All right, good to have you all here. Acts chapter 9. My name is Mark. I'm one of the pastors around here for now. Good to have you. I'm glad that you're here. If you have a Bible, open it up to Acts chapter 9. If you don't, grab that bulletin that we give you on the way in.
I'm doing week two of a sit down, teach through the text versus preaching you too much to try to get out of the way. Really good to have you. "Unstoppable" is the name of the series through the book of Acts, 28 chapters where God is unstoppable. The church is unstoppable. God can change your life. He has the power to change your life. We're going to see another story that is very similar to that today.
So if you do have a Bible, Acts chapter 9. I'm going to start actually at verse 31. Your bulletin doesn't have to be in the Bible. It's going to be in the Bible. Your sermon notes do not have verse 31, but I needed it in order to set up what we're going to talk about today. So it's going to go up on the screen for you.
Here's how the text starts. Remember last time it was Saul converted, right? He was amazing. He was blinded and Jesus says, "Hey, I know you were persecuting the church. Now I'm going to use you to change the church or reach Gentiles." Now it's the next thing that happens. It says, "Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened."
So let me just, because some of you probably don't think about maps when you think about Christianity or, you know, you don't know the maps off by heart in your Bibles. So when they talk about, when Luke talks about Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, this is actually how it lays out. And so some of us are like, "Oh, I didn't really know how the Bible is." So this is Israel. This is Judea. You have Jerusalem down here, which is kind of the main hub. That's where the temple is. That's where all the smart theologians are. That's where everyone hangs out and does scholarship. So this is like the university town or whatever.
And then up here in Galilee, this is like fishing town. All right. This is like Loomis. All right. This is like they make their own butter and they ride their horses to work, you know, whatever. So that's Galilee, fishing town, chill, and Jesus. And then this is Samaria, which cuts off, which is a group of people that all the Israelites hate, and they hate them. But notice something, Jesus actually did his whole ministry for three years up here, and then comes down here to die.
We know Jesus visited Jerusalem at least three times because in John it tells us he went to three different places. He went to Jerusalem, he went to Jerusalem, he went to Jerusalem, different Passovers. But, um, Galilee is where he did three years of ministry. He talked about birds and fishing and all that kind of gave all those parables and sermons. All that happens up here. And then he goes to Jerusalem and dies, which is fascinating because if you think about Jesus, you know, raised in Nazareth, that's why they call him Jesus of Nazareth. And it would have been like, these people were the uneducated people, right?
These were the people. And there was actually an accent that people had in Galilee that down here in the like, in the cool part of town, in the educated part of town, they made fun of them. So it's like, you know, it's like someone with a southern drawl. I don't know if you know this, like in America, but people with a southern drawl, the rest of the world thinks they sound stupid, right? So it's like, they're not intelligent. When you talk like this, I just wondered where the next town was over there. People go, "Oh, that person's not bright," right? It's like Forrest Gump or something walking around. Like, okay, they're not too bright.
So, so Jesus had, this is what's amazing, Jesus had an accent like a southern drawl. It didn't actually sound like that, but it was like, to their ears, it was, that was the dumb person's accent, all right? It was like, "Oh, he's from Galilee," which is crazy because when he comes down to Jerusalem, this is like Manhattan, like New York City. I go to NYU, I study Socrates and philosophy, and you're coming in going, "I just wonder, where's the subway? And I don't know where Times Square is, and I'd like to find it. What's up?"
And so that's what he sounds like to him when he comes down. He says, "I'm the Messiah, and I want y'all to follow me where we're going, and I want to die for the world," right? They're like, "What? There's no way God would use a guy from Galilee with that accent to come down here and change the world." That's how crazy and upside down it was that God would use you. So this is what he's talking about when he's laying out, they know the map when he's writing the story.
So it says, "Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace." What we're enjoying right now is the church, right? There's a time of peace. None of you fight with each other. There's no dissension or division among you. You all get along and believe all the same stuff. Beautiful. So it enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened, right?
I love this because the church needs to grow stronger, stronger, stronger, not just convert, but actually grow in Christ, become a stronger person. I love this. Yesterday I spoke at a men's conference in Chicago. So I drove there on Friday, gathered with this church yesterday morning, and it was incredible because I literally saw this group of men. It was a men's thing. So they all come together and they're all going, "Man, I want to be stronger," right?
It was actually, I didn't even know if I was going to get back to be able to preach last night when I was preaching because of all the traffic. So I'm like, preach all afternoon. And I'm like, I get back for the sermon. And I'm like coming in, the thing's like, "Oh, you're not going to arrive in time." So I'm like texting Kevin Thompson. I'm like, "Kevin, I need you to prep a sermon on Acts chapter nine and be ready to preach it." And he's like, "Okay, bro."
So I'm like, "I'm coming in at five o'clock, super hot. I don't know if I can get here in time." And so they're praying in the back, "Lord." And so he's prepped it. He's ready to go. He wants to preach. And then they're praying back there, "Lord, please help Mark to get here on time." And Kevin's like, "What the?" So we didn't know if it was going to be Kevin or me coming in from San Francisco. It was a lot of traffic. There were people, I didn't know where I was going. Half the time I was on a bridge. It turned me around to come back and over. Crazy.
Anyways. So, but it was great because all these men, all these men gathered and said, "I want to be better. I want to be better grandfathers. I want to be better husbands. I want to be better students. I want to be a better boyfriend. I want to actually get strengthened, not just stay where I am." And I was thinking about this. We're actually doing this here. September 16th was a men's event. So make sure men, you sign up for it. Look, I'm speaking at it, I guess. And so it's going to be awesome. It's going to be food, great time. So six o'clock, make sure you register for that on September 16th.
But it's all about strengthening. It's about going beyond just where you're at right now. Make sure you have an appetite to actually get better and stronger. Verse 31. So, and then it says, "Living in the fear of the Lord." If you got your Bible open, underline the word "fear." What I love about that is we rarely talk about fearing God. We talk about liking God. We have this version of God where he's a nice, safe person. And we don't fear him though. We don't have like that reverent respect where they're growing in their fear. They're recognizing God is so big and so amazing and so wonderful.
But he's also not someone you play around with. He's not someone you play around with. And Mark Buchanan years ago wrote a book called "Your God is Too Safe." And he talked about the idea that in the Western church, what we've done is we've created a version of God that he says is like a daft old uncle, a little runny about the eyes, playing puzzles in the backyard, hoping that you give him a little bit of attention every once in a while. And if you give him a little, "Oh, hi, uncle out there. Oh, hi, I'm so glad you gave me some attention." He's so happy.
That's how we think about God. But he's not like that. He's the fired up, jacked up against sin. He's full of wrath, full of justice. He's the God in Revelation 1 where he's got fireballs for eyes and he's coming back holding a sword, riding a horse to deal with justice and sin in the world. I mean, this is a God that you should fear. You should have a respect for where you go, "Man, this is like an electrical socket. I'm going to stick my finger in it. I'm not sure." Like, this is the God who is alive and well.
It's similar to this. As I was driving to San Francisco, I get down there and the church was right near the airport. And so I'm watching, as you guys know, when you're there, you're just watching these massive planes come in, international airport, just massive Emirates, all these planes, and they're landing. And I'm driving, I'm fascinated by planes, right? And there's something about, so I just like, I'm driving, but I'm just watching the planes half the time. Like, "What the, man, it's fast."
And this is like these huge planes and these little wheels. And you're like, "Man, how is that, how are I, I love that." I'm looking at it and I'm in awe of the mechanics and the size. "How's this thing staying in the air?" But I'm also kind of going, "Is this thing going to hit me? Like, is this going to fall on the highway right now and kill me?" So I'm watching it for those two reasons out of awe.
And I'm going, "This is exactly what this word means." It's like you revere God. You look at him and you're like, "He's complex. He's huge. He's massive." But I'm also a little bit, there's a little bit of me that goes, "Man, if he comes down on me, I gotta, I gotta be careful here." That's what the idea of the fear of the Lord is. And then it says, "And encouraged by the Holy Spirit, an increase in number."
Encouraged by the Holy Spirit. One of the great jobs the Holy Spirit does, underline this in your Bible, is to encourage you. And you know that you live a life of discouragement. You live a life of criticism. Some of you live a life where all you do is criticize people. You're not an encourager. You're a critic. And you're constantly negative. And you think that you look smart and that your contribution to the world is to be a critic and to be mean and to pick at everyone's flaws. And that's your life and that's your job.
The reality is, the way that you draw people to yourself is through encouragement. We know this. If you don't have a lot of friends, one of the reasons might be because you're constantly a critic. You have no encouragement in you. If you read the book by Dale Carnegie called "How to Win Friends and Influence People," some of you should be reading this book, all right? Because you don't have a lot of friends. You don't have a lot of friends. You don't have a lot of friends. You don't have a lot of friends.
And you're like, "I don't know why I don't have friends. Man, the world sucks and everyone's a loser." You know, it's like, "Well, that's why." Because Dale Carnegie talks about the idea that the way you attract bees is through honey. You don't attract bees through criticism. You attract bees through honey. You attract bees through being an encourager.
Think of Pastor Ray. Okay, Pastor Ray has the gift of encouragement. He is a constant encourager. It's all, he believes in you, no matter if you believe in yourself or not. He is the most positive. I'll sit in a room in a meeting and I'll be like critical about like 20 things for 30 minutes. "This sucked and that wasn't good." And he'll be like, "Yeah, but that one song wasn't that wonderful." And you're like, "I guess, man, I just, I just, you know."
And he's like, "You know, that person, they're the most wonderful person in the world. They're just the best. And that book I read, that's the best book that's ever been written in Christianity." I'm like, "Wow. And I wrote it. That's amazing. Thank you, Pastor Ray. You're just so encouraging." It's crazy. I mean, he's just an encourager. And when you're an encourager, everyone wants to be around you, right?
Sometimes I'll just call Ray when I'm just feeling down. I'll just be like, "Hey, want to come over and hang out with me?" And he doesn't know why. It's because I just need him to say nice things about me. All right. That's why he's there. That's what, so Dale Carnegie writes this, the world-famous psychologist B.F. Skinner proved through animal experimentation that by rewarding good behavior, animals learn faster and retain more effectively than by punishing bad behavior.
Later studies proved the same. The same applied to human beings. Through criticism, we never provoke lasting change, and we often create resentment. All we want to do is, you know this when you're training dogs and stuff, right? Like I train my dogs, I'm constantly just negative. Like, "Shut up. Quiet. Quiet. Get off the grass." It doesn't work. But if I feed them a treat, then they go, "Oh, whatever he just did, I'm going to keep doing more of that," right?
I'm going to do more. I'm going to equate positive reinforcement and praise with the way I feel inside. This is what it is. So this is true about human beings, to be an encourager like the Holy Spirit, and I'm not sure many of us are. And then it said, "The church increased in numbers." This is what I love about this. It increased in numbers. So often, I talk to people, and they're like, "Man, you know, when you're talking about the church, and you're talking about church growth, and that reaching people for Christ, and the church is growing, you know what? God doesn't care about numbers. He only cares about the heart."
And I'm like, "Um, no, he cares about numbers because numbers are people, right? Numbers are people." There's literally a book in the Bible called Numbers. And you know what it's filled with? A bunch of numbers. I know you haven't done it in your devotions in a long time, but there's a lot of numbers in there. Number, this many people crossed the Red Sea. This many people ate this. This many people got in this camp. It's a whole bunch of numbers.
And that's why he's saying, "It increased in numbers." The church increased in numbers. How amazing is it that we are part of a church that is increasing in numbers? Bayside Church is growing. And here's the crazy thing. It shouldn't be. You know what kind of, like, okay, so last week we did baptisms, right? Y'all were here for those. Incredible to watch. 168 people on this campus alone get baptized. Most of them spontaneous, on the spot, showed up in their Sunday best, not expecting to get baptized. Boom. Holy Spirit talks to them. They get in there, tell their story.
We saw unbelievable. Every service was late getting out. Nobody cared because we were celebrating new life, right? That happened across a bunch of our campuses to the point where we probably baptized almost 200, 250 people over the last month at all of the campuses of Bayside globally. That doesn't happen for a church that's over 30 years old. It happens to a church that's 10 years old.
When people are young, there's new believers, there's people who don't know Christ yet. 30 years old, it's not happening. Across America, churches our age are shutting the doors and we are increasing the number of new people coming to Jesus, new people getting baptized, new people. It's incredible. It's a beautiful thing to be a part of.
And I called Ray the other day and I just said, "Man, here's the thing. I mean, I was reading this. I was trying to be an encourager rather than a critic. So I called him up and I said, 'Ray, here's the thing. Bayside, knowing, like, I live in Granite Bay, the size of Granite Bay, this is not a metropolis, okay? This is not an urban center where there's three million people that live in Granite Bay. Really, Bayside has no business being as big as it is. In regard to the demographic of how many people live here, there's no way it should be this big. Like, good job.'"
Of course, he turns and he's like, "Yeah, it's because of you." I'm like, "Bro, I've been here two years. Relax." You and your, you know, this is the way Ray is. He's an encourager. That's what he is. But guys, an increase in number, it's a beautiful thing to be a part of a church like this.
Okay, that's verse 31, the verse that you don't have. Now let's get into the text of what you do have, okay? Would have been so much quicker if it was Kevin. So verse 32, as Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the Lord's people who lived in Lydda. So here's Peter, jacked up about Jesus, and what does he do? He starts traveling about the country to visit God's people.
Because he's not a guy who just sits in his house with his little family and his little life, and he doesn't visit anyone, and he doesn't go outside of his own comfort zone like many of us. You've got your life, you've got your friends, you've got your family, you've got your little rhythm, you sit in your house, you don't do it. You don't do it. You don't do it. You don't do it. He goes out. He says, "What about the challenge? I want to go out and visit people. I want to go out and tell people about Jesus. I want to go outside my comfort zone. I don't want to just get in my little rhythm of life."
This was me when I first became a Christian, right? 17, 18, coming to know Jesus, you know, smoking my cigarettes, reading the Bible, getting jacked up about Jesus. So what'd I do? I just walked around the town. I would tell people about Jesus at two o'clock in the morning. I'd walk up to a group of drunk guys. I'd be like, "Hey, you're all hammered. Here's Jesus." And I would baptize them before I was ever baptized, which is really bad theology. But I would baptize them. They would come to know Jesus. I would walk around. This was like my ministry.
I would walk around two, three in the morning. Lady on her porch, crying, walk up, pray for her, encourage you. I want to tell you about Jesus. This was my life. I was a walk around the town at two in the morning and tell everybody about Jesus guy. That's who I was. And then I got married. And then it all went away. Because you get married and of course marriage domesticates you. All right. It's like a cat, like a cat that's wild, can pee anywhere he wants. He just goes around the town.
But then you put the cat and you want to domesticate the cat and you put him in the little litter box. You say, "Now you pee here, cat." And the cat's like, "Okay, okay, that, that's me." All right. That's what the apostle Paul says happens. First Corinthians chapter seven. He goes, "Guys, some of you are single. Stay that way." This is his argument in 7. "Stay that way. Because marriage will bring down your capacity to go out and do kingdom things at any time of the hour. You can go out and do whatever you want. Now you can't do that. Because it's like, Mark, you have children at home. You can't be walking around the town at three o'clock in the morning as the weirdo telling people about Jesus on their porch because you have a mortgage to pay. And you got to learn my love language now."
All right. See, it's, "Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, words of affirmation. You look beautiful. Beautiful today. Yes, you do." And you become this domesticated person. You spend all your life focused on your house and your lawn and getting a new fence. And, and Paul goes, "It's great. I love it. That's for some of you. But for some of you, don't do it. So you can walk around and tell people about Jesus and not waste your life with domesticated things." It's exactly his argument.
Right. And so your life, do you live the kind of life that you're like, "I'm so jacked up about what Peter's doing." So verse 33 says, "So he's going around the town in Lydda. And here's what he finds. He finds a man named Anais, verse 33, who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years." So eight years, this guy Anais is sitting on his bed, totally bedridden, totally paralyzed. Eight years.
So try to picture that in your brain. 2016. What were you doing in 2016? What's something just to, what's something that happened in 2016? That's significant that we can think of. All right. Election. Trump. All right. Trump got elected. All right. So, right. All right. Bring it down. Bring it down. All right. So, so 2016, I'm so glad I asked. 2016, Trump gets elected. We can all remember where we were. That's how long this guy has been sitting paralyzed and bedridden.
Now think of the depression. Think of the isolation. Think of what he's feeling about his life. He has no hope. It's been eight years of bedriddenness. Some of you are there. You are paralyzed. Maybe not physically, but emotionally, spiritually, you are paralyzed, man. You are becoming hopeless. You are isolated. You are lonely. And you don't know whether God wants to ever show up and do anything in your life. That's what this guy was.
And what happens? Verse 34. Anais, Peter said to him, "Jesus Christ heals you." I love that. He doesn't use his own. Do you know that the only power, the only name that can heal is the name of Jesus? It's not your name. It's not your family's name. It's not money. It's not influence. It's nothing. But the name of Jesus Christ can heal you. Whether that's physically, and we do believe Jesus Christ still heals. Some of you, you have a diagnosis and you're afraid you're going to die. The name of Jesus, the person and work of Jesus Christ can heal you.
He doesn't always heal everybody. I mean, ultimately he does in heaven. He doesn't always choose to heal everybody on this planet, but he does heal many, many people. And we believe that he still does that. He doesn't always choose to heal that. And so you need to pray in faith that what happens to you is what happens to this man, that in the name of Jesus.
And here's what I love about it. This man never even asked to be healed yet. Peter walks up and gives it to him before he even asks, which is beautiful because you got to recognize all the amazing things that God brings into your life, even though you don't ask for them. It's called common grace. It's what philosophers talk about the problem of evil. And they say there's so much evil and suffering in the world that there's no way that God could exist.
But St. Augustine pointed out, there's also the problem of good. It's that so many good things happen in your life that how can you not believe in God? Because the fact that there is sex and music and art and beauty and wonder, and you have breath in your lungs and you have today, these are all, you don't know if God is holding back 99.9% of the evil things that could be happening in the universe. It's a problem of good. It's a fact that you didn't ask for you to be clothed right now. You didn't pray last night, "Please don't kill me in my sleep tonight. Let me live another day."
But he just did it because that's how good he is. This is a beautiful thing is before he even asks him, he says, "Jesus Christ heals you. Get up, roll up your mat." Immediately, Anais got up. I love it. All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord. So here's the beautiful thing. God heals. Jesus heals. He does it sometimes in moments like this. Some of you have had this. Somebody prayed for you in a diagnosis, the thing that was there that you go back to the doctor. It's not there anymore. We hear these stories all the time. We want you to still believe. We want you to still believe that Jesus heals.
But sometimes it's also in the normal everyday things of life where God shows up and does something that sometimes you're not, you're not picking up on. So, uh, Pastor, uh, Michael Metcalf, his son this week lives in Oklahoma, was out cycling, got hit by a car, like really hard, falls over, totally met. They jumped on a plane. He was in the hospital. They didn't know what was going on. Now, praise God. He's okay. He's bruised up, some stuff, but he's okay. But it could have been bad.
Here's the crazy thing. He's sitting on the side of the road. Five minutes after his, one of his best friends in the world happened to take that route to work that day and drove up and saw him sitting on the side of the road, goes over, picks him up, puts him in his car and brings him to the hospital so that he can be healed. Sometimes God uses those, like, what are the statistical odds? If he turns right instead of left, he doesn't see his friend. These are all the little things that God in the everyday is using to save you and love you and heal you and encourage you.
And the question is, can you see it or are you blind to it? So my, uh, I've shared with you that my family aren't believers. And so, you know, they love what I do and all that, but they're not like, "I love Jesus." And so my uncle, a few years ago, he was down in Florida and, uh, he walked out on his front lawn. And he was kind of sitting down or whatever. And he realized a bunch of red ants were crawling all over him. He didn't know this at the time, but he's allergic to red ants.
So all these red ants start to crawl all over him. He starts to kind of swat them off. And he realized every time he swats them off, like 10 take their place and they're starting to come out. So he goes inside and he takes a shower. And as he showers, they start like multiplying out. And he's like, "Oh my gosh, there's red ants all over." And he's like, his throat's starting to, and he's like, "I don't know." So he walks out, puts some shorts on, goes out to the front of his lawn and falls down, passed out on the lawn. His throat has completely closed up. He's dead. He's gone.
Okay. Randomly, this woman is cycling past. She looks over, sees my uncle, walks up, sees, looks at him, sees all the red ants and goes, "I know what's happening. He's having an allergic reaction." She happens to have an EpiPen in her cabin. So she jumps on her bike, goes all the way, comes over and starts giving it to my uncle, right? Like, I'm not sure it's a stabbing motion, but I'm not a nurse. So she's, she's stabbing my uncle. And he kind of comes to, his throat opens up. He's like, "What?" Ambulance comes, takes him to the hospital, saves his life.
And I'm like, call my family. I'm like, "My gosh, the glory of Christ, God's sovereign providential hand." And they're like, "Oh man, that was lucky." No, no. Don't use the word luck. That's not luck. A random woman cycles by. Oh, deduces. I look at him, I'd be like, right? Like, I don't know. I can't deduce no EpiPen. I don't know how to use one. I don't have one. It's the one person that happens to know what to do and has the right thing and figures out the red ants, the statistical odds of this stuff.
This is what's, you can be one of two people in life, man. You can be one of two people in life. You can either see Jesus Christ in the everyday or you can be blind to it. You can either see every moment of your life as it fused with the transcendent and the meaningful and the wonderful and the enchanted, or you can go through life completely disenchanted. And you don't think there's anything going on in the universe.
And this is what's beautiful. So people sitting here, you have paralysis emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, socially, whatever. Jesus Christ wants to heal you. He's healing me. I mean, I see my life as this, this progress of, you know, I talk a lot about my Tourette's, but I have obsessive-compulsive disorder too. And sometimes that's harder to see, but obsessive-compulsive is like, you're in the details of the intricate things.
And some of you have this too, where like, I'm constantly like, it's about cleanliness and you got to make sure things are clean and organized. And like, I was talking to a guy one time at a coffee shop and we were there for an hour. And at the end of the conversation, he said, "Do you want me to get you a ruler?" And it's because I'd spent the hour, like lining everything up on the table, right? Like the salt did that and the table needed to do this. And then there was that. And I'm like talking to the guy, like, that's my obsessive-compulsive.
Like it's about, it's like, if you touch that crack and you touch this crack and then, and then you need clean, you need clean. I don't like dirty things and people. And I'm like, I don't like dirty things. I don't like dirty things. I don't like dirty things. And so, um, so here's how I know I'm changing because a couple of weeks ago, my oldest daughter, uh, I didn't know this, but she went up in my bathroom and her friend and her dyed her friend's hair and cut it. Right. So they dyed the hair and they cut the hair. So there's lots of hair involved in this experiment.
And I don't know about any of this. And I go up after like the next day and I get in the shower, I'm showering and I grabbed for a towel and I take the towel and I put it on my face and I go like this and it's her friend's hair everywhere. I look like Chewbacca. I'm like, "What the, what's going on?" And hair hanging out of my mouth. I'm like, "What the, I'm covered in someone else's hair."
Anyway. So a few years ago, I would have freaked out and lost my mind. But today I just laughed and laughed. All right. That's called sanctification. These are the small details of what God is doing in your life. He's changing you. He's getting rid of your sins. He's helping you move along and progress and move forward. And this is what he's doing for me. This is what he's doing in the everyday. It's not the instantaneous. You are healed. It's the 10 year move away from this or that or whatever. And it's a beautiful thing. Only in the name of Jesus.
Verse 36. In Joppa, there was a disciple named Tabitha. In Greek, her name is Dorcas. So let's stay with Tabitha. Poor Dorcas. So Tabitha's there and she was always doing good and helping the poor. I love this. If you've got a Bible, please underline that. Can you imagine, can you imagine that people are going to be like, "I'm going to be on your funeral." She's going to die in a second, not to ruin the ending, but she's going to die in a second.
Can you imagine that people at your funeral say, "You know what? He was always doing good and helping the poor. She was always doing good and helping the poor." I'm not sure that's what people would say about me. They would say like, "Oh, he had a good podcast," which you should subscribe to, by the way, that it's, let's increase it in numbers. "Oh, he had a good podcast and he wrote a couple of things and he, you know, I don't know that people are going to say, but I would love it if they did."
Like, can you imagine this is your legacy? I love this. Verse 37, "About that time she became sick and died." Amazingly, and if you're here and you're exploring Christianity, we don't believe in the prosperity gospel. Okay. The prosperity gospel tells you, if you believe in God, you believe in Jesus and you do all the work, the right things in your life, then God's going to make you healthy and wealthy and do everything good in your life. And your marriage is going to be perfect. And your job's going to work out perfect.
And I got a friend who says, "You don't even have to ever get sick or die. You can be swept up into heaven in a whirlwind if you're righteous enough, if you're righteous enough." And what we would say is you can always do good and help the poor and still become sick and die. Because here's the thing with Jesus. He doesn't promise that you're not going to die. He promises that you're safe in dying, that you are in his hand.
And that where you're going is more joy than you can ever dream of. Because every single one of you at some point is going to get sick and die. You're going to get sick and die. It's going to happen to every single one of us. Our life goes by in a flash. And Jesus doesn't say, "I'm going to protect you from any of this." It's that, listen, when it happens, there is still hope in it. So she's sick and she dies. And her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room.
Verse 37. Verse 38. So when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, "Please come at once." Peter went with them. And when he arrived, he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas, slash Tabitha, had made while she was still with them. Isn't that beautiful?
We think it's such a small little thing to sew and knit and make robes for people. That's not a big deal. She was never a woman. She was never a woman. She was never a woman. She was never a woman. She was never on a stage under the lights doing anything significant for the world. And yet when she dies, these people pull the robes out and go, "Look what she did for me. Look what she did for me."
It's all the little things in your life that you do that people are going to remember. And the question is, when you die, is anyone going to notice other than your golf buddies? Is anyone going to notice or care that you are gone because of the way you impacted them? Not because of who you are, but because of the way you impacted them.
Look at what these widows are crying because Tabitha took care of them. And they're like, "Look what she did for us." It's a beautiful reality. I can tell you right now, sometimes I ask myself the question, "Am I making enough impact in my life? Am I actually having any impact? Is this what God wants me to do? Am I affecting anybody?" When I stand before Jesus, is he going to say, "Good and faithful servant, you did what I asked you to do?" I don't know. Sometimes I wonder.
And I was wondering about that this week. I was like, "I don't know that I'm having the impact on the world that I want to have. I don't know." And literally, the next day, it was while I was driving to San Francisco. It was on Friday. I drove by a Starbucks. I stopped in there really quick just to grab a Starbucks as I drove two and a half hours down there. And it was like a Starbucks 20 minutes from here.
So I go walk in and I see this guy and he's standing there in a suit and he's waiting for his drink. And I walked in and he kind of made eye contact with me. And then I looked at him and then he kind of did the double take. And he gave me the, "I recognize you" eyes. And I said, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know."
And then I kind of gave him the eyes. Because it gets really awkward sometimes. I see you guys out and about and you give me the, "I recognize you" eyes. But then I'm not sure. So I'm like, "Do you recognize me? I recognize you." And then it gets weird because it's like a woman and she doesn't know who I am. But I look at her and I'm like, "How are you?" And she's like, "Don't talk to me stranger." I'm like, "Sorry. I thought you recognized me. Do you not want a photo? I don't understand."
So it's kind of a confusing thing. So I walk in. He gives me, "I recognize you" eyes. And I look at him and I just walked up to him. I'm like, "Hey, what's going on, bro?" He's like, "Bro, this week I sat with my kids. They can't come to church right now. So I watch online every week." And he's like, "Last week, you have no idea the amount of things that you said."
And he starts to cry. And he goes, "The amount of things you said." And he starts to go through them. And he's like, "Seriously, I was watching you. And he said, I need to look up his email. And I need to get in touch with him this week and tell him all the ways he changed me. This morning I woke up. I started looking for your email. And you walk in to a Starbucks. And now you're here in front of me. And I got to tell you."
I got to tell you to your face. And he's crying. And I was like, "Man, this is, so you do recognize me. Do you want a picture?" I'm just kidding. So it was a beautiful reminder where God was like, "Hey, you asked this question. And when you ask this question about impact and what your role is in the world, I'm going to try to give you an answer."
At the end of it, he says, verse 40, "Peter sent them all out of the room. Then he got down on his hands and knees and prayed." I mean, they want Tabitha back, man. They're like, "This woman has impact. We want her back." And so he sends them out of the room. He doesn't even, they don't even get to see it. It's like this private, wonderful, mysterious moment.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer years ago said, "Theologians do a disservice when they try to take away the mystery of God." You need to, you need to like invite the mystery. And he does it all. No one's around. He gets down on his knees and prays, turning toward the dead woman. He said, "Tabitha, get up." And look at that. She opened her eyes.
And seeing Peter, she sat up, which is kind of a freaky picture, actually. It's like a zombie movie. It's like, blink. He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. I love this. This is like a little, a little Easter, a little resurrection. Because obviously, Tabitha is going to go on and die again. She doesn't go on to live forever. She's not walking around right now, right?
In 10 or 20 years, she'll die again. But this is a little Easter. It's a little pointer to the fact that anybody who believes in Jesus is going to be resurrected unto life. And that's what we hold on to when we're in the midst of suffering and pain. The fact that resurrection is true. The fact that we will be raised again. Jesus will say, "Get up" to everyone who's ever lived. And if you're a believer in Jesus, you get to go and be with the people you love.
It's a beautiful thing. It's almost like, you know, when you've lost somebody that, like a friend or a grandparent or a spouse or a parent, and you have a dream about them. Have you ever had that? Right? And you have a dream about them, and they're animated again. And the last time you saw them, they were laid out. But now they're animated, and they're walking around, and they're talking. And you're like, "Oh my gosh."
And you wake up, and all you want to do is go back because you got a little resurrection. You got a little Easter. You got them back for a few minutes, and all you want to do is go back again. This is what this story is doing. It's going, by the way, here's a little pointer to a reality of something that's going to happen. And it's going to happen. It's going to happen for everyone who believes in Jesus. Get up. Rise to new life.
And then the last verse is this, verse 42. "This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord." You know what I love about this? How did it become known all over Joppa? Because when something amazing happened, these people could not hold it in. It was everything in their power to go, "My life has been changed by Jesus. Now I can't do anything but tell people about it."
This is what C.S. Lewis says about joy. He says, "It's why when you love a movie or a song or whatever, you tell everybody you know, 'Oh, you got to see this movie.'" Why? Because it's not consummated until you share it. Here's what I experienced this week, okay? So my oldest daughter did an audition for American Idol, okay? So she's like, "Okay, Dad, yeah, I'm going to do it."
So the way they do audition for American Idol now is they do online, laptop, the producers watch you, and then if you're any good, they do it. If you're any good, they move you to the next round, and you get, and so she goes on, and we all have to leave the house because she wants focus, right? So we take our dogs, our two big dogs, we put them in a car, take all our family, and we're just driving around with these dogs in the car, trying to give her, you know, some space.
So she's in there. Then we go over to my buddy's house, and we're waiting for hours so that she can do it. So she goes in the first round. They go, "Oh my gosh, that was amazing. You did these original songs. We don't usually like the original songs. Those were great. You're going to meet with our producer at 6 p.m. We're going to call you back, and you get to meet with more producers."
So she's like, "Great." So we're all out. We've got to stay at my buddy's house. So she's there, so she meets with more producers, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, so we're over, my friends, and my wife's got the keys in her car, and we go to leave to go back to the house because we don't know if she's done yet, and we go, and the keys are locked in the car."
I'm like, "What? How, what is this, the 80s? Like, how did your keys get locked in the car?" And she's like, "I don't know, but don't worry. The other keys are in my purse." I'm like, "Okay, I'll get this car, and I'll go to the house, and I'm like, where's your purse?" She's like, "In the car."
So now we got, now we got two keys in the car. We got our daughter over here. I'm at my buddy's house. I'm losing my mind. I got my dogs running around. I'm like, "Oh my goodness, how does this happen?" And then Sienna texted, she's like, "I got through. I'm going to L.A. First week of December. I'm going in front of the judges."
So, and in my mind, I'm like, "Okay, there's probably 500 people that they send down in front of the judges." She goes, "There's 30 people in all of California that they send." And she's like, "I'm going in front of the judges." I'm like, "This is crazy. She's going in front of Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie and Carrie Underwood. She's going to buy, right? I'm going to be rich."
Because I've been tracking everything she has cost me since the day she was born. I was like, "Diapers, wipes, paying it all back." Anyways, so she tells us that, and I'm, now I'm calling the tow truck, and I'm like, "Tow truck, you got to come say, you know, and one tow truck guy is going to be $250, and I'm playing his tow truck company. Another guy, I'm doing all this stuff. Finally, we get a tow truck. He pulls up, he walks up, and me and my wife are there, and he's like, "Okay, let me help you," and he puts the thing.
And he hasn't been there 10 seconds before my wife's like, "My daughter's going to American Idol." You know, and he's like, "What, what?" And he's trying to undo the, she's like, "Yeah, American Idol. I mean, she just got through. I mean, she writes her own songs." He's like, "Yeah, that's great. That's great. All right, just give me my money."
We're like, "American Idol." You know, why? Why? We couldn't go 10 seconds without telling the first stranger. We couldn't go 10 seconds without telling the first stranger that we saw about the joy that was bubbling up in us. Is that how you function when you think about what Jesus has done in your life? That you can't help tell the people around you the hope and the joy that you have found.
That's why the word was spreading. That's why the book of Acts goes from no one knowing to the center of the world in Rome knowing by the end, and I just pray that's true about your life.
So, Lord, I pray that we're the kinds of people that have so met with you, that have so welled up with joy, that we can't help but tell the world what you have done in our life. And if that's not true about us, like, I understand, like, if we've been Christians for a long time, sometimes it's harder. We get our Christian friends. We got no one left to tell.
Because most people around us already know you. I just pray you would bring some people into our life, even this week, that we will be reminded in a moment, "Oh yeah, this is the person God has sent to tell them about the truth that is Jesus, and what he's done in my life, and how he's healing me in every way."
Give us the courage. In Jesus' great name we pray. Amen.
All right, guys, thanks so much for watching our Bayside online service. We're so glad that you're actually part of our church, which you are, even though you're watching from all over the world. And we have people literally watching from all over the world. You are part of our family.
And we want to get to know you. So please make sure you get in touch with us. Let us know your story. We'd love to hear you and serve you in any way we can. Also, part of what drives the way we connect as a church globally is giving. And so if you're part of our family, we would love you to start giving to our church those resources. We steward them to reach people all over the world.
And we hear amazing stories about what Jesus is doing with your resources. So if you already give, thank you. If not, you can start giving. We would love that. And then finally, if you're watching this live, we'd love to hear from you. And finally, we have all kinds of stuff we do. We have a podcast network. We have like 10 podcasts that address a whole bunch of different things in your lives.
So if you're a podcaster, join us in the Thrive Podcast Network. We'd love to serve you. We've got a ton of stuff there. We just want to make sure that you feel part of our family. So we love you. Thank you so much for being part of this family, and we will see you next week.
on Aug 31, 2024
