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All right, there they are Lindsey Amy and also you guys are always coloring drawing doing something before we get started You guys ready to go to there? Yeah, awesome. What do you got next to you there? You got some kind of tree Plant some kind. Let's talk about that a little bit. So where did we finish last time guys? Do you remember who we talking about last time? Jesus from our little library of the Bible back here No, I'm not holding it anymore because I drop it all over the place, but We talked about Jesus right and we kind of left him some of his ministry and something and the disciples becoming good friends of his And we didn't talk about this a lot last time. We'll talk about more today, but at the end of the Gospels Jesus dies The authorities of the time they kill him they crucify him on a cross and we'll talk more about that down the road but now if you were Jesus BFF and Now he dies and goes away. How are you feeling? Have you ever have you ever lost a good friend like moved away went somewhere else the long ways away? You don't see him anymore. Have you ever had somebody like that Amy you did? Yeah Yeah, it's kind of sad isn't it when they move away and Imagine the disciples more than just a BFF more than just their best friend They had left their jobs. They had left their homes. They left everything to walk with Jesus And now Jesus is gone. He goes away and Man they are when you arrived they were sad They were depressed and even though Jesus told them he would rise from the dead None of them remembered that so for three days. They're very sad. They're just they've left everything now What are they gonna do and then Sunday morning? Jesus becomes alive again. Jesus resurrected from the dead That's what we celebrate on what day Easter and it's coming up right Easter is coming up in a couple of weeks kind of be a different Easter though, right? No, wait Easter egg hunt. No coming to grandma grandpa's for dinner. Yeah anyway Jesus rose from the wrist rose from the dead knees with them again, and how are they feeling? Oh, they're very happy and then 40 days later. This is where the book of Acts starts We're gonna move on from the story of Jesus now To this part of the story. This is the very last part of the Bible This we're going where so we're calling Paul because we'll talk about Paul quite a bit not so much today But we're gonna talk about we use Paul to anchor this whole section of time when Jesus rises from the dead Then he takes the the people back into Jerusalem his disciples, and you know what happens to Jesus then? Does he just stay on the planet with them what happens? You don't know at the end of 40 days after he resurrected from the dead Jesus was with the disciples. They were on a mountain and he says I'm going to leave you now and he goes up into the clouds And he vanishes. He's gone again So how do they feel now? Well, I don't know about man, they might be a little mad But they were they were sad then they were happy and now they're back alone again in Jerusalem And they go back to the uproom and this is where the book of Acts begins It's actually called the Acts of the Apostles. Do you know who wrote the book of Acts? No, it's the same guy that wrote the Gospel of Luke. Who was that? Who wrote the Gospel of Luke? It's right in the name. Yeah Luke Luke wrote that Luke wrote it and when Luke got done writing the Gospels He went right on and writing about Acts and he tells us more of the story as it unfolds and this is what we're going to talk about today because They lost their best friend and I remember as we talked about last week, Austin, you remember the little drops in the water Made the visible made the invisible visible, right? So we said Jesus made God visible so we could see him and They go and for 35 years or four years Jesus walked on this planet. We got to see him and then he died But then he resurrected. That's good and 40 more days They got to be with Jesus and then he ascended he went to be with the father So he he left the earth that we can see and so the visible became invisible again And this had become the disciples best friend. Jesus was their best friend. He was their teacher He was their guide and they wanted to learn to follow him and now he's gone and they had expected Here's what the Jews expected. We haven't talked a lot about this yet This is in this part of the story the whole first part of the story Which we're gonna cover when we get to it the next few weeks But Jesus comes as the promised Messiah Israel had a hope the Jews that one day Jesus God would send them a Messiah one who would deliver them from oppression Delivered there from Rome. They were hoping Jesus would be that or they weren't hoping it But Jesus came to be that Messiah, but the Jews didn't recognize him. I told you last week They didn't see God in Jesus Jesus spent too much time with sinners He was too nice to the bad guys and they didn't like that And so they couldn't they couldn't see that Jesus was the promised Messiah all these books talk about the Messiah Who's coming and we'll talk about that story later So even the disciples they go up to the mountain with Jesus and they're saying are you now going to restore Israel? And Jesus says you still don't get it. It's not about the kingdom of Israel It's about the kingdom of God and so Jesus leaves there alone and then 10 days later There's a day called the day of Pentecost after Jesus ascended to the father God gives them a new a new person to read about in Scripture called the Holy Spirit. Do you remember the movie The Shack? Do you remember that have you seen it? No, some of you haven't seen it yet. Amy has there was the there was God Right Papa God the father there was Jesus and then there was this woman called Sorayu Which is supposed to be like the spirit So those three Persons are inside of God and that's pretty complicated stuff But now for the not the first time because Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit. He talked about the comfort coming Here's the most important passages to read in the Gospels when you get there. Okay, Lindsay, you're listening Yeah, good. You like drawing when you listen don't you? John 13 14 15 16 17. These are the last hours Jesus spent with his friends. He's it's just going by I'm leaving. I'm going away and don't be afraid because if I go away, I'm gonna send my spirit to be with you So what happens in the early part of the book of Acts is the invisible of the the visible now Jesus with us becomes invisible again and they feel all alone and they go back to this room and they're there And then the Holy Spirit comes and you know what the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit is Jesus inside of you Jesus inside you all the time So he's with you now the reason we know that happened Because when you know people who have maybe you know somebody like this, but they had a really good friend who was also their leader Maybe there was a famous president like Abraham Lincoln or somebody like that And then your leader dies and goes away and you got you and you knew him really well as a friend What do you think about when you think about your friend who left you? They feel bad, but you think about things like well, those were the good old days man Remember when Abraham Lincoln was here that was awesome man He was such a good leader or maybe a boss you had at work or maybe a dad that that's passed away or grandma He said oh my gosh. It was great when they were here. It was a great time You know what we never hear from the disciples as we go through the book of Acts and into the rest of the New Testament Wow, those were good days when Jesus was here And we sure miss him now because he's not here with us anymore What we hear instead is Peter and James and John and the other one saying that Jesus Who was here and whom you crucified whom God raised from the dead? He's still here. He now lives inside of us instead of outside of us That's pretty special, right? How would you like it if your best friend could live inside of you if you thought they were gone You'd never see him again, but suddenly you hear them inside of you suddenly your friend is with you wherever you go No matter what you're doing even if you're in the pandemic and you're stuck in your house your best friend is still with you That's what the disciples experience Jesus in the Holy Spirit comes to live inside them And now their best friend is with them all the time. That's the miracle of the book of Acts It tells us about these early Jesus followers who are trying to figure out how we hang out with Jesus and how we live with him And how we get to know him now all these things happen in a place in the world We call Israel grandpa took your mommy there a while back We went to Israel with Aunt Becky and mommy and and this is Jerusalem. This is the outside of Jerusalem This is where they this is where the temple stood. Let me get a little pen right here This is this is now a mosque right here, but this is where the temple used to be This is near where the gate was when Jesus came into Jerusalem on the triumphal entry the week before Easter He came on a gate that gates now underground because these walls These walls around here. They weren't there back when Jesus was here But they were built afterwards after it was destroyed the walls were rebuilt later But this is where the temple stood. This is where Jesus lived the upper rooms up here somewhere The city of David is down here somewhere. This is Jerusalem so many important events happened right there in Jerusalem And now the disciples are there and Jesus lived a whole of his life right around that same area Let me show it to you on a bigger map. This is a map of the whole Mediterranean See you guys remember being in the Mediterranean. Remember we were in Istanbul here, do you remember and and Venice is over here in Italy and Rome and Greece and Athens. This is the whole Mediterranean this little part right down here I'm sure I didn't have the pin earlier This is a this is Greece and this is Italy and Rome and Istanbul is right there Okay, this is where Jesus lived his whole life right here in Jerusalem and in Judea right here around this part of the world He lived his whole life there and he died and was resurrected there and for the first 10 years of the disciples they lived right in that area of This of the world and they began to talk about this Jesus this best friend of theirs Who is still with them and they were healing the sick and they were doing amazing things and those amazing things just let them know Hey, the best friend hasn't gone away He's still with us But now he lives inside of us through the Holy Spirit And so now we're gonna learn to live a whole new way of living the book of Acts is a whole new way of living inside Of Jesus Austin, you've got a little plant there next to you. Where'd you guys get that plant? Do you know? What from us guys yeah grandma sent you guys a plant to help you get through the Pandemic I guess and that's a gardenia now if that plant stays healthy Tell me what you think that plant is going to do. How's that plant gonna change in the next couple of months? It's gonna get bigger right what else it gonna do Go flowers. It's gonna grow flowers on it really pretty smelling flowers, right? Anything healthy grows right all of you guys are growing Right you keep growing you keep getting bigger and bigger even though grandpa says stop growing because I like little kids They're all getting big but that that plant is gonna keep growing because it's a lot, right? And that's the same thing we go back to this This is what we find in the book of Acts first We get a whole new cast of characters that happen we go from Jesus To the Holy Spirit at the day and that's Acts chapter 2 and then Peter becomes real important Peter becomes an important apostle the first part of Acts a Lot of what Peter is doing we get to read about and then later on in the book of Acts some other guy emerges a guy named Paul we'll talk about Paul Paul's a lot like us. You know what Paul didn't get to live with Jesus Paul didn't know Jesus when he was alive Paul was on the other side Paul was part of that group that wanted to kill Jesus and wanted to do away with him But we'll talk about Paul next week Paul actually comes to meet Jesus and Jesus comes to live inside of Paul and Then Paul becomes an important character. So we go from Jesus to the Holy Spirit To Peter and then we get to Paul and that's the arc of the story of the book of Acts Does that make sense? So they become very important people you're gonna read about Peter You're gonna read about him reaching out to the Jews because he was the the apostle of the Jews and Honestly, even the early Christians they thought Jesus only came for Jewish people. He didn't come for us He didn't come for Gentiles. He just came for them. It took eight or nine years before the Holy Spirit showed Peter This is Acts chapter 10 Jesus the Holy Spirit shows Peter. Hey Jesus didn't just come for the Jews. He came for everybody Don't call unclean what God calls clean and Jewish Jews always thought they were clean and Gentiles, which is what we are They were pagans because we were non-Jews. God didn't love us. God couldn't be part of our lives But Jesus came to show them. You know what? I'm bigger than just the Jews I want to know everybody and so then what happens from this little group that that Started in Jerusalem Right. Here's here's the book of Acts the next few years This grows to encompass this part of the world And not just Jews now it's including everybody Romans and Greeks and other other people And so this became part of the message of Jesus and then as acts goes on It reaches out to here. Paul takes a missionary journey, which we'll talk about he goes into this region right here Which is Ephesus and some of the and some of the other cities that we know from letters in the bible Paul went here with Barnabas and then they came back to this area And then they went out again and later and they extended Jesus into the Europe and they went into Greece and Eventually when acts ends the gospel has gone to Rome And actually further than Rome. It's gone into Spain. It's gone clear out And on this side, we don't have this in the book of acts But philip and others went to the east so the gospel spreads further it spreads into Into india and through persia and through those so the gospel just like that plant if it's healthy It's going to keep growing And the gospel kept growing in the world And so it goes from Peter who who stays pretty much in Jerusalem though He does go to Rome at the very end But he stays pretty much in it Paul goes out and he takes the gospel and like I said philip and others are taking the gospel out too So this message of Jesus That he lives in us that there's a new way to live in the world It's not just being a human and doing whatever I want It's I'm able to live in God's kingdom and do what God wants and learn the things that God wants me to know So that I can live a life that's not just based on myself But it's based in Jesus as well. And so as the early church goes out, there's there's a problem, right? Not everybody loves what they're doing The jews don't like that they're leading people away from judeism because judeism was all these things You're supposed to do to make God happy and now people weren't doing those things anymore So they were very concerned about them And so they got persecuted and then they got into Rome and Rome got threatened by these people that were following Jesus as the king Not the emperor as the king So he kills them. He kills a lot of christians And no matter even though they were being persecuted That little tree of the church of jesus christ in the world just kept growing just kept growing in acts We read about that. It's an incredible story as the church keeps growing So I want you to read about that. That's a history book It'll it'll take you through lots of things the church growing as a family and the church becomes I don't think of the church as that building on the corner that says first baptist church this or Presbyterian church that think of the church as jesus's family who are living in the kingdom of god in the world That's some of the people you know, right? You know people that live in that kingdom And you know people who don't know about that kingdom yet Was jesus became invisible in us He wants to become visible again through us When I love you lindsay the way jesus loves you jesus gets visible again for you When you love your friends like jesus loves you then jesus becomes more visible again in the world. Is that right? So the church becomes the reflection of his glory and we're all part of that church You're part of it and it's all of us individually And it's all of us collectively because there are things you learn about love from grandma That you don't learn from grandpa right grandma loves you differently than grandpa does She thinks of different things to do for you She says different things to you than I say to you because now between grandma and grandpa You get a bigger picture of who jesus is and then add your mommy to that and your daddy and other friends And now you're getting a bigger picture of who jesus is. That's what happens in the book of acts from jesus going away To jesus expressing himself and a whole lot of people so he becomes visible again Okay, and now very at the end I'm going to talk to you about the last book because we won't get to it again The last book of the bible is the book called revelation It's a vision this a vision. You know what a vision is A vision's like a dream except you're awake You haven't you're seeing images. You guys all dream austin. Do you dream? What do you dream about? You don't know do you dream about playing baseball? Do you dream about playing with puppies? What do you do? What do you dream about lindsay? turtles Puppy you just dream about things right there the pictures you see in your head, but you're sleeping And sometimes you don't know it's a dream till you wake up and go you ever had scary dreams Yeah, I have scary dreams through all the time grandpa wakes up every Often like that. I have these fascinating dreams Well, this is a vision john One of jesus's followers again member john. He wrote the gospel john He's on this island out in the Mediterranean. He has this vision About how the world comes to an end And the world and it's going to be cataclysmic There's things like diseases like we're talking about right here There's all kinds of wires war and death and then eventually here's what revelation says the kingdoms of this world Become the kingdoms of our god and of his christ So eventually this whole world becomes a reflection of god's glory a new heaven a new earth All disease is gone all sin is gone all that's done away with and forever We get to live together even people who died that we know and love like great grandma, right? We'll get to be together again in a new kingdom and a new world and we'll live forever and you won't get sick and won't have pandemics And you won't have problems in your life You won't be mad at your mom and you won't do any of those things Because we'll be able to live the way jesus has always wanted us to live before sin took care of us Now one more thing before I go because I always like taking a book that we've talked about book of acts And tell when I read the book of acts, here's a story that's really helped grandpa Remember, I told you they were being persecuted austin member There were people being killed one of their big leaders was killed And others were imprisoned and act chapter four the early church They're just learning to follow jesus that and that's we'll talk about that more next week The whole story of learning to follow jesus is fascinating one But they're just learning and now they're being threatened. We're going to kill you if you keep talking about jesus So they get together to pray to say jesus, what do we do? What would you think jesus would say here? These people are going to kill you and you want to pray about them What do you want to ask jesus to do? Do you know People want to kill you and you're going to talk to jesus about those people. What are you going to ask him for? I don't know about you, but I might ask him would you kill those people before they kill me, right? That's what I'd be would you get them before they get would you wipe them out and just let your good people be on the planet? Well, maybe that's what they wanted to pray But as they were together praying and they were looking at some of the old testament scriptures about god's people are always persecuted Those who follow god Not always loved in this world That they realized that praying the persecution would stop was not probably what god was doing And instead they prayed for courage They said god give us courage so when they threaten us we still speak up when it gets hard We still follow you give us courage. Give us boldness to speak for you and you know what happened the whole room shook And then they began to the spirit the holy spirit fell on them and they were bold They were confident even if even if they were going to die or be persecuted They weren't afraid to talk about jesus. Where did that power come from? came from the holy spirit And so I want to tell you too that as we go down this journey together That god doesn't always fix the circumstances in this world the way we would want I would like him to fix this whole pandemic make it be gone tomorrow So I can come over there and hug you children. That would be awesome, right? But instead we're asking god to give us boldness to give us courage Give us faith in the midst of this pandemic and give us ways to love people so jesus can make himself known in the world make sense okay Well, that's enough for this time. I think it went a little over time, but that's all right And for those of you that are with us this time, uh, let me tell you We're gonna stop doing two a week just because we're wearing people out including me Uh, we're gonna go to once a week the kids you guys got more homework these days, right? So they got more homework to do and more stuff. So instead of trying to do two a week Which is a lot we're going to still go back to one a week But we're still going to do 10 more of these and go through the whole of the bible We're going to finish the next estimate next time And then we're going to go back to the creation of the world and how god's been revealing himself through the whole of time Alrighty, thanks guys. We'll talk to you later