The Church

Well, good morning and grace and peace to you. Today's a great day. This is the last week of our sermon series, The Biography. Or maybe you're sad, or maybe you're just really happy because you're done hearing that sermon bumper video over and over and over again. And so it's just been amazing to be able to walk through the Bible from all the way from the prologue, the very beginning, to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then even take it a little bit further as we talk about the church and how the church started to grow and how it started to move and yet how it still moves today. So excited to be able to do that, to close that up, but also excited what is going to happen next week because we start a new sermon series called Parables, an Invitation into the Kingdom. And so yes, we will be here each and every Sunday during the summertime. Some of you have already asked me that, like, well, you guys are at FGC, are you still going to be here? Absolutely. We are a church, a community church that is comprised of many different types of people. And so we're going to be here each and every Sunday. So if you're a student and you are taking those forbidden summer classes, please come along. And again, if you're a part of the community and wanting to be more on mission with us, we're excited to walk through our new sermon series as Jesus, the great storyteller, shares more and more what it's like to be a part of the kingdom. So excited about that. Hey, if you are a college student, this week's a big week for you, am I right? It's finals week, all right? And maybe that is a stressful week for you, but we just want to let you know that actually tomorrow from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., Thrive is going to be outside the library and we are going to be serving coffee, bagels, cream cheese, because we know that you're stressed and you need to eat lots of food and drink lots of caffeine. So if you're at the library and you just need a break, just tell your friends that we're going to be out there. We're going to be serving so many students. Usually we have about 600 students that come through the lines and are very thankful for all the bagels and cream cheese, so we're excited about that. If you'd like to help serve with us, if you are a non-student, we would love to have you there. We're going to be out there from 8.30 to 11. I know that's a late one, but hey, it's all fun. So we're going to be doing that for tomorrow and really excited for that to happen. So before we plug into scripture, let's pray. Father, we had an opportunity to read from the book of Acts and see the church that started with such a small amount of people explode into so many people that continued to worship and followed you. As we look at the church and see what the church did, we also see what the church is doing today. So Lord, may we be like the church that the Holy Spirit has planted here at this place, just like it was in the book of Acts. We pray this in your name, amen. So oftentimes when I think of church, sometimes I honestly get frustrated. Has anyone ever been jaded from church before, like, oh man, I'm sick of it, I'm done. Or maybe the pastor just had an awful message and like, I just never want to hear that guy again. Hopefully you don't feel that after today. Or maybe it's like, I just don't really like the music, you know, it's kind of not my style, you know, don't like that. Or maybe you just feel like something bruised you completely. Someone talked behind your back or whatever it may be and you're just like, I'm just done with this church thing. I love God, but I just don't like the church. If that's happened to you, and certainly there's been times in my life where it's happened to me, I have to remind myself to open up my Bible and especially look in the book of Acts, because that's where we see the church in its purest form, the church becoming something so much more. And so in this book, we have a man named Luke, and he is writing to a man named Theopolis. We don't really know who Theopolis is. We think he's probably a ruler or a higher power, and it's kind of like a codename, because the gospel is just getting out, and he probably didn't want his name to be mentioned because he'd be persecuted or maybe even put to death for believing in such things like Jesus Christ. And so Luke is writing to Theopolis, and when he's sharing these words with Theopolis, he's saying, these men and women that I write to you about, they're ordinary people doing some extraordinary things. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Some of the extraordinary things they're doing is sharing the gospel, and people are believing in this good news about Jesus Christ, that he really did die, and then he rose on the third day. They're also going around healing people, and that is crazy. These ordinary people doing some extraordinary stuff. And see, all because of the Holy Spirit. It wasn't these men and women doing these things, it was because the Holy Spirit w...