Friends, that's great stuff, isn't it?
Don't they do a wonderful job? My friends, the Word of the Lord
is before us. Just consider that for a second.
The Word of the Lord is before us.
Let us be attentive to the Word. In the first book of the
Theophilus I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach
until the day when He was taken up.
After He had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the
apostles whom He had chosen. He presented himself alive to
them after his sufferings by many proofs, appearing to them
during 40 days and speaking about the Kingdom of God.
And while staying with them, He ordered them not to depart from
Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he
said, You heard from me, from John, baptized with water, but
you will baptize, be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many
days from now. So when they had come together,
they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom
to Israel? Jesus said to them, It is not
for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father is fixed
by His own authority. But you will receive power when
the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the
ends of the earth. And this is the word of the
Lord. Thanks be to God, gracious God,
gracious God, do that which we could not do on our own, but
take this word, improve our understanding of it for sure,
but improve our obedience to it. We pray through Christ our Lord,
we ask, Amen. Please be seated.
If you would grab your Bibles, I want to open them up to Acts
chapter 1, the book of Acts chapter one.
A couple of years ago, Kelly and I went to movie theater together
and we saw a movie and we were watching the movie in about an
hour and a half in the movie came to a wonderful resolution,
came to a glorious resolution. The good guys won, the bad guys
lost. Love was in the air.
I was happy, satisfied, everything was wonderful.
And then the movie kept going and it kept going.
And of course it introduced new things and and took it in new
directions. And about halfway through the
new direction, I thought to myself, there the director made
a mistake here. He ruined the movie.
The movie was great where it ended, and yet now he's dragging
it on. But by the end of the additional
ending, when the movie finally closed, I sat there and thought,
wow, that last part really brought forward the story that
was in the front part. The front part really was the
story. But this long, drawn out
epilogue that they did really made it worthwhile.
It was. It was a benefit to have all of
that, and it would have robbed the movie of so much of its
punch if it hadn't had that latter part attached to it.
Some of you who have been around might know that for the past
three years, summers, sorry for the, for the past three winters,
we have worked our way through the Gospel of Mark.
And the Gospel of Mark, you might remember if you were here
with us, ended on that high note.
It ended on a wonderful spot where we saw the life, the
death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And nothing could have been better than ending the gospel
the way that it did. And I suspect that's why Mark
ended that gospel that way and indeed why John and Matthew both
and the gospel somewhere in a similar position.
But Luke, however, goes on to continue his gospel in the book
of Acts. What we're going to do over the
next couple of winters together is that we are going to look at
the book of Acts and we have the risk of saying thinking to
ourselves, well, this is just an add on that.
The point is that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. And now we just have this
additional material that we have to cover.
But if you've read the book of Acts, and I trust and I hope
that you have or that you will, if you've read the book of Acts,
you know that that's certainly not the case.
That Acts in itself doesn't just elaborate upon things, but it
teaches us exactly about the life, the death, and the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just like the movie was made so
much richer by the way the director put on the ad on this,
the director of scriptures, the Holy Spirit himself is going to
add so much to our understanding of the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ by looking at the book of Acts.
So I would encourage you to come alongside with me as we study
the book of Acts over the weeks to come.
What we're going to do is we're going to find three main themes.
These three things do not cover every storyline that happens in
Acts. Acts is a very rich book, as
many of you will know. It's full of wonderful stories.
It's full of wonderful teachings and directions for us as God's
people. But they do tend to flow within
three main caveats. And so we're going to talk about
those here today. We're going to see how they get
set up really well even in the 1st 8 verses that we've looked
at, particularly in verse 8, the Spirit, the church and the
world. The spirit, the church and the
world. If we want to understand the
depth of the beauty of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the
book of Acts is a marvelous place to be.
If we want to understand the richness, the fullness of the
church, not just the church that was 2000 years ago, but the
church that is universally today and expressed right here at
Hebron Church, there's no better place for us to go than the book
of Acts. If we want to understand the
world, particularly if we want to understand the world that God
has called us to specifically, there's no better place for us
to be than the book of Acts. Having said that, we can't
afford to lose sight of the point.
Grab your Bibles if you wouldn't look in verse one with me in
verse one, Luke writes this. Luke is the author now of the
book of Acts. So we'll refer to Luke off and
on during this time In the first book of Theophilus Theophilus is
a is an either an individual or it's a summary of a group of
people. Theo God, Phyllis loved so loved
by God, those who are loved by God, those who are loved by God
or those who love God. This is his second book that
he's written. The first book being the gospel
Luke. This is the second book he began
he wrote in the first book I have dealt with all that Jesus.
Now notice how it says this began to do and teach, began to
do and teach. Luke's intent and our intent in
reading the Scripture is to see what God is continuing to do and
to teach. Yes, the Gospel of Luke talked
about what Jesus began to do and to teach, talked about his life,
his death and his resurrection, his teachings, his guidance or
direction for us, all the things that lead to our embrace of
salvation. But the way that Luke begins
Book of Acts makes it clear that he expects us to understand that
what follows is also the work in life and teachings of Jesus
Christ. One of the great dangers that
comes for from the history of the church.
And if you're a church historian, you'll be able to
look back at periods of time and see where this abuse is taking
place. The people get fixated upon the
book of Acts so that we can learn things about the Spirit,
the church, and the world, and they lose sight of that central
focus of what the book of Acts truly is about.
And it's truly about Jesus Christ and one of the key things
in which we're going to have to fight and struggle with together
collectively. And I need you to hold me
accountable to make sure that I'm fulfilling my part.
And then when he's preaching and others when they are preaching
about these texts, that the focus of our of our attention is
not to be so caught up with the Spirit, the church, and the
world that we miss the fact that the intent of the author is to
communicate to us about Jesus Christ.
This is his book. This is his, a continuation of
his story. That's the way it's intended for
us to be read. And if we lose sight of that, we
are likely to fall into the trap that so many have in looking at
the book of Acts and be distracted by so many things and
disconnect that from the reality of Jesus Christ.
But we recognize that this book is about Jesus Christ.
Having said that, historically and traditionally the book of
Acts is shorthand for the longer statement, the longer title of
the book of Acts. And that's the book of the Acts
of the Apostles, book of the Acts of the Apostles.
And some of your scriptures might identify the book that
way, the Acts of the Apostles. And if you're interested, of
course, we learn, we're going to learn a whole lot about the
apostle Paul. We're going to learn certain
amount about the apostle Peter. We're going to learn a little
bit about Philip, a little bit less about Stephen.
We're going to learn very little about John.
We're going to learn very little about James.
And that's about it. We're not going to hear a whole
lot about Matthew and Matthias and Bartholomew and Andrew and
Philip. There's so many things about the
book of Acts of the Apostles, of the book that are not covered in
this book. And so historically, it's been
recognized by so many that this is really not the book of the
Acts of the Apostles. It's the book of the Acts of the
Holy Spirit. And we can see this right across
the board when we look in verse 2, verse 2, Jesus began to do
and teach until the day when he was taken off.
Jesus was taken up the ascension, which we're going to
look at next week after he had given commands through the Holy
Spirit to the apostles whom He had chosen.
Listen to the implication here. The implication is that Jesus
himself, while he is yet with the disciples, while he's with
the 12 men in the and perhaps the gathering of of men and
women who have gathered around him, while he is still with
those who are committed to him, He is speaking powerfully to
them, and yet they are hearing him through the Holy Spirit.
Now, one of the things in which we're going to have to work hard
at doing is undercutting this felonious notion that is so
popular in today's society that associates the Holy Spirit with
some mystical force. You know, this is the legacy of
Star Wars and so many things where we depersonalize, where we
take the person of the Holy Spirit, he and we turn him into
an IT and we treat him as though he is in IT.
And we are going to fight hard to make sure that you realize
that the Scripture never does that, that the Scriptures
recognize the personhood of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit.
And so we talk about him and what he does on our behalf.
And here's one of the things in which he does on our behalf is
that he speaks to the disciples. Now, again, this is not just,
this is indeed a historical account.
This is in a discussion of what the Holy Spirit has done for the
apostles, for the original 12 or 11 at this point.
But nevertheless, we also have a reality that the Holy Spirit
does that with us today too. In other words, when we're
looking at the book of Acts, we are tracing not simply ancient
history here, but we are tracing our history and our reality, our
current present. The Holy Spirit will continue to
speak to us, does continue to speak to us the Lord's words so
that we can learn, so that we can grow, so that we can
develop. Thank you somebody back there.
OK, here's one of the realities. This is I want you to Amen this
too. This isn't a side note for me
for a second, but here's the aside.
You're never going to learn the book of Acts If you come on
Sunday and hear me teach it. Yeah, thank you, honey.
You're never going to learn the book of Acts that way.
It's simply it, it's a 20 minute exposure to the book of Acts,
which is which will get drowned out by the rest of the stuff
that happens in your life. I beg you, commit yourselves
over the next couple weeks, while we're next couple months,
while we're looking at the book of the book of Acts to spend at
least twice in the week reading the chapter that we're focusing
on. We're going to be looking at
chapter one over the next couple of weeks two different times.
Read the book of Acts, read Acts chapter 1.
I guarantee you if you do that it what we do here today will be
so much more meaningful, but the book of Acts will begin to stick
in your head. You will understand it so much
better. It's simply 20 minutes on a
Sunday morning simply cannot compete with everything else
that's happening in your world. So commit yourself just twice
more to read the book of Acts. Why?
What you're doing is you're opening yourselves up to exactly
what the Spirit does here in verse 2 that he speaks to his
disciples. I desperately want the Spirit to
speak to God's disciples here in this room.
And the way to do that is expose yourself to book of Acts Read it
every day. Of course, that's what I would
love. Read it at least twice and
you'll be amazed at how it begins to anchor itself in your
heart, in your souls. But of course, the focus of the
book, of the focus of the Spirit really comes to the four in
verse 8. So if you look in verse 8 with
me, this is Jesus now speaking to the disciples and he says,
but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.
If you've read the book of Acts, you know that in the next
chapter, chapter 2, the Holy Spirit does indeed fall upon the
the, the disciples and the beginning, the birth of the
church. This is the Pentecost experience
and it's something that we're going to spend a lot of time
talking about. What does it mean?
The Holy Spirit comes upon the church and has filled the church
and has directed and LED the church and fills the church with
power. What's your, what's your
superpower? Your, your Daydream superpower.
If you're a daydreamer, actually, I, I trust that
everybody can answer this question.
What, what superpower do you wish that you have?
OK, when I, I'm a daydreamer. And so I, I've noticed that my,
my superpower has changed through the years.
When I was much younger, all I did is want to fly.
I wanted to be able to fly and stuff like that.
Are there Flyers out there? OK, then.
Then when I got when I got it, when I got to middle age, then I
really wanted to have super strength.
I wanted to be able to crush my enemies.
Oh, so you know, so I wanted to have super strength.
Now as I'm getting older, I noticed that I really yearn for
invisibility. And I suppose some some
psychoanalysts could have a gay old time with me on that score.
But you know, you have the the different superpowers that are
out there. The reality is that the church,
God's people, have this superpower.
We have a superpower and we fail to acknowledge it all too often.
This is a promise that Jesus makes again to his disciples and
to each of us through those disciples, that the Holy Spirit
will come upon us with power. The word power there is dunamis.
It's where we get the word dynamite and power and dynamite,
etcetera, is an explosive idea. It's a, it's an outward
manifestation of power. It's not potential, it's not
possibilities. It is the outward expression of
that possibility, the outward manifestation of the power that
resides and flows through God's people.
This is what God promises with the coming of the Holy Spirit,
which we recognize has been fulfilled.
We're going to get into this in a couple of weeks, but if those
of you who've been around church, you know it to be true
for God's people that we are embedded, we are filled with the
Holy Spirit. We are so filled with the Spirit
that we are blessed with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Then that has to explode out of us.
When it does not explode out of us, we are denying the very
reality of what God has given us here through the power of the
Holy Spirit, the blessing of the power of the Holy Spirit.
Boy, somethings happened to people.
What's in the water today? So we have the blessing of the
power of the Holy Spirit that will come upon you when the Holy
Spirit comes upon God's people. This is the power of the Holy
Spirit. When we look at the Holy Spirit,
one of the things now, this is one of the struggles that takes
place. It's so easy, again, to begin to
identify the work of the Holy Spirit then with something
powerful like the Force, you know, something that's going to
give my lightsaber zooming abilities or something along
those lines. This isn't specifically not what
the Scriptures are identifying it as.
We have the power, yes, but to do what?
And this is where the notion of the church comes into this
passage. Take a look at this text again,
verse 8. But you will receive power when
the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth. There's two identifying marks
here for the church. The 1st is that you will receive
power. If we are to be the Church of
Jesus Christ, that explosive power of the Holy Spirit is to
be visible and manifest, and we're going to talk about how
that's the case. Book of Acts lays out for us how
that is manifest for us, and so I expect you to be able to be
attentive to that. If you are seeking to see the
Holy Spirit at work, I beg you to come along with me as we
study the Book of Acts together. Not only that, though, the
church. What is the notion of the church
here? Two different responsibilities.
One, that they will receive power. 2 that they will be
witnesses. We've already looked at the
first one, but to notice for a second that this is a collective
idea. Jesus is speaking not to us as
individuals, but to us as individuals in the midst of a
group setting. This is you all.
This is a way of identifying it both as you each to each of you
will be given this, and to all of you will be given this.
To each of us is given the power of the Holy Spirit, and to all
of us is given the power of the Holy Spirit.
That's the power. And then the second part of
being the Church is to be my witnesses.
Now a witness, I want to look at 4 quick things about witnesses.
Witnesses do four different things.
First off, they see something or experience something.
A witness is that I've witnessed it, I've seen it, or I've
experienced it. And the reality is for the
church is that every one of us sees or experiences Jesus
Christ. If you have not seen or
experienced Jesus Christ, if church is a function of what you
do Sunday morning, if church is something that you enjoy doing
because you like the people around you, or you think I'm
funny, or you like the music or something along those lines,
that's great. Please keep coming here, but
expect that you will have an experience with Jesus Christ
because that's what takes place in this room.
That's what takes place in the hearts of every believer that is
here. We witness Jesus Christ.
That is that we experience Jesus Christ.
We see Jesus Christ in our lives.
That's what it means to be a witness.
But it also means, secondly, to witness to the, to speak to that
in this case. Think for a second about being
in a witness chair in a court case.
You are a witness. Not only are you testifying to
what you have seen and experienced, but you are voicing
that. You are giving word to that.
Now I realize that people are different and they don't all
have the same giftedness. We all don't have the ability to
put into words that which we've experienced.
I understand that we are not all bold enough to take advantage of
those opportunities that come across our tables.
I understand that. But everybody, everyone in this
room. Is called to witness, to
experience, to to see Jesus Christ in their lives, and then
to speak of that. If you're building a court case,
a lawyer takes not just one witness, but a bunch of
different witnesses that all build together.
You are one building block that the Lord is using, that the Holy
Spirit is using to witness to His glory and goodness.
You might not be an important building block in your mind, but
you are important to Him. He has called you not just to
see and experience Jesus, but then to speak and witness to
Jesus Christ. Every one of us has that
responsibility. Thirdly, about witness.
This is where we get the word for martyr.
The word in the Greek is the same word for the word that we
use for martyr. To witness is costly, It's
sacrificial. It absolutely is anybody that
that proclaims the witness of Jesus Christ and thinks that
they're really good at it or that it comes easily to them or
they just have that gift or they just, and if you, if you think
that there are people that are like that out here, that's
simply not the case. A witness by definition is
costly and it's sacrificial. Now we nevertheless do so
because of the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is the connection in this verse.
We are empowered by the Holy Spirit so that we can identify.
Look, this is what I've seen. This is what I've experienced.
And I can talk about what I've seen and I've experienced even
when I realize it's going to be costly and sacrificial.
And fourthly, we're not told that we're witnesses.
We're told that we're witnesses to him.
That's the our text reads my witnesses.
But it's not so much in ownership.
Jesus is not saying there that you are mine and I own you.
He's saying rather, that you are witnesses to me, witnesses for
me, witnesses about me. And once again, this corrects so
much of our misunderstanding and failure as God's people to think
to ourselves that what we are talking about when we are
witnessing to Jesus is we're correcting every theological
mistake and we have to have all the right answers to everything.
We have to know our Bibles inside and out.
And we have to know what we have to do is witness to the
experience that we have had of Jesus Christ and of him alone.
That's what it means to be the church.
It's a fundamental understanding of the church is to have
received the power of the Holy Spirit and to be his witnesses.
And we're going to see this. If you want to see this played
out, if you want to see what heaven church is supposed to be,
come alongside with me as we study the book of Acts together,
the Spirit, the church, and of course, the world is modeled so
wonderfully here in verse 8 as well.
For we're told that we are to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea
and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
Now, if you're geographically oriented, you will recognize a
certain concentric circle nature of this Jerusalem, that spot
where the disciples were when they first heard the story,
Judea, the surrounding countryside, Samaria, the
countryside that is next beyond that, and then the ends of the
earth. The broadness of this.
This is the responsibility the disciples had to geographically
move out from this. But it's more than just
geographic. And we have that responsibility
again, as inheritors of the book of Acts.
We have that same responsibility to attend to the Jerusalem that
is around us, those people that are near and dear to our hearts,
our family, our friends, our neighbors, those who are close
to us, Jerusalem, to those who are geographically close by the
to our neighborhoods, to the city, to the church, to the
state, sorry, the state, somehow the geographic community that
would be reflective of Judea and Samaria and then to the ends of
the world. We have a responsibility to take
the gospel to the ends of the world.
Now, it's crucial to realize that Jesus does not say some of
you will be witnesses in Jerusalem, some of you will be
witnesses in Samaria, some of you will be witnesses to the
ends of the earth. He doesn't say that.
He says you, all of you, and consequently all of us will be
witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, Samaria, and to the ends
of the earth. How are we to do that?
How are we all supposed to quit our jobs and spend the rest of
our lives? No, clearly that's not what
Jesus has in mind, but he has in mind that you being empowered by
the Holy Spirit, being part of this body and community, will be
part of the witness of Jesus Christ.
That happens in Jerusalem, your Jerusalem, your family, friends,
neighbors, in your Samaria and Judea, the surrounding
countryside, and then to the ends of the earth.
How do you do that? 321321 OK, here's what I want
you to do over the next couple of weeks.
I want you to commit to doing this. 321 I want you to commit
to have to put three names in your heart.
Three names that are going to be guiding your prayers every
single day. Not when you remember to pray,
but you're committing to pray every single day.
Three names of Jerusalem, three names of your family members, of
your friends, of your neighbors. Three names of people that need
to hear the gospel message. Maybe not for the first time,
maybe they're long term believers, but three names of
people that you're going to keep in prayer over the next three or
four weeks, three or four months as we go through the book of
Acts together. 32 that you will put in your mind 2 institutions,
two organizations that are working in the community that is
around us either in Pittsburgh as a whole or in Pennsylvania or
in your local community, Penn Hills. 2 organizations that are
doing work. If you need ideas on some of
those organizations, one of them can be Heaven Church.
Pray for three individuals. 2 organizations in one place in
this world. When I first became a Christian,
this was back in 1980, four, 1984, my disciple said to me,
walk me through Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of
the earth. He said pick a place in this
world that you can pray for, that you can be passionate
about. And at that time the Soviet
Union, it was at war with Afghanistan.
And so I picked Afghanistan and for the past 40 years I have
prayed semi faithfully for Afghanistan.
Do you know what it's been like to see the church flourish when
when the Soviets left, and then to see the Taliban come in and
the church get squashed when it's there?
And to be praying as the United States is present in Afghanistan
and now the United States is not present in Afghanistan.
And to see God's work through the past 40 years because I have
been committed to praying for one nation where I will never
go, God willing, you know, as far as I know, I will never go
to Afghanistan because I've taken seriously the
responsibility that is laid upon me as part of the body of Jesus
Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit to pray for three
individuals, 2 institutions and one place in this world.
If you want to be see the world the way the Lord sees the world,
to seize it, see the Kingdom around you, God's Kingdom around
you the way that He sees the world, then I beg you to come
alongside me as we go through the book of Acts together.
Let's pray. Gracious Lord, we thank you for
giving us the gift of the Scriptures where we can see and
experience the realities of who we are as part of the Church of
Jesus Christ of the world that is around us, in desperate need
of Your love and your care, and specifically the power and the
work of your Spirit as He works and moves in our hearts.
Lord, we desperately need that kind of work in our lives.
And so we come to you, looking for Your grace and your
blessing, praying the way that you taught us to pray.
Our Father who aren't in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy
Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not in temptation, but
deliver us from evil. For thine is a Kingdom, and the
power and the glory forever.