Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Pastor Dennis Tuuri

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Clearly in saying shows our savior as a warrior king going forth to conquer the whole world and we see images of that in that psalm and in the Nazirite warrior that we talked about last week. Today we’re going to continue talking about the transformation of holy war and we’ll talk about preparation for a particular skirmish and for the holy war that we’re called to as a church this year in terms of evangelism.

Our text today is Acts 1:1-14. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. 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. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 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 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.” And then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath’s day’s 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.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the indwelling Holy Spirit in us individually and also as a church. We pray that the Holy Spirit would open our understanding, enlighten us, Lord God, with truths from your word, that we may praise and give you thanks, and that we may be transformed and fit vessels for you as we go into this week. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

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What I want to do today is first of all talk again about the big picture like we did last week, this transformation of holy warfare and talk some more about that. And look at the connection as we began to sketch out between Acts and the book of Joshua today. So that’s number one.

Number two, we’ll talk about preparation for holy warfare. What does our text today, what can we glean from it in terms of how to prepare for battle, so to speak, the sort of battle that’s described for us in our text today. And then number three, I want to actually call you or at least some of you to a particular skirmish in this transformed holy war, a particular battle that we want to engage in as a church in October, a particular service project.

So first the big picture of holy war again, second a smaller emphasis on preparation for that and how we can be victorious and what things will get in our way, and then third a particular ministry project that I’m going to invite you to engage in this fall in October.

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Now, I might just say to begin with that again, we’re going to talk about the relationship of the book of Acts to Joshua and holy war. I should say that there’s a book that was published last year. It’s a festschrift, a celebration committed or dedicated in honor of James B. Jordan, a collection of essays. And one of the essays is by Rich Lusk and that essay is on the transformation of holy war. And so much of the inspiration for last week’s talk and today’s talk and this perspective as we look at going about doing evangelism and service ministry projects into this year as a church comes from Pastor Lusk’s particular article in that book.

James B. Jordan wrote an essay a long time ago on the transformation of holy war in which some of these same basic points are laid out. And I should say that last week when we talked about the structure of Matthew and the Canaanite woman and the relationship of that to holy war and the transformation of holy war, that structure of Matthew was developed by Peter Leithart. In fact, when Peter was here several years ago at camp he taught on the Beatitudes and his sermon that Lord’s day prior to camp, as I recall, was an overview of the book of Matthew and sort of laid out the general structure of what Matthew is all about: a recapitulation of Old Testament history including in the section we talked about last week, the Exodus, and then moving through the wilderness into the conquest of the land and settling into the land.

And that was the relationship that we saw between this woman with a demon-possessed daughter, a Gentile Syrophenician woman being referred to as a Canaanite for specific purposes to show this connection to who Jesus is as the great warrior, the Nazirite warrior who will go about crushing the heads of many enemies as our text from Psalm 110 said today. And yet we see the transformation of that holy warfare in that he doesn’t crush the head of the Canaanite woman and her daughter, but rather he ministers to them and relieves her daughter from demon possession.

So he comes to bring justice to fruition. He comes to release the oppressed and he comes to deal ultimately with sin and the effects of sin and to convert the world, not to destroy the world. And so that’s the nature of this transition or transformation of holy war with continuity and discontinuity between Joshua and the book of Acts. And those are some of the source material that you can go back to if you want to pursue any particular aspect of what I’ve laid out here and we’ll continue to talk about today.

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Now today, we have these opening verses very familiar to us. I think Doug preached on them a couple of months ago. This kind of opening up of the book of Acts and the very beginning of the text for us today connects back to what Luke says to his former treatise. So right in verse one he wants us to see in terms of what he’s doing here that this is connected to his former treatise, and I want to read from the conclusion of the gospel of Luke, verses 45-53.

So this is sort of the Luke version of the great commission. So we read this: “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. This is after the road to Emmaus. And he said to them, ‘Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.’” So you can sort of see the echoes of Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth, you know, kind of truncated down to Jerusalem and all the ends of the earth in the account from Luke.

So this is the great commission: repentance and forgiveness of sins be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. And then he says, “You are witnesses of these things and behold I am sending the promise of my father upon you but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

And then “he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands he blessed them. And while he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God.”

So, you know, Luke and Acts by the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts, you see these crossover elements that link them together as links in a chain. So that ties the great commission to how that great commission is fulfilled in the book of Acts.

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And so this is really this transformation of holy warfare that we talked about last week. The connections between the book of Acts and Joshua shows us that again essential to who we are as disciples of Jesus Christ are those who are called to be witnesses to the entire world and through the witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to convert the world, to disciple the nations in the Matthew account, and to bring them to salvation in the Luke account. This is what we’re called to do now.

And just as the lesser Joshua, Joshua, was to conquer the promised land by means of this holy warfare, the holy war that God had commanded them to do, so the greater Joshua, Jesus, is going to conquer the whole world through his body, the church. And that is the connection between then what happens in the book of Joshua and the book of Acts.

So Jesus has this and what we see in the book of Acts then really acts of the apostles but really the acts of Jesus through his church to fulfill this holy war, this great commission, this transformation of the world through the proclamation of the gospel, the discipling of the nations and through essentially the rolling back of the effects of sin and its result enslaving people and preventing them from human flourishing in the service to Jesus Christ.

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So that’s what’s happening here in Psalm 110. We read in verse three, “Your people will offer themselves on the day of your power in holy garments from the womb of the morning. The dew of your youth will be yours.” And that’s what happens in the book of Acts. The servants of Jesus, his disciples, offer themselves to fulfill this holy warfare, the conversion of the world through the proclamation of the gospel.

Now, we’re going to spend quite a bit of time in Acts over the next couple of months. I’ll be out for two weeks. I have some minor plastic surgery tomorrow and I’ll have to recover from that for a couple of weeks. So we’ll have Chris W. and Michael L. in the pulpit. But when I return, we’re going to come back to the book of Acts and we’re going to look about how Paul goes about presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ in different ways to different groups of people to understand the audience that he’s speaking to and then how he transforms or changes his delivery of the message of the gospel in its accompanying elements in particular settings.

And this will be very instructive for us as we think about how we witness to individuals, how we go about service projects, how we go about transforming Oregon City and the neighborhoods that we live in. You know, it’s not that we’re all going to memorize a simple gospel presentation and present that to whoever we see. That’s not God’s way. God puts that gospel message in a particular context depending on the sort of people that he talks to.

And we’ll even see a progression of cities in the book of Acts. There are particular cities that become focal points in the book of Acts. And those cities represent religious centers as in Ephesus which we’ll talk about here in a couple of minutes, philosophical centers like Athens, political centers like Rome, and so different presentations of the gospel to particular cities and to particular people depending on their own backgrounds.

So this will help us be effective in going about the proclamation of the gospel of Christ and serving as we just read in the book of Acts to our neighbors and in our community and in our cities. And so we’re to be willing, we’re to be those who willingly serve the Lord Jesus Christ, this great Nazirite warrior who leads us in victory in the words of Psalm 110. And so Acts in its opening ties us back to the great commission and we see this fulfillment.

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Now last week I talked about some specific elements connecting up the book of Acts with the book of Joshua. And today on your handout, the first page is a chart that’s actually taken from RCC’s Sunday school curriculum that shows the connection between what happens in the book of Joshua and then what’s happening in the book of Acts. And the purpose of this is to show you multiple lines of evidence that show that what we’ve got going on is the transformation of the holy warfare that’s described in Joshua. This side of the cross, there are similarities and then there are dissimilarities. And so that table really focuses on the similarities between the two books.

As I mentioned last week, one of the strongest elements that shows this connection to us is found in Acts 18:18. We read that after this Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria. And with him were Priscilla and Aquila. “He had cut his hair for he was under a vow.”

So he’s under a vow and he cuts his hair. What sort of vow in the Bible results in the cutting of hair? Well, it’s the Nazirite vow. And when a Nazirite went forth to do holy warfare for God in particular ways, he would let his hair grow long. You know, in the days in the book, in the description of Deborah and the conquering of God’s enemies, there we read that the men’s hair hung long. In other words, they took Nazirite vows for the destruction of God’s enemies to wage warfare against those who were attacking God and his kingdom.

And so Nazirites would let their hair grow long and then they would fulfill their vow by having their hair cut off and dedicated to God. So Paul at the end of one of his missionary journeys is returning to Antioch, the place where he was commissioned, and in connection with that cuts his hair because he was under a vow. So that missionary journey, the first one commissioned at Antioch, Paul shows us that was a holy warfare Nazirite activity on the part of Paul. And so it connects up the missionary journeys and the preaching of the gospel and what happens in the book of Acts. It connects all that up with Nazirites and with the taking of Canaan in the Old Testament.

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So, one other thing I want to say before we look at that chart in just a minute, in this text that we just read from the book of Acts, we read that the disciples ask him, “Will you restore the kingdom to Israel at this time?” And he says, “No, of course not. Don’t be stupid. There’s going to be no restoration to Israel of the kingdom.”

No, he doesn’t say that. What does he say? He says, “Well, it’s not given to you to know the times and seasons, but you’ll be my witnesses. You’ll be filled with power. You’ll have the ability to testify to me.”

Now, a lot of commentators, I think, get this wrong. And I think it’s important to understand what this is all about because it has specific connection back to that commission of Jesus to disciple the world given in Matthew and then in Luke’s account, to bring salvation to the world. These were, you know, first of all, this wasn’t a particular disciple asking a stupid question. This was the whole group of disciples. It says the disciples asked Jesus and secondly this is a group of disciples who had just had graduate training in the kingdom. Right?

Jesus spent 40 days after his resurrection. And the text we just read said that what he was doing those 40 days was teaching them about the kingdom of God. He’s specifically instructing them in graduate school. We could say those 40 days post-resurrection, pre-ascension, he’s specifically instructing them in the kingdom of God. And are they going to at the end of 40 days as a group get that instruction so wrong that they’re asking a stupid question? I don’t think so.

I don’t think that’s what it means. And the problem we have is when we read Israel there, in terms of a specific group of people rather than its broadest sense. Remember we started this series with Jacob and the change of his name from Jacob to Israel and Israel means you know being ruled by God wrestling with God being ruled by God but ruling for God as well is the implication of the name and what the New Testament reveals is that the church is Israel.

Now Israel are all those who are ruled by God and who rule for God apart from you know racial backgrounds. And so the restoration of the kingdom to the church, which is Israel, I think, could be wrong, but I think that’s what they’re asking about.

Now, the significance of that is this. Jesus doesn’t tell them that ain’t happening. What he tells them is, you don’t know the times, but you do know the method. He says, well, I, you don’t know the times or seasons. However, in answer to your question about the restoration of the kingdom to those who rule for God and are ruled by God, in answer to your question, you’ll receive power from on high and you’ll be my witnesses. You’ll take this gospel everywhere.

Now, later in the book of Acts, we read that what’s going on is described as the restoration of all things. So, the holy war, the proclamation of the gospel that began in the book of Acts continues to this day. And that we want to engage in as a church individually and corporately this summer and into this fall.

What that’s all about is the restoration of the kingdom to those who are ruled by God and rule for him. The discipling of the nations and ultimately the restoration of all things. That’s what history is. This side of the cross, it is one long conquest of the greater Canaan, the whole world in very similar fashion to the conquest of Canaan by Joshua and the army of God in the book of Joshua with significant changes and differences.

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So the text that we just read, I think stresses to us that we don’t know times, we don’t know seasons. You know, we’re not called to look at that. What we’re called to be is faithful in the power of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the gospel and recognize that the promise of Jesus Christ is that be effectual. We’ll win the land. We’ll win the world. The nations will be discipled to Jesus Christ. That’s who we are. Our people engaged in that particular mission.

And in one sense, everything else we do is subservient to that goal, to the discipling of the nations. That’s our ultimate identity and calling as Christians is to engage in this sort of holy war.

Now, I’ve got a table there for you. I mentioned last week a number of connections here. You can look at this table on your own. I don’t think I want to go over it, but there’s some rather obvious stuff happening, right? The death of Moses, the death and resurrection and disappearance of Jesus. You know, Joshua then takes up the mantle and moves into the holy war in Canaan. The Holy Spirit now comes as the leader of the army.

Now, there are guys that are called, Paul, of course, is one of them, a significant Joshua-like figure. But ultimately the replacement for Jesus is the work of the Holy Spirit directly, which is quite significant. Commands, you know, to both sets of armies given on the table there, which rather obvious, we just talked about for the last few minutes. Leaders are encouraged at the beginning of the book of Joshua. You know the head of the Lord’s army perhaps the pre-incarnate Jesus comes to Joshua and says be strong be courageous. You’ll be okay with this battle. It’ll be great. And then in the same thing in the book of Acts, what’s going to happen? They should wait for power, strength that’ll give them courage, the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit to come upon them. So, they’re given encouragement for the task that they’re called to do just like Joshua and his people were given encouragement.

They move into a, they start with a particular city, right? In Joshua, they start with Jericho. In the book of Acts, they start with Jerusalem, which is interesting because Jerusalem has sort of become Jericho, right, it’s become sort of apostate, and you know it’s interesting that both in Jericho and Jerusalem the particular warfare is waged liturgically. They do burn Jericho after they conquer it but really they march around liturgically blowing the trumpets shouting and that’s what brings down the walls and conquers the enemies, and Jerusalem it’s the proclamation of the gospel. It’s the worship that’s being held in the city that is in the same way you know attacking a major city.

And so there’s this connection. There are discipline situations in both accounts. We mentioned this last week but the sin of Achan results in problems and then we have the sin of Ananias and Sapphira and both of those in both instances the people that are bringing trouble upon the people of God are both dealt with by God and done away with.

Now it’s interesting the difference though too, right? So if we see the commonality between Achan and Ananias and Sapphira and we, there’s a textual link. Ananias and Sapphira apparently in some of the stuff they keep money back and Achan, the Septuagint version in the Greek version of the Old Testament uses that exact same Greek word to talk about Achan’s stealing stuff that was dedicated to God. But notice that with Ananias and Sapphira, they were lying against the Holy Spirit. They weren’t required to give all the proceeds of the sale of their land to the church. So there’s a distinction going on.

There’s more maturity happening this side where people are called upon to make decisions and then to be true to their decisions. But in both cases, that happens and it’s dealt with. And the end result of that church discipline, we could say, is that fear comes upon the people. And so the message of the transformation of Canaan or Jerusalem in the broader world, it proceeds in relationship to the fear of people that comes upon the discipline that’s exerted against people that would bring trouble upon them.

So there’s there’s lots of other connections here. I won’t go over the whole list, but that’s a chart that can sort of show you the continuity between Joshua and Acts.

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I want to talk a little bit about some of the discontinuities. We have this connection to help us understand what we’re about doing, but also to draw discontinuities, how things have changed, how the work of the Lord Jesus Christ has transformed holy warfare.

And the most obvious difference is that the change is from killing people to converting them. And we saw this with the Canaanite woman and her daughter last week. That’s that’s that’s a big transformation of how holy war is accomplished. And so when we read these texts from Psalm 110 about killing people, we can now say that this side of the cross, what those things refer to is their death and resurrection in Jesus, their conversion.

Secondly, in the old, in the book of Joshua, they’re inflicting suffering on other people, right? They’re engaging in war, inflicting suffering. Whereas if we look at what Paul does in the book of Acts, he suffers for the sake of those that he’s saving and delivering.

In verse 22, we read Paul is giving his farewell speech to the Ephesian elders and Ephesus was this gentile city. So, this is a conquered city now, a converted city at least in part. And Paul is giving his speech to them, his farewell address. He’s not going to see him anymore. And he says, “And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.” Verse 25. “So he’s proclaiming a kingdom.”

But in what way does this accomplish? Going back to verse 22. “Behold, I am going to Jerusalem constrained by the spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value, nor is it precious to myself, if only I may finish my course in the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

So Paul says, I’m going to suffer some more. In other places, we read more about his sufferings. So instead of inflicting suffering for the sake of those that the holy war is being waged against, we’re suffering for those people. And Paul is completely willing to suffer and if necessary die for the sake of the proclamation of the gospel and the conversion of the Canaanites or the Gentiles.

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You know, third, so another big picture is that instead of harming people as happens in Joshua, what happens now is Paul is particularly prone to talk about protecting people. He’s not trying to harm people. He’s actually trying to release them from being harmed, release them from oppression and to actually protecting people. And in chapter 20 verse 29 again talking to the Ephesian elders, he says, “I know after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men, speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.”

And then in verse 35, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard, that we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, how he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and he prayed with them all.”

So Paul says, you know, our job is not now to harm people, but rather and it’s not just to not harm people, it’s to protect the weak. You know, what did we see in Matthew’s gospel? We saw Jesus this the symbolic case that was used for how we go about holy warfare in our day and age involved a weak person, a widow and a fatherless child. And so these were some of the classes that deserve particular attention in the Old Testament and Paul says that in our holy warfare instead of you know harming people we’re actually supposed to be moved to protect them and release them from the suffering that they’re in.

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Four, from forcing people to do particular things in the book of Joshua service now, service to those people becomes the norm. Verse 19 of chapter 20, Paul says, “serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews. So Paul is serving Jesus by serving those people, the Ephesian elders and the Ephesian church and others that he’s called upon to convert.

So there’s a transition away from forcing people into things to now serving people and through that service calling them to obedience to Jesus.

In Joshua, they’re after their own inheritance, right? And that’s proper at that time. But they’re going about, they’re going to conquer the promised land and they’re going to get their own inheritance. But Paul talks about inheritance in verse 32 of chapter 20. And he says, “I commend you to God and to the word of his grace which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”

So our attitude now is not trying to achieve our own inheritance first and foremost. It’s to try to bring those that we’re conquering, so to speak, through service, through love, through suffering, through their conversion, it’s to bring those people into the inheritance that all the saints in Jesus Christ share.

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So there’s a shift, there’s discontinuity in inheritance. And then finally in the book of Joshua the method used is primarily sword and fire, right, so they use the sword to conquer and fire is used to consume things. In Joshua chapter 6 verse 24 after they conquer Jericho it says they burn the city with fire and everything in it. Only the silver and the gold and the vessels of bronze and of iron they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.

Now we have a little picture back there of what the transformation will do and that is that instead of fire literal fire now the fire of the Holy Spirit will come upon us and empower us and we in the power of the Holy Spirit will bring the greater silver and gold, the people themselves, the Gentiles, the dwellers of Portland and Oregon City and the various places we live, those precious image bearers of God will bring those into the service of the temple of God through conversion.

And we’ll do it not by using a literal sword, but by using the sword of the scriptures. So the Bible and the power of the Holy Spirit replace as it were the literal sword and literal fire of the book of Joshua.

So you know there’s continuity and discontinuity with holy warfare. And those differences are quite significant. That’s what we want to focus on as we go about doing the work that we’re called to do.

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You know, all of our community groups, everybody in community group is supposed to be praying for somebody they want to witness to this year. And you’re supposed to be praying in your community group for everyone as they try to witness to a particular friend, neighbor, coworker, whatever it is. We’re supposed to have this as a model this year. And we’re supposed to have these service projects in mind that will lead to this kind of activity that we find in the book of Acts.

Jesus said that all the things that he did and taught in verse one of Acts 1 is what’s described in the gospel and we want to engage in doing things and in teaching things as well and those two things go together. And so as we go about doing those things these distinctions in the holy warfare, the transformation of it should be at the top of our minds, right, should be at the top of our minds.

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Now, I want to talk for just a couple of minutes now then about preparation. So, we see what it is. We see what the purpose and goal of it is. We’re assured of that purpose and goal. We see the significance in our own lives of engaging as holy war warriors for Jesus Christ and what that means in the big picture. So, hopefully you’re ready to go. Hopefully you see this as central to your identity. But I want to talk for just a couple of minutes about preparation for battle.

How do we get ready to go about doing that holy warfare? And the text today, this is what it’s all about, right? Jesus says, you’re going to go engage in holy war and you’re going to do it to the uttermost parts of the earth. But there’s preparation that’s required for you prior to actually beginning the work. And he says, you got to do some stuff here first in preparation. And we can draw lessons from that to help us think about what can we do to enhance the effectiveness of the warfare that we’re going to engage in this fall on into the next year.

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Okay. Now, each of the community groups are trying to develop not just a leader but also a missiologist. And I think about half the groups have them now. Maybe the other half are still working on them. But if you’re a missiologist in one of these community groups, or if you are in a community group and know your missiologists, these are particularly important for them, right?

If the missiologists are really going to be kind of part of the lead into doing service to communities and encouraging people to pray for and evangelize in an effective way, and we’ll look at presentations of the gospel as we get into this summer and fall. If the missiologist is kind of one of the lead people in doing that, then this preparation I’m going to talk about that’s important for all of us, you know, is particularly important for you. If you’re one of these missiologists, you particularly should listen to this part of the sermon.

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Now, and the first thing I want to say, preparation for service is a commitment, and this isn’t so much for each of you individually, but it’s for the leaders of the church, a commitment to church discipline.

Now, why do you say that, Dennis? Because in both cases, in Joshua and Acts, we’ve described how church discipline was significant. When there’s sin in the camp and it’s undelt with losses happen. When they went from Jericho to Ai, they lost. They weren’t able to go about doing what they were supposed to do there because one person was engaged in sin. Now, if we want to go about doing effective evangelism and service this fall, I would suggest to you that unless we’re serious about church discipline, we’re going to be ineffective in that task.

Now, this is significant today because the whole world has moved away from kind of the idea of judging. And you know, the idea is that well, if you’re going to be really effective for the kingdom, you sure don’t want to engage in church discipline. Everybody sees that as you’re being unloving. That’s going to do the last thing you want to do to help bring people into the kingdom. I heard Francis Chan a year or so ago at a place here in the greater Portland area. I heard him talk and he was talking about his book called Erasing Hell. And he said that, you know, he realized that as he studied hell, wanting to find it not really in the Bible, he didn’t want it there, but he realized the Bible absolutely declares that hell exists.

And he said he realized as he studied for that book that he had become kind of a PR agent for God. “God, I read this about you. I read that you engage in discipline and putting people to death at times. And you judge the whole world through the flood. And you have this side of you, this wrath generated by your love and your love becomes wrath as people strike out against your beloved. I read this about you, but God, if I tell people about you like that, they’re not going to want to come to you. He wanted to make God look nicer than God really is in a desire to be effective in what we could call holy warfare, evangelism.

And he recognized that was just wrong. He can’t use his own methods to accomplish God’s purpose. And God says that to accomplish his purpose, he tells us in Joshua and he tells us in Acts that significant to that process is a preparatory commitment to engage in church discipline when necessary.

I reread an article recently by Jim West that I read 30 years ago and it was a in one of the early volumes put out by the Tyler guys, Jim Jordan and that group and West is a pastor of an RCUS church in Sacramento and the name of the article was substitutes for church discipline or something like that. And he says nobody wants to engage in excommunicating anybody anymore. So we have all these substitutes and one substitute for instance is counseling. We’ll counsel people for years that probably we ought to be doing church discipline with. And it doesn’t help them not to apply what God says is his method to bring them to recovery. And it doesn’t help the church. So we need to have a commitment not to be freaked out by church discipline. It will get in the way of our effectiveness if we let obvious and overt sin continue in the context of our particular church or any church that wants to be effective for the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Secondly, unity. So Jesus says get ready and prepare for the gift of the Holy Spirit. And what do they do? They don’t go off by their own meditating in their own prayer closet. They come together as a group to the upper room and pray together as a group. They’re unified together. If a church has disunity going on, if we’re going about holy warfare, not corporately, but just off on our own individually, and there’s no real center to what we are, you know, if you have an army where everybody in the particular platoon is just doing their own thing, highly ineffective. But when people are unified together, then that army is more effective in its particular work.

We read in verse 14, the text we read today, “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers.” Unity is a precondition for effective holy warfare, for effective evangelism and service that leads to the proclamation of the gospel and the discipling of a community. Unity is a big part of that. And so if you’re a lone ranger sort of person, no, you know, become part of the unity of the whole of the body of Jesus Christ. The unity is an essential part.

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Three, the Holy Spirit is absolutely required. What does Jesus say? You know, he doesn’t say go start doing this stuff. He says wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. So your work, my work, our work this fall in preaching the gospel and in doing that kind of transformed holy warfare is absolutely dependent and I know we say this but it’s absolutely dependent upon the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Right now how does the spirit work in our life? Well, the spirit speaks through the word. And you know I think that one part of preparation for evangelism and service is becoming regular in Bible reading. Not because Bible reading abstractly as something but because the Holy Spirit speaks through the scriptures to us. You want to develop a proper sense of submission to the Holy Spirit as you go about doing evangelism and service projects for your communities and neighborhoods. Absolutely critical. Jesus said this and you know the scriptures are the way the spirit speaks to us primarily, right? It’s primarily through the word of God.

I had a conversation, I had several conversations this week. One, I’ve had a number of conversations in the last couple of months, and I’ll ask people, “How’s your Bible reading?” “Not too good,” they’ll tell me. I hear this from almost everybody I ask. Now, I don’t ask very many people, so maybe a lot of you are doing just great, but I get the sense that maybe we’re not doing so good at that.

I had another conversation with a person and they told me that they had read their Bible and that they were reading a particular text. They were just reading through the Bible in a particular text, they felt conviction for something they had said to me about somebody else and they said, “I shouldn’t have done that.” You see, the Holy Spirit was using the scriptures to bring conviction of sin and this particular sin could have caused some degree of disunity in the context of who we are as a church.

So if the spirit is absolutely required for doing effective holy warfare and he is, then the development of our relationship to the spirit by reading his word and being sensitive as he brings conviction from that work particularly in elements of unity of the church. Well, you see this is quite important to us.

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Again, community groups, one of the purpose of the community groups is some degree of accountability in the basic things of life. Get your community group to just share, you know, what’s it take two minutes to talk about Bible reading and how much people are doing it. Hold each other accountable. You know, hold your feet to the flame on this thing. Get everybody reading their Bibles regularly. Okay? It shouldn’t be hard to do. And you don’t have to read big tons or anything, but some exposure to the scriptures throughout the week, giving the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to speak through that word to you and enhance your sanctification and your effectiveness then for evangelism.

You know, I know people that aren’t effective for evangelism for years. and they’re not reading their Bible for years and they’re not particularly, you know, thinking about the scripture. I mean, that’s why that happens. So, community group leaders, you become accountable to your people. If you’re having trouble, confess your sin to your group. Tell them, “I’m having a hard time reading the Bible regularly. How about you?” And then you all pray for each other and try to encourage and hold each other accountable.

The Holy Spirit is absolutely critical in preparation.

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Now, there’s text in Ephesians 4 that we shouldn’t grieve the Holy Spirit. So, let me read this text and talk a little bit more about our relationship to the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4, and I’ll put it in context. Verse 29, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but only such as is good for building up, edifying, as the occasion fits, that it may also give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

So if we want relationship with the Holy Spirit, we want to hear the spirit speaking through the scriptures, which you can’t do if you don’t read them or study them, but at least read them. And we also then want our speech to be under the control of the Holy Spirit that it ministers grace and doesn’t tear down, but it’s building up.

Now, if we can’t do that, and then we try to use our speech to convince our neighbor of the gospel of Christ and to bring him into the inheritance of the saints. They’re going to be a major disconnect. Put away filthy communication. Put away communication also that produces disunity and put on speech that’s pleasing to the Holy Spirit and doesn’t grieve him. Speech that is edifying and ministers grace.

Now he goes on to say after he says, “Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.” You got bitterness, you got malice, you got bad attitude in your heart, put them away. Because if you leave them there, then it’s going to grieve the Holy Spirit and you’re going to be completely ineffectual for gospel ministry, for doing what we’re called to do, for doing a task that is absolutely central to who you are in this life. This is your purpose to witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Goes on to say, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another just as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

So, unity again and kindness to people enhances the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. And then one last verse here, but sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. Now, do we believe that verse?

I mean, think what that verse is saying. Sexual immorality, impurity, covetousness, must not even be named among you. He doesn’t say now don’t go engaging in a lot of that stuff. He says, don’t even, you know, yak about that or let it have a place in your ordinary conversations in your way of life. I mean, he says, don’t even let it be named among you. Don’t let the first appearance of sexual immorality and covetousness rise up in your life. That’s pretty radical stuff. You know, the scriptures are radical, right?

And we tend to take them and just sort of de-radicalize them and just sort of slide along our way and then we wonder why we’re not effective in doing our Psalm 110 following the leader and converting the nation stuff. Well, that’s why, you know. George Washington knew about the importance of personal morality and holiness. We’re talking about relationship to the Holy Spirit, right?

When George Washington was in the field, he would severely punish any of the men in his army that swore because George Washington knew what we don’t know a lot of times. George Washington knew that for the actual battle and warfare against the British, he was absolutely dependent upon the divine blessing of God. And if he did things or let his troops do things that turned God’s blessing into curse, they were doomed. And forget America. Forget America. That’s the attitude we need to have.

Are you serious about moving into praying at least for your neighbors, trying to evangelize, doing community service projects, engaging in holy war sort of stuff this fall? Then be serious about getting rid of unholiness in your life. Can’t tell you how many people I talked to, men usually, but women too, problem with, you know, sexual temptation. It’s absolutely all around us. And if we don’t commit ourselves to this kind of verse, to getting ready for the warfare, to hearing George Washington tell us, “Don’t do that stuff because it’s going to bring God’s curse upon us.” If we’re not ready to do that, we’re going to lose.

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Preparation is preparation by waiting for the gift and the power of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is holy. And when we get unholy and engage in lots of sexual immorality and bad speech, then God says that’s the exact opposite of preparation for holy warfare. It’s going to bring defeat.

You remember the Balaam strategy, right? They were about ready to enter into the Holy Land doing holy warfare and they’re going to take over the land. And you know, Balaam was hired to curse them and to say, “No, don’t let that happen.” And but he said, “Well, I can’t curse them because God’s blessing them. They’re going to win. They’re going to be effective. They’re going to transform Canaan into a place where holy people live.” But then he said, “There is one thing we could do. I can’t curse him. I can’t ask God to curse him. But what I can do is bring along some really pretty gals from outside of the faith of Yahweh. And I can get those young warrior guys, you know, to sin sexually. I can do that. And you know what? Then I don’t curse them, but God will curse them. They fall into sexual immorality. That’s going to bring the wrath of God against them. And that’s going to, that’ll do what you want, B., you know, king. You don’t want them entering into these victories. Well, they’re going to lose if I bring those pretty gals along.”

And that’s what he did. And the wrath of God struck out against his people. And for a while, they weren’t effective at holy warfare.

So, preparation for what we do in terms of community service and evangelism must involve this understanding of the need for the power of the Holy Spirit, listening to his word, trying to be sensitive to his conviction to us as we read the scriptures. And then on the other side of it, cleaning up our lives in holiness so that the power of the Holy Spirit will flow through us.

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One last element of preparation, prayer. This is what they did to get ready, right, for the big conquest. They met together waiting for the Holy Spirit’s power and they prayed together.

You know, when I first got serious about following the Lord in my adult life, I was at a conservative Baptist church in Beaverton. That’s where Christine and I met. And you know, it was really good and Frank Spears of the Jesus People USA. This is where I met Frank. And you know, Frank and myself and one or two other guys, well, there probably were different guys at different times, but we were single guys. And you know what we did with our Saturday nights? We didn’t go clubbing. Not that there’s anything wrong with clubbing necessarily, but what we did with Saturday nights is we would get together, four, five, six guys, and pray for the church.

We’d pray particularly for the worship service the next day, for the proclamation of the word, and then we’d pray for any problems that were going on in the church. We prayed. We prayed as a group. We need that to be effective at what we want to do here. We have to be people of prayer. And we’ve talked about this over and over the last couple of years. And I know a lot of you are, but those of you that aren’t yet become so. And think about getting together with other people.

I heard the other day about two guys here and they’re meeting for prayer at a park regularly. I think every morning or something. And I was just so thankful, you know, because I know that’s going to produce fruit. And I know that if we don’t do those sorts of things, the fruit won’t happen. This is what they did to prepare for holy warfare is they prayed together and they prayed about what was going to happen.

We need a group of young people or older people in this church regularly, weekly, praying together for the endeavors that we’re looking forward to doing this fall and on into this next year. These development of the community groups, mission into our neighborhoods, evangelism of a particular person, that friend of each of us or coworker or whatever it is. All right, let me call you to a skirmish then.

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There’s a battle coming up. I want you to go out to the battlefield. Many of you, not all of you necessarily, but on your handouts in addition to the chart from the book of Joshua and Acts, it’s got this thing that says “image” at the top of it.

Many of you know that one of the first things we did got in Oregon City was to help establish a Love, Inc. branch for the county. Love, Inc. last year started a thing called Pathways of Hope. And it does exactly what we talked about last week. It relieves the oppression of people by trying to mentor them in various disciplines, financial disciplines, training of children disciplines, that sort of stuff, vocation, so that they can get away from dependency and lives of kind of not going anywhere to becoming, you know, effective and productive citizens.

And this is a year-long program. A lot of commitment involved for people to mentor somebody else. Well, what they found out after that year is they want to start now an entry program into that. It’s only eight weeks long. This is not big commitment time. They came to RCC. Joan Jones, the head of loving Clackamas County, met with the session at our session meeting Wednesday night, presented this to us, and we’re yay and amen. This is just what God wants us to do: to have a series of meetings here, eight lessons, eight weeks, and it’s kind of an introduction.

If people go through these eight weeks well and graduate from this image course, then they’ll move on, many of them, into the Pathways of Hope. So, it’s kind of a new gateway thing that really focuses upon who they are being created in God’s image and culminates in the eighth week with a discussion of their own relationship to God through Christ. So, it’s very much aimed at providing the foundation for them becoming productive as citizens moving away from the kinds of dependency and very difficult lives that they had.

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Now, many of these participants will be single moms. There’ll be on-site babysitting. There’ll be a meal with the mom and the kids here. Then there’ll be babysitting and some homework help for the kids that’ll come to those series of meetings over eight weeks. And then the mom or the mom and dad will have a lesson presented to them that week and then 45 minutes of discussion in a small group of three or four people with someone there to help guide the discussion.

So, it’s presented to you on the handout that’s there, but this is something we’re doing. Dave H. has stepped up to be the primary coordinator for RCC in this event. I talked to one community group already and the community group leader was pretty excited. He probably hasn’t talked to his people yet, but one of the Oregon City community groups seems pretty excited about being part of this.

You know, there’s a number of things that we could do if we had enough people to man these things. All we really need is well, three or four people and the building. We can do that, of course, but I’d like us to do more.

Most of these people are going to need rides somehow to get to the church from their homes in Oregon City or Gladstone or wherever they are. We’ll need people to help lead the discussion, these small group discussions. If we have 20 participants in the class. That’ll probably break into six small groups that’ll meet throughout the church in different classrooms. That’d be six people to help guide that discussion. We need people that’ll just sort of be part of the hosting here at RCC that’ll have dinner with the people, get to know them, develop friendships with these people, right?

So, there’s various ways you could help out. Small commitment, eight weeks and you’re done. Well, there’s a graduation ceremony, so kind of nine weeks. No big deal. Not a lot of training. It’ll only be one training session for you. But so a training session then participation in a nine-week program. But very small cost to you personally. And yet it could be exactly what we talked about last week particularly and today as well where we’re dealing with people who have very difficult lives who need to be transformed who need to be brought into relationship with Jesus and discipled in terms of how they live their lives and what they do with their resources and how can they go about being more productive than they are now. How can they do a better job of parenting their children?

I mean it’s a tremendous opportunity for us to provide this gateway set of classes that will then in itself produce friendships and stuff but then also help these people move into the mentoring program that has a lot more commitment involved with it in terms of the participants.

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So this is a skirmish. This is a little battle that’s coming up. This is our little, you know, I preach on holy war on Sunday. Joan comes and presents this wonderful opportunity to us on Wednesday. We’re a go. So if you’re interested, if your community group wants to be involved as a community group, talk to Dave H. Talk to him today. You know, it’s two months away, but that time will happen quickly and we want to start to fill in these slots. There’s a lot of logistical stuff that Dave will oversee, but people will have to help him with. So immediately it’s an opportunity to make application of these last two sermons and get us you know a running start as we move into the fall and the blessings of God upon us as we seek to bless, serve other people, go through some suffering for them, and bring them into their own inheritance with the saints as well.

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Let me conclude by reading that what happened at the end of Luke and what happens at the beginning of Acts. It says that “he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And while he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.”

So, you know, he’s blessing them. Probably Aaron’s benediction. I don’t know for sure, but he’s blessing them. And then he goes into heaven. The blessing of Jesus, the mediator between heaven and earth, is what is the final act that he does as he ascends to heaven. The blessing of Jesus, the mediator between heaven and earth, is what is the final act that he does. as he ascends to heaven. And they’re watching him do this. He’s blessing them to what purpose? So that they can do just what he’s told them to do, to be his disciples throughout the whole world and to disciple the nations.

And it’s interesting because in the Acts account, he does this and they’re just amazed. They’re just staring at him, you know, as you would. And they’re just, you know, in reverential awe of what has happened. And two men in white tell them, “Well, why do you keep staring at the sky? He’s coming back. There’s work to be done. Get down to Jerusalem.”

Now, we don’t know this, but J. Alexander, I think, said that one of his friends suggested that those two are not angels. That it’s Moses and Elijah. Why would he think that? Because that’s the guys who are on the Mount of Transfiguration. And those are the guys that were with Jesus and a couple of the disciples there. And what did Jesus tell them there? They were in the same sort of alike reverence of Jesus and in the presence of Moses and Elijah. But then they were told, “Hey, you got to get out of here now. You got to go back down the mountain because you’ve gotten power now through what you’ve seen. You’ve been transfigured, right? You’ve been transformed knowing who you are and the power and the relationship you have to Christ and these other great saints.”

And then and what happens next in the narrative after the Mount of Transfiguration? There’s demon-possessed child down there that they got to take care of.

We’re called to come together and to recognize that Jesus is in this perpetual position of blessing us for the purpose of going about evangelism, service to our neighborhoods, and fulfilling the great commission and discipling the nations. That’s going to happen because his blessing from heaven is upon us and the power of the Holy Spirit empowers us.

And we just want to say, well, that’s great. It’s wonderful. And then he wants us to know at the end of the service, he says, now you got to get out of here. You got to move into your week tomorrow because there’s demon-possessed children. There’s work to be done. There’s holy war to engage in the power of the spirit. That’s why I blessed you. Not so that you can have a wonderful experience right now, so that you can be go my people. He says as you go into the week.

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Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the benediction that you place upon us at the end of this service and for the reminder that you’ve empowered us, Lord God, to be those to successfully go to relieve those who are demon-possessed, to relieve those, Lord God, who are subject to oppression and injustice due to their own sin and due to the sinful state of our world. But help us Lord God to love them, serve them sacrificially.

Help us particularly to make opportunity, make the most of this opportunity this October with the image program to step up and to recognize that you bless us to the end that we might be successful warriors for King Jesus. Make us a people of prayer, holiness, Lord God, as we go about these tasks. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.