Thanks for listening to the His Hands Church podcast. If you're using the His Hands Church mobile app, please turn off the auto lock on your phone's general settings so that you can listen to the message uninterrupted. And thank you for being part of what God is doing at His Hands. Got a couple quick announcements before we jump into what we're gonna talk about this morning. Kind of the same stuff we've been talking about, but there's a lot going on, and it's worth getting excited about. It is woo-worthy. You guys were saying woo earlier. So we've got a couple things. One of those is this event called Help Portrait, and that is gonna be next Saturday. So a week from yesterday. Tom Melesko is a great part of our church, and he is a photographer really passionate about this. And it's just a way to give someone a smile around the holidays, to give someone that something small that that just blesses them, something small that gives them some cause for joy might be a way to say it. And so what Hellportrait is, is it's an event where photographers come together and provide free professional photography for people in need, for people that couldn't afford that, maybe a single mom and their kids, but but situations like that. And so there's a sign-up table outside if if that's something you have a need for, or even honestly, even if there's someone you know and love that has that need and you just want to be aggressive and sign them up and then call them and say, hey, you don't have to go. But just so you know, if you do, there's an appointment, you know, just do it. You know, get people signed up and and bless some people this Christmas. It's no cost to them. They'll get you know a free professional photography situation and and uh situation. What is that? I don't even know what I mean. I am not a photographer. I I don't yeah, okay. So help portrait, it's gonna be great. Uh Christmas is coming up, a lot of good things around Christmas. Want to show you our website. We've done this the last few weeks. If you go to our website, you'll see Christmas Eve at his hands on the front page. Click that, and you're gonna be taken to this page. It's a little page for the event. It's got some information about Christmas Eve, both of our services, four o'clock and six o'clock. And if you go to the top left corner, you'll see these little links you can click. And that's a way you can share our Christmas Eve worship get together uh with all your friends. You can invite people via email. If you click invite others, you can tweet it. If you're a tweeter, I don't know how to I don't I don't use Twitter. Um Facebook, you can get on Facebook, and all you gotta do is click that. It puts it right on your right on your Facebook page. And I think today there's something like 350 people that have shared that. So keep that going because I've been saying, if we get to a thousand shares, that's a hundred thousand people that see it. So that's that's something to be excited about. And then you know, just tell people about it, invite people. There's so many people that experience God's love for the first time, uh, not just here at this church, but but any church, on something like Christmas Eve or Easter, it's an important thing for us to do. And so if you know someone, you love someone, just invite them and invite them to be part of this. Uh, Christmas Angels is going extremely well. Today was one of the last drop-off days for Christmas Angels. And so if you have forgotten to drop your stuff off, if you got a star, you just didn't get around to getting everything yet, we'll be open this week. We're we're office hours are Tuesday through Friday, uh, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. And uh there will be someone here. You can come to the office on the far left side of the building, and we'll take that stuff for you. But get it in as soon as possible because next Sunday is delivery day. Next Sunday, yeah. That if you've never been part of delivery day, oh man, let me tell you, you need to. Just stay after church next week, get in your car, get in a big line. We all love being in lines and in cars. It's it's it's an American tradition. So just do it. Just do it, be in line, play some Christmas music. You'll be given some gifts to take to families. You know, the thing I love about that is this is that it's not like we'd have to be the heroes. You know, we don't have to be the ones that show up to the house with the gifts wrapped and show them to the kids. It's amazing. That's one of my favorite things about Christmas Angels is that we get to take the gifts to the families and the moms and the dads, they get to wrap the gifts. They get to be part of that because that is something as a parent that is so important. And even if we can't afford it, even if we're at a time and a place in life where we can't provide that, to be able to give parents the gift of wrapping their kids' Christmas presents and putting them under the tree, that's important. And so it's not just us doing it for the kids, it's doing it for the whole families, and we get to do that next week. So be here for that, wait in line with the car, and we'll we'll give you some gifts to deliver. It's gonna be a blast. It's gonna be a blast. Well, let's pray and let's just uh get into what we're gonna share this morning. Jesus, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your love. Thank you so much for everything that you're doing in us and through us and through this community. I just pray that you would fill us with your spirit this morning, get us excited about knowing you, about our relationship with you. Jesus, we love you so, so much, and we just ask all this in your name. Amen. Well, I've got a lot of notes this morning, so you'll just have to bear with me. Uh God works in awesome ways. We've been doing this whole uh history of the Bible over the course of about 10 weeks. Next week will be our last week. Ben's gonna be here. He's gonna wrap the whole thing up. He's already told me that it's probably gonna blow everyone's minds and be the best thing anyone's ever seen. He didn't say that, but I just I like to put pressure on Ben. I don't know why. I really like Ben. I just like to, it's just a thing. Um but it's gonna it's gonna be fantastic. This has been a great series. And it's a great series because this is our history. This is not just the history of the Bible, this is not just the history of people that have come before us. This is our history as God's people. And it's important for us to know our history. It's important for us to know what God has done before us so that we can recognize what a privileged time that we live in now. A time when we know Jesus, a time when we can have a relationship with God and have his Holy Spirit in our lives. So it's been an exciting thing personally for me to do. Ben had this drawing, this thing that God gave him. Very, very cool visualization of the entire story of the Bible. It's a timeline, but it doesn't look like a timeline that you've ever seen before. So if you haven't been here, I really encourage you to go online on our website. There's a link to Ben drawing this live. It's really, really cool to watch. But up to this point, it's the beginning of creation. It's that first dot in the middle is the tree of life. Every dot that you saw as it was drawn, those little dots that kind of go down and to the left or right, I'm turned around when I'm on the stage. One of those two are your options. Uh, those represent these trees. These trees that just kind of show up when God makes a big promise to his people. And so there's trees like the burning bush, which was technically a tree, potentially, we we don't know, but it's tree-like. Uh there's the oaks at Mamre. There's a tree of life. And every time God shows up and he makes a big promise, we see this spiral happen. It's it's people living life and doing like we do every day and just missing it, missing the target. Things seem to go horribly wrong. And up to the point where we get to Jesus, which was last week, everything seems to be spiraling, out of control, irredeemable. And Jesus shows up and changes everything. That's what we talked about last week. Jesus changed everything, he's changing everything every single day. And so when Jesus shows up, he completes what's been before him. It becomes this perfect circle. What looked like a mess now looks purposeful. Honestly, it looks beautiful. Reminds me of a lollipop. I like that. Okay. So Jesus shows up and he fixes it, and it's great. And up to this point, if you saw Ben draw it live, everything has been this continuous line. And this morning we get to the first moment in this drawing where the pen leaves the paper and there's a jump. And that's when we get to our part of the drawing this morning. Now, that that dot that first appeared after Jesus, a little outside of that, that's our sixth tree. We're going to talk about that tree this morning. And the promise associated with that tree is the promise of the Holy Spirit. I think it's really appropriate that there's a jump in this drawing. I don't know if this is what Ben was trying to communicate, but it's appropriate because when Jesus came, he completed what was before him, and through him we have something new. We have something brand new. We live in a new relationship with God, we have a new covenant, is what theologians would say. It's something that a lot of people have a hard time getting, but in Galatians chapter 3, verses 22 through 23, Paul wrote, Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came. It protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, now that we have Jesus, we no longer need the law as our guardian. Jesus completed it. It's pointless for us to try and strive, which is what religion compels us to do, to strive to live by the old way, when God went to such great lengths to give us a new way. And Jesus is that new way. So it's very purposeful that the pen leaves the piece of paper, leaves the page, and we have something new. But that promise, that promise associated with the tree that we're going to talk about this morning, it's the promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus made sure that we knew he was leaving. He told his disciples often, hey, I'm I'm not gonna be here forever. I'm gonna go to a cross, I'm gonna die. He said it very explicitly, and they just never got it. And I can understand that. I would imagine if you spent three years walking around with Jesus, seeing the things that Jesus did, and he tells you, I'm gonna die, you'd be like, Yeah, right? There's no way. I can understand that. But he he did. He went to the cross and he told him, I'm I'm gonna leave you, but he made a promise to them. And we see that promise in John 14, verses 16 through 17. He said, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him because it isn't looking for him, it doesn't recognize him. But you know him because he lives with you now and later will be in you. I love that last part. He lives with you now, but later he will be in you. It's possible for us to experience the Holy Spirit just by being around God, by being around people that are excited about God. All of us have had experiences, perhaps, where we've been talking to someone who's really passionate about Jesus, and we just feel something around that person. But the promise that Jesus makes us is so much greater than that. It is not that, hey, one day you all get to gather together in a building, and when you're all together and there's a bunch of people that love me, you're gonna feel better. You're gonna feel a presence. It's that this will be in you, this will be a part of you. The Holy Spirit will be within you. That's the promise. And that's exciting. That's important for us to back up here for a second because I, if you're anything like me, I'm just gonna assume that there's some of us, there's some of us that hear about God the Father, and we're like, yes, I get that. He's my daddy, I love him, he loves me. We hear about Jesus, and yes, Jesus. He has a beard, he was alive, I can picture him, he died on a cross, I've seen I've seen the the paintings, I can picture that, I get that. And then we get to the Holy Spirit, and they're just kind of like, well, I'm not really sure. That's my experience most of growing up. You know, when we say God, we mean God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It's all God. It's kind of a strange concept. Religion calls it the Trinity, that's what theology says. That's not in the Bible, it's just a word we've used, and it helps us. It's three individual people, persons, but one God. They're different, but they're the same, but they're different but the same. Makes total sense. And it can be a strange concept for years, centuries, we've tried to come up with analogies, explanations, things that help it make more sense. And so I remember I went to a Christian high school, and there was this one example of an egg that was used a lot, where you have, you know, a shell, the white of the egg, and then the yolk, and they're all an egg, but it's three parts. I like eggs, and that never still never clicked with me, even though I got that. The first time I ever saw something in this world, something you know, man-made, that made me go, yes, we've done it. We've finally done it. We have we have our analogy. We've got it. I was at a supermarket. Just I'm telling you the truth. I was at a supermarket years ago. It's probably been six or seven years ago, and I'm I'm walking through the aisle and I see this thing in the in the health section, the the the what I don't know what you call it. Uh, what is that section? I don't pay attention to the names. It's where you buy shampoo and stuff. What is that called? Health and beauty. Thank you. I'll be honest, you can tell I haven't had a haircut in a long time. I don't even know where my we moved, and it what does it say about men? A lot of us that when we get busy, the first thing that goes is hygiene. We just don't pay attention to those kind of things. So it is what it is. So I'm in, I'm in that section, who knows why, and I see this bottle. And it struck me. I'd never seen anything like it before. It said shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in one. And I, first of all, I was excited because honestly, I'll just be honest with you. When I'm in the shower, whatever bottle is there, it's an all-purpose bottle. I don't care. I'm tired. I sometimes I keep the lights low. I don't even want, I'm just what it's gotta be soap, whatever it is. It has to work, okay? But I'm like, that's it, three and one. It's the Trinity. Finally, we have something. Finally, we've been waiting all this time. This beats the egg so badly. Three and one. Now, that would actually be kind of sad if the best thing we could come up with in all of human history would be body wash and conditioning or whatever. But Jesus cleanses us, so maybe it's appropriate. I don't know. But the reality of the situation is that the best thing that illustrates this concept, it can be kind of a strange concept, but it's you. In Genesis chapter 1, we see the Trinity, we see God, the Father, the Son, and Spirit. We see it. Genesis 1 26 says, Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us. They will reign over the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. So we see here, God says, Let us, plural, make human beings in our image. We are blessed to be the one part of creation that was created in the image of God. Everything else that God makes in Genesis chapter 1, he just speaks into existence, but not us. We are handcrafted. We are made in the image of God. And we we're not God, but we're in his image. There's certain aspects of us that reflect him, that make it possible for us to get him on some level, to know him. And so if you really think about yourself, you can see a little a little bit of that whole trinity concept there. Has anyone ever been been exercising and you're on a treadmill, you're running, and you're telling yourself to run? Your body is saying, stop, and you're like, no, Justin, no, keep going. You're gonna go. No, I don't want to go. You're gonna go. And if someone could hear your inner dialogue, they think you were crazy. But in that moment, your your mind is talking to your body, and your body's talking back, and there's a conversation. All of us have had moments where our spirit might be leading us to do something that our mind says, This doesn't make sense. I don't think you should do this. There's a lot of very easy to understand reasons why this is not a good idea, but your spirit, God is leading you in a different direction. We all have a body, we all have a mind, we all have a spirit, they're distinct, they're separate, but they're all us. So even in ourselves, we can see a picture of who God is. And this morning, we're gonna focus on that one part that Jesus promised, and that's the Holy Spirit. Now, in my personal experience, the Holy Spirit has just been a difficult person for me to know. I grew up in a very traditional uh Southern Baptist church in Springfield, Missouri, and I had a great experience at that church. Hamlin Memorial Baptist. That was the name of the church. I loved it. I met Jesus there, I got to know the Bible there. I have great memories of that church. I wouldn't change my experience there for anything. But just part of our church culture was we got God the Father, he's dad, do what he says. And he loves you, but do what he says. Jesus, he's big brother, you know, in our whole family concept of God. God's adopted us into his family. God's the dad, Jesus is the big brother, he rescued us. The Holy Spirit, who's he? You know, in the experience I had growing up, he was like that weird cousin you don't invite to holidays. Because he just makes everyone feel uncomfortable. All of us have that weird cousin, some of us are that weird cousin. It's okay. He's that person that when people are like, oh, they're they're coming over. Oh, well, can I leave? How do I get out of this? You know, that was the Holy Spirit to us. We didn't deny that the Holy Spirit existed. It was in the Bible. We believe the Bible, so we baptized people, we said the Holy Spirit, we just didn't talk about it much after that. And so I grew up in kind of a strange environment where Springfield, Missouri, I went to this really Southern Baptist traditional church, and Springfield, Missouri also happens to be the headquarters for the Assembly of God denomination. And it's a much more charismatic denomination, very comfortable with the Holy Spirit. And I had some friends that went to some really big, thriving Assembly of God churches, and they had big youth groups, and they'd invite me to these youth events, and I would come from my really traditional understanding of God, Jesus, and that other guy, and I would go to these churches, and people would be speaking in tongues, and I would just be standing there going, What is going on? I'm freaked out of my mind. And so what I kind of did was just put the Holy Spirit to the side and said, I believe you're real. I'll get to you later. I just, I don't know what to do with you. Please don't make me speak in tongues. That was essentially my experience. And honestly, it wasn't until it wasn't until I came here, and a few people in my life, uh, a few people that were in charge of me, leaders in my life, just kind of made me. Just basically said, Justin, you have to. You have to become more open to the Holy Spirit. You need to do that. And I just was like, fine, I'll do it. What do I need to do? And they're like, you just need to pray, you just need to be open, you just need to believe and that God's gonna work through you and that he's real, and that and that, and I'm like, oh, fine. And and it took a long time, but eventually I had an experience, I had a Holy Spirit moment where I was like, wow, this is real. He is in me. It's that promise that Jesus gave us. I experienced that for the first time, that I'd experienced the Holy Spirit around me. The promise is that I would experience him in me. And that's all of us. All of us have that. And so the history at this moment we get to in the timeline, the part of our history that we're at is the is the early church. It's Acts, it's the letters that Paul wrote, these little glimpses we get of the church that existed right at the beginning. The church that we'll we're still a part of today. And it's the moment when the Holy Spirit first lives within people, and what happens as the result of that. And to put it briefly, things happened. I mean, a lot of things happened. And we see the start of it on the day of Pentecost. It's Acts chapter 2. It says, On the day of Pentecost, all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them, and everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability. At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. And when they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers. They were completely amazed. How can this be? They exclaimed. Here we are, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, Phrygia. I don't I know I mispronounced that one, uh, and a bunch of other places. They're like, I always wonder, did they really say that? Are they counting? Or they say, hey, there's a lot of us, and we're from a lot of places that have distinct languages, and these guys are all speaking the languages that we speak. We can understand what they're saying. And we all hear these people speaking their own languages, the wonderful things that God has done. They stood there amazed and perplexed. What can this mean? They asked each other, but others in the crowd ridiculed them, saying they're just drunk. That's all. Some people don't get it. So the Holy Spirit comes in power, and things happened. There was a result. You know, we've talked a lot about trees. And Jesus talked about trees sometimes too. There's a very famous thing that he said is that you judge a tree by its fruit. Well, we see the fruit from the Holy Spirit moving in Acts 2, 41. Excuse me. It says, Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day, about 3,000 in all. This is the moment when the church, this great kingdom that Jesus promised, which up to this time is about a hundred people, instantly has momentum. 3,000 people are added to the church in that one day. So we have fruit. We have a result. When the Holy Spirit moves, there is fruit. Things will happen, and those things will result in people believing Jesus and knowing Him and being excited about Him. Galatians 5 22 through 23 says, But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things. When the Holy Spirit is active in our lives, we produce fruit. The church produces fruit. We have a result, we have an impact in this world. Marlon's been painting a tree every single week. And this morning his tree is not that. It's that. There we go. I love Marlon's paintings. And kind of in the context of the Holy Spirit and this whole concept of a tree producing fruit, it gave me a little bit of a new perspective on a lot of his paintings. And what I love about it is you don't see any literal fruit. There's no bananas. I was gonna paint a banana on there and see if he'd mind, but I decided not to. I'm good at bananas. I can do it. Alright. But it but it looks, it looks like this tree is not just producing fruit, but but it's like fruit is just exploding. Like it's bursting forth. And that's the church. That's that's us and the rest of this world following Jesus, producing fruit. And it's bursting forth. So this morning we're gonna talk a little bit more about that. One of the best ways to understand this new thing that's begun is by looking back. You know, Jesus said, You search the scriptures looking for eternal life, but the scriptures point to me. And so sometimes to really see what Jesus is doing, we just we look back a little bit. In Ezekiel 47, there's this prophecy, this vision that Ezekiel has of a time yet to come. And it's really interesting. An angel appears to him, and here's what it says. Now he brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water pouring out from under the temple porch to the east. The temple faced east. The water poured from the south side of the temple, south of the altar. He then took me out through the north gate and led me around the outside of the gate complex on the east. The water was gushing from under the south of the temple. He walked to the east with a measuring tape and measured out fifteen hundred feet, leading me through water that was ankle deep. He measured off another 1,500 feet, leading me through water that was knee deep. He measured off another 1,500 feet, leading me through water waist deep. He measured off another, guess what? 1,500 feet. By now it was a river over my head, water to swim in, water no one could possibly walk through. He said, Son of man, have you had a good look? And then he took me back to the riverbank. While I was sitting on the bank, I noticed a lot of trees on both sides of the river. He told me, This water flows east, descends to the Erabah, and then into the sea, the sea of stagnant waters. When it empties into those waters, the sea will become fresh. Wherever the river flows, life will flourish. Great schools of fish, because the river is turning the salt sea into fresh water. Where the river flows, life abounds. Fishermen will stand shoulder to shoulder along the shore of the Engedi, all the way north to En Iglaim, casting their nets. The sea will teem with fish of all kinds, like the fish of the great Mediterranean. The swamps and marshes won't become fresh, they'll stay salty, but the river itself on both banks will grow fruit trees of all kinds. Their leaves won't wither, their fruit won't fall. Every month they'll bear fresh fruit because the river from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will be food, will be for food, and their leaves for healing. We have this river of life, and everywhere that it goes, life happens. And that prophecy was about the church. It was about us. Jesus just said it differently. In Matthew 13, 31 through 32, he says, here's another illustration Jesus used. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field. It's the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants. It grows into a tree, and birds come and make its nest, their nests and its branches. So in Ezekiel, we have this small stream that becomes a flood, a river of life. And then Jesus talks about a small seed that turns into this huge tree, this massive tree that birds are blessed by. He's talking about us, the Holy Spirit working in us as his church. We are a river of life to this world. We're supposed to be. We're supposed to be. You know, together we can change this community. And it's happening. You know, it's Christmas time, it's an exciting time because the whole world's kind of talking about Jesus or trying not to talk about Jesus. But no matter what you say, whether it's happy holidays or Merry Christmas, everyone knows. It's about Jesus. So it's a good time. And I'm just taking this right from something that Steve shared last year at Christmas because it's so appropriate. It's so appropriate. It's what we're talking about this morning. You know, Jesus was born in a dark world. Rome ruled a lot of the world and had overran and occupied Israel. Herod ruled Rome. He was crazy. Not only did he murder anyone opposed to him, he eventually killed his own family out of fear that they would oppose him. The average life expectancy, the life expectancy at the time that Jesus came into this world was 28 years. So if you were born in Jesus' time, you could hope, hope, to live 28 years. Anything more than that was a pipe dream. And it had been that way for a thousand years. For a thousand years before Jesus, that life expectancy had been the same. But soon after Jesus, very soon after Jesus, it rose. And it rose to 30, and then 35. People started living to be 40 and 50. Today, in this world today, the average life expectancy in the world is 70 years old. We're blessed in this country for it to be about 10 years longer. But that would have been impossible in the minds of the people that lived in Jesus' time. But Jesus promised that when he came, the time of God's favor had begun, and a river of life, like Ezekiel said, would flow into this world and there would be fruit. It wasn't just the life expectancy, though. There was slavery everywhere. Women were oppressed across the board in all nations. Wars were a constant way of life. Diseases like leprosy were common and not curable. But it's a different world today. So much of that has been fixed in some cases, or it's progressing. And there's this thing about Christian culture, it's religion. That likes to pretend that the world is just going down the tubes. It's almost a scandalous thing to say in a church that the world is doing okay and actually it's getting better. That's a shocking thing to say, unfortunately, in a lot of Christian culture. Because there's this religious idea that everything is going wrong, everything is terrible, and yes, yes, we can look at certain things in culture and point to them and say, that's not good. Absolutely. We can look at television programming and say, hey, that's not good. But let's be honest though, religion, religion, religion boycotts Disney. I mean, that's religious people boycott Disney. Can you imagine Jesus coming back 50 years ago and going, all right, where's Walt? Because all these kids smiling, it's ticking me off. Okay? This is what I'm gonna deal with. This is what we've got to stop. And it's a silly thing, but that's religion. Religion has such a negative view of the world that it looks at something like Disney and goes, we've got to stop this. This is enough. That's religion, but but that's not the world. There's progress, there's life. And it's happening every single day. It's happening in this community. I mean, 50 years ago, orphanages across the country were common. You know, stories of someone opening their door and there being a baby abandoned on the doorstep, that was common. Orphanages were overflowing. Today, people will wait years, spend thousands and thousands of dollars to adopt a child. And that did not happen 50 years ago. And it's it's because of Jesus. It's because he has made true to his promise that he came into this world, and that the result of us having the Holy Spirit in our lives is that the world would be a better place. And that happens, and it is happening. It's just that religion and Christian culture sometimes likes to pretend that it's not. My wife went to a Bible study a couple years ago, and there was a really uh well-respected and well-known teacher that had been an author, and she was talking about the world, and this was her kind of big piece of wisdom to the group, was that uh she didn't think the world was getting darker. Just felt like the light was growing dimmer. That is such a lie. Because Jesus is the light of this world, and he will never get dim. And there is nothing in this world that can ever diminish his light. There is nothing in this world that will ever make him grow dim. Jesus is the light of this world, and he's alive, and his spirit is alive in us, and this world is a brighter place because of that. And we have the privilege to serve this world. The thing that the nation of Israel missed, the big picture that they missed as being God's people, was that they they felt like they were called to special privilege. They felt like as God's people, they were in a place of privilege. And God's people are called to a special place of service. So we have the honor of being the ones that get to bring light where there's darkness. We get to be the ones that help people in need. We get to be the ones that help each other. We get to be the ones that make this world brighter, and it's a privilege and it's an honor. And you guys are so, so good at this. I love this church. I've been a part of his hands for seven years. I love this church. And I really love this church because most of us are in a really good mood. And we should be. You know, it is not spiritual wisdom to look at the world and see everything that's wrong with it. It does not take a spiritual person to do that. That's not spiritual wisdom to look at the world and discern all the things that are going wrong. That's human nature. And it's been the truth about every generation, regardless of their spiritual beliefs, that they believe they're living in the worst time ever to live. And we're not. The low point of humanity is when we nailed our Savior to a cross. Ever since then, with his spirit active in this world, the Holy Spirit present, it's getting better and it's going to get better. Because we have this river of life. In John 16, Jesus said, I still have many things to tell you, but you can't handle them now. But when the friend comes, the spirit of truth, he's talking about the Holy Spirit, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won't draw attention to himself, but he will make sense out of what is about to happen, and indeed out of all that I have done and said, He will honor me. He will take me, he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is also mine. That's why I've said he takes from me and delivers to you. In a day or so, you're not gonna see me, but then in another day or so you will see me. That stirred up a hornet's nest of questions among the disciples. What's he talking about? In a day or so, you're not gonna see me, but then in another day or so you will see me. And because I'm on my way to the Father, what is this day or so? We don't know what he's talking about. And Jesus knew they were dying to ask him what he meant, so he said, Are you trying to figure out among yourselves what I meant when I said, In a day or so you're not gonna see me, but then in another day or so you will see me. Then fix this firmly in your minds. You're going to be in deep mourning while the godless world throws a party. You'll be sad, very sad, but your sadness will develop into gladness. When a woman gives birth, she has a hard time. There's no getting around it. But when the baby is born, there is joy in the birth. This new life in the world wipes out memory of the pain. The sadness you have right now is similar to that pain, but the coming joy is also similar. When I see you again, you'll be full of joy. And it will be a joy no one can rob from you. You'll no longer be so full of questions. And this is what I want you to do. Ask the Father for whatever is in keeping with the things I reveal to you. Ask in my name according to my will, and he'll most certainly give it to you. Your joy will be a river overflowing its banks. Our joy. As the followers of Jesus, we should be the most hopeful, the most optimistic, and the happiest people that exist in this world. Bar none. And I will admit I am not that person sometimes. I'm not that person a lot of times. I let the little things get to me. I focus on what's not going right instead of everything that is. Jesus said that it's when we're that person, overflowing with joy, like a like a river of life, that this world will be blessed. The worship team wants to come back up. I just want to read Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47. This is a little uh it's a little section where it just describes the early church very, very quickly. It says, All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to sharing in meals, including the Lord's Supper, and a prayer. A deep sense of awe came over them, over all of them. And the apostles performed many mirac many miraculous signs and wonders, and all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the temple each day. They met in homes for the Lord's Supper and shared their meals with great joy and generosity, all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. It's this little summary. And I was reading this book. It's right here in my hands, this one. And it's this commentary on this, on this exact, uh, this exact passage. And this is what it says about the early church. I just want us to think about this and think about us as a church and what we want to be. Because we're still young as a church. We're what, seven, eight years old? I believe this is an important church. And that God established this place for a very big purpose and a big vision. I know we all believe that too. So he writes, it was a learning church. It persisted in listening to the apostles as they taught. One of the great perils of the church is to look back instead of forward. Because the riches of Christ are inexhaustible, we should always be going forward. We should count it a wasted day when we do not learn something new, and when we have not penetrated more deeply into the wisdom and the grace of God. It was a church of fellowship. It had what someone has called the great quality of togetherness. Admiral Nelson explained one of his victories by saying, I had the happiness to command a band of brothers. The church is a real church only when it has that kind of fellowship. It was a praying church. These early Christians knew that they could not meet life in their own strength, and they didn't need to. They always went in to God before they went out to the world. They were able to meet the problems of life because they had first met him. It was a reverent church. In verse 43, the word which the authorized version correctly translates as fear has the idea of awe in it. It was said of a great Greek that he moved through this world as if it were a temple. Christians live in reverence because they know that the whole earth is the temple of the living God. It was a church where things happened. Signs and wonders were there. If we expect great things from God and attempt great things for God, things happen. More things would happen if we believed that God and we together could make them happen. It was a sharing church. These early Christians had an intense feeling of responsibility for each other. It was said of William Morris, the 19th century writer and artist, that he never saw a drunk man without having a feeling of personal responsibility for him. Real Christians cannot bear to have too much when others have too little. It was a worshiping church. They never forgot to visit God's house. We must remember that God knows nothing of solitary religion. Things can happen when we come together. God's Spirit moves upon his worshiping people. It was a happy church. Gladness was there. A gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms. It was a church whose people others could not help liking. There are two Greek words for good. Agathos simply describes a good thing. Kalos means that a thing not only is good, but also looks good. It has a charm and attractiveness about it. Real Christianity is a lovely thing. There are so many people who are good, but who with their goodness possess a streak of unlovely hardness. J.P. Struthers, minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Greenock, used to say that it would help the church more than anything else if Christians would from time to time do a bonny thing. Do something lovely. In the early church, there was a charm about God's people. And I read this, I got really excited. I shared it with Nathan. He was in the office that day, and I got excited because I believe that's us. And I believe we have the ability to be likable and to love people and to smile. And when people ask us how we're doing, our answer should always be doing great. I'm fantastic. I am saved. Even if we don't say that, if we don't feel the need to like explain it, no matter what this world throws at us, we have Jesus. We are that river of life. So I just want to encourage all of us, all of us to you know look inside of ourselves and ask God to just put away anything in us that looks at the world with that normal sort of this is terrible, that's going wrong. If you watch news programs that focus on everything wrong, it's gonna affect the way you think. It's gonna affect what you're focusing on. Half of that stuff's just ridiculous anyway. You know, they just they put a question mark at the end of it, they can say anything. Are president a terrorist? Find out. If there's a question mark, they're not saying that. They're just asking, and who knows what the answer is, right? You you can't fill your mind with those things. Instead, we're part of God's kingdom. He's our king, and he's a good one. So the challenge this morning is just to live as a river of life. Let the Holy Spirit work through you. Make the people around you smile. Give the other people in this world around you a reason to believe that God is real. Just give him the credit. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for every single person here. Thank you for this church. We are a family, we love each other. We can only love each other because you love us. And so, Holy Spirit, we ask that you would fill us with your spirit, that you would give us joy, that we would be a river of life in Woodstock, in this community, in this world that we live in, that nothing would ever be able to deter our smiles and our hope. Because our hope is in you. We love you so much, Lord. We pray that you would help us be a person of service, a people of service to anyone in this community in need. That we would come together and be a strong force for you in the community that we live in. We love you so much, Jesus. Amen.