Some
of you who follow this blog might like to know I now have an e-book available
on Amazon/Kindle. It’s called The Place Accorded of Old: Questions About
Women in Ministry. It is a Biblical
and historical defense of women in ministry; it also allows me to share my
experience in dealing with an issue that threatened to disrupt the life of a
congregation. I decided to publish on Amazon because the last agent I
approached told me that, while he agreed with me, no publisher would take a risk
on such a “controversial” book written by an author with no nationally
recognized “name.” With no agent or editor, I'm afraid the book, like this blog, isn't perfect; but I hope its message is clear. The book is also a
partial answer to the question: “What have you been doing since you
retired?”
Acts 1:1-5
I first preached this sermon as an
introduction to a series on the Book of Acts. Some of the messages from that series are
already posted on the blog. While I
don’t intend to post other messages the series right now, I will revisit Acts
from time to time.
Recently there was
an ad campaign designed to attract young people into teaching, a worthy
goal. Part of the campaign’s strategy
was to encourage listeners to remember those teachers who made a difference in
their lives. Most of us can name a high
school or college teacher who made an important contribution to our lives, who
challenged us to do more than we might have thought we could do, who encouraged
us to dream big dreams. But, if we’re
honest, we’ll admit we can also remember teachers who were awful.
Luke’s
introduction brought one of those teachers to mind. I took him for an introductory course in
Psychology in college. I faithfully
studied the assigned chapters for the first test and then got a terrible grade
on it. I didn’t know the answers to
several questions. Questions such as,
“The author mentions his dog in his dedication, what was the dog’s name,” or “In
the introduction the author says psychology can improve athletic performance,
according to the picture of the track meet, what school had the highest
score?’
I suppose if
anything good came out of that experience it was a tendency to pay just a
little more attention to prefaces and introductions than I used to.
We might be
tempted to skim over Luke’s introduction to the Book of Acts. After all, once you’ve noted that the book is
dedicated to the mysterious Theophilus, what more is there to say? Even the reference to the Risen Christ
spending some forty days with his disciples teaching them about the Scripture
almost seems like a segue to what follows.
Yet, if you read the introduction too quickly you’ll miss a short phrase
that gives us a crucial perspective on the entire Book of Acts and on all
subsequent church history.
Luke says that in
his first volume, “I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach…” If
his first volume focused on what Jesus began to do, the second volume
focuses on what Jesus continued to do. The perspective Luke wants to give us
can be expressed this way: The ministry
of the Spirit-filled church is a continuation of the ministry of Jesus. FF Bruce:
“The implications of Luke’s words is that his second volume will be an
account of the things which Jesus continued to do and teach after His
ascension—by His Spirit in his followers.”
If Luke’s Gospel
answers the question, “Who is this Christ” then Acts answers the question “Who
are Christ’s People?” Christ’s People
are those who carry on the work of Christ.
Does the ministry
of today’s church demonstrate the same breadth, compassion, and love as the
ministry of Christ? Do Christ’s people
do Christ’s work today? Would those
heroes of the primitive church, those men and women who sacrificed and suffered
for their faith in Him, be able to sense a spiritual kinship with us should
they suddenly find themselves transported to the twenty-first century? The keys to being able to answer those
questions in the affirmative are found in the Book of Acts.
We can see several
of them in seminal form here in the first chapter.
If Christ’s people would carry on
the work initiated by the Risen and Ascended Lord…
Those who
would continue Christ’s work will do so
by maintaining the priorities he set.
The Jewish people
lived in hope of the Messiah, the Redeemer who would be sent from God to
establish God’s Kingdom. By the time of
the first century that vision of the Kingdom was primarily political in which
the Messiah wielded military power.
Although Jesus had
spent so much time teaching his disciples the true nature of the Kingdom of
God, they still clung tenaciously to some of the old ways of thinking. While
the disciples continued to look for a political kingdom, Jesus continued to
stress that his would be a spiritual kingdom.
There was nothing
wrong with the disciples being interested in the future, especially in how God
might act to bring about his purposes in the world but their question seemed to
indicate an inappropriate preoccupation with that future.
Jesus responds to
them with a twofold thrust. First, while
the Heavenly Father obviously wanted them to know many things, the timing of
the end was not one of them. Of course, that
hasn’t kept well-meaning teachers from announcing to the world that they have
stumbled upon some hidden code by which they have been able to determine the
time and date for the end of the world.
So far they’ve been wrong.
Second, instead of speculating on the future, they were to get busy
continuing his work.
Those who would
continue Christ’s work will do so
by keeping his purpose close to their hearts.
“You
will be my witnesses…” Instead of being
prognosticators they were to be preachers.
Instead of watching the skies they were to be witnesses. Instead of being princes of the Kingdom they
were to be proclaimers of the Kingdom.
Specifically,
they were to tell the world—the whole world—about Jesus. That immediately that challenges the
provincialism implied in their question to Jesus. The Messiah hadn’t come merely to be a
blessing to “Israel” but to everyone, even those at “..the ends of the earth.”
In
the Book of Acts we will see Christ’s People finally catch the vision that
motivated Jesus Christ from the beginning.
The church will become a missionary church. One of its leaders, Paul, would write the
Romans that his great dream was “…to evangelize where Christ has not been
named.” (Romans 15:20 HCSB)
For some, today,
that vision dream is terribly wrong. In
their minds it is the height of arrogance to even attempt to win men and women
to Christ, to disturb the order of some non-Western culture by attempting to
impose our world-view upon it. But time
and again those who have carried the gospel to other cultures have discovered
that many who accept Christ did so because they saw in him the fulfillment to
the secret yearnings of their hearts.
At the same time,
as Christ’s People attempted to carry out Christ’s purpose, they changed the
world for the better. Because they saw
every man, woman, and child as individuals for whom Christ died they built
hospitals to care for the sick, they eventually were victorious in the war
against slavery, and brought about many other changes too numerous to mention.
How did the
message of the missionaries have such an impact? It changed the world because it was focused
on Jesus Christ himself. Jesus
predicted, “You will be My witnesses…,” witnesses to him and about him,
witnesses telling his story again and again.
This focus on
Jesus is essential to our witness, and the Jesus upon whom we must focus is the
Jesus of the Scripture. Because the
preaching of the early church placed the Biblical Jesus at the heart of its
message it turned the world upside down.
Everywhere the first missionaries went they told of Christ, told of his
life, told of his death, told of his victory over death. They presented him as the One who would give
forgiveness to the sinner, hope to the hopeless, peace to the troubled, freedom
to the bound, healing to the broken.
Whenever the
church has neglected or changed that message, it has been ineffective. Whenever the church has rediscovered that
message, it has been a powerful and transforming presence in the world.
But it has not
been easy. For this reason...
Those who
would continue Christ’s work will do so
by embracing the power he gives.
Both here and in
Luke’s Gospel we see something amazing.
Jesus has commanded the disciples to carry his message into the entire
world. It would be a tremendous task,
one that might have seemed almost impossible;
certainly it was a task that demanded their immediate attention. Yet, instead of saying, “Okay, the clock is
ticking, hop to it,” Jesus said, “Wait!”
Right, there were no clocks then, but Jesus did say, “Wait.”
More particularly
he said, “wait for the gift my Father promised.” The Jewish people believed the Messiah would
bring the age of the Spirit; Jesus is
about to make that a reality. In Luke’s
Gospel, Jesus had already said something similar, “…wait in the city
[Jerusalem] until you have been clothed with power from on high.” That is, power which comes from God.
In today’s
churches we often here people urge us to strike while the iron is hot, to take
advantage of the opportunities before us.
When we do hear the word “wait” it’s often connected to statements such
as, “We have to wait for the printer to get the flyers to us,” “It’d be nice to
do that but we have to wait ‘til we have a larger budget or more people.” How often do we hear people say we have to
wait until we have the leadership of the Spirit on this or that proposal? No, instead we say we have to wait until we
“run the idea up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes.”
A few years ago an
author writing on the subject of church growth argued that the early church
needed to depend upon the Holy Spirit because, unlike the modern church, it did
not possess an understanding of marketing or the technology to allow it to
reach a large audience. Since the
contemporary church has these resources, it no longer needs the power of the
Spirit to do its work.
By contrast, the
early church was so driven by and dependent upon the Spirit that Luke’s second
volume has sometimes been called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.”
Perhaps the
ineffectiveness of many churches can be traced to the failure to embrace the
power of the Spirit. Years ago, Carl
Bates said that if the Holy Spirit were somehow taken away from our churches
business as usual would go on in most of them without anyone noticing.
Yet, the Holy
Spirit and the power he provides was such an important theme that, according to
John’s Gospel, Jesus spent much of the evening prior to the crucifixion
discussing how life would be different once the Spirit came.
Keep the following
in mind:
1. This was a promise of real power. The word used is dunamis—which refers to the power to do what needs to be done. Jesus knew what they would face better than
they did; he knew what power they would
need. We’ll see that power demonstrated
in obvious ways like miracles but, also, in the courage Christ’s People will
display as they go on doing Christ’s work in the face of opposition.
2. This was a promise of spiritual power. It is power bestowed by the Holy Spirit. The church will fail if it tries to
substitute temporal power of any kind for the spiritual power given by the Holy
Spirit. Wealth is power, so, too, is
charm or popularity. Education can grant
a kind of power. But none of these can
accomplish what the Spirit’s power can accomplish. The challenge is spiritual, the power needed
to meet the challenge must be spiritual.
3. This was power with a purpose. Christ’s people were called to be
witnesses—witnesses to him. The scope of
that witness was greater than any of them imagined at this point. They would preach to the poor, to the
powerful, to Jews, Greeks, Romans, to individuals with whom the disciples would
have once refused to even share a simple meal.
They would see such men and women of every race, culture, and status
respond to the message of Christ.
This was the
result of the powerful enabling they received from the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s power was linked to their
faithful proclamation of that message.
Even today the Spirit’s power is linked to the content of our witness. As Leander Keck says, “The less Jesus is the
core of witness, the less power we have.”
Throughout the
Book of Acts we’re going to see how Christ’s People accomplished the seemingly
impossible by depending upon the Spirit of God—the gift of their Risen and
Ascended Lord.
Those who
would continue Christ’s work will do so
in light of his promised return.
“It is not your
business to learn times and dates which the Father has the right to fix.”
(Williams) Jesus’ pointed statement, as
translated by Williams, shouldn’t be taken as a condemnation of all reflection
on the Second Coming. But it was a call
to balance and perspective.
Luke, writing
sometime near the beginning of the 60’s may have included this event because
there had developed an unhealthy eagerness for the Second Coming, an eagerness that
may have been born out of the increased persecution faced by the church, an
eagerness that blinded believers to the urgency of other concerns. The angelic rebuke seemed to say that Jesus
would not come any sooner if they stood watching the sky; instead, they should get busy with the task
Jesus had placed before them. And as
they went about that task they could do so with the awareness that every
convert brought the Return that much closer.
While the earliest
believers did not cluster in small groups to discuss the finer points of
Biblical prophecy or to generate booklets and charts explaining their
understanding of the doctrines related to the end of history, they did make it
a plank of their preaching. The promise
of that Return helped motivate them to face hardship and to be constantly ready
to present the gospel to a new audience.
In our day, the
excesses of a few have embarrassed Christ’s People into a patent silence
regarding the Second Coming. Is this why
we are not as motivated about reaching unbelievers as Christians of earlier
days were? Have we forgotten that all
the great creeds of the church have underscored this doctrine? Would we like to relegate it to fringe groups
who meet in storefront churches?
As we look at the
Book of Acts we’ll discover the options regarding this doctrine are not either
to be obsessed with it or to ignore
it. And, perhaps, we’ll discover this
doctrine is not relevant only to the distant future, but relevant every time we
stand by the grave of a loved one, every time we consider our own mortality,
every time we are tempted to throw up our hands and say evil has won. We’ll discover what the heroes of the Acts
knew—long before the first baseball game—that it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
CONCLUSION
If you come away
from this study of the Book of Acts with only a greater grasp of its content,
with only a clearer picture of some of its heroes, this study will have failed.
The only way this
study will be a success is if all of us catch the vision to be Christ’s People
carrying on Christ’s work in our world.
