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Welcome to the Hope Community Church! Hope is a multi-site church community with locations around the Triangle in Raleigh, Apex, Northwest Cary, Garner, and Fuquay-Varina. We are here to love you where you are and encourage you to grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ! We strive to speak the truth of the Bible in a way that is easy to understand, helpful in your current life circumstances, and encouraging. No matter who you are or where you come from, you are welcome here!
Welcome. Hope it's good to see you. Welcome online. Come on,
let's stand and sing together. I'll praise in
I'm I.
So.
As
praise. When
praise gonna shoot Rose.
Defeated.
Gonna shoot.
Defeated.
You. Calm the storms around
the darkness.
One
greater. There's no power like the power of Jesus.
Let arise. Let all,
there's no power like the power Jesus.
Hallelujah. Well,
we're so glad to celebrate with you the glory of God in this place.
For those of you, if you're here,
and this is your very first time to Hope Community Church,
we want to welcome you. You are so very welcome here. And after the service,
if you just head out these doors and to your left,
you're gonna see a next steps area and we would love to connect with you.
We actually have a special gift that we would love to give you just for coming
and checking us out.
And there we can answer more questions about our church and help you take your
next step with Jesus there. For those of you who are joining us online,
we're so glad that you took some time out to check out Get Hope tv and we want
to know that you're new.
So if this is your first time and you're experiencing hope, go in the chat.
Type the word new, our people would love to connect with you. And again,
let you know all about what God is doing here at Hope Community Church.
Well, we're gonna continue worshiping together, sing about our king.
Without to from heaven,
right to fulfill
throne.
Come.
On church, lift your voice and sing
reveal kingdom and
to redeem whole creation.
The lamb conquer dead.
Thank you for
I hear your invitation
to let it all go.
I'm laying down and I,
I run the,
I'm done with reason.
My heart needs a soul. So
I.
Can't,
I.
Can we give God praise and thanksgiving.
For his mercy.
You know, I love the words of that song We run to the Father.
And here's the thing,
the power of that song is there's only one reason that we can run
to the Father.
We didn't have access until cer certain point in history.
And it was when the perfect sacrifice happened. Jesus,
the Holy Lamb of God,
when he gave his very life and he died on the cross for our sins,
that's what gave us access to the Father. And that's why as a church,
on the first weekend of every month,
we take time to pause in our service and observe communion
to remember what he's done for us.
And I wanna read to you what Paul says to the Corinthians in Corinthians,
first Corinthians, chapter 11. He says,
for I receive from the Lord what I also passed on to you,
the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed,
he took bread when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,
this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way after supper, he took the cups saying,
this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. And then Paul,
the apostle adds these powerful words. He says,
for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you me,
we as Christ followers proclaim the Lord's death until he
comes. So when we observe communion, it's not just a moment of reflection,
it's not just a moment of remembrance. It is those things.
But it's a moment of proclamation, of the power of the gospel,
the power of the death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So if you're joining us online,
I want to encourage you to go and grab some crackers, juice, bread,
what whatever you have that just represents the broken body of Jesus,
the blood of Jesus, shed for you. And if you're a Christ follower,
take time to remember his sacrifice here in the room.
I want to ask you right now,
just to make your way around the room to the tables,
take the elements back to a seat. Have a seat there.
There's some scriptures on the screen to just reflect and pause before you take
the elements. But let's do this in remembrance of him.
Fall into grace. I'm done with it. Heart,
no reason away. My heart needs a
soul, needs a, so I run,
I run, I fall into grace.
I'm done with it. No reason to
my heart found a soul.
So I again, I run,
I run, I fall into grace.
I'm done
heart. So
and again and.
Again.
Church.
Just our voices sing. I run to.
I run to the Father, fall into grace.
I'm done with hiding the reason away
my heart found a soul, found a friend.
So I run to the Father again and again and
again.
Hallelu God,
we give you thanks for your mercy.
God we honor you and we glorify you. God,
we lift up our praise to you for only you are worthy. God,
we pray that today, if anyone doesn't know you, that you would draw them to you.
And God,
we pray that you would open our minds and our ears to hear and learn from your
word tonight. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Well, what's going on? Hope family. You know,
a couple years ago we had this vision and the vision went something like this.
What if we could put a resource in the palm of your hands that was available to
you 24 7 to help you grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ?
I could not be more excited to let you know that the day is finally here and the
hope in real life app is ready to be downloaded. Uh,
just to give you a little backstory,
the way that we approached this was with this masterclass mentality.
Like what are the growth tracks where you have a felt need to grow in your
relationship with Jesus and to live our lives the way that God has for us.
And so areas like marriage, uh, parenting, uh, how, how about our finances?
Uh,
what does it really mean for me to grow in my relationship with Jesus Christ?
And so I want you to know it's organized that way.
There's even ways to actually find community inside of the app to share prayer
request,
to know that people are coming alongside of you to encourage you to grow in your
relationship with Jesus. So that's one thing I wanna let you know. Also,
alongside of that,
we are going to be starting an all in church Bible study together starting
Monday, February 5th. And we're gonna do that through the app.
It's gonna coincide with our current sermon series. I'm telling you,
this is an opportunity for us as a church to go beyond Sunday,
to go beyond the walls of our campuses and actually engage God through scripture
together. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to text app, alright?
That's a PP to 7 2 9 8 9. When you do that,
you're gonna get a link sent directly to your phone that's gonna allow you to
download the app. Now,
if you don't do that now and you get home later and think, oh yeah,
I need to download the app, and you forget that 7, 2, 9, 8, 9 number,
just go to whatever app store you usually use to download apps,
search Hope in Real Life app. It'll pop up and you can jump in. Listen,
this is an opportunity for us as a church to take a next step that God is
calling us into. We're jumping in week one. That's the move. Let's go.
And now back to the church.
I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. Yeah. Like to come on.
I like to move it, move it.
As we see here.
25, 11 38.
That we.
Moving.
Into the Renaissance.
Physically, physically
what's in.
The modern mirror. We start to see.
Like, it, it.
It, it it.
Church history. Like you've never seen it.
We saying there's nothing that our God can't do.
But he doesn't always do what we like.
Sometimes he doesn't meet our expectations.
He's powerful enough, he's able,
but he doesn't do what we think he ought to do.
If you've ever experienced that with God, then we are in good company.
As we turn to Acts chapter one today, we begin a new series,
a four-part series on the book of Acts as we watch how the church expands
from Jerusalem to all the parts of the earth.
So I'd like you to turn to Acts chapter one and we're going to
dive right in. There's a lot to cover and it's gonna be,
I think, and I hope a pivotal study for us.
We sang the Spirit lit the flame, and this is what we're gonna see in,
in the Book of Acts.
So I'm gonna read Acts chapter one verses one through 11 so
you can follow along. As I read from the ESV in the first book,
this is what Luke is writing. His first book is the Gospel of Luke.
He also writes Acts. So his, he says in the first book, ooph,
I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was
taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles
whom he had chosen.
He presented himself alive to them after suffering by many proofs,
appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
And while staying with them,
he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the
promise of the Father, which he said,
you heard from me for John baptized with water,
but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord,
will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
He said to them, it's not for you to know there's some disappointment.
It's not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father has fixed by
his own authority. But
here's the new news. You will receive power,
Divine enabling when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.
And when he had said these things as they were looking on,
he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.
And while they were gazing into heaven as he went,
behold two men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee,
why do you stand looking into the sky?
This Jesus who has taken up from you into heaven will come back
in the same way as you saw him go.
Now this is Luke's second account, his second volume,
and his first volume ends in chapter 24 of Luke.
And and the story goes like this. Jesus has died.
He has raised up from the dead.
And two of his disciples, we know only one's name ops, uh,
cleopas. They were walking from Jerusalem to a Emmaus. It's about a seven hour,
I mean seven uh, mile walk. So they're walking. As they're walking,
they're discussing what happened in Jerusalem. I mean it was a big to-do.
Jesus had been crucified.
And all of a sudden Jesus appears alongside of them, say, Hey,
what do you, what are you talking about? And they look at him like,
are you crazy? You know what happened in Jerusalem, right?
And Jesus is acting like, no, I don't know what's going on.
And so they tar started to explain what, what happened in Jerusalem,
how Jesus had died and, and they were expecting something.
And what they were expecting was this Jesus that they had walked with for three
years,
this Jesus who had cast out demons and healed the sick and preached the the
kingdom of God to people and saw many people follow him.
This Jesus was to make a difference for the people of Israel by
declaring war on Rome,
toppling the Roman Empire. This is what they had expected.
This is how they read the Old Testament.
This is what they were expecting Jesus to do because he they believed
was the Messiah. But he died.
It shattered their dreams. To go on to mention,
well a couple ladies came and told us that they didn't find him in his tomb.
So maybe that's good news. And so as they're walking along,
they asked Jesus to join them for supper. He says, alright,
I'll join you for supper. And so in Matthew 24, verse 27,
it says that Jesus,
during that supper began to explain to them
from the Old Testament everything concerning him.
Can you imagine that Bible story?
He takes all of the Old Testament and he shows it those two people,
how it applies to Jesus. Jesus is saying to them,
I am the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies. And it says,
suddenly their eyes were opened, they realized who it was.
And just the time they realized who it was, he vanished from their sight.
There he goes again. We just saw him and now he's gone again.
First he dies and now he vanishes.
And so they go and they tell the other disciples, he says, Hey, we just,
we just saw Jesus and the women were there too. And they said, we,
we saw an empty tomb. Two men stood by us and said,
why are you looking in the tomb? It's empty. He has risen.
And so they're all scratching their heads. Now where is he?
And just as they're doing that, he appears once again
automatically appears. He says, Hey,
peace be unto you. And they're like, what do you think you're a ghost?
That's what it says. They thought he was a ghost.
And Jesus again explained to them
everything concerning himself from the Old Testament. He repeats it.
And then what he does is he tells them,
reminds them actually that the Holy Spirit is going to come
as he promised. If you remember John 16, the upper room discourse,
Jesus was telling them that it's necessary for him to depart. So the counselor,
the comforter could come, well now it's time. So,
so for 40 days, Jesus spent
with his disciples teaching them banishing their fears,
helping them understand all that they needed to know,
opening their eyes to the Old Testament and how it was fulfilled in Jesus.
And then teaching them about the promised Holy Spirit.
And it was not until he told them about the Spirit and had answered their
questions, felt they were ready,
that he ascended to the father's right hand.
And that's what we read in Acts chapter one.
But they had this haunting question
that we read in verse six. Is it at this time,
now that you're back, you disappeared, but now you're back again.
Is it at this time you're restoring the kingdom to Israel?
What their perspective was was what they probably read in Isaiah chapter two.
Isaiah chapter two said that Jerusalem would be the center for
all the peoples of the nations to come and worship God. And they were thinking,
this is the perfect time. You have just risen from the dead.
Now's the time
and Jesus departs.
And so they're left and awe of his ascension.
But wondering what is this going to be like?
What is God up to? This is not what we expected.
We expected more and more people to come to Jerusalem,
more people to be converted by the Messiah. It's just not happening.
So we turn over to Acts chapter two
and I'm going to read several verses there as well.
Chapter two verse one, when the day of Pentecost arrived,
they were all together one place and suddenly there came from heaven,
a sound like a mighty rushing wind.
And it filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues of as
a fire appeared to them and rested on each of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other
tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem,
Jews
Di devout men from every nation under heaven.
And at this sound,
the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was
hearing them in his own language and they were amazed and astonished saying,
are not all these who speaking Galileans?
And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language?
Parthians, Meads mites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia,
Pontus, Asia, reia, paraphilia,
Egypt and parts of Libya belong to re and visitors from Rome,
both Jews and ProSites credence in Arabian.
We hear them telling in our own tongues, the mighty works of God
and all were amazed and perplexed saying to one another,
what does this mean?
Now others were mocking saying they're filled with new wine.
And what we see here is something very significant.
This is the reversal of something that happened back in Genesis chapter 11
called Babel. Do you remember that story?
Humanity on their own wanted to reach God. So what did they do?
They built what's back, an ancient near east, a zt,
a multi-tiered building or a tower.
And they were trying to reach God. They're trying to get to heaven on their own.
And God said no. So God confuses the tongue.
That's the Hebrew word, Babel to confuse. He confuses their tongue.
All of a sudden they find each other.
They're speaking the same language as they,
they split up and the nations are are born.
What we have here
is not man seeking to reach God in their own way,
but God seeking to reach man
in a new way.
That's a beautiful picture of the unity of scripture and how God takes what is a
mess that man makes and makes it right.
When those people were building that tower, they didn't expect that to happen.
When the people of, uh, the,
the disciples thought he was gonna build a temple didn't happen.
Disappointment everywhere, bewilderment, disillusionment.
But God had a better plan.
And so here we are, we where and there we go.
So now they're sitting, the spirit has come upon them,
they're speaking in tongues
and God has done something amazing and they're still not sure what does this
mean? I think we'd be in the same boat.
We wouldn't understand it either. In fact,
I believe today we've lost the dynamic that we're about to read about in the
church in the West goes something like this.
If you look at chapter two of Acts,
we see Peter,
remember Peter denying Peter confused Peter bumbling Peter
couldn't get anything right unless God Dev divinely gave it to him
just a couple months after he denied Christ.
He's here in the street corner of Jerusalem
and he's going to preach something that he had
never preached before.
He's gonna say words that were not from him.
The Holy Spirit had come upon him and the others and now
he stands and he says he stood up with the other 11
raised his voice.
Remember all those people from all the nations are gathered in Jerusalem
and he stands up, he says, listen to me. This is important.
Lean in. He wasn't like, oh hey guys, I got something. If you have time, uh,
I'd like to share something with you. No,
he stood in the confidence that the spirit of God had given him
and he proclaims to them
a message that we need to recapture in the church in the West.
And that is this Jesus. Look at verse 22,
men of Israel, listen to this
Jesus,
he didn't start telling these people about the stories of walking by the sea of
Galilee with Jesus.
He didn't recount everything that had happened to him and all the wonderful
experiences he had with his master.
He proclaims Jesus. Listen to what he says.
Jesus of Nazareth was a man.
He talks about Jesus' humanity,
Accredited by God, by his miracles, wonders, and signs his deity,
which God did among you through him. As you yourselves know,
this man was handed over to you by God's
set purpose and foreknowledge.
Wow.
Do you remember Peter?
This is the same Peter when Jesus said he had to go to the cross, he said,
I will not let that happen. And you remember what Jesus said,
get behind me Satan. Why did Jesus say that?
Because Peter unknowingly wanted to
stop Jesus from doing the very thing he came to do.
He said that's that's the work of Satan.
That's same Peter is now saying, you know what?
By God's predetermined counsel,
he delivered his own son
That could only be attributed to the coming and work of the spirit of
God at the day of, of Pentecost.
Now what's important about that?
It's important because we understand
that the message of our mission is
Christ.
We're getting that confused in churches today across our land.
I believe we're in this ecclesiastical moment in our land where people are
abandoning the faith.
They're replacing Jesus with other commitments that make them
feel more safe In this culture
and in this ecclesiastical moment,
it's also a personal moment for you and for me. We have to ask the question,
am I going to one,
renew my commitment to this kind of spirit fill spirit led
ministry of preaching and proclaiming Jesus Christ where we live, learn,
work and play. Or two,
am I gonna replace it with something that is more comfortable for me with my
friends and my colleagues and my neighbors?
I'll talk about spirituality, I'll, I'll talk about God,
but not Jesus.
A lot of churches are doing that. As you may know,
they're giving into all kinds of political ideologies and other things and
they're emphasizing the wrong thing.
Or we can thirdly just reject Christ
altogether. Those are three choices in this moment.
Do we renew our commitment to proclaim him and him alone?
Do we replace it with something more comfortable for our culture or do we reject
it altogether?
And there's churches right in our community that have completely
rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as doing that,
they have separated themselves from the 2000 years
of gospel preaching, spirit
enabled spirit empowered proclamation of Jesus the
man, Jesus God.
You see, that's, that's important.
And so the first implication from Ephesians one and two is that Christ
is the message of our mission Jesus.
And as you work your way through the messages of acts,
what you find over and over and over again is,
is it's about Jesus.
It's always about Jesus.
And you get to Paul and you read his letters and he says to me,
to live is Christ.
If you put anything else in that place to me to live is health to me.
To live is financial security to me to live whatever,
then you can't say the last part of that same verse for he said to me,
to live is Christ. To die is gain
For you to live as health. You'll be sorely disappointed
for you to live as financial security. It will be taken away.
There's no pockets and shrouds.
Right?
And this is, this is at what is at stake.
What Luke is wanting us to understand as he writes these letters or
writes these words rather,
is for us to understand the key dynamic of the church of Jesus
Christ is precisely him. Jesus Christ.
This is why Paul in Ephesians chapter four,
when he is talking about the ascension of Christ and that the ascension of
Christ, Christ gave gifts to people
through the Spirit. It
so that Christ's mission that he began as he walked this earth would continue
through his people. And so he gives them gifts.
And he says the reason he gives gifts is so that the church,
you, me, together,
might grow up to the fullness of the stature of
Christ. Hope.
We do not measure ourselves against each other
as a collective. We don't measure ourselves against another church.
Hope, community Church,
summit Vintage C3 Shepherds, you name it.
They are to measure and we are to measure ourselves against Jesus Christ.
He is the message that we proclaim.
And the sec second implication of this is that we are responsible
for that mission.
It's easy, however, to neglect that
It's easy for us to get comfortable not sharing Jesus.
And Luke wants to remind us
there's a long history of men and women who gave
their all for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Missionary stories,
stories from all over the world of men and women that have gone into places that
some of us wouldn't think about going to in order to tell them about Jesus.
Good mission, biographies are very rarely read anymore,
but they're very well worth reading.
'cause they remind us of the people that have gone before us.
My wife often says the cloud of witnesses that spur us on,
that we can look to and gain courage from because they were faithful.
We can be faithful in hope. We need to be faithful.
We do not want to be a church that replaces Christ
with something more comfortable.
We certainly do not want to be a church that rejects Christ all together.
I'm glad hope is committed to the truth of God's word and to the proclamation of
that. And we do that so that we can be equipped.
So when we are here being refreshed
and renewed by the teaching of the word, we go out, we're sent.
And this is the the work of the spirit he sends.
So as you go through acts, you find throughout acts these,
these little statements and they appear at key places through the
Book of Acts chapter six, verse seven.
The word of God spread and the number of disciples increased.
Chapter 9 31.
And the souls of the of the disciples were strengthened and God was adding to
their numbers daily. 16, five,
the word of God spread. Disciples increased.
1920, the number of disciples increased.
The word of God strengthened and spread.
And then it ends in the last verse of chapter 28
with an unfinished task.
Paul in chains
still proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.
When our minds race forward to the book of Revelation,
you might remember that verse that says that their people
from every tribe and tongue and people, group and nation
standing before the throne of God and of the Lamb singing
praise to him, How do they get there?
It is our responsibility by the power of the Spirit with the
gospel of Jesus Christ to populate heaven
with people from every tongue, tribe, nation.
That's your responsibility. That's my responsibility.
It's not the responsibility of the people that are up here speaking.
I mean it is, but not solely or the paid staff.
It wasn't the responsibility simply of the 12 apostles for when they all
gathered in Jerusalem and they were happy just to be in Jerusalem. And God said,
I wanted to go to Judea and Samaria and then to the uttermost parts of the
earth. He sent persecution so the church would scatter and who scattered
new believers, scattered people that were new in their faith.
The apostles stayed in Jerusalem. There's people like you and me,
no credentials, no great scholarly scholar like Paul.
They went out and they spread the good news.
And as they went and spread the good news,
churches were started all over Asian minor.
It wasn't the work of one man,
it was the work of the spirit of God through the people of God,
using the word of God to proclaim the son of God.
That's our responsibility. Christ
is the message of our mission.
We are responsible for that mission.
And as we go through acts, we're gonna see that
people like you. So I can't do that.
You're right. Not without the spirit of God.
Well, I dunno what to say.
Paul preached Jesus. You know Jesus,
the proclamation.
Doesn't mean you have to get up and preach in a corner as Peter did.
It means as you sit down over a coffee and share with a neighbor or a friend,
a coworker, what Jesus has done in your life,
explain to them who this Jesus is. Let the Spirit of God do the work.
We are not responsible for saving souls. That's his responsibility.
We are responsible for proclaiming the good news.
And the question is,
are we up for that?
There's nothing our God can't do
through you in the lives of others,
by the power of the Spirit and the Gospel of Christ
by God's Grace May hope be a place
that always preaches to the gospel and sends
the family out to be the witnesses that the spirit of God wants to
use to populate the throne room of heaven with people
From all over the world.
Let's ask God to help us do just that.
Father, we thank you for your word. Your word is truth. Your truth sets us free.
And if it's good enough for us, we certainly don't wanna hoard it.
But at times we confess to you that that's how we live our lives
times. We forget that Jesus is the core of our message
and that you've sent us on mission.
Lord, we ask you
do a work in our hearts individually, corporately, as a church family
that propels us out of our comfort zones, out of our fear,
and with boldness and grace, taking the message of Jesus
by the power of the Spirit to the people who so desperately need to hear
about him.
Help us by your grace to continue
strengthening and spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Well hope Community Church, we have received a gift this weekend.
Some of you may not be that familiar with Gary Vet.
He is one of our senior leaders and I've been here at hope for
over 11 years and my life is richer.
My understanding of God's word is richer.
My understanding of how to apply that to my life in a practical way
is richer because of this man.
And today was a gift.
It was a simple and yet incredibly prophetic and profound message
that I know I need to go back and re-listen to a couple more times.
And so I want to encourage you,
I wanna encourage those of you who have joined us online too,
go back and let the spirit of God that we've heard so clearly about
today bring this message even more to life and more to
application through your life for His glory.
I wanna remind you about the app and I want to encourage you to download the app
and you can do so by texting app a PP to 7 2 9 8 9
and let's all of us download that and do this journey
together through the Book of Acts starting on Monday morning.
And I'll be doing that. I would love for you to join me,
join us as we journey through the Book of Acts.
If you're here in the room with us and you're new,
we would love to meet you at next steps after the service.
And if you're online joining us new, please let us know.
And if there's any way we can serve you and or your family as a church,
please let us know. Thanks for being with us during this time.
We look forward to seeing you next week. You're dismissed.