Knowing Christ - Dale Heisey | KFW 2017

Lesson Transcript

Several of us were praying earlier. I think it's all of our desires that this weekend be a time of great prayer, of great fervency. I was reading a quote from Spurgeon who said that, "Prayer without fervency is like hunting with a dead dog." And that struck me. I thought, "Wow, that's a good observation." I hope that we can go to the Lord not in vain repetition, but truly with hearts that are expectant, that believe that He has something for us this weekend. So let's go to the Lord.

Father, we come before You this evening, and we pray first for ourselves. We ask that if we have fallow ground in our hearts, that You would indeed help us to root it out and to soften it, to prepare the soil of our hearts to well receive the seed of the Word, that it may penetrate deep into our hearts and bear much fruit. Father, I pray that as we sit here, we will be attentive. We will be praying for our own hearts.

We will be praying for those who will be speaking, particularly Brother Dale, as he shares two messages from the Word. We ask that Your Holy Spirit would be mighty among us. We pray that Your Spirit would be mighty in our own hearts. We pray that You would give our Brother Dale clarity to share his heart, to share the Word. We ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. It is certainly a special joy to greet you tonight in Jesus' name, and we welcome all of you here.

And if you noticed in that brochure they were passing out as you registered, it says there that this evening should be a time of introduction to the theme of this weekend. And so we want to use it that way. And before, if you allow me to, before I give an introduction to the theme of the weekend, I need to give an introduction to that. So I have three words that I want to say to the congregation, and I'm saying these words also for the benefit of the speakers who will be following in these sessions.

I want them to be aware of some of these points, especially of one of them. You will know when I get to that point. The first thing I want to say tonight is that this theme that we have for this weekend is a bit distinct for Kingdom Fellowship Weekend, the last numbers of years that this group has been meeting together in various campgrounds at different places this year at Roxbury.

And it has come to our attention through observations and pastors who are blessing their people as they come here and desiring to see their congregations blessed and enhanced as they visit here on these weekends, that maybe we should just take a little time and reflect upon this, that salvation is not only a personal matter with God, and revival is not only our yieldedness of anointing before the Lord. It's not only a matter of my prayer time and of my evangelism and my interest in the neighbor.

It's not only my walk with God. It's not only that I am aware of Him and know Him, though this is life eternal, but there is a corporate aspect to the Christian life. And more specifically, there is a local body. There's a local congregation. There is a gathering together of the saints. There's a local assembly. And how does all this work there? How does my prayer life work there? And how does revival work there? And how does my life flow there?

And if anybody had become aware of my relationships with my brothers, were they to examine that even to the least extent, would they begin to wonder then if that's the relationship I have with God? And would they tend to think that, "Well, as He gets along with this one, then with that one, that must be what His relationship with God is like. And how is this working on this level?" That's a concern. And so putting all that together this weekend was planned with that concern in mind.

And so we'd like to look this weekend not only at our walk with God and our personal devotion there as important as that is, because you know what happens when you try to start a car and several of the cells are dead in the battery. The battery's a union of energy there to get that engine started, but when several cells are dead, it kind of is a defeating way to try to arrancar a car mañana. It just does not get the car started. And so it is in the church. And so we don't hesitate.

We have no apologies for the past years and their emphasis on that personal relationship with God, but would you allow us this year to look at the corporate experience? That's the first observation I'd like to make. And then there's another one. I don't have many preachers here: pastors, evangelists, missionaries. I suppose in an audience this size, there are several. And one of the things we try to teach pastors is that there are always two ways to preach a sermon. Now, there are more than two.

Preaching methods are many, but we have a body of truth here, and we can take that truth and we can really scourge the people with the truth. We can send those lightning bolts of doctrine and teaching and truth to the people, and their hearts are scared and they realize they don't measure up, and they feel condemnation, and in their situations, they don't know what to do about it. They think maybe all we're doing is aiming something at them.

And that's not the way I would recommend that we speak to our people, but there's another way. And that is we have in the audience someone who does not understand what we're talking about, someone in the audience who does not understand what we're experiencing, someone in the audience who's never seen this point of view from their scriptural background and perspective before. And they're sitting there saying, "You know, I admit I don't understand it.

It's obvious I'm not doing it, but I'm open to understanding it." Then let's teach them in such a way that they can understand it. And if there was a sincere person who said, "If someone would guide me, I think it'd be a blessing to me," but there are eunuchs, not only from Ethiopia, there are others. There are apollasses who need to understand God's Word. The interesting thing about this is that those of us who are preaching and teaching, we need one another too.

And so there's someone here this weekend who says, "You know, I was never here before, and I don't know what's going to happen this weekend. What are they going to do to me when I get here?" We don't want anyone to be under any condemnation. No one is under any criticism for where you are in your life. Every one of us is on a journey, and we press on, but we're not there yet. And there's a goal before us, but we're still striving towards it.

And I'd like to speak tonight and ask our dear brothers who are sharing this place tomorrow and Sunday to keep that in mind, that this corporate experience, maybe it's not where you are. You say to me, "Oh, there are just a few of us where we are. Why?

We're just a real small group, and maybe there's someone here that does not have any group, and this is not a word of condemnation." But if we could share some scriptures here and invite and encourage, and at least try to explain, and I want you to know that throughout this weekend, if you'd like to visit with someone who could help you, maybe plug your life into some of this experience, even though you're at a remote place, kind of isolated and alone, there's great love for you at Kingdom Fellowship Weekend, and

God cares, and that's why you're here, and we want to minister to you as you're here these days.

And so I want to share that word. That's an introduction to the introduction. And then one more word. We have here, and I'm going to be reading it, both from John 17 and later from Acts 2. We have a model there. We have a model of how a group of people, about 120 souls, began their elementary steps into applying the newfound life in Christ, the life that comes from above when Christ ascends and the gifts are given and the Spirit of God comes, as He promised that it would.

And the wind is blowing, and the Lord is near, and we see them modeling a new experiment in the city of Jerusalem. And that time went on, and there may have been more than one way to carry all this out.

And although I'm very, very blessed with this model, and we're very excited about the simple teaching that's given here and the way this was so ably lived out in this first-century church, you and I might be aware that in various cultures, in times, and places where the gospel goes, we have to take the same Lordship of Christ, the same Word of truth, the same apostolic doctrine, the same desire—thank you—to honor our Lord, the same love one for another, and form a model in our communities wherever we are that

people can recognize and say of us that we said of them, "These are Christians.

These are the anointed ones. These people know the Lord. They have been with Jesus." There is something about them that we don't have in ourselves. And so this model here, maybe that's slightly different in certain settings of the world, and maybe your church expression is just slightly different from what we have at our local assemblies where we are, but it's a model that must be carried out.

And when Christ is in the midst, when our Lord Jesus is present with us and in charge, then there can be a holy response, a holy work done, and we want to keep that in mind as we go through these messages this weekend. John 1:17, I'm sorry, in your Bible. These words spake Jesus and lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may also glorify Thee." Now, I'm not doing this tonight. I'm not going to take time to do this tonight.

When Andrew Mary wrote his book With Christ in the School of Prayer, he—in one of those earlier lessons—he had some 30 lessons there, I think, in that book. In one of the early lessons, he referred to the law of the sanctuary, and that phrase comes from the book of Ezekiel. It's said just slightly different there. In the book of Ezekiel, we have a very interesting thing that happened. In chapters 10 and 11, we have the glory of the Lord departing from the temple.

He goes out here on a hill off to the side, and then later departs completely from the city. The glory of the Lord is gone. And then we come back here later into the 40s, 41, 42, 43—43—the glory of the Lord comes back and fills this temple, and it's filled with a glory that's hard to imagine. And everyone knows that the glory of the Lord is there.

And I'd like to think of that model as we look at this verse here: the glory that belongs to the Father and belongs to the Son that is demonstrated to this earth when the tabernacle of the temple is filled with the glory of the Lord, when Christ has His honored place, when His life and love is flowing between us. "As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.

And this is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, to whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee in the earth. I have finished the work which Thou gave me to do. And now, O Father—notice this verse—glorify Thou me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gave me out of the world.

Thine they were, and Thou gave them me, and they have kept Thy word." And if we just drop down then to verse 16, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through the truth. Thy word is truth." I want you to notice the plurality of these terms here. "As Thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also, which shall believe on me through their word. That they all may be one. These—they all may be one. As Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us. That the world may believe that Thou hast sent me. And the glory which Thou gave me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfected one.

That the world may know that Thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as Thou hast loved me." And brothers and sisters, it's just like this, that there was a tremendous glory and relationship and unity and communion and oneness between the Father and the Son, and there was a glory there that could not be hidden.

And then Jesus is saying here, in these little churches, in these corporate expressions of My presence wherever they are around the world, men are going to see that glory when My disciples do where they are gathered together, as you and I, Father, have done when we have been together. And Jesus having said those words, and now one more thing needs to be said: doesn't your heart crave an experience like that?

Well, there's perfect trust where you have confidence in each other, where you can rejoice to see God doing at a brother something he's never done in your life, where the gifts of others are way beyond our own, but what a joy to be part of something that's far greater than ourselves. And then the love and the quietness and the humility and the blessing—the Lord commands a blessing there. He sends that blessing there. It has to be there, and the glory of the Lord fills the place, and the glory is not departing.

It's not ikkabod. It's the glory of the Lord returning and filling the house, and then people see that. So I wanted to read that to you. Let's go to Acts 2. I'd like to begin reading here at verse 41, then read to the end of the chapter. All right, so this is the day of Pentecost, and we have had 3,000 souls converted here through the preaching of God's Word.

It's a phenomenal story, and we have something happening to the people that were in this way united to God's church, and this required a very, very unique response to this kind of an influx of souls into a given congregation. And 1:20 turned into something else very, very quickly here. Verse 41 says, "Then they that gladly received His word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about 3,000 souls.

They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And all that believed were together and had all things common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need.

And they, continuing daily with one accord to the temple and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their bread with gladness and signals of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added unto the church daily such as should be saved." Now, some of you might know this.

It really does not matter, but we were just in the States about two and a half months ago, and we were only here two days and discovered that terrible pain with which my wife was traveling on the airplane as we came up here, and the fact that she had not been able to stand on her feet for ten days nor take one step, we found out after we were in the state of Pennsylvania for two days that she had a broken hip. We had been to several doctors in Costa Rica.

They had not discovered the problem because all the pain was from the knee down, and they checked those things out and couldn't find anything wrong, and the problem was a hip that was seriously shattered. And so she had a partial hip replacement here in a local hospital in the county of Lebanon, city of Lebanon, and then that left us with a financial responsibility.

Less than a week ago, a young man in one of our churches who has very, very little income—I suppose there are not very many people in this audience that would be satisfied to live on what he earns in a week and a month—this young man, about 17 years old, came up to me and said, "Brother Dale, let me give you something." He had a piece of paper all folded up, and he gave me this folded piece of paper. I didn't know what it was, and I got home and opened it up.

It said something like this inside, written in his handwriting. It said, "I'm sorry this is such a small amount of money, but I want to give something for your wife's hospital bill. I hope that this can help a little." And I showed that to my wife. Now, brothers, surgery can help solve problems. Brothers, some finances can help at times, but nothing heals like love. Nothing heals like oneness in a church. Nothing heals like someone saying, "I want to participate." And you know, isn't that what we just read here?

Carried out in a different way, not quite the same models we have here, but a very beautiful thing, which leads us to a very important point in this passage of Scripture that I've read because we have Christ here, our Lord Jesus, with global plans. We have Christ here who sends the Lord into the high and gives gifts to men. We have Christ who has gone into glory and ten days later sends the Holy Spirit upon the earth. We have Christ who gave a commission.

He gave it five different times in Matthew and Mark and Luke and John and in Acts 1, and I'm not sure about it, but at least four of those five times what he said to the disciples about their responsibility to evangelize the world were said at different locations, different experiences, different times in his ministry to the eleven. One was gone by that time. And his heart is the souls of men, and as we read this passage, we very easily see that there are two ways that God does that.

There are two ways that God reaches his hearts. There are two ways that evangelism works. There are two methods that God uses, and I read both of them to you in this passage. The first one is—and Peter did it on the day of Pentecost—the preaching of the Word, and that might be literally standing on a street corner. It might be standing at the Solomon's porch and preaching out over the temple audience to a crowd of people out there in the courtyard. It might be trucks being passed out on the street.

It might be something digital that you're using. It might be some other means by which a person hears the gospel of Christ. Those are beautiful things, and God honors that, and the foolishness of preaching is what God uses. It's an evangelistic tool. It's a powerful tool to bring people to Christ, but there is a second method here. It is the one accord witness of the local assembly. You notice that in these verses that we've read, and then this explains—it's a picture here.

It's a description of what this congregation looked like as if you were standing outside observing it, as if you were watching what was happening.

Praising God and having favor with all the people, the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved, and that shouldn't be a surprise to us because we know the heart of our Lord Jesus and what he said in chapter 13, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you." And that commandment he never could have given until the very end of his life because no one would have known how he had loved us.

"As I have loved you." Can you imagine a congregation of brothers with that kind of love to each other? "By this, show all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have loved one for another." It's that same aspect. It's the witness that comes from the testimony of the gathered body, and people are watching that. They're seeing that assembly. They're seeing the interactions. They're sensing what flows from life to life. It's a powerful tool. Jesus said the same thing in John 17, where we have read this evening.

We read it twice, and toward the end of that reading, we said there, we read there, "That the world may believe." You be one in your attitudes and relationships that the world will believe, and then another time he said, "That the world may know." How they know it's going to work? How they know it's going to work in their lives? How they know it's going to change them? How do they know it? They can see it. You see, could we carefully say it like this tonight?

If what we see here is not working in the assembly where I am, if it's not working in our churches, it's not working among us. There just seems to be a dearth, a drought. It just seems like the prayers don't get past the iron ceiling. It just seems like it's an exercise that doesn't result in much.

Then I would say, based upon what we've seen here, there might either be something wrong with our message or there's something wrong with the messengers, with the relationship between us and among us that are responsible to give the message. What is wrong? This is what Christ's will is, and we have it here. It's a fulfillment. The local congregation is one of God's ways to reach people that otherwise will not be reached.

They see it, experience it in the lives of his people, and that is why I feel that whether you're going to have a closed economic community like they had here at the very beginning or not, whether you're all going to live together in some compound someplace in some kind of a communal situation or not, there's going to have to be a real close relationship between the brothers of a church, and we have to have something more than a place to go to church on Sunday. It's got to be something else.

It has to be a fellowship. It has to be a community. It has to be a testimony. It has to be a flame of fire, and that's what Jesus is asking for here. Can we go look a little bit further at this passage that we just read by way of introduction? I want you to notice that here we have on this earth twelve apostles now because another was chosen in chapter 1, and we have some that are kind of a little bit better known and maybe just out front a little bit more than others like Peter and John.

We have Peter here preaching in this day, but Matthias has now been chosen, or Matthias if you speak Spanish, Matthias in that case. So we have men here, but we have more than men here, and if you notice this passage we've had here, verses 41 to 47, we notice the close relationship between what they are doing and what the Lord is doing, a close relationship between what we're doing in our churches and what the Lord is doing in our churches.

And there are certainly many, many things that you and I can't do, but there's nothing that Christ can't do. We are very limited in what we do, and he's not limited in what he can do. So let me just share a couple of things with you. We have Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost. That sermon was before, verse 41. I didn't read that sermon, but I'd like to notice verses 38 and 39. The people asked him a question. They wondered what to do.

Then Peter said unto them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost for the promise that is unto you and to your children and to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." And so Peter did the preaching, but the Lord God did the calling, and you're effective in this message, and you're trying to, as best you can, communicate the truth to the people who are hearing you, but while you're

doing that, the Lord is in the midst.

He's doing something way beyond what we are doing. There are situations here gathered together throughout this weekend in this tabernacle and campground that we are ignorant of. We don't know about it. I've already met some of the most interesting people.

I've already met some people that probably have taken a tremendous risk to come to a place like this for this weekend, and may God bless them, and all the needs they have, the unique situations that they represent, where they come from in their country or in their state or in their community. We can't minister all to that, to all those things, but the Lord does. He knows what's going on. He will bless them, and we must be conscious that Christ is in the midst.

And when a problem is in your congregation, a problem between brothers, a problem in the relationships, or however it is, say even in the health issues of your brothers or a financial struggle that someone might have, and it's way beyond the resources of the congregation to meet it, it's not beyond the resources of our Lord to meet it. It talks about fellowship here, the apostles' doctrine and fellowship. We have bread house to house. We have singing. We have praising God.

A lot of things happen in your fellowship, but I want to just read what it says in 1 John 1:3, "Just as ye where Christ is, show ye where Christ is while we're having this fellowship." What is going on here?

Verse 3 says, "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us." Fellowship with us and truly our fellowship, the fellowship we have with each other, the fellowship we have on this earth, the relationship we have with one another, that fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ, and that's what makes it what it is. That's what gives it the power from on high that it has. It's not a social fellowship. It's not a club.

We don't take up our dues once a week. It's a sharing. It's a caring. It's a being interested in one another, and we have that fellowship with each other because we have fellowship with Christ.

Let's see, Sunday morning a week ago in our congregation, a young mother stood up, a young mother who had never had a chance in the world to be a child of God, didn't know one story in the Bible, doesn't know anything about sin, does not know what truth is, one of the most ignorant people I have ever met when it comes to spiritual things. She's now married, a member of our congregation, she and her husband, they have two small children. She stood up and she was crying. She said, "I'm a mess in our home.

I get angry at the family. I don't think God is with me. Would you pray for me? I'm not doing very well." Well, it's hard to have fellowship with one another if there's something wrong with our fellowship with God. I'll maybe say a little bit more about that on Sunday morning, but she made a very, very beautiful connection there. She put her attention to the right thing. For as ignorant as she is and for little as what she knows, I need God with me.

Last time I was in this state of Pennsylvania, I had an interview with a young mother who faces intense difficulties that very, very few mothers face, and I hope that no one here has to face what she lives with. I said, "Dear sister," she's almost like a daughter to us, and so I think I called her that. I said, "But in all the struggle, is there evidence that God is there? Do you have evidence that God is there?" And she began to tell me about what she called—listen to it this evening—she called it God things.

"Brother Dale, it's a God thing." She gave me one God thing, and she gave me another God thing and things in her life that could not be possible apart from God working in her life. I said, "You tell your children about those God things. Explain that to your friends, your family. There's a God thing. Our fellowship is with each other. It's our fellowship, but we have it because we have this." We had a meeting with that young mother in Costa Rica.

She was very blessed with what she heard that evening, and we sat together in her house. We have wonders and signs being done here by the apostles, but not by the apostles alone. May I read to you the last verse of Mark 16? "And they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following." Amen. The Lord was with them. Where was the Lord? Ascended onto the high. Where was the Lord with them? And these signs were being done.

These wonders were being done by the apostles. It's the evidence that the Lord was in the midst. So I didn't have a way to come here this afternoon. So my granddaughter offered that we could take her car, and I can drive her car out, then she'll drive it back home. So she's sitting beside me, and we're driving along.

We're going out to Pennsylvania Turnpike, and she gets out of her cell phone, and she finds a Bible passage on there and starts reading me some verses from Mark chapter 14, and she reads me these verses, "And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name they shall cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up turbines. If they drink any deadly thing it shall hurt them.

They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." She said, "Brother Dale, do we experience that in our churches?" The apostles wouldn't have either if Christ wouldn't have been doing it, but Christ was there. Now, you just hold on to that throughout the weekend. We'll see if the Lord comes back to that later. Christ is the Lord of the church. He's the head of the church. He is the fullness of the body. He is the builder of the church. He's actively involved in what's going on here.

I want you to notice that in this passage. And then some 11 or 12 times in the book of Acts, we have this word, "one accord, one accord," comes from a very interesting word in Greek. The Spanish Bible every time translates this word unanimously. It's a very good translation of this word. There's only one time in the Bible this word is used apart from its usage is in Acts. It's found in Romans 15. I'd like to turn there just briefly. This will not take long.

Acts, excuse me, Romans 15, there's a very good Bible definition of this word here in this passage, verses 5 and 6, "Now the God of patience and consolation grants you to be like-minded one to another according to Christ Jesus, that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." And our Bibles say that ye may be with one mind and one voice glorify God, and why is that? Because we are like-minded. We have the same mind. The same mind is in us that was in Him.

The same mind that was united with His Father, one with the Father is in us. That same mind not grasping for attention or for popularity or for recognition, the same mind that's humble and lowly and servanthood-minded, that same mind is in us, and when that mind is in us, then we have this one accord. That doesn't mean that no one has a thought or a perspective different from somebody else, but the mind is the same. One mind, one voice. We have that throughout the book of Acts.

They were together with one accord in prayer in verse 14 of chapter 1. When the day of Pentecost was full to come, they were all with one accord in one place. Verse 46 says, "And they continued daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread of house to house." That is the power.

That is what must be in the assembly where you and I are, that one accord, that unanimous thinking, that being like-minded, that having one voice, and when we come out of the discussion, come out of the meetings, we're saying the same thing. We agree to it. It makes sense to us, and we are satisfied that the Holy Spirit has given us that direction, one accord. And then I want to go to verse 42. Read this verse one more time, and I'll leave you with just a few thoughts.

"They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers." And what I want you to see in this verse and throughout this whole passage and throughout the formation of this new body of people called the church of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, you have here, if you look at it closely, both an external and an internal aspect to this. You have structure. You have life. You have clear order. At the same time, you have power.

So I was getting out of the car out here in front of one of these buildings that my granddaughter's little Honda, she said, "Grandpa, I want the Lord to give you words, but I want God to give you power." The words are one thing. The power, there is this structure. There is this order. There is this external. There is something in place here. There are parameters here, but there's also something else. We have the apostles' doctrine. There's a limit there. There's something containing. There's something describing.

There's something that is visible, and we can understand it, apostles' doctrine. And when Roland Allender wrote his book, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, or no, I guess that was Missionary Method St. Paul's or ours, he said in there that every place Paul went, he left with every congregation what the Greek Bible calls an apostolic tradition. It's what Paul said he leaves with every church. It's what he said there four times in the book of 1 Corinthians that he's taught this in every congregation.

Every congregation has received these teachings from him. Now, we have letters written to other congregations. We don't have all the teachings in all those letters that we have in 1 Corinthians, but Paul left with each congregation a clear playing field, a parameter, an understanding of apostolic doctrine. We have that. We have a Lord's Supper here, and some people would call that an ordinance.

That's okay with me if you call it that, but the power of this thing is not the fact that it's structured in such a way that happens once a week or once a quarter or once a year. It's not the kind of bread you use or don't use. It's not what kind of method you use to serve the wine, the grape juice. It's not that. It's the life that's in there. It's the love and fellowship that's there. So you have the structure, but you have something else. We notice that here.

There is fellowship, koinonia, a flowing of life and of love. There are house meals, house to house. There is a life of prayer. We will notice more of these elements throughout this weekend, but what we see here are souls united in daily work and in worship, and people are watching it, and they're interested in what they see. They don't understand it, and those of you who are missionaries, I don't know how many we have here in this audience.

You go to a new place, and you're so excited about what you've studied and what you've learned. You want to see souls come to Christ. You're going to build this building. You have some funds here to put up a little temple. You want to see this thing be filled up with people, and after two years, nothing happens, and you say to yourself, "What's going on here?" Your message might be fine.

Keep preaching it, but during those two years, during those five years, the Lord's going to bring all kinds of things into your life. You'll face difficulties probably that you never knew you'd face ever. Many, many missionaries bury a child within six months of being on the mission field. Happens to many, many people. I can tell you many stories like that, and people have faced incredible difficulties, and why is that? And people are watching. What do they do when that happens? How do they handle that?

What do they do? They're looking. Let them observe. Let them learn. Let them draw near and watch you. Stay on your knees. Stay before the Lord. Stay close to each other. If there's only two families in this place where you are or three, be as united together as you can be. Don't ever let anything divide you. Don't ever let anything destroy. The holy work that God is doing in your testimony. People are watching. It's sowing time. I stood beside an open grave. A precious missionary family burying his son.

They tried to get it across the lake in time to get to the hospital and couldn't get across the lake in time, and a little boat—high winds and storms—they couldn't get across in time. The boy died. Now, we have an open grave. Now, we need to say some words, some proper words to these parents, these grieving parents. I said to them, "This is not a grave. It is a garden. In that casket, there's not only a body.

There is seed, holy seed, that you're sowing today in this garden, and God knows what He will do with the fruit that comes forth from this sowing. Go forth and bear the precious seed and weep as you go, but in love and unity and surrender to God in humbled mind, in fellowship with one another. There is a harvest coming, and the people are watching. It's God's evangelistic method. He needs willing people through whom He can work to make it possible. God bless you, dear people, this weekend.

Thank you, Brother Dale, for that message. These two passages that he shared from Acts 17—John 17 and Acts 2—are among two of the passages that I believe should be, I should say, the most prominent in our own thinking as we read the New Testament. You know, we often use the expression "the Lord's Prayer," and for good reason, we talk about that prayer in Matthew 6, but of course, Jesus in that prayer was really instructing the disciples how to pray.

Maybe it's a little more fitting to call John 17 the Lord's Prayer. That's, of course, the prayer that Jesus Himself prayed, and it's by far the longest prayer that we have in Scripture from Him, and one could easily make the case, as Brother Dale did, that Acts 2 is, in fact, the fulfillment of what Jesus prayed for there in John 17. One of the points that struck me as I was listening to Brother Dale speak was a concept that I heard many years ago.

I read it in a book where someone had said that what it takes for people to believe something is what's called a plausibility structure. A plausibility structure is real people, real structures, real human beings who have love and relationship. They can make the beliefs suddenly seem plausible, that for most people, when they read the Bible, it's just this far-out idea, and what in the world does this mean?

But set in the context of an Acts 2-like setting, then, as Jesus said in John 17, the world knows, and I hope those of you who remember and have been memorizing this verse recall that Jesus said, "The world will know that He was sent by the Father." And so this is right at the heart of what it is to be a Christian. It's to form this answer to Jesus' prayer in John 17. The unity that He prayed for is not a mystical unity out in the ether.

It's a real tangible unity that the world sees that forms this plausibility structure as we see in Acts chapter 2 that draws many, many people, and I hope that as we move through the weekend, we can unpack this concept in great detail. I'm actually going to close us in prayer, and then we're going to move into a time of small group prayers, but let's pray and ask the Lord with seal what Brother Dale has already shared.

Father, we go before You, and as we hear the words of Jesus as He cried out shortly before His crucifixion, I pray that we will understand the words of this man who is about to die and put them deep in our hearts, that His prayer will mingle with our prayers as we seek to see this people that have this beautiful concentric relationship of the Father and the Son, the Son and the Father, Jesus and us, us and Him, and the life of the Trinity exploding, permeating through us, and the world marvels as it sees these

tangible plausibility structures, these structures that all of a sudden make the Gospel seem real.

Father, give us divine energy to fulfill Jesus' prayer. May our communities, may our churches grow more and more like Acts 2, not in deadness, but in vitality and in life, and I pray that as we meditate on what we heard, You will give us more of a hunger, that we will cultivate in ourselves more of a hunger to see Jesus' prayer met, and we know that just as in Acts 2, the harvest came really as an overflow of the life that existed in the church.

Father, we pray for our time of moving into the small groups and also for the meal that we're going to be eating in a couple of hours. May we speak in ways to build one another up and to encourage one another up in the faith. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.