The message is looking at the danger we have of comparing ourselves with each-other instead of comparing ourselves with Christ and His Word. 

<p>The message is looking at the danger we have of comparing ourselves with each-other instead of comparing ourselves with Christ and His Word. </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Ilam SDA Church

Daniel Pel

The One-Eyed King

I'm very excited about our presentation this morning, which is entitled, The One-Eyed King.

And now you're starting to think, where is he going to go with this?

Well, you just hang in there and you'll see exactly what I mean by the One-Eyed King.

We're going to find out this morning that maybe some of us here are one-eyed kings.

So before we get into God's Word, let's have a word of prayer.

I invite you to just bow your heads with me as we invite God's Spirit to direct us in this study this morning.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this beautiful opportunity to come together and study your word.

We ask for your Holy Spirit to come and dwell with us, to be our teacher and our guide.

I pray that you will speak through me to your people, and we claim the promise of your word that your words of truth that they will not return unto you void but accomplish that in which you please so be with us this morning we pray in the precious name of Jesus Christ and for his sake we pray.

I invite you to take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to the book of Acts.

That's the book of Acts just after the Gospel of John and we have the story there of the early church, the story of the early disciples as they went into the world proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.

The book of Acts is 1 of my favorite books in the Bible.

It is the story of power, a story of God working in those early believers.

And at the outset of our presentation this morning, I would like to take a big picture at the Book of Acts.

I would like to take a bird's perspective of the book of Acts as we just look at some of the snapshots of what God did in those early days of the Christian movement.

So turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Acts and we're gonna start right in the beginning in chapter 1 looking at verse 4.

And being assembled together with them, He, talking about Jesus, commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to do what?

Here Jesus is gathered together with his disciples and it's just before he's going to ascend to heaven.

So this is the last interaction between the disciples and Jesus here.

And Jesus tells them that they are to wait in Jerusalem.

For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

Jesus gives us them the insurance that if as they go back to Jerusalem and wait there, something special is going to happen.

And he's going to pour out his Holy Spirit upon them and they're going to go forth in mighty power witnessing of what Jesus has taught them.

Now look at verse 6, look at the response of the disciples here.

Verse 6 says, therefore when they had come together they asked him saying, Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

Now I want you to catch the significance of the words of the disciples here.

Jesus has just told them that they were to go back to Jerusalem and to wait for the outpouring of his spirit and Then they respond to Jesus and say, are you gonna right now set up your kingdom?

They didn't really understand the words that were spoken to them.

And even though they might have understood the words, they didn't really understand what God was about to do.

They believed that Jesus should set up his kingdom, should raise up his kingdom right there and then.

And yet Jesus says in verse 7, He says to them, it is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." It's interesting the words in verse 7 for times and seasons are the Greek words kairos and kronos from which we in English derive our word chronology and so God is basically revealing to the disciples, Jesus is revealing to the disciples the real chronology of how things are going to happen.

See the disciples had their own chronology, they believed that it was the right time for Jesus to set up his kingdom right there and then.

And yet they had to step into the chronology of God, into the times and seasons of God, and that was that they were first to go back to Jerusalem and to have an experience there in the upper room.

And through that experience the Holy Spirit would be poured out, and then they would start preaching in Jerusalem, and then in Judea, and then into the uttermost parts of the earth.

They were to step into the times and season of God.

And therefore we have the rest of the book of Acts as a consequence of the disciples stepping into God's plan, stepping into God's time and season.

And so you continue there in the book of Acts and in chapter 2 we read about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Peter's powerful sermon which resulted in 3, 000 souls being baptized.

You go into Acts chapter 3 and you read about A lame man that is laying there at the entrance of the temple.

And when Peter and John meet him, he asks for some money.

And Peter and John, they respond to him and they say, Silver and gold have we none, but in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.

And he gets up and he glorifies God and walks into the temple.

And so you go on into the story of Acts and in chapter 4 you read about how Peter and John are arrested and brought before the religious authority of those days, brought before the Sanhedrin.

They will not let the opposition crush this movement, and they continue to preach the name of Jesus in Jerusalem.

In chapter 5, you read about how they are arrested again, and this time they're put into prison, but during the night an angel of the Lord comes, opens up the prison door, they move back out of the prison into the temple and the next morning they're preaching again.

Can you imagine what a power that was upon the disciples and the apostles as they went forward in the days of this early movement.

You look at Acts chapter 6 and it talks about this devoted young man by the name of Stephen that stood up and preached with great power and healed those that had sickness.

And then you read in chapter 7 how he was taken before the council of the Jews.

And he was questioned as to what he was doing.

And you read about his powerful, powerful testimony that he bears before the religious leaders of God's guidance in the past.

And then he has a vision of Jesus as he sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

And the leaders take him and drag him out and they stone him to death.

But then in the very next moment, you read in the very next chapter about a man that was witnessing that stoning, a man by the name of Saul, which is on his way to Damascus to capture the Christians in that city and he has a vision of Jesus and he's knocked off his horse and he can't look into any direction and only at his own heart and realizes his need for Jesus, surrenders himself and becomes the mighty apostle Paul.

And so you just have these miracles and powerful moments throughout the book of Acts.

And then you come to chapter 17 and it gives this amazing testimony of what this early movement was like.

If you turn to Acts chapter 17, Acts in the 17th chapter, and take a look at verse 5 to 7.

What was the testimony of the early believers?

Again, they find themselves here in opposition, against opposition of those in the city of Thessalonica that are wanting to stop the growth of this movement and we pick up the story here in Acts chapter 17 in verse 5 it says but the Jews who were not persuaded became envious took some of the evil men from the marketplace and gathering a mob set all the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason and sought to bring them out to the people but when they did not find them they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city crying out listen to what they're crying out these who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

Here are those that turn the world upside down.

I wish that was said of the Church of God today.

I wish that was said of this church, that we are actually turning this city, turning the world upside down.

You know I shared this experience that I had in actually during the series that we're doing here at the moment, but since many of you or several of you were not there, hint hint, I would just repeat that illustration.

I was last year in the city of Vancouver and I was there because I was going to do some filming for a Christian broadcast, TV broadcast station, and I flew into Canada and I landed in Vancouver, and as I was standing there ready to go through customs, I saw this big screen up there and it was showing an ice hockey game.

Now Canada is really into ice hockey and I was just watching the game and I hadn't really you know watched a lot of ice hockey before and I was just looking at it and thinking to myself if I would ever play that game I would break every single bone in my body.

I would break bones that I didn't even know that I had.

And so you see them crashing against each other and here it's going on and on and everyone is just riveted on that screen.

And then I come to the to the man in the customs and I give him my passport and he seems to be more occupied with the game than with my passport but eventually he passes it back to me and he says he says just be careful in town tonight just be careful in the city tonight.

I thought to myself well what's the big deal I mean it's only an ice hockey game, can't be, it can't be too much going on.

Well that evening we arrived at the hotel where we were staying and there was, as we walked in, there was a TV that was on with live footage of what was going on in downtown Vancouver.

My friends, what we saw on that TV screen was a city turned upside down.

Some of you will remember this in the news, right?

They were burning cars, they were burning police cars as well, they were looting shops, they were destroying everything, and the city was just absolutely in an uproar because of an ice hockey game.

And I thought to myself, looking at that, I was reminded of this, what I read in the book of Acts chapter 17, where it talks about the disciples turning the world upside down.

Now the disciples did not do that by putting on fire police cars of the Romans, the police wagons or whatever it was, they did it by some very different means.

Preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ had such an impact that the Bible says in Acts chapter 17 the testimony of the disciples were that they turned the world upside down.

And the question can be asked is the world heading in the right direction?

If we look at the world around us, it seems obvious that we're heading not quite in the right direction.

And so it might be needed to turn the world upside down again.

2000 years into this movement, here we are at the end of time, and God is raising up a church.

He's raising up a people, and He wants them to have the power of the gospel to be able to turn this world upside down.

We should not be content with anything less.

So often we are content with less because we have not seen this type of power.

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The One-Eyed King

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