Acts 8:1-25 | Modern Missionary

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Slides:

The world is in great need of more modern missionaries. Modern missionaries are in great need of the power and boldness of the Holy Spirit.

Thoughts on the lamentation over Charlie Kirk in the church:

• Many felt a personal connection with him.

• He is a brother in Christ: Ps. 116:15 Precious in the sight of the LORD Is the death of His godly ones.

• His murder didn’t feel like a random act of violence; it uncovered the battle of ideologies and spiritual warfare that affect us.

• He was influential for the sake of the Gospel.

• A lamentation over one is not hate or indifference for another.

We will lament, pray, and praise.

Psalm 69:29-31

But I am afflicted and in pain; May Your salvation, O God, set me [securely] on high. 30 I will praise the name of God with song And magnify Him with thanksgiving. 31 And it will please the LORD better than an ox [Or] a young bull with horns and hoofs.

Modern Missionary:

• Two ways to gather a crowd: miracles and preaching.

Acts 17:16-17

Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. 17 So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing [Gentiles,] and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present.

Modern Missionary:

• Caution, contents may be hot!

Acts 17:19, 21, 32, 34

And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? ... 21 (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.) ... 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some [began] to sneer, but others said, "We shall hear you again concerning this." ... 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

Three relationships with the Holy Spirit:

• With (“para”) us, to convict the world of sin

• In (“en”) us, as a seal, a mark of our salvation

• Upon (“epi”) us, to empower us for ministry

Modern Missionary: Are we seeking the Holy Spirit with the right heart?

Luke 11:9, 13

"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ... 13 "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will [your] heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"

Luke 11:5-8

Then He said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; 6 for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; 7 and from inside he answers and says, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you [anything.]' 8 "I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him [anything] because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

1 Timothy 4:14

Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery.

“In true asking there is a kind of urgency, a refusal to be content with anything less than the answer…This is clearly the teaching of the Scripture itself. Our danger, all of us, is to reduce the great blessings of the Christian faith to some almost automatic process…There is this element of real seeking, ‘hunger and thirst’." (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Joy Unspeakable)