for all to see. And what nobody apparently in the current church has noticed was that the original covenant of the church is they hand wrote the doctrines of grace into this log book as the confession of the church. And that all those who signed it, there was 11 signees, signatories. There was seven white people and four people of color who made their mark, and who then had someone write their name behind it. It was a Calvinistic Baptist church. It was an integrated Calvinistic Baptist church. The year was 1829. There were hundreds and hundreds of churches throughout the South, and indeed the United States, that were Orthodox and Calvinist. That is no longer the case today. It would be safe to say that we do not live in a culture that hears the gospel. I know that your people experience it too. They go on vacation. They have some reason to be out of town. They go visit another church. They come back and say, Pastor, you don't know how bad it is out there. And it sometimes can be very bad. We took a poll in our county of the 110 churches in our bedroom community of Atlanta of 110,000 people. So there's roughly a church for every 1,000 people. Of the 110 churches in our county, we could only count five, being generous, that you might hear justification. Now, of these 110 churches, at least 25 or 30 claim to be evangelical, or would use that term, regardless of their denominational affiliation. But we can only guesstimate that we could maybe find five that would teach both halves of justification. They don't have to use the word justification. They just have to teach both halves. Maybe five. Now, in God's providence, Reformed Baptist churches as well as other denominations have been raising up churches in the last decades. When we began our church in 1989, we were the only church in the state that we knew of that held to the 1689 Baptist Confession. Now the Lord has raised up churches in Macon, in Jackson, in Jessup, in Rincon, in Commerce, and our little church in Fadville. in Chattanooga, which lies on the border of Tennessee and Georgia. And so if good things happen, I claim Chattanooga for us. If bad things happen, that's the Tennessee part of Chattanooga. There's a black church, the Resurrected Baptist Church, in downtown Chattanooga, which is a black inner city confessional church. Pastor Chris Trafenstadt from Myrtle Beach is here, and he was a friend and advisor to the pastor Eddie Jacks, to the church in Chattanooga. As to how it got the name the Resurrected Baptist Church, Pastor Jacks simply says, well, this sucker was dead, and the Lord resurrected it. which seems a very good reason to name it that. But Georgia is now a state of thousands of churches, Jewish synagogues, Muslim worship centers, Hindu temples complete with gargoyles, and various and sundry cults. In Fayetteville, Georgia, at the corner of Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, there's a Muslim worship center. which must be some form of desecration. I'm not sure what. But we have a man who's seeking to plant a church on the east side of Atlanta, which if his church is constituted in the next few months, which we hope, that would give us another church. Read with me when the book of Acts, I'll be reading from the English Standard Version. Let us see what the risen and ascended Christ did in 14 verses of Luke's account here in Acts chapter 1. I'll be reading out of the English Standard Version. In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem. but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, You have heard from Me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." So when they had come together, they asked Him, Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.' And when he had said these things as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.' Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying. Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers." I was asked last fall to speak on church planning. I'll give you a call to church planning. I hope to make two major points. First of all, what is church planning? Briefly. And then number two, how do we go about accomplishing church planning? It might presuppose in your mind that I know what I'm talking about. I don't. I'm a fellow learner with you. I am in the process of learning. In fact, I think as you'll see, I don't know how to do church planning. What is church planning? Let me give you a definition. Church planning is preaching the gospel and teaching the whole counsel of God in the power of the Holy Spirit such that people are converted and Christians are gathered into a new local assembly. Let me repeat that. Church planning is preaching the gospel and teaching the whole counsel of God in the power of the Holy Spirit such that people are converted and Christians are gathered into a new local assembly. And the question is, where can we go and find a model or a template for church planning? Is there a blueprint that I can refer you to? Is there one text? Is there a bevy of text? And so this says, this is how you do it. Well, contrary to so many books on the market today, contrary to sociologists of religion, contrary to denominational and independent agencies which tell you if you make 20,000 phone calls and do X, Y, and Z, we can guarantee you you'll have 200 people at your first meeting. I don't think that fulfills the definition of a church, and I don't think that that is how the New Testament would have us to go about it. How is church planning to be accomplished if I am to call you to plant other churches? Well, first of all, I want to look at what God the Holy Spirit does in planting a church. That will be the first half of this part. This first how-to, then, is on how God the Holy Spirit empowers church planting. Notice what we read from Acts chapter 1, verse 8. The disciples had asked a question which proved to be, or could have been, a red herring. A red herring is an idiom from, I believe, fox hunting in Great Britain, where if you wanted to lead the dogs off the trail, you dragged a dead fish across the trail from where they would be hunting and they would stop following their prey and they would go off following the red herring, the dead herring. Well, the apostles ask the question, is it at this time that you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Is it at this time that you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? And implicit in that are some red herrings. Number one, by using the word restore, He's looking back to a glory time in Israel. He's looking back to perhaps the Davidic kingdom under David and Solomon before it split apart. Is it at this time that we get to see Israel be preeminent? We do not have to have Romans boot on our neck any longer, that Israel gets first place in the economy of God. And then I think also implicit with that, besides that, Would you say ethnic or racial red herring? There's also a geographic red herring, because where was the Davidic kingdom headquartered? In Jerusalem. And I think the apostles would have said if you'd asked them, well, what about the Romans all around us and about the Greeks and the Greek-speaking world that the Romans conquered? Well, if they want to come to Jerusalem, that's fine. If they want to be a part of our kingdom, that's fine. But we want to see Israel, we want to see the Jews back in the place of being number one. And our Lord did not specifically rebuke their comment. He did say that it was not time for a prophecy conference, but it was time to realize that God had bigger issues, and that he was not going to restore Israel at that time, but he was going to empower these men with an endowment from on high. And he said, you will be my witnesses. You will testify to me, as Dr. Renahan said in his message, an excellent, much-needed message, by the way. Amen. Did you know that over one-fifth of the references to God the Holy Spirit in the whole Bible are in the book of Acts? Does that not seem amazing? 20 years ago I did a study on the Holy Spirit and looked up all the verses on the Holy Spirit in the whole Bible and noticed that Acts had a huge preponderance of these verses speaking about the Holy Spirit. Well, in one way it's not surprising because the promise had been given in the old covenant that God was going to do a new work. And when Jesus admonishes Nicodemus, you are the teacher of Israel and you don't get this idea of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a new birth. Have you not read Ezekiel 11? Have you not read Ezekiel 36? God's going to do this great thing. So it's not surprising that as Christ had finished his work and was about to send the Holy Spirit from on high, that the book of Acts in this great outpouring would have verse after verse after verse talking about the new covenant ministry of the Holy Spirit. How it was so much more extravagant and fulsome than the old covenant ministry of the Holy Spirit. And while there are many similarities of the work of the Spirit in both Testaments, there's certainly a greater outpouring, a greater effusion of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. One out of five references in the whole Bible, 66 books are found in this one book. In fact, as you read the book of Acts, you realize there is no accounting from how we go from the four Gospels and the life and and highly nuanced biography of our Lord Jesus Christ, to this guy named Paul, who doesn't appear anywhere in the four Gospels, and all these other people, and how do we go from Jesus being crucified and then raised again from the dead in Israel, and suddenly we have churches all over the Roman Empire. We have tens of thousands of Christians all over the Roman Empire. Indeed, Acts is the record of Christ's agent, God the Holy Spirit, exercising invincible, inexorable authority to build Christ's kingdom in the first century. This is a partial listing of some of the things the Holy Spirit propels and compels to happen. The disciples are waiting in the upper room along with the women. The Holy Spirit is given in Acts chapter 2. He comes down. Christ said, I'm commanding you, I'm ordering you, don't leave to go on your mission until you are empowered by the Holy Spirit. I promise this to you. John the Holy Spirit baptized with water. You will receive an empowerment by the Holy Spirit. We see him bringing conviction, illumination, regeneration to some 3,000 people at the first preaching of Peter, the former coward and Christ denier. We see cowardly men made brave and strong, men who, as I think John MacArthur once said, that Peter was the man with the foot-shaped mouth. And I don't know if that was original with him, but it works for me. How could these believers, these new converts, be united together in such a way that they would devote themselves to the means of grace as in Acts 2.42. They would devote themselves to sacrificially helping others. Imagine if, while we're here at this conference, Imagine if there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and there was a convention in Phoenix. Phoenix, I know, is a destination for conventions like Atlanta. And there's a big, who knows what, international sand grabbers of the world are here looking for spotting places to pull sand out of the desert. And there's an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I don't know what you come to Phoenix for, but I'm sure, International Association of Cactus Examiners. a beautiful place that people have come to have a conference at. And suddenly, because of the Spirit of God coming upon us here, and us preaching downtown at the convention center, several thousand of them are converted. They go, we want to go to Cornerstone Church. We don't have enough seats for you. Well, that's OK. We'll stand outside the parking lot. We'll stay in the orange groves. Right, and how long do you, we'd like to stay here, this is where we heard the word of truth that saved our souls. Can we stay here for several weeks? Right. Where can they stay? They're going to run out of money. Well, the saints of this church, the saints of Cornerstone, sacrificially give of themselves. Some of the wealthier saints like Barnabas give of their money, sell property, anything in order to keep ministering in the spirit of unity and of lavish love for Christ and our fellow man. We see holy boldness granted in the face of persecution and threats. It becomes inconvenient. People are upset at what's happening here and so there are threats made and Jim Adams and the elders are dragged out and they're threatened and they're beaten and told not to preach anymore. And they come back and they report to us and we pray for greater boldness for these men to preach the gospel. Great discernment is given to the apostles. They are able to see hypocrisy when it boldly moves among the new saints, and God the Holy Spirit exercises judgment in taking hypocrites out of the church. A racial problem comes up. well you know when you're distributing food you're not really taking good care of our people and your people getting the first and best stuff and our people particularly our old people aren't getting the good stuff and so a very human very real kind of problem comes up and they're given discernment and sanctified common sense to say We take you at your word. We will appoint men from your group here who are attending. And you will be the ones who will distribute the food so that you can make sure that your people are not treated in an unfair fashion. The first proto-deacon, Stephen, is given great utterance to preach when he's arrested at a meeting. And he preaches to his persecutors in a never-to-be-forgotten message covering the whole Old Testament. A great persecution comes upon the believers, and God the Holy Spirit gives grace to these people who are scattered throughout Palestine. God the Holy Spirit saves Samaritans, the hated half-breeds, using Philip. And then Philip is providentially led to the middle of a road out in the middle of nowhere on the way to Gaza, where the Ethiopian eunuch just happens to be going by, just happening to be reading from Isaiah 53. And then, to the shock of everyone, Luke recounts for us how public enemy number one, Saul Bin Laden, is converted on his way to crash his chariots into the Christians' homes in Damascus and have them killed. We have here in Acts chapter 1, the promise of Luke looks back to, my first treatment, Theophilus, was all that Jesus began to do and teach. Now let me show you what he continues to do and teach through God the Holy Spirit, his personal agent, and stand in. Brothers, if you ponder and pray over the book of Acts, I'm not suggesting that I'm a primitivist or a restorationist that we should expect the book of Acts to be replicated today. I am suggesting, though, that reading the rest of the New Testament, that our first priority must be that we must not be men who take lightly grieving or quenching the Holy Spirit. I realize that Paul writes almost exclusively with, I think, an exception of 1 Corinthians 2, 1 through 5 and 4, 19 and 20. But almost all the time when Paul writes about this Holy Spirit, he writes about the Holy Spirit for holiness and sanctification. If you read Luke's Gospel and the Gospel of Luke, Luke's emphasizing predominantly the power of the Holy Spirit for ministry, the power of the Holy Spirit to be effective witnesses and ministers for Christ. But I suggest that the two, as many other things in the Bible, are not contradictory. They're friends. And when we're encouraged, do not grieve the Holy Spirit, I was convicted in preparing this message. I would not treat you like I treat the Holy Spirit. I would not treat my wife like I treat the Holy Spirit. Is there anybody who is more humble and long-suffering with us than Christ's personal agent, his stand-in, who indwells each of us here who are believers? And the myriad upon myriads of times that we grieve him. And if I slap my wife in the face a few times every day and then wondered why our relationship was a bit cool, You could take me aside and say, well, you knucklehead, and for those of you who don't know me, that's a technical term I use. A knucklehead is a person who is not enlightened. Look, you knucklehead, you cannot insult your wife. You cannot slap her in the face and expect her to have the same normal, cordial, fulsome relationship that you would enjoy at other times. But the insensitivity to which which we are prone to treating the Holy Spirit, even in the sense, you know, it's so easy to treat the Holy Spirit as a thing. Even though we could teach the doctrine of the Trinity, we could teach the Holy Spirit as a person. But we run roughshod over Him, and we are insensitive to Him, we ignore Him. we treat him like an it or a thing. In 1 Thessalonians 5.19, Paul says, do not quench the Spirit. In Ephesians 4.30, when he says not to grieve the Spirit, it's in the context of disobeying what you know to be right. And in 1 Thessalonians 5.19, it's attached in some versions by a semicolon to admonition not to despise prophetic utterances, which was the means until the canonization of Scripture by which God was explaining His ways to His people. I suppose you'd say quenching the Holy Spirit today would be reading your Bible and seeing something in there that strikes you that you should do or not do. and you ignore it and just push ahead and do it anyway or don't do it anyway. But I suggest that my first encouragement to you is that we need to be men who are filled with the Holy Spirit and sensitive to the Holy Spirit. And at the end of the day, our naysayers would say, well, you know, we never liked their doctrine and we always thought they were kind of wacko as individuals. but we have to admit they seem to be men who have an endowment of the Holy Spirit, that their ministry is not merely explainable by where they went to school and how many books they had in their library and how smart they were, that not simply they were a well-read group, but that God's hand was upon them. God seemed to be pleased to use them. Another aspect of God the Holy Spirit resting upon our ministries and bringing about church planning is that in this passage we read, we see him divinely guiding how church planning was to happen. If you read the myriads of commentaries on the book of Acts and look at how they handle Acts 1-8, most of them admit, well, there seems to be some kind of order here for how the gospel is going to be sent out in the first century. And I think, actually, even today, if you look at how, once your church is established, how the gospel goes out from your church, your church becomes Jerusalem. And then you reach your Judea and Samaria, and we'll come back to that in a minute, what those stand for. But as missiologists would tell us, if you're writing to Jews who've just been filled with the Spirit, What is Jerusalem to you? Well, that's our capital. That's the place we know well. Most of the disciples were from Galilee in the north, but nevertheless, they all knew Jerusalem. They had made pilgrimages to Jerusalem as pious Jews. They had made pilgrimages to Jerusalem with their Lord. The ministry was headquartered in Jerusalem. It's a place culturally familiar and immediately close. That's where we are. But then he goes on to Judea. Now, Judea is a place which is geographically still close, and it's a place that's still culturally close. We're still dealing with Jews, and we're still dealing with people whose culture is not unfamiliar to us. It's just geographically a little bit farther. When Philip went to the road to Gaza, he was out in Judea. He wasn't in Jerusalem. And he just happens to have a providential appointment with its Ethiopian eunuch. So we have the concentric circles. First of all, Jerusalem, geographically the place where we are, and culturally a place that we're very familiar with. Judea, a little bit farther out geographically, but culturally we're still very familiar with it. And then he mentions Samaria. And you know your Bibles. If you go from the south to the north, if you travel the straight line, you should go through Samaria. But because of racial and ethnic and religious tensions, most pious Jews would either cross the Jordan and go up in that region of the Decapolis or they'd make a wide road around the Samaritans. But they're just not our kind of people. We don't like to drive through that part of town. If we drive through that part of town, we lock our doors. It's the way we treat people today. So you will go to a people next who are geographically farther away and culturally they're beginning to be farther. The Samaritans had a history of the Jews. The Samaritans were people who were left over when the Babylonians depopulated Israel. We will take everybody who's worth anything, every artisan, every creative person, every person who has some kind of ability that we'd like in our empire, and we'll leave the flotsam and jetsam, we'll leave the street people, so to speak, of Israel in place, just so the area won't be totally depopulated, but we've taken everybody of any worth and taken them back to Babylon. So these people who are left intermarry with pagans and over a period of time come up with their alternative worship and religion up in Samaria. Mount Gerizim, we know the discussion Jesus has in John 4 with the woman at the well. I'm going to ask you to go to people who are geographically a bit farther away. Not that far, but they're culturally going to have some differences from you. And racially and religiously, there's going to be some differences and you're going to go to them next. And then finally, and I'll leave that for Earl in his message of Call to World Missions, he says, you are to go to the ends of the earth. I'm sending you to places that are geographically distant and culturally distant. They're not going to talk like you. They're not going to have the same values as you in all kinds of things. They're going to be geographically distant and culturally distant, and you're going to have to adapt if you're going to reach them. The beginning of that adaptation, I think, is seen here in even going to the Samaritans, but certainly when you go to the ends of the earth, but I'll leave that for Earl. We see God the Holy Spirit by Luke's writing, giving direction, and this is how the empowerment of the Holy Spirit is going to propel you to minister. And then as we see this fulfilled in the book of Acts, if you get out the book of Acts and just start going to work through it, where are we now? Well, we're in Jerusalem. Well, now we're in Judea. Now we're in Samaria. Now we're back in Jerusalem briefly. We're in Judea briefly. Now we're versus where we're starting to go to the ends of the earth. You can see it played out in the book of Acts. But let me give you a couple of concrete illustrations about how God the Holy Spirit might guide you. In Acts chapter 8, Philip is having a successful ministry among the Samaritans. It was a huge thing, culturally, for these Jews to see God the Holy Spirit come upon the Samaritans. And Philip was having this effective ministry. And the way I think, and probably the way many of you think, is we're onto something here, let's just mine it until it's all gone. Until this vein is gone. But God, the Holy Spirit, and it isn't explained how, but Philip is taken away from that ministry, and he's taken away out in the middle of the desert in Judea. He's no longer with the Samaritans. He's left the revival in Samaria, so to speak, and now he's down in this road. And there's just one man with his entourage in a chariot going by. God wanted to reach the Ethiopians through this pious convert. And so we have God taking a man away from what ostensibly is a thriving, nearly a revival ministry, to going out to reach one person for Christ that he's providentially led to. In Acts chapter 13, we have the young dynamic church in Antioch, and they're worshiping the Lord. It lists the gifted teachers who are there in verses 1 through 3. And we have After a period of worship, God the Holy Spirit sets aside Barnabas and the younger man Saul for the work of the ministry. And it was just a time of whether the elders of the church were praying and worshiping together, whether it was a worship time in the whole gathered church is not clear. But in some way, God made it known to them that He wanted these two men, two of their best men, to be set aside to leave the church to do what came to be uh... church planting way beyond the borders of israel to the outermost parts of the earth and then that's chapter sixteen verse eight a passage that over the years becomes more and more dear to me on his missionary journey he's getting ready to go from one province to another is forbidden by god the holy spirit in some sense to go into bithynia backs up, reconnoitres. You know, Paul was not an existentialist or a charismatic. He wasn't just flitting about the Roman Empire looking for the next thing that popped into his head. He worked his plan, a plan I'm sure he'd prayed over and sought God's will on. And now the Lord doesn't want me to do this. So what should I do? So after probably a period of reflection and prayer, okay, we should go here. God won't let them do that either. What does he want us to do? I'm not sure they were totally clear, but they decided that, you know, let's go down to Troas. It's a port city. You can go anywhere in the world from a port city. So they go to Troas. And we're sitting here this morning because of what happens next. He has the Macedonian vision. He's only ministered to Asians so far. He has a vision of a man wearing European clothes, a Macedonian who says, come over to Europe, cross the Dardanelles, cross the Bosporus. We need you. We're as lost. We need you. And so he comes to the determination, God wants us to take the gospel to the gulp Europeans. My relatives in Germany, the only reason they weren't naked savages is because it's too cold in Germany in the winter to run around naked, so you have to wear. But they were the same kind of people that we talk about inhabiting the South Pacific or other parts of the world. And the hordes that had come over from Asia, which were populating Europe. But Paul is led to open the ministry to Europe because he's sensitive and obedient to what God the Holy Spirit brings upon him. What is our human responsibility? What is our human responsibility in this task? Well, I think there's several aspects of our human responsibility, and I'll try to wrap these up briefly. In response to both the Holy Spirit's empowering us and guiding us, I think that we must be men and women of prayer. A tenth of all the references to prayer in the Bible are in the book of Acts. A fifth of all the references to the Holy Spirit in the Bible are in the book of Acts. A tenth of all the references to prayer in the Bible are in the book of Acts. In fact, prayer is seen throughout Acts as the primary way that the disciples are moved. Again, the Holy Spirit's the hero of the book of Acts as Christ's agent, but he's moving these people to pray, and then he's answering their prayers. That's the number one way in the book of Acts we see people responding to problems and difficulties. They pray. Persecution, they pray. Church discipline problem, they pray. It's been very convicting working through this material about my need to be instant in season and out of season in prayer. Praying, praying, praying. In Acts 6, it's convicted to be reminded, as we all are convicted when we read this, the Apostle said, you know, it's not good for us to set aside our call to the ministry of the Word and prayer in order to be involved in the food distribution. As noble a task as that is and necessary, that's not our primary calling. It's a secondary calling. But how easy it is for us to get caught up in secondary things and to spend a lot of time and energy and neglect the primary things, our call to be men of prayer and of the Word. Years ago, as a young Christian, I was convicted in a message by a man who said, if you're not praying, then you know who you're trusting. Well, I'm trusting myself. I mean, don't you know how many years I've been a pastor? Now you say, well, you're pretty crass. Yeah, and you are too. How many years have you been a pastor? Remember the first time you ever taught a Bible study? God, if you get me through this, I'll become a missionary. OK, something like that, some really desperate prayer. The hundredth time that you preached or gave a Bible study, were you as earnest in prayer? Was I as earnest in prayer? Probably not. Do you know how many books I have in my library? People ask me, how many books do you have? I go, why would that be important? I've already got more books than Jonathan Edwards, and I'm not one-tenth of Jonathan Edwards, so I'm just multiplying my sense of conviction. But to what degree does the number of books you have have anything to do with your usefulness to God? But we are among a group of people who value studying the scriptures. And we read books about the scriptures, admittedly. But it's an easy thing to trust your books. My books have nothing to do with my suitability before God. Well, do I trust my preparation? I've labored over this message for x amount of time. But God's not going to share his glory, not even with smarty-pants evangelicals. What about our gifts? I knew a man one time, he said, this thing that scares me about myself is I am such a gifted speaker. He was a public speaking major in college and an athlete. And he was invited all over to speak. And he said, a lot of times, I just didn't have to prepare. I just showed up and spoke. I don't have that problem. But he did. But he said, it's scary to realize I can just fall back on my gift and stand in the pulpit and blow smoke. We must be men of prayer. Well, what should we pray? Well, Jesus told his learning, being humble disciples when they said, well, would you teach us to pray? And of course, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. First and foremost, we would love to see your name hallowed. He looked upon the brokenness of the Jews of his day, their lostness. He looked upon them with compassion, as helpless and harassed as sheep without a shepherd. Can you look at a culture that has Time Magazine have on the cover a couple years ago? Men and women, are they different? It's like being so low, so bereft of common grace, that you don't know cause and effect. If you don't know cause and effect, you are doomed to a life of misery. If you don't know if men and women are different, you are doomed to a culture of disintegration. And he said, pray to the Lord of the harvest. On my Bible, I make that a title. I think that should be one of the titles of our Heavenly Father. Pray to the Lord of the harvest that He would send forth laborers into the harvest field. Pray when you have your prayer meeting, if you have a special prayer meeting for revival. Ask God to raise up men. Ask God to raise up good men. Ask God to raise up your best men. Ask God to tithe your best men. You go, we can't afford them. We're just struggling to get church officers ourselves. Well, I think the Lord would be pleased at your sacrificial giving. Jesus taught the disciples to pray. And again, it's in Luke's account. Matthew's account, he has it this way. If you hard-hearted sinful men know how to give good gifts to your children, remaining in depravity hasn't left you bereft of kindness to your children, how much more reasoning from the lesser or the greater. How much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to them who ask him? But Luke, being always concerned with the Holy Spirit and his unique approach for the gift of the Holy Spirit for power, he says, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask? What's the best gift that can be given to us after salvation? In 1972, I was beginning a ministry in Indianapolis, and I was having my devotions in the Gospel of John. And as a young man, I was working very hard to learn to be faithful. And I still have a lot to learn in that area, but at least I was being made aware that I had to work in that area. And in John 15, 16, in my devotion one day, it hit me like a sledgehammer. John 15, 16, Jesus is talking to the disciples and he said, you did not choose me, but I chose you. Now Reformed people get all excited about this part of the verse, but they seem to go to sleep at the rest of the verse. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. Semi-colon. Loyal to the American standard. That whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he'll give it to you. So what do you think we should be praying for? Enduring fruit, lasting fruit. You did not choose me, I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, the kind that would endure, the kind that would remain. That's whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He'll give it to you. And I go, I've been working really hard. I've worked myself into a physical exhaustion. But I've not been praying for you to raise up enduring fruit. I began that day earnestly to pray for enduring fruit. And the leadership from my ministry came this next week in response to a foolish young man just saying, well, you said it here and I should pray this. And I think I'm trying to get the working part down, but I really need to balance with the amount of prayer. We should pray. Lord, would you raise up enduring fruit? Would you raise up harvesters? Would you raise up people who are decisions who distict become disciples. Our Lord said, you have not because you ask not. And we need to ask him. And we shouldn't think, oh, he's such a Scrooge. He won't give us anything. You go, I would never say that. That is irreverent. No, you would never say it. You just think it. And I know because I've thought that and I can extrapolate from the Bible and my heart to what goes on in many of our hearts. The Lord is not very big hearted. He's kind of a Scrooge and a miser. He's got the truth in a bottle, and once in a while, he'll be nice and he'll let you have a drop. But we ascribe to him wicked motives too often, I think. That's not enough time for that. We must obey our moral duties laid out in scripture if we're to have the approval of the Lord and his blessing upon us. To obey is better than sacrifice. To hearken better than the fat of rams. Ian Murray pointed out that praying for the Holy Spirit's empowering is no substitute for repentance and immediate obedience. The context was a famous Methodist minister in London who was pleading that God the Holy Spirit would be given to his denomination in order that it might recover from its liberalism. And it would become a great and powerful movement again. But he said, praying for the Holy Spirit's empowering is no substitute for repentance and immediate obedience. What about half a dozen glaring sins that the denomination had not repented of and would not subsequently repent of? I'm not willing to leave off my sins, but I want the Holy Spirit's power. And our denomination deserves to be big time again. Isaiah 66-2, this is the one to whom I will look. I don't care about your big buildings. You're only using stuff I made to make them anyway, so I'm not impressed. I mean, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool, so your buildings are not truly impressive to me. But this is impressive. This kind of person does have my notice. Well, who's that? He who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word. to tremble at the word of God. I think tremble in a sense of so reverently beholden that as the maid looks to her mistress or a slave to his master, and all the master has to do is just point his finger, and you're gone to do it. And this reverence, trembling at the word of God. A quote you all know, Robert Mary McShane, my people's greatest need is. How do you think George Barna would answer that question? How do you think George Gallup would answer that question? Or the latest sociological student, Rodney Stark? What is the greatest need of American pastors today? What would leadership journals say? What would Christianity Today say? What would a search committee looking for a new pastor say? My people's greatest need is my personal holiness. A holy minister is an awesome weapon in the hand of God. We must be resolved to obey in our context, even if it's difficult, even if it's fearful. The apostles had to come to the place in the book of Acts. We hear what you're saying, but we must obey God rather than men. And they prayed for the Holy Spirit's boldness despite their fears. I grew up as an Episcopalian, was converted in my university days, and have followed the Episcopal Church's vicissitudes with much sadness. In San Francisco area, a Episcopal church there invited an Anglican pastor from Uganda to speak at a banquet on renewal and evangelism. And they had a dinner party for him with their vestry in attendance. And they were asking him at this dinner party, tell me, why is the Anglican church in Africa exploding and it's languishing here in the States? What can we do to see our churches explode with the kind of growth you have? And he told them, well, first of all, you habitually grieve the Holy Spirit. You don't pay a close attention to the Word of God. You should not have women as elders. You should not have homosexuals as unrepentant practicing homosexuals as members of your congregation. There were women elders in that church. The assistant pastor was a woman. There were homosexuals sitting on that desk. He didn't finish that dinner. He was invited to leave. He never spoke at the banquet the next night. And that church continues to implode while God the Holy Spirit is blessing the church in Africa. Final point, we must exercise faith in regard to God's promises. It's mentioned in Acts 6, 5, 6, 8, and 11, 24 that so and so was full of faith and the Holy Spirit, or full of faith and power, or full of the Holy Spirit and faith, spoken of twice of Stephen and once of Barnabas. Our Lord said, according to your faith be it done unto you. It says of our Lord that Jesus could do no miracles in that place because of their unbelief. I have been repeatedly convicted by a tendency in my life to be surprised more than expected. What would that look like? Well, Spurgeon had one of his young graduates from the pastor's college come up to him and said, you know, I've been out preaching now for a couple of years and I'm just not seeing converts. And Spurgeon looked at him and said, well, you don't expect to see converts every time you preach, do you? The guy goes, well, no. And Spurgeon goes, well, that's your problem. And I don't think he was, you know, Spurgeon was very clever, but he was not shallow. I see people converted and I'm surprised. Is that any fault with the Lord? Is that any fault with the Holy Spirit? Is that any fault with the gospel? Or is it the man who is meant to preach the gospel himself so often doesn't really believe that God wants to see people saved, doesn't really believe people need to be saved, or that God would use me? Thomas Goodwin, in his return of prayers, which, by the way, if you can't find a copy of it, Grace Publications has a great simplified classic edition of that along, coupled together with Benjamin Morgan Palmer. But in his return of prayers, he likens our praying to a merchant sending out a ship loaded with goods and then kind of walking away from the dock. Someone asked him a couple days, a week later, whatever happened to your ship? He goes, oh, I don't know. I just kind of send ships out. I don't really pay attention to whether they ever land there and disgorge their cargo and come back. Or a trucker today who loads up a semi and sends it off to another city and never bothers to hear, well, did it make it? Did it disgorge its load? Did it come back? Are we into shipping only, or are we into shipping and receiving? Shipping is I send something out and expect something to come back. but I don't really look for it, and shipping and receiving is, Lord, we've prayed. We believe that we're not a lot more big-hearted than you are. Lord, we believe your promises are yea and amen and Christ Jesus. So we've been praying this, and we want to look expectantly for you to bless our prayers. I said finally once too quickly, one more finally. We must sow the seed bountifully, especially with men. In the context of talking about money in a verse which is, I believe, from Proverbs and applicable to other situations, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. If I witness three times a year and preach the gospel once a year, I probably should expect to see a much smaller harvest than if I witnessed every opportunity, witnessed many times during the year and preached the gospel continually. We must take advantage of every opportunity to witness and we should, if God's called us to be preachers of the gospel, we should make opportunities to witness, make opportunities to preach. nursing homes in our area are begging for preachers, and we have thankfully developed that ministry. We believe there'll be people who were converted in the eleventh hour of their life, before they descended into Alzheimer's or something else, or Parkinson's, who heard the gospel through the lips of Hank Rast and some of the other faithful men of our church who preach the gospel with power. There's many other places. Ladies' clubs, men's groups, these terrible clubs that men belong to. They're not terrible in being gross, they're just terrible in being insipid. and all these things that men give themselves to in fraternal organizations, and they need speakers. We must take advantage of every opportunity to preach. And divine appointments must be prayed for and kept. Lord, would you raise up people that you want to have witness to? Here's Philip in a revival in Samaria, and there's an Ethiopian convert to Judaism on his way back from Jerusalem trying to figure out what in the world Isaiah 53 means. If someone calls me up and says, would you talk to so-and-so for me, I believe that that's a particular nudge of God the Holy Spirit, because even as in church discipline, the first line of defense is God the Holy Spirit in your own heart, right? And if you keep saying no to God the Holy Spirit, then he goes and taps someone on the shoulder and say, dear brother, so-and-so is shouting when he shall not, and you need to go talk to him. And so somebody goes and talks to you, but that's the second line of defense. And so if God the Holy Spirit has someone come to me and say, would you talk to so-and-so or my son lives in your community, or my daughter lives around here, or my neighbor, would you talk to them? I believe that is a divine appointment. We should expect God, the Holy Spirit, to lead us to his appointments. My father-in-law was led to Christ by a Baptist pastor who Gordon knows. My father-in-law will forever praise the name of Clarence Townsend, General Association of Regular Baptist Pastors, who, as a young man, took over this church. And here was a man whose wife sang in the choir and was active, never came to church. Golfed every Sunday. So he decided that he needed to pick up golf and learn golf on his day off. And asked this man who was the best golfer at the country club to teach him to play golf. And this man who also would cut hair, Clarence Townsend said, would you cut my kids' hair? All my boys. And over time he says, you know, I can teach you something too. I can teach you about Jesus Christ. And the only reason Clarence Townsend picked up golf was so he could get close to this man. The only reason he brought his boys by. And George Cook came to Christ. And we'll ever have in his pantheon of greats, Clarence Townsend. And Clarence Townsend gave up golf after George became a Christian. Amen. Neighborhood hospitality. Are you the most hospitable people on your block? I know you're the people that don't do all the things, and on Sunday your house is quiet, except for when you go to church, that's their perception of you, but are you the most big-hearted, open-hearted, generous, giving people on your block? Or is the moat still filled with piranha, the gate up, the walls high, and you're the family that doesn't do anything, good, bad, or indifferent. We need to be among our people. We need to be witnessing. We need to be practicing the giving of the gospel. Let me conclude with three things to encourage you. Ian Murray's Pentecost today. co-authored by the Banner of Truth and Founders Press, is a great analysis of what we can expect in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Martin Lloyd-Jones' little book, Authority, the third chapter, it only has three chapters, on the authority of the Holy Spirit and as he goes through the tragic and comic attempts of evangelicals. to regain lost authority by a thousand and one other things, everything except the Holy Spirit's authority. And finally, J.W. Alexander, the son of Archibald Alexander, one-time Princeton professor and pastor of New York City, wrote a pamphlet that has been republished by Chapel Library. Pray for the Spirit. And of course, most importantly, study the Book of Acts. Say, Lord, I'm not asking for signs and wonders here. I'm asking for authority in my preaching. I'm asking you to work in people's hearts Our neighbors are clueless as to the wrath to come. Would you put the fear of God in their hearts through our preaching and witnessing? Well, my time is up. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, We've been reminded a couple of times already today that we are men of dust, and proud dust we are, and we are susceptible to every sin imaginable. We pray that you would take the things of Christ and that you would continue to apply them in our lives continuously, that you would not let go of us, that you would not let us drop the torch of truth, that you would not let us lose it, that we would run the race faithfully and that we would die well, that we would take many with us. As Paul could say, what is our glory and our crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you at the return of our Lord Jesus Christ? For you are our glory and our joy. May there be many, many, many in our pictures, in our composites of all the people that we took to heaven with us. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.