Earth, Wind Fire

6 · Invites the congregation to turn to Leviticus 23 (though not reading it aloud) as the canonical foundation for understanding the festal calendar

Now, if you want to, you can turn to Leviticus 23. You don't need to— I'm not actually going to read from this, but it's actually quite interesting just to see it laid out before you.

7 · Walks through Leviticus 23's festal sequence starting with Sabbath and Passover, and establishes that Christ's death on Passover is not a redefinition but a fulfillment — bringing Passover's meaning into its designed fullness

In Leviticus 23, this is where God's prescribing the festal calendar, and he begins by prescribing, ordering that the Sabbath be observed, right, every week. The next festival He prescribes is the Passover Festival. And we'll talk a lot about Passover this morning, so I'll move past that for a moment. Just only just realize that Christ died on Passover, right? You know that. And so there's God revisiting what Passover means. With the Gospel, and I would say, I don't even like redefining as the way to describe this, I would say fulfilling, bringing into its fullness, the full meaning of Passover is realized through Christ.

8 · Introduces the Feast of Firstfruits (the Sunday after Passover) and explains its Old Testament practice: dedicating the first harvest to God

Well, Jesus is resurrected on the next Feast you will see in Leviticus 23, which is the Feast of the Firstfruits. This is the Sunday after Passover, and you would go out into your fields and you would pick whatever is there, there would be some initial firstfruits from your fields, You would pick that and you would dedicate that to God.

9 · Connects Jesus' resurrection to the fulfillment of Firstfruits through 1 Corinthians 15: Jesus is the first harvest from the dead

Now, the Bible makes it really clear, for instance, 1 Corinthians 15 and other texts, that Jesus' resurrection, his bodily resurrection, is the first fruit of God's harvest, right? He's the first fruit from the dead.

10 · Establishes the eschatological dimension of Firstfruits: Jesus' resurrection is the prototype of the future resurrection of all believers

So Jesus is resurrected on the Feast of the First Fruits and appears before God as that final, uh, form of God's work in the world. Jesus is the first harvest of what will become many sons and daughters physically resurrected to stand before Him in glory.

11 · Summarizes the redemptive-historical fulfillment pattern: God revisits the Old Testament festivals to reveal their full gospel meaning — Passover shows new freedom, Firstfruits is filled by Christ's resurrection

So God's revisiting Passover and He's showing us a new kind of freedom. God's revisiting— I don't have good language for this piece of it— God's filling in the Feast of the Firstfruits with Christ. Christ is the firstfruit from the dead.

12 · Establishes the chronological progression from resurrection to Pentecost (40 days + 10 days = 50 days) and reiterates that Pentecost is fundamentally a celebration of fruitfulness

And now we get to Pentecost, 50 days after Passover. So if you like to think through things chronologically, you can think about that Jesus, after He was raised, spent 40 days amongst His disciples. And then the disciples, after He was ascended, have spent 10 days gathered together in prayer. That's what Acts 2:1 is telling us. Acts 2:1 is saying that the day of Pentecost has arrived. And Pentecost was a feast, was a celebration of fruitfulness.

13 · Announces the sermon's goal — to provide a biblical definition of success — and establishes that fruitfulness and success are synonymous terms in Scripture

So this is going to be at least a two-parter, but at the end of this, we're going to actually be able to have a biblical definition of success, right? A biblical definition of success. Fruitfulness and success in the scriptures are synonymous. You can find passages where both are actually cited in the same passage. As, as synonymous. So we don't use the word fruitfulness often in the way that I'll be talking about it. So if it helps you, you can think about success, but the idea is the same. Fruitfulness and success, same thing in the scriptures.

14 · Transitions into the work of demonstrating that Acts 2 is fundamentally about fruitfulness — anticipating that this will be a new interpretive angle for most listeners

And before we're done today, and we'll also do this again next week, we will have a biblical definition of success. We will have a working biblical definition of success. This Now, before I do that, I think I should at least kind of prove to you that this passage that you've heard so often is actually mostly about fruitfulness because you've probably not heard that before.

15 · Begins the argument that Acts 2 is about fruitfulness by citing the first evidence: the event occurs on the Harvest Festival by divine design

So it seems self-evident to me, and so I didn't even think about this until this morning, and I thought, you know, it seems self-evident to me. I've been studying it for 2 weeks. Let me take a moment just to kind of walk you through some of the evidences that are in this text to show that this indeed, Acts 2, is indeed a passage about fruitfulness, a passage about success. So the first evidence is what I've just discussed, that this is taking place by God's perfect providence on the Harvest Festival, right? So that's the first evidence that this passage is about fruitfulness, is that it's taking place in God's timing on the Harvest Festival.

16 · Presents the second evidence that Acts 2 is about fruitfulness: Peter's Joel 2 quotation comes from a context describing restoration from famine and desolation to rain and fruitfulness — making Pentecost the climax of God's restoration work

The next one I would just point you to, and we'll get to this passage, this verse later, a few weeks from now. Verse 17, Peter begins to discuss Joel, the book of Joel, the Old Testament book of Joel, chapter 2, and I think he goes 28 and 29. That's God pouring out His Spirit on the people, and the men and the women receiving utterance from, prophetic utterance from from the Lord, receiving dreams and visions from the Lord. Well, the whole context of Joel, if you start verse 1, chapter 1, and read all the way up to where Peter goes, the whole context of Joel is that a horrible famine has settled in on God's people. And he describes this famine, God does in Joel, as something that has been both self-inflicted and not self-inflicted, inflicted by by external enemies. So that he talks about the locusts coming and devouring everything, and there's this whole picture of a wasteland, of God's land as a wasteland. I think it's in earlier, I think maybe verse 17 or so in Joel 2, it gets to the point where the land is so barren because of their sin and because of the enemy's pillaging of the land. That there's that famous refrain that appears all over Scripture, which is they say, why will the nations say, where is your God? You know, look at this wasteland, look at this devastation. Why would the nations say, where is your God? Well, as you progress through Joel, God then says, you know, pray, humble yourselves, repent, and pray for God to restore your land. And then as you progress a little bit further, God says, I will send the rain. I will send the former rains and the latter rains. And he begins to describe this desert place made desolate by sin, made into something, you know, beautiful and green and fruitful through God's work. That whole process is leading up to what Peter describes in Acts 2:17, when he references Joel 2:28-29, he's referencing the climax of God's restoration from desolation into fruitfulness. So that's another evidence that this passage is about fruitfulness.

17 · Presents the third evidence that Acts 2 is about fruitfulness: the undoing of Babel's language confusion — which was a judgment creating futility — means God is reversing the curse and restoring fruitfulness through the gospel

The third one would be that there's an undoing of Babel that occurs in Acts 2. Maybe you've seen that, maybe you haven't. We got to the very edge of that idea in verse 4 of chapter 2. And that's simply the idea that through the gospel, God will undo the confusion of languages which He inflicted on the world in the book of Genesis at the Tower of Babel. Now, why did God do that at that time? Why did God divide the languages? Why did He confuse the languages? Well, He did that as a judgment and a discipline to create futility. Right? If you actually go back and read that text, you'll see that the reason he did that was to frustrate their progress. It's a revisiting of the garden curse, which is to work the ground in futility. And so he frustrates and separates and divides them because they can accomplish less that way, less evil. So this reunion of Babel, the revisiting of Babel, is actually God bringing fruitfulness through the gospel back into the world. And my goodness, if you know history, it's happened. The last 2,000 years have been spectacular when it comes to fruitfulness compared to the thousands of years previous to it. Really, truly. So there's another evidence that this passage is about fruitfulness.

18 · Presents the fourth and final evidence that Acts 2 is about fruitfulness: the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply is fulfilled in Jesus and His church through disciple-making — connecting Pentecost to the original creation command

And finally, I think we've talked about this quite a bit. You're probably tired of me hearing about, or tired of me talking about it. But we do remember all the way back at the beginning of the Bible, when God issues commands, they don't go away, they're always fulfilled, and they're always fulfilled in Jesus. Well, God's original command to man, right, was to rule and subdue the earth and be fruitful and multiply. And I think we've shown repeatedly throughout the years, last year or so, that the fulfillment of that is Jesus as the new and perfect Adam, and His bride the new and perfect being perfected Eve. And the way that they're ruling and subduing and being fruitful and multiplying is how? By going into the world and making disciples. That's the final vision of God's original command to rule and subdue and fill the earth.

19 · Summarizes the evidences and pivots from demonstration to application: Acts 2 reveals God's vision for what success looks like

So there are multiple layers and multiple reasons why I think that Acts 2 is God's way of saying, hey, I want you to see what success looks like. I want you to see my vision for fruitfulness.

20 · Moves into personal application by asking where the congregation gets its definition of success, establishing the stakes for the sermon's central claim

Now, before I go on to give you a very clear definition of fruitfulness in this text, I just want to ask you a couple questions. I hope you'll realize how pivotal this issue is, this, this definition of success. The first one is this: we all get our definition of success from somewhere. Right? We all get our definition of success from somewhere. Where do you get yours?

21 · Escalates the stakes by equating the source of one's definition of success with one's functional god — warning against idolatry in the form of self or crowd as success-definer

Now, that's kind of a, you know, a bit of an easy— difficult question to answer, but you may not be able to answer it at this moment, but this one you can. Do you think that it wouldn't be too far of a stretch for me to say that the place you go to get your definition of success is your functional god. Do you think that's a stretch? Do you think that's just preacher talk there, or do you think that's probably legit? That the place you go to get your definition of success is your functional god. I don't think that's hyperbole. I think that's pretty accurate. So if you go to yourself for your definition of success, I think that's your functional god. If you go to the crowd, a particular crowd, I think that's your functional god. We are always in danger of outsourcing our definition of success to some lesser god.

22 · Warns against the danger of having no fixed definition of success, describing it as drifting morally and spiritually without anchor

Second question: can you understand how dangerous it would be, or it is, to not have a firm definition of success at all? In other words, when I asked Where do you go for your definition of success? You may say, well, I don't really know if I have one. And that would just be, to me, something that you should think of as, that's not good, right? That's not good. It's not good to not have a definition of success. It's definitely not good to spend another breath that God has given you on this life without a clear definition of success. And it's certainly not good for you to allow that definition of success to change like a weather vane depending on the prevailing winds.

23 · Illustrates the danger of an unstable definition of success by comparing it to the GPS Killer story — external forces hijacking your direction when you have no fixed internal compass

You know, my kids and I used to invent stories on our long road trips and we would come up with, you know, some, you know, we just write stories in our heads and we talk them through. And we had one called the GPS Killer. And this was a guy who was a serial killer and he would hijack people's GPS while they're on road trips and he would send them to his cabin. You know, and then kill them, right? So good morning, cheerful thoughts, I know. Well, the GPS killer. I immediately thought of the GPS killer when I thought about this idea of going through life without a definition of success. You know, if you go through life without a clear, tattooable definition of success, then really what you're doing is you're allowing external forces to constantly hijack your sort of your whole inner GPS and drive you and steer you where they want you to go. You know, you've got to have a clear definition of success. We can't just say, well, that's something that maybe will come later.

24 · Argues from design logic: you cannot win at life by playing with your own rules when the Creator has already defined the game — you must align with His definition of success

Third question, doesn't it make sense to have the same definition of success that the creator of this reality uses? To run the world? Doesn't it make sense to have the same definition of winning that the Creator of this whole thing uses and used to design it and build it and govern it and rule it? You know, you can't win at something by playing by your own created rules.

25 · Tells a humiliating personal story of running the wrong direction in a basketball game and scoring for the opposing team — serving as a vivid analogy for pursuing the wrong definition of success

In 7th grade, I was tall, not as tall as Wes, but I was tall for my age. And everybody wanted me to play basketball. And so I kind of fell into the pressure to play basketball. I didn't like basketball. It was not physical enough. And so I did it, but I didn't like it. And I remember I sat on the bench most of the year, and they put me in a game. And I remember going in and getting a rebound and running down the court. I was totally free. Running down the court and just completely unencumbered. I'm not that fast. Well, I am now. I wasn't then. I'm super fast now. But I don't want to lie from the pulpit. So I'm running down the court, and I make the layup and realize that I had done the thing, like the second worst thing next to showing up naked to school. And that is to make a shot in your opponent's— in your own goal. I ran the wrong way and made a layup. That was the one point I scored in basketball, in organized basketball. That was my last game. Everybody agreed that it was a mistake, that I had been unfairly profiled for my height.

26 · Applies the basketball illustration directly: without a God-given definition of success, you can be convinced you're winning — even with apparent external affirmation — and be completely wrong

But running the wrong direction, I mean, I was fully convinced that that was the right thing. I was sure of it. You know, here's the funny thing. There were a lot of girls that I liked that were cheerleaders on that team. And I could hear them screaming. And I interpreted their screaming as cheers for me, you know, in the moment. Like, I'm looking at them like, "Hey, Angie, what's—" And I'm like, "I'm winning, right? I'm winning." No, I wasn't winning. They weren't cheering for me. They were yelling at me to turn around and go the other direction. If you don't have a clear, God-given definition of success, you may think you're doing the right thing, you may think you're headed in the right direction, you may think that the world is in even agreement with you, even perhaps that the Bible is in agreement with you, and you could just be dead wrong all around.

27 · Announces with uncompromising force that Acts 2 provides God's sole definition of success, it is actionable, and it is the only legitimate way to live

So this idea of having a clear definition of success is essential. And I believe Acts 2 is a unique passage in some ways, and in some ways not a unique passage, and that it gives us God's clear definition of success. It's the only one that God has, it's the only one you should have, and it's actionable. What do I mean by actionable? You can act on this definition of success. You can pursue this, you can make this your life, you can make this your heartbeat, you can tattoo it on your forehead if you choose. This is absolutely 100% the only way to live. How about that for exclusivism right there? I just said this is absolutely 100% the only way to live.

28 · Re-reads Acts 2:1-5 and extracts the core definition of success: God's presence with God's people producing God's praise

Now let's look back at that text again, verse 1, Acts 2, and let's see if we can pull this out. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in 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 as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one 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, devout men from every nation under heaven. So here's God's definition of success: God's presence with God's people producing God's praise.

29 · Unpacks the definition by showing the movement from God's presence (wind, fire, Spirit) to God's people (all together, filled) to God's praise (inward and outward, overflowing to conversion)

God's presence— wind, fire, filled with the Spirit, all signifying God's presence— with God's people. They were all together. The fire rested on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. God's presence with God's people producing God's praise. Verse 5 continues, now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men of every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And this is God's presence in God's people producing God's praise both inwardly and outwardly. The inward praise of the congregation overflows onto the streets, and many come to faith in Jesus.

30 · Declares with absolute certainty that this definition of success is the sole legitimate one, the telos of all history, and the unchanging standard by which all of life should be measured

Guys, I really do want you to understand, this is the only definition of winning. This is the only one. This is the point of life. You need to spend your whole life, all your life, seeking this: God's presence in God's people producing God's praise. God's presence and God's people producing God's praise. This is the Creator's fully realized version of success. This is where all of history is heading. This is how it's all going to end. This is what winning looks like, and God will win.

31 · Issues a direct command: if you want to be successful, you must pursue this definition exclusively and wholeheartedly

If you want to be successful, you will seek this and this alone. With all your heart. God's presence in God's people for God's praise.

32 · Asserts that Scripture consistently testifies that God acts for the sake of His own name, directing those who need proof to John Piper's Desiring God rather than reproducing the full argument

Again, this standard to me seems self-evident. I think if you just went through the scriptures, you could go through list after list of God saying, I will do this, or I will do that for the sake of my name. God's sole motivation, his essential motivation in action, is to bring praise to his name for all of eternity. And I'm not going to walk you through the first 4 chapters of John Piper's book, Desiring God, to prove that to you. He does a good job of picking every verse you could possibly think of in the Scriptures and laying that out for you. If you need convincing that God's central goal, that God's definition of winning is that He is seeking to produce His praise by putting His presence in His people Read the first few chapters of Desiring God. You don't even have to read the whole book.

33 · Addresses the anticipated objection that God is vain for seeking His own glory by arguing that it would only be vain if God were not God — but you should stop doing it because you are not God

So, one thing I will do before we go on is just ask the simple— answer a simple question that often comes up when you realize that that's God's central purpose. That's His definition of winning. That's how He is. That's why He's doing everything that He's doing. Isn't God vain in seeking this? Isn't God vain in seeking His own name to be praised for all of eternity. And I would just say, yes, if God were not God, it would indeed be vain for Him to seek His praise as the end of all things for all of eternity. And that's why you should stop doing that, right?

34 · Turns the objection back on the objector: we object to God seeking His glory only because we want that glory for ourselves — our lives have been massive glory hunts, making our objection self-indicting

Most of the time when we listen to the objections we have against the nature of God, we find that we don't have an objection against the action God is taking because we do the very same things. We have an objection to God being God. We want to be God. The truth is, is that most of us, our definition of success is the same as God's, just ending on us and not on God. The truth is that most of us, if we really were pressed to give a definition of how our lives have operated and been guided for the last whatever number of years, the answer has been very similar to God's. We have been seeking for our name to be glorified amongst the people of the world. Our objection to God's action of doing everything for His praise is self-indicting. Because if we were to slow play the tape of your life and ask, now why'd you do that? Now why'd you say that? Why didn't you do this or say this? The truth is, is that it's all been a massive glory hunt. All of it.

35 · Offers a pastoral reframe: we're not far from the truth — we already know how to live for another's glory, we just need God's help to redirect it from self to God

This also means, by the way, that we are really close to getting it right. We need God's help. We'll talk about this more next week. We need God's help to move off of seeking our own glory and seeking God's glory. But the truth is, is that we at least have the basic idea down, which is to live our whole lives for another person's glory. We're not that far off. God can redeem this. He can make this true. But we need to understand that this isn't optional.

36 · States the application in stark terms: if you are not wholeheartedly pursuing God's presence with God's people for God's praise, you are wasting your life

And we need to understand that if you are not wholeheartedly seeking God's presence in God's people for God's praise, you are wasting your time. Your life. You're wasting your life. That, that's just as simple as it gets.

37 · Addresses the feared objection that living entirely for God's glory will produce an austere, thin, joyless life — like moving from color to black and white

You know, oftentimes when we talk about this idea that all of life is for God's praise and that my sole motivation should be to see God's presence in God's people for God's praise, we start to think of austerity, that this is a very thin way to live, right? That that seeking God's praise in all things is sort of like turning off the color on the TV and going back to black and white. It's assuming that making God the center of everything dims the quality and enjoyment of everything. Or even more so, like we're moving from eating a full diet, right, of all sorts of foods to only eating one thing. Like, you know, manna, this sort of like, okay, that moving from the way you're living your life right now to living a life solely devoted to God's presence and God's people for God's praise would somehow be austerity.

38 · Rebuts the austerity objection by appealing to creation: if God has always been seeking His own glory, then look at the thick, rich, abundant world He's made — this is not thin soup

But assuming that I'm right in saying that God has been doing this all along, right? I think the Bible says very clearly that what God has been about the whole time, before there was time, is seeking His praise, seeking His glory. Assuming that's true, then I just would tell you to look around and look what He's doing. Does this look austere to you? Does this look like thin soup to you? You know, after you're in the hospital, they give you chicken broth and it's just barely food. You know, it's just barely food. It's really not mostly food. It's mostly not food. It's just barely food. I think we think of seeking God's glory as moving into the barely food category. But if all that God has been about this whole time was to seek His own praise, was to bring glory to His own name, to build up an eternity of praise for His own name. Well, look what He's done. Look how He's acted throughout creation history. Look what He's made. Look how He's blessed. Look how thick life is.

39 · Extends the rebuttal: seeking God's glory singularly will not produce thin soup but a life full of pleasure and danger, nuance and difficulty — because that's who God is

This is not a thin soup, folks. God's not a monk. He's not a cheapskate, He's not a stoic. The world is thick with pleasure and danger, and it's a world created by someone seeking his own glory. And if you seek God's glory singularly, only, fully, completely sell out to it, your life's not going to be thin soup. It's going to be full of pleasure and danger. It's going to be full of nuance and difficulty and ups and downs. And hard things and sweet things, because that's who God is. God's all those things. So if anything, making God the singular purpose of your life, seeking God's presence in God's people for God's praise, if anything, that gives you the antidote to austerity. That gives you the antidote to the thin soup problem.

40 · Argues that seeking your own praise produces a fragile life because all the sources of self-glory (beauty, strength) are fleeting and outside your control

Here's the thing, as long as you seek your own praise, your life is incredibly fragile. And your ability to win is incredibly dependent on a whole bunch of things outside your control. You know, just as soon, you know, I raised two girls, two beautiful girls. You know, just as soon, and I've seen them go through awkward and the whole thing, Some of them are still moving through. But just as soon as you're this pretty girl, you realize, well, I'm kind of pretty. And as soon as you kind of realize this, as soon as it starts clicking there, it starts to pass away. Beauty fades. A guy realizes, you know, I'm actually pretty strong. I actually have physical capabilities. You know, I remember hiking on 20-mile hikes and then, you know, coming into camp after a 20-mile hike and playing football the rest of the night with my friends. You know, you revel in this and you think, you know, this is— this makes me feel good about myself, this makes me feel good, you know. And then it fades.

41 · Extends the fragility argument: everyone is headed toward physical poverty (the absence of bodily choices), which means seeking your own glory is a losing strategy

Whatever, whatever you're using right now to seek your glory is just so fragile. You know, there's a physical poverty to which we're all headed. If you've ever been poor, poverty is the absence of choices. You know, it's just like, I don't have any choices. Wealth is the multiplication of choices, poverty is the absence of choices. You know, we're all headed to a physical poverty Every one of us will get to a place where our bodies will not do what we want them to do. And it will get worse from there. They'll start doing things we don't want them to do. So your plan, as it's progressing right now, to live life for your glory, is dependent on so many factors that are fading, fragile, and outside of your control.

42 · Contrasts the fragility of self-glory with the antifragility of seeking God's glory: your success becomes dependent on God's unchanging purposes rather than on fading external factors, making you able to win in every season

But a person who seeks God's presence in God's people for his praise can move through every kind of season of life and still win and still be successful because that person's success is not dependent on external factors. That person's success is dependent on on the God of the universe doing what he wants to do. So there's a beauty in being antifragile, as a popular author wrote a few years ago, antifragile. Not only can I endure hardship, but hardship actually makes me better. Well, pursuing God's presence in God's people for God's praise is the only way to live a truly antifragile life. Acts 2 is the unfolding of an antifragile fruitfulness. A lot of it looks like fun. A lot of it looks like exaltation and goodness and joy. And some of it looks hard, but all of it, friends, all of it, every bit of it looks like winning. Because God's presence in God's people for God's praise will continue ad infinitum. That's the way God is moving all of history.

43 · Issues a final warning against divided loyalties: you cannot diversify between seeking God's glory and your own — trying to do both wastes both

Now, I want to say one last thing, and that is simply that if you are pursuing this, God's praise, with 40% of your life and some other vision, some other definition of success with 60% of your life, you're wasting both. This is the one case where diversifying your portfolio is going to create danger for you. Stop, just stop. Just stop doing, trying to do two things. The Bible's really clear, you're on a railroad that you can't get off of when you try to serve two masters, you have no choices. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. You cannot serve two masters. You will hate one, you will love the other. Just stop. I said a number of months ago that my whole goal in life is to be true all the way through. Well, that means not apportioning my definitions of success. That means betting it all on one. And going all in on one vision of winning. And that vision of winning involves seeking God's presence with God's people for God's praise. And do that with every bit of my life. And friends, if you're not doing that, you're wasting your life. And if you are doing that, you'll never lose your life.

44 · Signals a structural shift: the remainder of today's sermon will focus on the Passover-Pentecost connection, and next week will move deeper into the Acts 2 text

Well, I want to keep this connection to Passover and Pentecost for the remainder of our time. And then next week, we'll go forward and discuss this more, you know, forward into the text.

45 · Establishes the theological sequence: just as Passover precedes Pentecost in the calendar, freedom always precedes fruitfulness — you cannot be fruitful unless you are free

But I want us to just remember this sequence of events because it really is key in our understanding of what fruitfulness looks like and where fruitfulness comes from. So in the same way that Passover precedes Pentecost in history. Passover comes before Pentecost in history. The Jews were released from their slavery in Egypt and then brought into the Promised Land through much difficulty of their own making, brought into the Promised Land, and there they found a fruitfulness, a measure of fruitfulness. So in the same way that Pentecost— or Passover comes before Pentecost— we need to understand that freedom always comes before faithfulness. Freedom— oh, I'm sorry, freedom always comes before fruitfulness. Freedom always comes before fruitfulness. You can't be fruitful unless you're free. You can't be fruitful unless you're free.

46 · Explains the need to revisit the Passover story: the festal calendar was second nature to the disciples, but modern readers need to recover that background to fully understand what God is doing

In order to pursue and possess the fruitfulness that God has for you, you must be free from the enslaving power of sin. So I want to go through the Passover story quickly, because if you think about it, these disciples are full of this stuff. The, the festal calendar is a part of who they are. All that they're seeing God doing, from the sacrificing of his own son during the Passover, the raising of Jesus during the firstfruits, the, the coming of the Holy Spirit during the Pentecost— this is just second nature to them. In order for us to navigate these texts, we kind of need to make it not second nature, but we need to take extra time to understand what would have just been immediate for them.

47 · Recounts the Old Testament Passover story: famine drove Israel into Egypt, where they became slaves, and God freed them through the blood of a lamb on the doorposts, sparing them from the judgment of death

So we want to take some time here to just close out thinking about the connection on the calendar and in God's order between freedom and fruitfulness. So just to go back, there was a famine in the land that caused all of Israel to join Joseph, the brother they'd sacrificed— and I mean in a bad way— the brother they'd given up to join him in Egypt in order to survive. A famine forced them into Egypt originally. They're there for centuries and become slaves of the Egyptian government. They are in literal slavery. They have no choices. They are in old-school slavery. God's work in the original Passover was to bring them out of that physical slavery, right? And that he did through the offering of a lamb that was shed, the blood of which was shed on the doorposts over the homes of the faithful. God spared his people from the passing judgment of death on the Egyptians and made them free. And that was how Passover was celebrated for a very long time.

48 · Establishes the typological fulfillment of Passover: Jesus is a better lamb for a better freedom, freeing us not from physical slavery but from the enslaving power of sin, which is the true barrier to fruitfulness

Jesus came and said, inferred, demonstrated that his death would bring a deeper freedom, right? His death, his Passover death, he was a better lamb for a better freedom from a far worse kind of slavery. What we see in the story of the Passover is the opportunity to step immediately into faithfulness, but that is delayed because they are not actually free. You know, they say it's an 11-day journey or something from Egypt to the Promised Land. They could have been shucking corn, you know, to, you know, a couple weeks after being freed from slavery. They could have walked out of that slavery into fruitfulness. They could have used that freedom to go into fruitfulness, but they could not because the Passover provided originally could remove a man from slavery but could not remove slavery from the heart of man. They were all bound up inside to sin. They remained slaves to sin. And Jesus coming and offering of himself As the new Passover lamb gives us a new freedom, a deeper freedom, a truer freedom where we are no longer slaves to sin. So this is the basic shift, the basic redefining of freedom we see with Passover. From a political freedom, from a physical freedom, to a spiritual freedom. Christ's sacrifice is a better freedom for us. It, it makes us free in a different way. Which solves the basic problem that has always stood in the way of our true fruitfulness. Our basic— the thing that basically keeps us from success is our wandering and squandering hearts enslaved to sin. That's the thing that keeps us from fruitfulness. And Christ, in offering Himself as a sacrifice to free us from sin frees us from the wandering and squandering hearts.

49 · Illustrates the principle with the common experience of young adults squandering freedom, establishing the axiom: sin turns privileges and pleasures into prisons, which is why we cannot have fruitfulness without first being freed from sin

Now, plenty of 18 to 20-somethings have experienced this very thing. I experienced it just a little earlier because I was especially rebellious and an early bloomer in my rebellion. But many of us have experienced straying from the Lord as we reach our first taste of freedom. Right? That we get this first taste of freedom and we stray because we were not prepared for the freedom that we received. That's true of all of us. Here's the basic adage: sin turns privileges and pleasures into prisons. Every time. Every time. You get privileges, sin will turn it into a prison. You get new pleasures, sin will turn it into a new prison. That is how our sinful hearts work. So we could never enjoy, never experience true success, true fruitfulness, if God didn't do something about our sin. If freedom doesn't come before fruitfulness, we cannot have fruitfulness.

50 · Cites Proverbs 25:28 as a picture of the unregenerate heart: a city with broken walls where all potential is squandered due to lack of self-control, which only gospel transformation can remedy

You know, Proverbs 25:28 is one of the most devastating Scriptures I've read in a long time. Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control. Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control. The idea is that a man who hasn't had his heart changed by the gospel is like a city where the walls have been broken down and all of the good things, all of the potential, all of the treasure All of the goodness is just squandered because he lacks self-control, he lacks self-discipline. Well, where does self-discipline and self-control come from? It comes from Jesus doing a work in our hearts that frees us from our love of sin, our slavery to sin. It comes from the new and better Passover.

51 · Summarizes the Passover-Pentecost connection and issues the central application: you were freed to be fruitful, not to hoard God's presence but to declare the gospel

Now, we're going to wrap up because we've just covered a lot, and we'll go back to this again next week, but I want to leave you with this idea: you were freed to be fruitful. You were freed to be fruitful. That's the basic idea. You were freed to be fruitful. You are not called to gather for God's presence alone. You're not called to gather for God's presence in God's people alone. You are called to gather in God's presence with God's people for God's praise. You are called to be fruitful sons and daughters of God in the world declaring the glorious gospel of grace.

52 · Issues a prophetic confrontation: the congregation would leave over doctrinal or moral compromise but sits unbothered in evangelistic barrenness for years, which is no less a grotesque sin

It is not— I don't take pleasure in punching people in the stomach spiritually, but I just want to be clear about something. If we started doing gay marriages in this church, many of you would take your families and leave. If I started preaching heresy, many of you would take your families and leave. But you can go 5 years, 6 years, 8 years, 10 years without seeing anyone brought in from the street and led to Jesus, and you can sit. It's no less of a sin. It's no less of a full grotesque dysfunction. It's just your grotesque dysfunction. And you've built a whole culture around it to excuse it and make it okay. You were not given freedom to squander it. You're not given God's presence Just squander it. You're given these things to produce praise unto His name in the world.

53 · Escalates the confrontation: the abiding sin in the church is insulation from repentance over lack of conversions, distorting sovereignty of God theology to excuse evangelistic barrenness, and the congregation has responded with stubborn resistance

I want to just be 100% clear about this because this seems like a good time just to be 100% clear. Abiding sin in this church is the utter insulation from repentance. Over the lack of conversions. And you are distorting the sovereignty of God theology to excuse it, and you are also saying that faithfulness is okay. Faithfulness is the goal and not fruitfulness. And you're wrong. You're wrong. The basic functioning of a healthy body of people of God is to reproduce. And if you will not repent of the way you have in your personal relationship with God's people at this church, if you will not repent of this, you are allowing a grotesque sin to sit in your midst and speak lies to you about the definition of success. I have spoken about this multiple times, and in my limited human eyes, I have seen an incredible amount of stubbornness in response. An incredible tendency to brush past this and move on, to excuse it, to reframe good life-giving theology to make excuses for sin.

54 · Issues a final charge: God freed us and gave us His Spirit to proclaim the gospel and see people come to faith

God has made us free so that we could, and given us His Spirit so that we can proclaim release to the captives, so that we can, like these people, experience God's presence as his people to his praise, both internally and externally, and see people come to faith in Jesus. And unless we repent of the way we've chosen to do life and orient our lives around this definition of success, we are wasting all of the goodness, all of the gifts, we're wasting our lives. There's a world of people out there who need to be told the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you're not pouring your life into that, you're a fool. Because you're not doing it because you haven't been told to do it. And you're not doing it because you haven't been encouraged to do it and equipped to do it. You're doing it because you have your own definition of success and you've made it look enough like the Bible's to endure in your rebellion.

55 · Reads Ephesians 2:8-10 and Titus 2:11-14 to establish that salvation by grace creates a people zealous for good works, not a people insulated from evangelistic obedience

You're saved through faith. This is not of your own doing, it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Titus 2:11, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works.

56 · Names evangelistic barrenness as lawlessness and disobedience, and contrasts the austere life of self-protection with the full, dangerous, rewarding life of gospel fruitfulness

I want to be clear about this: being evangelistically infertile is lawlessness. You are being quarrelsome. You are kicking against the goads. You are not being properly obedient to your Lord and Savior. Being evangelistically indifferent is a lawless choice. You were made free to bear fruit. You are, to the extent that you're disobeying that basic rhythm, you are wandering in a wilderness. Full of stubbornness and self-indulgence and self-importance. And God says, "No, I set you free to make you a functioning proclamation to the world about the goodness of free grace." The fruitfulness that we're seeking is not an austere life. It's full, full of danger and full of pleasure and full of risks and full of rewards and full of highs and full of lows and full of heartbreaks and full of victories. It's not safe or comfortable. God.

57 · Closes the application section by citing theologian Mike Bull on the cosmic scope of gospel fruitfulness: salvation is not the end of faith but the beginning of a fractal kingdom work filling the earth

A friend of mine, a theologian named Mike Bull, he and I talked this weekend and I was talking to him, he's an expert on feasts and those sorts of things and wanted to make sure I was okay with some of what I discussed and I revisited some of his writings and just want to end you with this quote: God's word is true. As Christians, our faith is true. Under Adam's broken covenant, we were widows and orphans. We now shelter under a new Adam. But many would have us believe that salvation is the end of our faith. That is not true religion. Jesus has more glorious plans than that. Grace is the law fulfilled. He has something for us to do. The end of the new covenant age is a world where every nation is discipled, A world governed by wise, Spirit-filled men. If every sphere of life is covenantal, history belongs to those who can marry law and grace, truth and Spirit in each one of these domains, and marry them not just in word but in deed. All of our domains will be conformed to His. Our shelters are the microcosmic physical expressions of Jesus' cosmic one. The Father's house has many dwellings, so the Kingdom of God, like the Bible, is fractal, every member ordered and operating by the spirit of love.

58 · Casts the vision in creation terms: God is free and uses His freedom to make fruit multiply, and we are called to repeat that rhythm — to fill the earth with God's glory by bearing fruit

The vision is we fill the earth with God's glory by repeating the basic rhythm we see at the beginning, and that is God is free. The Lord is in heaven, he does whatever he pleases. And in his freedom, he makes fruitful the world filled with sons and daughters. Look what God does with his freedom. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. See and do what God does with his freedom. He makes fruit to multiply. In all the earth.

59 · Prays for the congregation to receive clarity on God's definition of success, for God's Word to bear fruit in their hearts, and for God to produce internal eagerness to obey and seek His praise rather than external compulsion

Let me pray for us. Well, Lord God, I thank you that you are continually giving us clarity on what winning looks like and what losing looks like. We are so easily confused and so easily distracted and moved off the mark. So Father, I pray that through Your Spirit, You would let Your Word bear fruit in our hearts, and that we, Lord, would walk as people zealous for good works. That You would, Lord, cause from within, not from without, not from a law, but from within, an eagerness to obey You and enjoy You and seek Your praise in the world. Lord, we need Your presence for that. We'll talk more about that in the upcoming weeks, but We know, God, that you have freed us from the slavery of sin if we're in Christ. So we are no longer slaves to the impulses which tell us to fear men's opinion. We're no longer slaves to the impulses which tell us that, that we should prioritize our own immediate happiness over the happiness of others. We're no longer slaves to those things. We have been freed to bear fruit. Lord, give us fruit, please. Please give us fruit. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

60 · Introduces the Lord's table with a confrontational application of 1 Corinthians: the unworthy manner is to hog the gospel for yourself while blocking others from hearing it — communion calls us to examine whether we are being selfish pigs

Well, the Lord's table is set before us, and as you know, if you know the passage in 1 Corinthians, there's some kind of fencing that comes with this in which the apostle attempts to say, you know, there's a worthy and unworthy way to take the table. And what he really comes down to is he says, you guys are being pigs. You know, you're just being disordered pigs. Everybody to the trough. It's like, you know, you're rushing in, you're not leaving opportunity for others, you're not encouraging others to participate in the table. I think one of the basic questions worth asking before participating in the table is, am I hogging the gospel? Am I hogging what this represents? Am I blocking out others? Am I being a selfish pig? Is this just for me and I'm just regularly over and over and over and over again partaking for me without thinking? Have I ordered, structured my life so that it's not just for me? So that others can hear? And believe and receive.

61 · Calls the congregation to self-examination before communion by asking who else in their lives the gospel is for, inviting them to repent of evangelistic selfishness before partaking

So as we consider our hearts and prepare for this table, I just want to ask you guys to just play for a moment and allow us to just take a moment and ask, is this table for my neighbor? Is this table for my coworker? Is this table for that family member I've written off? Is this table for— who else is this table for, Jesus? Who else in my life have you appointed to eternal life? Who else in my life have you placed in my life so that I can share the gospel with them? Let's ask those questions before we come and partake, and then as you've talked to the Lord and processed that, please by all means come and partake of God's free gift.