This is a rush transcript.

[00:00:00] Grab a seat, everybody, and hopefully you got one of these. They got one of these right here. See who's got a Bible with them. That's what we're here to do here at Compass Bible Church, is we want to get into the word, grab your Bible, open it up. The first verse, Thessalonians. And again, I just want to say on behalf of everybody who has been working to plant this church. Thanks so much for being here. This is very exciting. And we're going to be working on making it better every week.

[00:00:26] But we need more shade or if you need to know where the bathrooms are, they're right back here behind you.

[00:00:33] But no matter where the Lord takes us and I'm hoping he's eventually going to take us to a building here in Huntington Beach and I'm ready to be here for decades.

[00:00:40] I'm ready to die here in this city. We'll see what God has for us. But we are 100 percent fully committed.

[00:00:47] And whether we're outside here in this bowl or whether we get in a place where they see it, comfy seats, we're going to do one thing. Every time we gather together, we're going to preach the Bible class.

[00:00:56] That really is another church where some guy comes up here and says a bunch of stories and tells people what they want to hear and kind of just, you know, � , what he thinks people should should hear from the Bible.

[00:01:08] We're going to preach straight through every single God inspired verse of scripture and the book. We're going to start with his first verse alone. It's and over the next seven weeks, we're going to go through chapter one, ten verses. That's our plan. And I actually want to read this entire chapter together. I actually want us to do an old fashioned stand up with your Bible and we're going to read the scripture like people who have a lot of respect and people who feared God and want to honor him. So if you could stand up with me, I want to do an old fashioned scripture reading here. Just start off our time together. We don't want to hear one person's opinion. We don't want. Men don't need another man telling him something. We need to hear from God. So let's see what God says right here. Please follow along with me. We're going to read first this.

[00:01:55] Chapter one, Paul Silvana's and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians and God, the father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace.

[00:02:07] We give thanks to God always for all of you constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and father your work of faith and labor, of love and steadfastness, of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, for we know brothers loved by God that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word and much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia.

[00:02:53] And they care for not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and they, in your faith in God, has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead Jesus who delivers us from the right to come.

[00:03:26] We praise these starter times and the word God.

[00:03:29] We thank you so much for this scripture, this example of the Thessalonians and how that church got started.

[00:03:36] And now we pray that you will start our church in the exact same way as we learn from their example.

[00:03:41] You this morning for this in Jesus name, please grab a seat and we're gonna like I said, we're gonna work on this chapter over seven weeks. But I wanted to skip because today's our first day. It's exciting here. I wanted to skip straight to what I believe is the climax of this passage with down a verse. Say we're just gonna focus in really this morning on one phrase and we're gonna move right through it here. Look at first say it says, For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you, I mean, just by reading that chapter, you get the idea. Paul came into town into Bessel, a nightclub. He preached the gospel there in the synagogue and people started getting saved.

[00:04:18] And he knew that God had chosen some of the people because the way they responded with their lives were radically changed. And not only were their lives changed, but it says that the word of the Lord that Paul preached to them this gospel message it like echoed, it reverberated. It sounded forth from them. I didn't just hear the word and believe it. It wasn't this kind of personal thing. No. What happened with them, it just kind of blew up and it's spread everywhere. And he says Macedonia and the chaos.

[00:04:46] And I don't know if you're familiar with the biblical geography here, but Macedonia and Kenya is an area larger than the current country of Greece. OK, systemd. That's a big area.

[00:04:59] One little. Church of People. They heard the gospel and something so powerful happened among these people that people are talking about it not only throughout the whole country of Greece, to put it in modern terms, but really it says this is such an overwhelming response.

[00:05:14] You guys already have such a big reputation for Jesus Christ that literally your faith in Jesus is known everywhere.

[00:05:21] Just a small group of people in this town of. Right.

[00:05:26] I've been study in this town. I've been reading everything I can about the city of Thessalonika, and it's really a cool city. And then it was right. It was a coastal city. It was off the GNC in this little protected gulf there. And also it was a major city in the area of Macedonia because it was on the VVA, Ignacia, which is the main road, if you know something, about the Roman Empire, the main west to East Road.

[00:05:50] There is that the Ignatius.

[00:05:52] You've got a city that's very close to the water and it's also very close to a major transportation way, I think.

[00:06:00] And this is just like Huntington Beach.

[00:06:03] You've got you've got a world famous beach right here. I mean, go down Main Street today, start talking to people.

[00:06:09] You're going to meet people from Argentina and Brazil and the Caribbean. I mean, this is people they travel through to come to this beach to shooby dooby down to rubies down there.

[00:06:20] People are coming from far and wide to do that. And then we just happen to have kind of our modern day a Ignacia, don't we? The debacle known as the FORO. I mean, we are we are in a prime position.

[00:06:34] We are right between, you know, a happened in place on the coast and it happened in traffic area. Right. Many of us have spent more time than we planned on it. Right.

[00:06:44] I mean, that's how the word spoke. A small group of people got so fired up in one spot that it was like, what happened there, people passing through or whether they were going out traveling to other places, like what happened with this group of people that everybody was talking about. Everybody heard about it. It was a powerful experience. That's what we want to happen here. Don't come here to do a little church where everybody feels good about themself in our little holy huddle. We came here so the word of the Lord would sound forth in Huntington Beach. That's why we're here. And so that's what I want to talk about today. What does that mean? That's what I want to happen with us. What does that mean? We're going to ask two questions. First question. What is the word of the Lord? What does that what does that phrase mean?

[00:07:29] Second question. What does this mean to sound forth? All right. And to understand what the word of the Lord was, we're going to have to get into the context here. The best way to understand the Bible is by figuring out what's going on, getting into it. And we're going to actually go back to when the Thessalonians church got started in the Book of Acts.

[00:07:46] We have the account at Chapter 17. So I hope you got a Bible and we're going to turn around. Let's hear the beautiful sound of five pages turning here and that in the beautiful outdoors here this morning. Turn to Act 17 with me. And let's go back and take the word of the Lord. It came to them and then it sounded forth from them. Well, let's go back and let's read what happened here in Act 17. Let's get the context. What was this word that Paul preached to these people that was so powerful? That's what we want to talk about. That's 17. Look at first one. Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia to other cities, they were in vilify.

[00:08:25] So they're working their way here all over the coast off the achee. And see, they came to Fassel and 9th. There it is.

[00:08:32] And then where there was a synagogue of the Jews in Poland. And as was his custom. This is how Paul went around preaching.

[00:08:39] And on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them from the scriptures and explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead.

[00:08:52] And saying this Jesus, whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.

[00:08:59] And some of them, some of these people were persuaded. And they joined Paul and Silas. I said a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading men. So here's how Paul planned in church. You see any kind of jumped in on what the Jews were doing and the Jews, they were meeting there in their synagogues on the Sabbath. And so, Paul, he kind of basically need to another church. He basically just kind of took over what was going on when it says he reasoned with them. I think this was some kind of interaction with the people that he had there.

[00:09:30] And he used the Old Testament scriptures to prove to them and really free things that we're gonna see this morning that he proved to them.

[00:09:38] He proved to them that he was the Christ who had to suffer and then rise again.

[00:09:43] So though the word of the Lord that Paul gave to these people is the gospel message. That's what it means. Now, if I just ask you this morning if this is maybe the most important question anybody's going to ask you, this is why we set up everything. So I could ask you this question this morning if I asked you this. Morning. What is the gospel? Could you come up here right now and grab the mike if you like?

[00:10:05] I'll tell you what the gospel is. Maybe I sit right there up, give you a blank piece of paper in your bulletin. Could you write down right now what the gospel is? Could you tell me that information? That is the most important thing. That is the word of the Lord. And I talked to many people who call themselves Christians and I say, what is the gospel?

[00:10:26] And they look at me like I'm saying something weird, like I'm starting to speak in a different language or something like I'm serious. I'm asking you this question, what is the gospel? So we will be like, well, there's four of them. Pastor Robert.

[00:10:40] So that's what answer I get, another answer I get a lot of times when I ask people, can you tell me the gospel? I smile, I'm try to be friendly. What is the gospel? And they say to me, well, you know.

[00:10:53] There you go. You know how you know I'm a guy.

[00:10:58] I do know, but I'm asking you, what is the gospel?

[00:11:03] This is the most important question anybody's going to ever ask you. And so many people who tell me that they're Christian people cannot then tell me the gospel of Jesus Christ. I mean, people at churches like this all the time. If you can tell me the gospel of Jesus Christ, how can you tell me you're a Christian? It doesn't go together. You have to have both of them. It is only the gospel that seems to point number one. First thing you want to do here. A CompassHB HB. Don't assume people know the gospel.

[00:11:35] We're going to spell it out in very vivid detail. Point number one, you want to write it down if you're taking notes. Don't assume people know the gospel. Don't assume that because somebody is a good person and they smile and they go to church.

[00:11:47] Don't assume that they actually know the information that you need to know to put your faith in to be safe.

[00:11:55] And these people, they got the gospel hearing that 17 as Paul presented it to them, it is so clear and it is in its most basic and essential elements. And so you've got three dashes there. I just want to make sure that everybody understands the three essential elements here that we have of the gospel message. And you'll see there at the end of verse three, the quote he was saying to them, this Jesus, whom I proclaim to you is, though, what does he say there?

[00:12:22] Shout it out is the one. Oh, that's a big deal.

[00:12:25] That's a big deal, that he would go into a Jewish synagogue and that he would prove to a bunch of Jews that Jesus is the Christ. See, people use Christ today like it's Jesus's last name. That's how people are using it means then. But if you had said Christ in this synagogue, you just said that Jesus is the Messiah. That's what you just said. Let's get back down for our first little dash here. First essential element of the gospel is you've got to know who Jesus is. Jesus is the Christ or Messiah, where if you wanted to translate that, you would say the anointed one.

[00:12:59] That's what it means.

[00:13:01] And throughout the Bible, there have been prophecies, there have been allusions, there have been symbols. That one was coming who could do something once and for all to make people write with God that there was this this one who was coming. And you can go all the way back to Genesis and you can trace it through the entire Old Testament that this messiah, this anointed one, was on the way. In fact, Jesus, he rebuked the Jews of his day, religious people church in our way, we would say churchgoing kind of people because they didn't know the facts. In fact, many of the Jews, many of the most religious church type of people, when Jesus showed up. Did they embrace Jesus or did they reject Jesus? Which one did they do? Rejected him.

[00:13:47] And he said, John 539, if you want to write it down. He said, you search the scriptures because in them that you think you have a life. But he said, these testify of me.

[00:13:58] That's what he said. He's too many people are reading the Bible, trying to have life and they're missing the point of the Bible. The point of the Bible is Jesus and that he is the Christ.

[00:14:09] That's the point. And he says, do you get the point? I'm the guy. I'm the one.

[00:14:15] The one that we've been talking about in the Old Testament. The Messiah. The one that we're now going to call savior and Lord in the New Testament.

[00:14:21] That's me. I'm the guy that was a that was a fighting words for him to say that that Cheesus was the Messiah.

[00:14:30] And you could not have said a more inflammatory thing in a Jewish synagogue. You were going to raise a ruckus by saying something like that.

[00:14:39] And they all had this messiah idea in the in mind. In fact, we need to go to the Old Testament. Let's go to Saul, chapter two.

[00:14:47] Let me just take you to one place out of the many we could turn to. That's something I hope to do throughout our sermons here at Compass. HP is inspired Jesus in the Old Testament. And here with me to Sommes Chapter two, here's a good place to seek the Messiah. And this is a great chapter for us to look at as this would have shaped the Jewish thinking, the people that that Paul was talking to their vessel the night they started in the synagogue with the Jews.

[00:15:14] And they would have all known song to look at it with me, read it with me here and says, Why did the nation's rage and the people's Quoddy being the kings of the Earth?

[00:15:23] They set themselves in the rulers, take counsel together, look at all the men and their nations rising up and they're rising up against the board and against his.

[00:15:32] You see what it says, their anointed or you could translated Messiah. That's the word that world is working against the Messiah, saying let us first their bonds apart and cast away their courts from us.

[00:15:43] Let's just go do whatever we want to do. Let's rebell against God.

[00:15:46] But he who sits in the heavens laps. The Lords holds them in derision and he will speak to them in.

[00:15:52] His wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me, I have set my king again another reference on Xai and my Holy Hill and I will tell him the decree. The Lord said to me, You are my son. So here's God, the father speaking to his son today. I have begotten you ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the Earth, your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

[00:16:18] Now, therefore, o kings be wise. Be warned the rulers of the Earth. Hey everybody, take notice to this.

[00:16:23] Serve the Lord with fear and greed. Shall we swim trembling.

[00:16:28] Kiss the sun. Kiss the Messiah lest he be angry. And you perish in the way. For his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him is what the Jews wanted.

[00:16:40] They wanted a Messiah who is going to show up and overthrow the Romans.

[00:16:44] They wanted a Messiah who is going to show it. Show up as some kind of political savior, some kind of national leader. And he was going to be this mighty one that everyone was going to bow down and fear and the Jews were going to rise back to the top of the ladder of the nations on planet Earth. And now you're saying this humble guy, Jesus, who died on a cross, this lowly servant. This man who seems so weak at the end. You're saying that he is the Messiah.

[00:17:11] See, that was controversial right there. Let me just tell you this. Companies Bibles are going to be anytime you want to talk about the real Jesus Christ. It's going to be controversial. There has never been anyone more controversial in the history of planet Earth than Jesus Christ. Don't accept the P.C. version of Jesus, who's just some good teacher. Here's what Jesus said.

[00:17:31] I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody gets to heaven. Nobody gives to the father. There's only one way and it's through me. That's what Jesus Christ said. And so can you imagine. I think part of the reason the Thessalonians had such an amazing response to the Gospel is consider the boldness of Paul and his team to walk into a group of Jewish people and to say to them, this guy's the Messiah. And they're all like, he didn't overthrow the Romans. The nations aren't.

[00:18:00] Where's he treading down the nation's worst, his rod of iron. I didn't see that.

[00:18:04] And now he has to prove to them that this guy Jesus from the Old Testament. That's all he's got. He's got to prove to them the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel message.

[00:18:15] And so go back to Act 17 and you'll see the second part here. This is the biblical way to say it. And Act 17. You'll see the main point that he's got to make to these guys is that Jesus is the Christ and anointed one. The Jews were familiar with this. Their profits were anointed. Their priests were anointed. Their kings were anointed.

[00:18:33] And Jesus was the only one who was all of those. A lot more we could say about Jesus being the Messiah. But but now we get to what Jesus did. We've got to start out with who he is. And then we get to this verse three, explaining and proving this took a lot of work from Paul here, but explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ. Remember, they're thinking big, powerful leader. Well, here's what he's got to do.

[00:18:55] He's got to suffer and rise from the dead.

[00:18:59] And when you see that in the New Testament, when it says that Jesus needs to suffer, the way that we would say it today is that Jesus died for our sins. Let's get that down for our second day.

[00:19:07] Here's the essential facts of the gospel that you have to know to be saved. That one is who Jesus is, that he is the Christ, that he's the messiah, the anointed one to, that he died for our sin. And then let's just put the third dash down now right here.

[00:19:22] He did stay dead.

[00:19:23] He rose from the dead in a triumphant act, oversee over death to offer everyone now new life that even if you die, you can live. Jesus Christ says I am the resurrection and the life. Everyone who believes in me, you die. You will still live. And I get a man from anybody. That's Jesus Christ. And he rolls into town and he says, Hey, let me tell you something.

[00:19:48] You're not going to like. Jesus is the Messiah. Let me tell you. Number two, you're not going to like the Messiah die. No Jewish self-respect. A Jew had their messiah dying on a wooded cross.

[00:20:01] Nobody like that guy. Who suffered. And he did something else that you're probably not going to believe. He rose from the dead. But you haven't heard that one before. Well, here is.

[00:20:11] That is the message that we've got right there.

[00:20:14] And if we're going to make a difference for Jesus Christ here in Huntington Beach, we have to bring that message in. We have to find the way to save. Paul knew how to say it to the Jewish audience. We got to find a way to say it to the Huntington Beach audience. And we got to say these three things over and over and over. And when this is the hill, we are going to die on. Hey, Jesus Christ. He is God. And he died for your sins and he rose again.

[00:20:37] And we need people to see that. Zacharias Chapter twelve. True. With me, the Zacharias Chapter Twelve. Another Old Testament prophecy here. There's a lot of places we could go this morning. I'm taking a deep into the clean pages of your Bible.

[00:20:49] The minor problem. Shout out if you want to know what page it's on for the rest of the. If we could find a find Zacharias with you here.

[00:20:58] And let's look for Chapter twelve of Zack Ariah, Chapter Twelve.

[00:21:05] There's a we could obviously could go into I say a fifty 53. Maybe you're familiar with that passage of classic prophecy about the death and even the resurrection of the They Have Sorrows servant.

[00:21:16] There were many prophecies that proved that the Messiah was just going to be this leader conquering nations, but that he was gonna be a humble one who would bear our sins, would be crushed for our iniquities, who would be pierced for far transgressions. Look at how it says it here in Zekeria, Chapter twelve.

[00:21:34] Look at was ten. With me it says Zacharias. Chapter 12. Verse 10.

[00:21:39] And I will pour out the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Spirit of Grace. Pleas for mercy so that when they look on me, OK. Here now we're talking about something that is still yet in the future when the Jewish people here in Jerusalem. They're going to look on him, on him, who they have pierced.

[00:21:58] They're going to mourn for him. They're going to realize what they did was wrong. As one mourns for an only child, weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first born.

[00:22:10] There's a prophecy that is yet to happen, that someday in the future, the nation of Israel that we see getting regathered together in modern times.

[00:22:18] This nation of Israel is going to see the Messiah when he does come to rule over them, when Jesus, we believe is yet to come in the future, when he does come to conquer nations and to rule over the world and they will see him and they will look on this one and they will realize he was pierced for me. Most important thing that you can ever learn in your entire life is that Jesus Christ died for your sin. The most important thing you're ever going to learn.

[00:22:44] That's what this book is. Say what Paul is going into Thessalonica. It's saying is someone died for you. You can't blow that off. That's serious news. Someone maybe you don't even know. I didn't even know. Maybe I needed somebody to die for me. But that's the message of the gospel, that you didn't need someone to die for you. Because God is perfect. God is holy. I need a lot of good people.

[00:23:08] I mean, I've met a lot of good people. There are a lot of good people here and need to be.

[00:23:12] I think you're a good person. Right. Deserve better than the other people, aren't you? I mean, isn't that how we are? We all watched the commercial for the Channel four, News 11. And we think.

[00:23:24] I don't like that. I got down to four or five. Look, the cops are going to get it.

[00:23:30] How long is this going to take? If we got any Cheetos, what's going on? Yeah, I'm glad I'm not this guy.

[00:23:36] And you start thinking, how bad did it get for this guy?

[00:23:38] Just start driving down the freeway and then what? I'm not back. And we feel pretty good about ourselves as we recline our lazy boy chips. Do you think you're a good person? You probably are a good person by our standards.

[00:23:53] But are you a perfect person? Would you consider yourself a holy person? Do you think that's how God rolls?

[00:24:02] God is set apart. There is no one like him who dwells in unapproachable light.

[00:24:07] If we saw God, the Father in all of his glory today, the Bible says we would fall down like dead people.

[00:24:15] That's who. God. I'm not that. You're not dead.

[00:24:20] Back to the standard surge problem.

[00:24:26] I'm not going to ever live up to that, no matter how hard I try. No matter what I do to improve myself, no matter what kind of diet I go on or how many hours of sleep I get.

[00:24:35] I'm not going to bust out perfection. Morning. Jesus Christ. He died for your sake. He lived the righteous life that you could not live. And then he took your place on that. And I cannot think of something that should be more defining for who you are as a person. If it's somebody took your punishment, somebody took your spot.

[00:25:05] We die for your sin.

[00:25:06] And then he rose again, not just so you could be forgiven, but to give you a new life. So now in his power and in his name, you can't say no to same. You can't say no to doing the wrong things. They used to define you. And you can live now. A brand new way. In Jesus Christ. This is the gospel message. And he's saying no. Sunday people's minds are going to change about Jesus.

[00:25:30] And instead of seeing some historical figure or instead of seeing some guy that the Jews rejected, that they didn't think there was a messiah. And they shouted, crucify him. No, they're going to see him for you. He is the one who was pierced for them.

[00:25:44] And they're going to eat. They're going to mourn, he says. Grown men crying.

[00:25:49] That's when they realize what Jesus Christ did for them. And this is a prophecy that is yet in the future. But this is what we want to see in Huntington Beach right now. People convicted about their sins and seeing the answer in Jesus Christ on the cross and turning from that sin to follow him.

[00:26:07] That's what we're here. And here's the problem. You want to know the biggest problem that we're going to have in trying to tell people about Jesus in Huntington Beach?

[00:26:16] What are many people going to tell us what to be like? That's good news, I guess. But it's old news to me. That's what I've already done, that I prayed a prayer when I was a kid.

[00:26:26] I was at a service like this one that was inside of their condition. But I was so focused on.

[00:26:32] I walked down that aisle and I talked to somebody and they put their hands on me.

[00:26:36] I felt the feeling come over me.

[00:26:41] Because here's the thing. If you couldn't tell me the gospel, no one asked you that most important question. A few minutes ago and now you've explained it here.

[00:26:48] If you can't tell me these three things that we explain. Then what were you putting your trust into? We say if you don't know this gospel message, if that's not specifically what you have put your trusted people use in the faith, the word faith for all kinds of things.

[00:27:07] Everybody's got faith these days. Oprah's got faith, right?

[00:27:11] Joel Osteen got faith. Right. We've got faith here. A Compass Bible church. We're talking about some different things. That right. Safe word. What are we putting our feet in? That's what matters. Breast feeding the gods out there that he exists.

[00:27:25] Our next believing that God loves us. We're believing something very specific. If you have not put your trust in this very specific piece of information that we called the gospel, these three beings right here.

[00:27:38] If you didn't understand these three three things at the moment that you think you got saved, then I'm here to ask you today, how could you have been saved if you didn't know the information that you're supposed to put your trust in to safety? I'm concerned that a lot of people there put and there goes my notes.

[00:27:54] We're going to be all right. I'm sure that a lot of people are putting their trust in the fact that they prayed that prayer.

[00:28:01] The fact that they walked that aisle.

[00:28:04] And when you stand before the gates of heaven and you're finding out whether you go in or not, it's not going to matter. Anything that you did in this life. It's going to matter. Here's what's going to matter.

[00:28:13] Jesus Christ died for your sin. That's what's going to matter if your faith is not in that specifically that you can't be saved.

[00:28:23] Your dead.

[00:28:24] That's going to be our biggest problem. And trying to win people for Jesus Christ. People are going to tell us they're already there when they're not. I mean, that might be our biggest problem with this group. Because you've got some past experience where you felt good about Jesus Christ.

[00:28:42] But I got to ask you, because this is what God wants me to do. This is why the Thessalonians church got started, because they understood this information and this word of the Lord before they died. And it just blew up from there. If we don't start with the right foundation of the gospel of Jesus, our church will go nowhere.

[00:29:00] If you haven't started with the right foundation that Jesus died for you and rose again. Who he is as the Christ. You don't see him as that then your Christian life.

[00:29:08] He won't be able to move forward because he doesn't have a building block the foundation. Now, the second part of our of our phrase here is the word of the Lord.

[00:29:19] And then it says sounded forth. And that's really the Greek word that we get this word, actually.

[00:29:24] Right. So I have this idea of like the gospel just coming to them and it feels like some kind of explosion almost where it's like something blows up and then it starts just kind of reverberated. Right, like a loud sound. We could see a loud sound. I know we can't see it, but what I'm told by scientists and they convinced me because they use a lot of terms, like I didn't really understand, was that when the loud sound happens, there's waves coming off of that sound.

[00:29:48] Have you seen that diagram before? Have you seen this, Becky? That's the picture.

[00:29:52] Do you think that something happened when the word of the Lord came to these people that he echoed? It sounded like it was so powerful what happened there that the ripple effects, the waves are still going out from that gospel, really being received by people who are really putting their trust in Jesus Christ and just boom, it goes out from there.

[00:30:14] This is exactly what Jesus promised. We shouldn't be surprised when we see a church like the Thessalonians that blows up. We should be surprised when we see churches that don't go anywhere because, Jesus Christ, he promised this was going to happen in his church. Turn to Matthew 16 and let's hear something straight from Jesus Christ here today in Matthew, Chapter 16. Everybody turn there with him. As we start our church, let's see what the problem is that Jesus said that he was going to do. And again, it comes down to this essential question of who is Jesus Christ is the most important question. What is the gospel of Jesus? And he asks his disciples. Matthew, 16, looking verse 13 with me.

[00:30:54] Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesar Rio Philippon, he asked his disciples and just let me say right there where it says he's a real Phillip guy. That's our Avians. He's a real Philipot is way up to the north from Jerusalem.

[00:31:07] So if you're the Messiah, you should be rolling into Jerusalem. You should be taken over. Let's get these Romans out of here. Let's get these false religious leaders out of here. Let's start having some authority.

[00:31:17] That's right. You would be expecting Jesus to go straight to Jerusalem if he's the messiah. When he's up, it sees a real. What's going on here? This is not the messiah they expect. And so Jesus asked this insightful question. Cycles. Who do people say that the sound of man is, I'm probably not what people are expecting of me.

[00:31:36] What are they saying about me out there? And they said, well, some say you're John the Baptist. Others say you're Alija. Others. Jeremiah, one of the prophets. They're thinking back through the Old Testament. And then Jesus makes it personal, as he always does.

[00:31:49] And he said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon. Peter, you're the spokesperson. With a foot shaped mouth here for the disciples, Peter replied, You are the Christ son of the living God. Right. You are the Messiah. And Jesus answered him. Blessed are you, Simon. Son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.

[00:32:13] You don't just figure this out for yourself. But my father, who is in heaven, has revealed this to you.

[00:32:18] And I tell you, you are Peter.

[00:32:21] And on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

[00:32:28] And there's a wordplay going on there because Peter's name is Petrossian. The word that he uses for rock here is Patroni. So he's doing a little wordplay. Hey, Peter. Right answer. And on this rock right here, I'm going to build my church and the gates of hell.

[00:32:42] The gates of Hades death will not be able to overcome my church. Satan will not be able to overcome my church. I'm going to build something that will go for all of eternity. I'm going to do something right here. And the ripple effects are just going to go on and on and on.

[00:32:55] On this rock, he says, I will build my church.

[00:33:00] What are you referring to? Who is referring to not? You're the man he's referring to the answer that Peter just gave. The most important thing.

[00:33:08] You are right. That's what he's going to build it on. The right answer to who Jesus is. That's the foundation of the church.

[00:33:17] And I think that's such a great picture because that's something I can't see. I can't see the sound waves. I can't see like you can hear my voice. You can kind of even hear it echoing, but we can't see it.

[00:33:26] But here's what I can see when I throw a rock on water thing. When I skip a rock every time that rock hits the water, what happens? The ripple effects in what we're doing here in Huntington Beach, we're dropping a big old Jesus rock and the ripple effects aren't pr� are going to go for decades because Jesus Christ said when you drop the rock of who I am on that rock, I will build my church and sorry, Satan, but I'm taking ground in Huntington Beach.

[00:33:57] That's what people say.

[00:33:59] Sorry. Natural process of people dying. Those people are still going to live.

[00:34:03] That's what Jesus Christ said, because I will build my church. That's the promise of Jesus Christ. That's what we should expect to happen here at CompassHB. Bob, you're turning to beat. Not only that, we're going to show up every week for church, but that Jesus Christ is going to show up here at this church.

[00:34:18] And he is going to build it. And no one can stop what Jesus is doing. Does that can anybody popped up here?

[00:34:24] I wish I had a pig in the water. If you could just see the ripple effects, because that is what we are doing here today.

[00:34:31] It is just going to go out and it is going to be glorious to see what Jesus Christ does.

[00:34:39] So if you're point number two, you only want to do now. Point number two. What does that think like? Well, here's what we want to pray for. You want to pray for a comeback of Jesus conversations?

[00:34:49] We want to do what Paul did. And we want to go talk to as many people as we can. Who is Jesus? We want to tell him who he is and what he did. Then he died and rose again.

[00:34:58] There was times in America, there's even been times in the history of Huntington Beach where people talked about Jesus.

[00:35:03] Surely the early church, this word of Jesus Christ was spreading everywhere.

[00:35:09] We need to talk to more people about Jesus Christ.

[00:35:12] We're going to do that here when we gather together. We're going to do at our hopefully we got it together. We're going to drive an ice cream truck down the street and get to people in the community.

[00:35:20] We're going to talk to anybody we can't because we think every time you drop the rock of Jesus Christ, the ripple effect start to go on.

[00:35:28] That's how we're going to think here at this church.

[00:35:30] And so when it says the word of the Lord in forth and that's what I want. I want more conversation about who Jesus is and what he did. And I just wanted to echo and reverberate and go all over. That's the story of the church. Talk a second, Thessalonians, Chapter three. We're seeing it in First Thessalonians, Chapter one. Here's the main thing that Paul uses to describe this church.

[00:35:52] This word picture of the word of the lord sounding forth, echoing like a rock being dropped in water and just ripples going out.

[00:36:00] One second, Thessalonians, he says it again. He because this was the picture of how Paul thought of the church in his mind. Second this morning. Chapter three. Verse one. Look at this phrase here with. He has a prayer blessed.

[00:36:13] And he says to them, Finally, brothers, pray for us. He's asking for them to pray for him that the word of the Lord may speed ahead.

[00:36:21] Here's a picture of the word running ahead, Your Honor. Hey, guys, are you still out here dropping in the rocket? Jesus Christ, I'm still out here.

[00:36:30] Preachin who he is and what he did.

[00:36:32] And I need you guys to pray with me that the word of the Lord will run and in the Bible, the word of the Lord, the word of God.

[00:36:39] It starts to become its own thing. It just starts getting out there and doing work and spreading.

[00:36:44] And you can't stop the word of God. That's that's how the Obama talks about. I mean, that's really the story of the Book of Acts. You could summarize the Book of Acts of the Word of the Lord did this.

[00:36:53] The word of the Lord did that. Turn over to acts with me. Like I said, we're gonna be working in our Bibles here. Turn over the ax. Chapter six.

[00:37:00] And let's just start there and let's just trace through the Book of Acts just a few of these statements about the word of the Lord.

[00:37:06] And if we could just give more sermons about Jesus, if we could just have more groups about Jesus, we could get more conversations about Jesus Christ. Every single time we get it out there, it will ripple and it will go look at acts Chapter six or seven, it says, and the word of God continued to increase and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.

[00:37:28] And a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. And can we just look can we just change? What if we change the language to just putting it into our situation and the word of God continue into this priest and excuse me, continue to increase the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Huntington Beach.

[00:37:48] And a great many of the surfers became obedient to the great many people in North Orange County, all kinds of different people of different shapes and sizes, different ethnicities.

[00:38:03] They came and became obedient because they put their trust in the only thing that has hope for anybody. Jesus is the Christ who died for your sins. And he rose again.

[00:38:13] And I would love to see that. I would love to see this place multiply. I'm already thinking, man, how many people would it take to fill up this entire amphitheater? Why are we just doing it over here? That's gonna take a lot of Jesus conversations, a lot of ripple effects out in the community.

[00:38:30] That's gonna take every one of us. The best way we're gonna spread Jesus and unteach is word of mouth. That's how it's gonna spread. And the best mouth that's going to spread with is your as you open up and you say, I'm ready to now be more bold for Jesus Christ than I've ever been. I'm ready to get out there right now and start talking to people in a way that I have never done before. That's what it's come to see. The full explosion of the gospel, go to chapter twelve.

[00:38:59] Look at verse 24 here acts chapter 12, verse 24. Look at this would be an understatement here about the word of the Lord. This is a theme as so many passages we could look at said for twelve verse 24.

[00:39:12] But the word of God, two things here increased and multiply, not just added. That's how it started out back in next to for to you. Adding to their number. Now it's bigger than that. It's the plan. We're working up to more serious math with the chapter 13, verse 49, right over across the page there. Chapter 13, verse 49. And the word of the Lord is spreading throughout the whole region. Here's something you need to know about the Thessalonians.

[00:39:38] How long did it seem at 17. Paul was there teaching the people that you met. Did you pick up that detail? It said he was there for three Sabbaths and then he's run out of town.

[00:39:49] Now, as we study First Thessalonians, Paul describes such a tight relationship with these people that it's going to seem like he was there much longer. And then three Sabbaths and maybe he was there longer than just three weeks. But the truth is, these weren't like people who've been going to church since day one.

[00:40:06] These weren't people who had years and years of church. These were new believers who were just getting out there.

[00:40:13] They were kind of foolish, like new believers often are. They think you're just supposed to tell everybody about Jesus. They don't know like us. Like some of you guys who have been going to church for years.

[00:40:25] You guys don't tell anybody about Jesus because that's not what mature Christians do. We do Bible study. We do it at home. We don't really advertising because you could understand half the things we were saying if you hadn't gone to church for at least five years. You're throwing out all these all ages and all these vacations and people can't really track with what we're saying. That wasn't the best along to ensure they were fresh. They were new. They were they were freshmen or rookies. They were like, oh, man, the game coach I want to play. They had been beaten down. They were idealistic.

[00:41:01] People thought that it was as simple as going and telling somebody else about Jesus Christ every single day.

[00:41:09] That's what they felt. And they understood it probably better than a lot of them.

[00:41:16] A word of God. Multiply.

[00:41:20] And we've been talking about certain this church for a long shot. And a lot of people have said, yeah, I'm glad, go into Huntington Beach. Man, there's a lot of churches in Huntington Beach, but they really need Jesus.

[00:41:32] And I'm like, that's interesting. And I keep hearing people say that over and over and over. And finally, I said out like that statement very much.

[00:41:43] If there's a lot of churches somewhere, then there should be a lot of Jesus somewhere. And I guess they meant the. So the average church, the average churchgoer, the person who calls himself a Christian, would you think of that person as someone who goes around telling people about Jesus Christ? Does the average person who goes to church go out and start telling people who Jesus is that he's God, that he died and rose again? What do you guys think? Is that what the average person has? No theme.

[00:42:10] Our idea of what church is is flawed because we have based it on our own experience of church. That's why we're going to study your festival. We're going to see what church was really supposed to be like, where everybody who got the gospel spread the gospel.

[00:42:26] And these folks, I mean, that's why some of you guys are here, is because somebody knocked on your door, you got some free ice cream and you got invited. Now, we are so glad that you are here. And we tried to do something. We tried to get out there. We tried to invite as many people as we could in the surrounding community, but we didn't have a lot of people to invite people. So some friends from campus police who came and helped us and we've started to trying to spread the word. That second stuff that wasn't just something we did before the first service to let everybody know we're here.

[00:42:53] That's gonna be how our churches we want to get out there and we want to tell people about Jesus Christ.

[00:43:00] And if you're here today and you don't have confidence that you have been saved by the gospel, if you haven't seen this rock kind of drop in your own life and felt the ripple effects of Jesus Christ dying for you and rising again, man, today could be the day of your salvation.

[00:43:17] That's what we're here to do, is we're here to see Jesus Christ save people starting right now. And if you want to talk to people here, all the people that stood up earlier myself, we are hungry to talk to people about the gospel.

[00:43:30] That's what we want to do.

[00:43:32] As a pastor, I mean, that's what I live for, is what am I going to get to talk to the next person about Jesus Christ? What am I going to get to sit down with somebody and explain to them how because of what Jesus did, their life could radically change and they could be a new person because he died and rose again for them?

[00:43:47] It's such good news. It should never become old. It should keep getting better and better. And we should grow in our excitement to share it. You know, I was thinking about that. I want to have these conversations.

[00:43:57] I want to have these conversations. And one group of people that I try to have that conversation with all of my all the time is is my children. How many how many people talk to the gospel, talk about the gospel with their own children these days? That's something that always concerns me. I don't just want to talk to about the gospel because I'm a pastor. I want to talk about it because I'm a I'm a Christian person. I don't want to talk about the gospel of my wife. I don't want to talk about the gospel with children. So we do this thing in our house with the kids. It's called the gospel chart.

[00:44:28] And we go over and you could ask the kids, hey, what are the three things you've got to know? And they'll tell you. What are they? Jesus is the Christ who died for our sins.

[00:44:38] He rose again. That's why we're here. Because your father in heaven. He wants you to know three very important things, because your father in heaven. He loved the world so much. He gave his one and only son.

[00:44:51] And he wants his son to save you. That's what. And that's what we're here. We're here because God wants more people to get saved. And so we're going to spread the name of Jesus Christ and God. The father loves you. Through his son that his son would die. We rise again. And I pray that you have that relationship with with the father through Jesus Christ.

[00:45:15] If you put your hand out over here, we've got a couple of gospel resources if you've never heard of these things.

[00:45:20] This is a great day in your life because we've got some things that can help you understand the gospel and get them out or a little bookstore we're setting up over here. We've got partners, which is a one on one discipleship program where you can go through, learn how to tell the people the gospel. You've got this book getting it right. Anybody ever read this book getting getting a bike right by this guy named Mike Fabrizi?

[00:45:39] Anybody ever read this book by our pastor, Pastor Mike Poobah as a pastor down there and all these survey? Oh, you wrote a book to help people get the gospel. It's called Getting It Right. We got these resources right over here. You can pick them up and talk to anybody after the service.

[00:45:55] Let me pray as we get ready to do some more worship. Please pray with me. Thank you so much for being here and for sticking with me in the heat. Let's pray, everybody. We thank you so much for this good news that we can just blabbering out here in this hole. God, it's so great. Even how it echoes a little bit here today to think about the word of the Lord coming to this small group of people in this coastal town right on a main transportation way. And the word it came to them. Well, such power that it just exploded just rang out like a trumpet s like a clap of thunder so loud and powerful.

[00:46:30] Now we're just a humble group of people here setting up easy ups. But we want you to drop that rock of who Jesus Christ is here today.

[00:46:40] We want Jesus Christ to build his church on the revelation that there is no one like then he died for our sins and that he rose again.

[00:46:52] And I just pray if there's somebody sitting here even this morning and they realize, I don't know the gospel walking in here, I could have told you those three things. If somebody asking what the gospel is that they would realize that that is their hope right there. That's there. That's her one ticket.

[00:47:08] You've got to put all your trust in Jesus Christ. Who else would you want to put your trust in? The one who died. The one who was piercing through for us, for our sins. He took the punishment that we deserved. So we get the life that he perfectly lived.

[00:47:27] We praise Jesus Christ that he has the power to rise from the dead. He has the power to make dead people today rise to new life in their souls, that Jesus Christ, he is the name above all names.

[00:47:40] And now we pray that you will use our church to lift the name of Jesus higher than maybe it's ever been lifted before, especially here in Huntington Beach, that many could see his glory, that the eyes could be opened and they could see him for who he is standing.

[00:47:55] Right now, your right hand ready to return the messiah, the anointed one. Got that the name of Jesus Christ be known and that the gospel ring out. We pray this Jesus.