Look up!

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Wow, this is going to be a fun series, I think, and we're going to be living it up. You'll see on your, if you didn't sit on a sparkler, we do want you to take those and try to invite someone along here to invite to home huddles, et cetera. We're going to be in this series for eight weeks. I'm excited about it. You'll see different testimonies of different individuals over time, just like we had with Katie. You're going to learn a lot, I think. We are trying to be what the early church was, which I think God wants us to always be. The first passage, we're going to be touring through the Book of Acts to an extent, as well as seeing different passages that fit in with our key passage, which we'll get to later in the sermon, which is Acts 2, 42 to 47. You can see on the U version of the Bible, if you put in our zip code, 33928, you can get, under the events, you can get all the notes for this sermon today, and you can even take some more notes if you want. Later this week, I know Wyatt will have the sermon up online through our app on Tuesday. Are we live streaming, too? Woo, hey. Not sure who's all there, but I think last week, actually, I know Nikki Collin watched from up in Connecticut. She is an assistant coach for the WNBA team, the Connecticut Sun. She's away from home, and yet, she's still connected to us, which is great. Now, we're going to look at Acts 1, 1 through 8, to start out this week, and it's Look Up. So Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke, with his name, and then he also wrote this book, Acts. And he starts off, in the first book, O Theophilus, that's the Gospel, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given command through the Holy Spirit to the apostles, whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them 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 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 of Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or seasons, that the Father is fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. So you know, I used to believe, and I still think I live within this framework, and this is what I want all of us to change, at least a part of the framework. I used to believe that Jesus Christ accomplished everything, which I believe he did through his death and resurrection, and then he ascended into heaven, and as a kid I said, Okay, so he ascended into heaven, he sits at the right hand, like we would say in the Apostles' Creed, and now we wait for him until he comes again. And so this in-between time, we're waiting, and we're waiting, and we're basically waiting to be beamed up in one form or another, because there's no intelligent life down here. But that Jesus did everything, and so all we can do is maybe share what he did back then, and share what he taught back then, and hope that people see the relevance of it for today. That is not the way Luke understands it at all. I don't know if you caught this in that first verse. Look at that first verse, if you have it before you. In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. Did you catch that? So the first book is what he began to do, which means the book of Acts is what Jesus continues to do and teach, and now he is doing it through his disciples. He's working through them, and he keeps doing it. In fact, I believe it was in the Gospel of John when he's in the upper room with the disciples and he has this long discourse, he says, You're going to even do greater things than I do, because I go to the Father and you will receive the Holy Spirit, and he preps them for it. So that's all going on, but the book of Acts is what Jesus continues to do, which means then that a disciple is, what is a disciple? A disciple are those who continue to do and teach what Jesus did and taught. Now I was never taught that as a kid. I thought being a disciple meant I believe these things, and I get this information, and then I parrot it back, and everything's good, right? A disciple is someone who just knows stuff. But what we see in the book of Acts, as Jesus continues to work through his disciples doing a lot of the same things he did, and they're teaching that a disciple is one who does what Jesus did and teaches what Jesus taught, and I think that's still true today. So I guess i...