Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Shay and I visited the West Campus building site this week, and it's remarkable how much work they've gotten done. They've got all the footers poured and they're laying blocks and they started the plumbing.
[00:00:24] So that project is coming along very well, and it won't be long. Our West Campus will be in their new building.
[00:00:36] Pastor Chet is doing a remarkable job of leading that project. And you ought to whisper his name to the Lord every day, because it is ridiculously hard work.
[00:00:47] Let's pray.
[00:00:51] Our dear Heavenly Father, in your creative imagination, you created the church you dreamed of people for whom Christ died to forgive their sins, in whom the Holy Spirit abides with gifts and talents.
[00:01:17] And these people coming together to worship the name of Jesus Christ and to serve him in a broken world.
[00:01:27] I pray that you would fulfill that good idea in this place and we would be a thriving church where the work of Christ is accomplished, God is glorified, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit prevails.
[00:01:46] I pray that we would be a church that attracts people to the excellence of Christ.
[00:01:51] I pray that we'd be a church that gets better at inviting people into the joy of ministry.
[00:01:57] I pray that we'd be a church that always says yes to the adventure of faith.
[00:02:02] And I pray that we would be a church that knows the wisdom of being a culture of generosity. And I ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[00:02:14] We're studying the day of Pentecost and Peter's sermon on that day.
[00:02:22] And if you read Peter's sermon closely, you get surprised at a certain point because Peter places the origin of the church, ah, In a cemetery.
[00:02:46] Not literally, but figuratively.
[00:02:50] Peter says the church looks back to King David and the promises that God made to King David.
[00:03:02] And the church looks forward to Jesus Christ and the promises that God made to David being fulfilled through Jesus Christ.
[00:03:15] Somehow or another, historically, the church got this because early on, churches began to provide cemeteries close to the church.
[00:03:34] If you drive about 5 minutes up marks Road, you're going to come to a little brick church.
[00:03:45] It used to be called B.B. town Baptist Church, and what an odd name, but there yet you have it.
[00:03:52] And it's a tiny little church, but right next to it there is a historic cemetery.
[00:04:02] If you go to Europe, it wasn't uncommon for churches to have cemeteries in the basement and people would be interred in vaults in the basement.
[00:04:20] If you go to Westminster Cathedral, you can sit in the auditorium and you can see the plaques of people who are buried right there in the walls of the church at first, it feels a little creepy, but when you think about it and you think about the nature of the church, it starts to make much more sense.
[00:04:56] So on the day of Pentecost, we believe that the Holy Spirit moved from working primarily in the Old Testament church to empowering the New Testament church.
[00:05:08] And Peter stands up on that day and preaches to people from all over the known world.
[00:05:16] And in verse 29 he says this.
[00:05:21] Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day.
[00:05:37] Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor his flesh to see corruption.
[00:05:59] Peter said, if you want to understand what God is doing in the church, you have to look back to one of the greatest figures in the Old Testament, King David.
[00:06:14] King David lived about a thousand years before Peter preached the sermon.
[00:06:19] But everybody who was an Israelite knew stories about King David.
[00:06:26] It's just like if you go to elementary school in America, you're going to know stories about George Washington.
[00:06:34] Ah.
[00:06:35] You're going to know stories about Abraham Lincoln.
[00:06:39] King David was a great national hero.
[00:06:44] And, and, and Peter is saying, what's happening here today?
[00:06:52] God got started back when our greatest national hero, King David, was still king.
[00:07:02] Ah.
[00:07:05] Ah.
[00:07:07] Peter saying, we have to break the generational myth.
[00:07:18] Ah.
[00:07:22] Every generation lives with a myth that somehow or another we're different than all the generations that came before us.
[00:07:32] That was them. This is us.
[00:07:37] I don't feel that much so much anymore. But when I was young, I did.
[00:07:45] When I was running around in bell bottom pants wearing army surplus shirts.
[00:07:51] Ah.
[00:07:53] Ah.
[00:07:56] Listening to We Won't Get Fooled Again, I felt like that our generation was.
[00:08:07] We were the people.
[00:08:10] Anybody, anybody live back then.
[00:08:14] Okay. The world was better than. I just have to admit it. All right, all right. But it's this generational myth that somehow or another, all the generations before us, they weren't as smart or cool as we are.
[00:08:32] Ah.
[00:08:34] Ah.
[00:08:35] And somehow or another our generation will, it will stand out in other generations.
[00:08:45] It's a myth.
[00:08:48] And every generation feels like that. And young people, if you feel like that, you should. God bless you. It's part of the joy of being young. Don't get cynical too soon, But I remember when they played the Beatles. I want to hold your hand on AM radio just for the record.
[00:09:19] Ah.
[00:09:22] David lived a remarkable generation Incredible things happened, but he was mortal.
[00:09:31] And when his generation was up, it was up.
[00:09:37] Peter lived in a remarkable time.
[00:09:40] Incredible things happened. The church was born, it spread rapidly through the Roman Empire. But when his generation was up, it's up.
[00:09:51] And I want to say to you, who are my age or about my age, we serve God generationally. Do you get it? This is our one chance to do something beautiful with God and then we hand it all over to the next generation.
[00:10:12] You get this.
[00:10:14] I was a 28 year old boy once and I had a vision, I had a passion, I was going to kill myself to do some incredible things with God. I don't mean literally, I mean figuratively.
[00:10:30] I believe the promises of God.
[00:10:34] And in our generation, God has done remarkable things.
[00:10:40] But we are like every other generation in the church. We get one generation to give God our very best and then we pass it on to someone else.
[00:10:51] And what I want to ask you, and what I want to ask myself is, am I grabbing this opportunity to be a partner with God in my generation to accomplish things that glorify his name and give the church in a healthy way to the generation that's coming after us?
[00:11:17] Our elders already have a plan for a transition plan because as you can tell, I'm wearing out.
[00:11:25] You people wear me out.
[00:11:30] And at some point we will surrender the ministry of our generation to the next generation.
[00:11:40] Why is this important?
[00:11:41] Because the churches that understand, that thrive, I can't fix anything that happened in generations before me.
[00:11:53] I can only set generations up after me. But I can't, I, I, I can't perform in their generation. I'm doing, I have a century church plan. I'm doing the best to mentor young people. So a hundred years from now, there'll still be people around here who got mentored by somebody I mentored. You see, that's, we can do all of that, but we do all of that understanding that we all serve generationally.
[00:12:24] And it just so happens this is our time to give God our very best and do everything we can to partner with him so that in our generation, Jesus Christ is glorified and the church is healthy and thriving church.
[00:12:42] Because listen to me, especially you are under 40. Everybody who's under 40, look straight at me right now.
[00:12:51] You're gonna go to bed one night and you're gonna wake up the next morning and you're gonna look like me.
[00:13:05] Thank God, not you. Ladies.
[00:13:09] Listen, it goes like this.
[00:13:14] You wake up one morning, you look in the mirror and say, who are you?
[00:13:23] Ah. What we are going to do with and for Christ, we got to get at it.
[00:13:30] We have to get at it.
[00:13:33] We have to make it part of our life.
[00:13:36] We have to make the church and what God is doing in the church important and a thing we plan to be part of for the glory of Jesus Christ.
[00:13:50] I know David's death story.
[00:13:56] David got old.
[00:13:58] He had been a mighty warrior in his prime.
[00:14:03] The last thing anybody wanted to see was David and his mighty 30 running at you.
[00:14:14] They were the elite of the elite.
[00:14:18] They were the Navy SEALs of their world.
[00:14:22] And when you saw David and his mighty 30 running at you, if you. If you were wise, you ran.
[00:14:30] Because if you didn't, they struck you down.
[00:14:36] But like all people, David grew old.
[00:14:41] And he reached a point in his life where he had to have assisted living.
[00:14:50] He had a nurse that took care of him every day, and he had a son named Adonijah.
[00:15:01] And Adonijah looked at his dad with disrespect and he said, the old man's done, and this is my chance.
[00:15:12] I'm going to grab the throne for myself.
[00:15:17] So he got together some people, some players, some people of influence.
[00:15:25] And he had a big dinner.
[00:15:27] And at this big dinner, he declared himself king.
[00:15:33] What he didn't know was while he was doing that, Nathan the prophet went to David and said, do you know Adonijah is stealing the throne?
[00:15:46] Because I know. You said your son Solomon would rule after you.
[00:15:51] And David said, no, he's not stealing the throne.
[00:15:56] You take Solomon, you take my bodyguard, you go down to the spring of Guy on, you anoint him with water from Guy on, you put him on my mule that everyone knows. You put a royal robe on him. You ride him up to the palace and the throne room. You set him on the palace, and everybody bends a knee to him and says, hail, King Solomon. And I will affirm everything you do.
[00:16:28] At the very end of his life, his son Adonijah tried to steal his legacy.
[00:16:36] This is what the chronicle says about.
[00:16:39] This is David's obituary.
[00:16:43] Thus David, the son of Jesse reigned over all Israel.
[00:16:48] The time he reigned over Israel was 40 years.
[00:16:52] He reigned seven years in Hebron and 33 years in Jerusalem.
[00:16:59] Then he died at a good old age, full of days, riches, and honor.
[00:17:06] And Solomon, his son, reigned in his place.
[00:17:11] Now, the acts of King David from first to last are written in the chronicles of Samuel the Seer, and in the chronicles of Nathan the Prophet, and in the chronicles of Gad the Seer, with the accounts of all his rule and his might and of the Circumstances that came upon him and upon Israel and, and upon all the kingdoms of the countries.
[00:17:39] Awesome, man. That David was incredible. Things that he accomplished in his lifetime. He became a national hero. His name is still honored 3,000 years after he died.
[00:17:52] But his time passed and Solomon led a new generation.
[00:18:05] And over the generations they continued to repair King David's tomb so that everybody in, in Jerusalem could walk by and say, the King David Tomb.
[00:18:28] They looked at it the way we would look at the Lincoln Memorial, the way we would look at the Washington Monument. They looked at it as something of incredible national pride.
[00:18:42] And Peter's going to say in his sermon, David's tomb is here to this day.
[00:18:57] That was a thousand years ago.
[00:19:00] If you go to Jerusalem today, there's a tourist site for everything.
[00:19:07] I mean, ah, they know where Jacob blew his nose. Ah, and they got a little monument there and you can pay to go visit it.
[00:19:19] There is a place they call King David's Tomb.
[00:19:23] But the building was clearly built probably at the time of the Crusaders. And because nobody could find the tomb anymore, they just named it David's Tomb, turned it into shrine. And they charge you to go in and look at this little place.
[00:19:40] All right, I was going to bring a picture, but I couldn't find one good enough.
[00:19:46] Where I think David's tomb was and where, where the, the best historians think it was. All this left now are these the remains of these two tunnels.
[00:20:00] Because King David wasn't the only one that was buried there. All his descendants after him, the kings after him, were buried there.
[00:20:09] And it has been smashed, broken and looted. And all that's left is the remains of these two tunnels. And even the roof is broken off part of it. All right, I'm saying all of this to once more try to reiterate.
[00:20:34] We, we hold the world one generation at a time.
[00:20:44] I want you to feel the edginess of that. We only hold the world one generation at a time. King David, in all his greatness, he's unparalleled. Every king after him was compared to him. But he only held the world one generation at a time.
[00:21:05] And when push came to shove, they couldn't even maintain the monument to his past glory.
[00:21:16] Ah.
[00:21:19] Ah.
[00:21:20] Now Peter goes on to say, King David being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, David was more than a king, he was a prophet.
[00:21:41] And David prophesied that God spoke to David and said, I promise you one of your descendants will always sit on Your throne. And I'm going to read you that promise in a minute.
[00:21:53] But I want to push the point that you can have one career and still have another career with God.
[00:22:03] King David's career was. King kept him pretty busy.
[00:22:09] He was a warrior king. He had to fight the Philistines, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Araminians.
[00:22:17] He had. He had a long list of battles, and on top of that, he had to manage the kingdom.
[00:22:25] But he also had a career with God. He was a prophet.
[00:22:30] Here's what I want to say. Everyone in this room, you can have a career, but that doesn't mean you don't have a career with God.
[00:22:42] You have a career, but you have a career with God.
[00:22:47] When you became a Christian, the Holy Spirit gave you a spiritual gift. Would you hear this?
[00:22:53] And that spiritual gift is God's work in you so that you can have a career with Him.
[00:23:03] Your career with God may look something like David's. He was more a king than he was a prophet, but he was still a prophet. And, and he still served God. And his relationship to God still made a major difference.
[00:23:19] The king who was out fighting battles would sometimes calm his soul and would sit quietly with a piece of papyrus paper and dip his quill in ink and he would write as a prophet.
[00:23:42] The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
[00:23:47] He makes me lie down in green pastures.
[00:23:50] He leads me beside still waters.
[00:23:53] He restores my soul.
[00:23:56] He leads me in the path of righteousness for his namesake. You know who wrote that?
[00:24:02] A spiritual A. A warrior king who had a spiritual career with God that has influenced hearts ever since the day he lived.
[00:24:18] You can't hold onto life, but you can pass through your spiritual career the. The life of Christ, the ministry, the work of the church. You can pass it to the generations after you. Do you get it? I can't hold on forever, but I can pass through my spiritual gift and through my spiritual career. The life, the love, the thinking, the work of Jesus Christ. We pass it generation to generation, one to another.
[00:24:54] One generation will tell your mighty works to the next.
[00:25:03] Ah.
[00:25:07] Peter said God swore an oath to David that one of your descendants will always be king in Israel.
[00:25:18] That is recorded in 2nd Samuel, chapter 7. Let me read it for you.
[00:25:26] Ah, thus says the Lord of hosts. God is speaking to King David.
[00:25:32] I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep that you should be prince over my people Israel.
[00:25:42] This is a rags to riches story. Hey, David, when I found you, you were hanging out with a bunch of stinky sheep.
[00:25:54] Ah, but I made you something. You couldn't be by yourself. I made you prince in Israel.
[00:26:01] I have been with you wherever you went. And I have cut off your enemies before you.
[00:26:09] And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth.
[00:26:16] And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel.
[00:26:38] And I will give you rest from all your enemies.
[00:26:43] Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.
[00:26:50] And when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body. And I will establish his kingdom, and he shall build a house for my name. And I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
[00:27:10] And I will be to him a father, and he will be to me a son.
[00:27:14] When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men and with the stripes of the sons of men.
[00:27:21] But my steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.
[00:27:31] Your house and your kingdom shall be sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. In accordance with all these words and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.
[00:27:48] Nathan, the prophet, said to David, God is going to use your family to influence the world for the rest of human history.
[00:28:01] It's a pretty big promise. Church and generation after generation, one of David's descendants served as king until we come to Jesus Christ.
[00:28:22] Do you remember what the angel said to Mary when he said, you're going to have a son?
[00:28:29] I'm guessing you don't, so I wrote it down for you.
[00:28:34] The angel appeared to Mary and said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
[00:28:43] Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will call his name, Jesus.
[00:28:51] And he will be great and will be called the son of the Most High.
[00:28:57] And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David. Now here it is.
[00:29:04] And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.
[00:29:09] And of his kingdom, there will be no end to hear this.
[00:29:15] God gave the promise to David.
[00:29:19] That promise got passed down generation by generation by generation.
[00:29:25] And a thousand years later, Jesus Christ, the son of God, is born.
[00:29:31] And the angel Gabriel says, mary, something special is happening here. The promise that God gave to the house of David a thousand years ago. It's going to be fulfilled in your son. And he's going to be the king of that God promised through the lineage of David. And his kingdom will never come to an end.
[00:29:57] All right, now we're going to start putting some stuff together.
[00:30:00] What happened at the day of Pentecost?
[00:30:03] The Holy Spirit moved from working in the Old Testament church to working in the New Testament Church.
[00:30:10] The. The Holy Spirit moved from working in the kingdom that David built to working in the kingdom that Jesus Christ is building.
[00:30:23] The kingdom of David passes away and the kingdom of Christ replaces it. And the Holy Spirit is at work in the church the very same way he was work at work in the Old Testament. Do you see this?
[00:30:40] But we don't look back to King David.
[00:30:44] We look back. We look forward to King Christ.
[00:30:51] Ah.
[00:30:52] Ah. We turn from the sorrow of death to understand the nature of the church.
[00:30:58] Christ is the eternal kingdom. His kingdom will never come to an end. And the church is the core of that kingdom.
[00:31:07] Do you hear this?
[00:31:09] Ah.
[00:31:11] David had a death story.
[00:31:15] Our Lord Jesus Christ has a death story. But it's very different than King David's. We celebrated every Easter, don't we?
[00:31:24] John, the beloved disciple, wrote this.
[00:31:29] So they took Jesus and he went out bearing his own cross to a place called the Place of the Skull, which in Aramaic is Golgotha.
[00:31:44] The very name Golgotha is ugly.
[00:31:50] Doesn't it sound ugly?
[00:31:52] Golgotha.
[00:31:56] And there they crucified him.
[00:31:58] And with him two others, one on either side, Jesus. Between them, Pilate wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. This is important. We read over it all the time.
[00:32:13] It read, jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
[00:32:20] Jesus died as King of the Jews.
[00:32:27] Many of the Jews read this inscription. For the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and. And was written in Aramaic, Latin and in Greek.
[00:32:38] So the chief priest of the Jews said to Pilate, do not write King of the Jews, but rather this man said, I am King of the Jews.
[00:32:50] Pilate answered, what I have written, I have written.
[00:32:58] David's death story ended there.
[00:33:03] Christ's death story does not end there, because John also wrote after this, Jesus, knowing that all was now fulfilled, he said. He said, to fulfill the Scriptures, I thirst.
[00:33:20] And a jar full of sour wine was stood before him.
[00:33:24] Ah.
[00:33:25] So they put a sponge to fill the sour wine and. And on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus received the sour wine, he said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up the Spirit.
[00:33:42] Before Jesus died, he said these important words.
[00:33:47] It is finished.
[00:33:52] What is finished?
[00:33:55] What is finished?
[00:33:56] The thing that is finished is what God was doing in the Old Testament Church. Jesus Christ completes the Old Testament Church. For you have read the Bible. Christ is the end of the law. To those who believe, we are not under the law, we're under grace.
[00:34:16] Something new begins at Pentecost because something old was finished on the cross.
[00:34:24] David's tomb was occupied for thousands of years.
[00:34:31] Christ's tomb was empty after three days and looks to the future.
[00:34:39] Christ's empty tomb promises a new heaven and a new earth in which we will abide forever in a loving relationship in a world without pain and sorrow.
[00:34:54] Our Lord, the Lord of the Church, is going to do something for humanity that no king, no president, no Congress, no Senate, no no political organization could ever do. He's going to give us a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
[00:35:16] He's going to give us a new heaven and a new earth where one generation doesn't yield to the next. But we all abide in eternal life and the grace of Jesus Christ abounds for all of us. There's no need for the sun because Christ is the light of that new kingdom. There's no need for the moon because Christ will enlighten every being.
[00:35:43] We have in the Church a glorious future. And it is a future that is created by our magnificent King of kings and Lord of Lords.
[00:35:55] The Church looks back to David to see the faithfulness of God. The Church looks forward to the return of Jesus Christ and the triumph of righteousness.
[00:36:07] Ah.
[00:36:08] At some moment, generation after generation that comes to an end.
[00:36:15] And there'll be a great shout and a trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And we who are alive and remain, we will be caught up to the God, to Christ in the sky, and so shall we ever be with him.
[00:36:35] We have a king who's coming back. We have a king who's promised that where he is, there we will be also. We have a king who has created a place that is infinitely better for his people than this generational world could ever be.
[00:36:53] And his promise is, I'm coming back and I'm gathering you all to myself.
[00:37:01] And we're going to live in a kingdom that never comes to an end, where there is no pain, no sorrow, no misery, no ugly, no shame, no regret.
[00:37:15] Church.
[00:37:16] I want to. I want to.
[00:37:19] I want to say as clearly as I can, in Christ, no one is abandoned to Hades, because He overcame, he overcomes for us in Christ.
[00:37:35] No soul sees corruption in the body of Christ.
[00:37:41] No member of the body is ever lost.
[00:37:46] The Church stands between two tombs, a tomb of a kingdom that had promise but never lived up to it, and the empty tomb of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who has made promises that are not generational, they are eternal.
[00:38:09] Do you hear this?
[00:38:11] The Church stands in a mediating position.
[00:38:16] We stand between a failed world and and a world that Christ promises to be so magnificent that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and neither has it entered into the heart of those who love Christ Jesus.
[00:38:37] I want to tell you again, the Church is unique in the world. There is no other institution like us.
[00:38:45] God is doing in the Church what He cannot and will not do in in any other organization in the world.
[00:38:52] And I am asking you to rethink the place of the Church in your life, the place of Jesus Christ in your life. I'm asking you in your generation to serve him in such a magnificent way that future generations will be connected to the same promise that we're connected until the day that he comes, as he promised our dear Heavenly Father.
[00:39:21] One more time I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus.
[00:39:29] One more time I see how absolutely awesome and majestic he is.
[00:39:37] One more time I lift my eyes off my own failures and I see the One who's altogether beautiful, consistent, faithful and true.
[00:39:50] And when I see Jesus Christ, I also see standing behind him the great church that he created, the Church that He loved and gave Himself for the Church that He sent his spirit to empower the Church for which he makes intercession day after day.
[00:40:11] I pray, Heavenly Father, that our love for Christ would go deeper and our commitment to His Church would be richer.
[00:40:20] And I pray that your eternal purpose would be accomplished in Christ's name. Amen.
