Well, good morning brothers and sisters.
My name is Andrew Dinardo. Thank you for the warm welcome.
It's great to be here. I work at First Presbyterian
Church and, and grew up there and now I'm serving on the
pastoral staff with young adults used to work with Henry.
So that's our connection. And it is just great to be here.
It's weird not to see Henry and Kelly while being here, but it's
great to see you all. And if we haven't already met, I
look forward to to meeting you friends.
Today we look at another EPC essential.
It sounds like you all have been going through those.
And today I want to look at the missional aspect of the EPC.
And I want to direct our attention to the book of Acts
chapter 1. So if you have your Bibles, feel
free to flip there and open there.
Acts chapter 1, verses one through 11 In my former book, O
Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach
until the day he was taken up to heaven.
After giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the
apostles he had chosen after his suffering, he presented himself
to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.
Appear He appeared to them over a period of 40 days and spoke
about the Kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was
eating with them, he gave this command.
Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised,
which you have heard me speak about.
For John baptized with water. But in a few days you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit. Then they gathered around him
and asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the
Kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for
you to know the times or the dates the Father has set by His
own authority. But you will receive power when
the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the
earth. And after he said this, he was
taken up before their very eyes, and the cloud hid Him from their
sight. They were looking intently up
into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in
white stood beside them. Men of Galilee, they said, Why
do you stand here looking into the sky?
This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will
come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.
Friends, this is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Would you pray with me?
So God, open our ears, give us ears to hear your word, open our
hearts, give us eyes to see. Lord God, transform our minds so
that we would know you and knowing you, love you, and
loving you love one another. We thank you, Lord God, that
your love toward us and for us is one that's inseparable, the
best thing that we can't escape. So we come before you now with
Jesus, our hope, our Redeemer and our friend.
And it's in his name that we pray.
Amen. So I think in the e-mail that
went out, it said that my wife and I, we live, live in Menaca,
I'm at Trinity Seminary, work at First Presbyterian Church.
And it said that we had, I think it said we had two kids with a
third on the way. And, and the third came a couple
weeks ago on November 2nd. Oh, thank you.
Don't have to clap for that, but thank you.
And but having three kids now, I already found myself repeating
myself a good bit in our house, having to say things over and
over again, especially when our four year old doesn't take a nap
midday. And now with three kids, I know
that I'm just going to become a broken record eventually.
That's kind of my future destination.
I always thought my parents were just like that.
And now as a parent and as a dad, I think I'm, I'm starting
to understand sometimes my wife and I will look at each other
and think, are we not being clear enough?
Are we not good communicators? Our, our kids just sometimes
aren't getting it. But I'd be remiss and actually
like completely wrong and misled if I told you that was just my
kids because I need told things time and time again as well,
especially lately. I'm going to blame it on having
three kids with a newborn in the mix.
But I've been told things by my wife and, and she will say we
talked about this and I will say I don't remember a thing about
that conversation. I saw a couple of you look at
one another when I said that. So I'll let you sort that out
afterwards. I didn't have that as the
intended application of the sermon, but it can be.
Friends, we are, we are very forgetful people, right?
And actually that that is the story of Israel throughout
Scripture, the story of God's people, a huge part of their
story is that they are forgetters.
They are not rememberers, even though God throughout his
Scriptures tells them to remember.
That's one of his more common commands to remember.
And yet they forget. So he brings them out of Egypt,
tells them to remember his name, and they spend time wandering
because they've forgotten who he is, and therefore they forget
who they are. And this doesn't stop as Jesus
explains his Kingdom and His way and His will to his disciples as
he's actually physically presently with them.
We all know that the story of the disciples is not one of
perfect following and obedience, but rather it's actually 1 of
forgetfulness. This like spiritual amnesia
where we just can't get it. Even those with the sharpest
minds, the keenest memories seem to forget who God is and our
lives fall out of order from there.
And the apostles in in the book of Acts are no different.
Friends, this morning I come to remind us and remind myself of
of some very basic things. In some ways.
Often times we want to get deep in our faith, but we forget the
very essentials and the roots of it, the apostles of the book of
Acts. And we too needed a reminder of
somewhat basic truths that are at the root of who we are and
who God hopes for us to be. And today I hope we will
together see that the missional church, our church, this church
here, Hebron Church, First Presbyterian Church, the Church
Catholic, meaning worldwide, the missional church is to want what
God wants, is to know God well and to go transformed by his
power and by the work of his Spirit.
So first we see that the missional church wants what God
wants. In Acts chapter 1, when the the
gospel writer Luke is recounting his former book, he says in my
former book, O Theophilus, he's just harkening back to Luke.
He quickly makes reference to one of the final interactions
that Jesus has with his disciples before being taken up
into heaven. So after all of Jesus's earthly
ministry, after his one-on-one meetings, after all of those
like taking disciples aside to to teach them really important
lessons, the mission trips, the the quasi retreats, you know,
things that we how we would call them these days.
Luke says that the question that the disciples have to offer to
Jesus after all of that is this Lord, are you at this time going
to restore the Kingdom to Israel?
That's their culminating question.
It makes me want to hang my head at times in disappointment or
roll my eyes. Were they daydreaming when Jesus
was with them? You know, maybe like a like I
was in middle school and my teacher would be speaking and
teaching. Often times I'd they'd say,
Andrew, are you listening? And I'd have to kind of have
someone snap me back back into this world.
How could they forget what his Kingdom was like after the
parables were given and many explained and spelled out.
You spent all that time with Jesus disciples and still you
are missing the point. It's not what he came for, to
restore the Kingdom to Israel specifically in that region and
geographic area. And I think, and I wonder
perhaps it wasn't so much a lack of listening, but more so a fear
of what's unknown, wanting to put Jesus and the Kingdom of God
in their terms. You see, all of this was
happening many, many years ago. So often times we can see it and
think, well, I can't really understand because I didn't know
the context. We don't live there.
Now. This world is unlike that world,
but at the same time, these are human hearts.
And therefore this same condition is shared by us again,
this forgetfulness, this spiritual forgetfulness, this
desire to control Jesus, to make him like us rather than for us
to be conformed and made into his image.
And it's such a temptation of ours as I think more and more
so, to have control, or I, I should say, to attempt to have
control because we never truly have it, do we?
In a day and age where we can control things like the
temperature in our homes down to the the degree where we can turn
that on and off from our smartphones while we're away, we
can control many things, or at least it seems like we can.
But then we're reminded by things like often the weather in
Pittsburgh is a good reminder traffic, that there are things
that we truly just cannot control.
No matter how hard humanity tries to squeeze and hold
something and try to control it and shape it into our molds and
images, we cannot control everything because we are not
made to control everything. We're not designed that way.
That's not in our fabric or our framework.
But still, when people see Jesus, and when I say people,
it's not people out there, I'm talking about my heart and
yours, they try to describe him. We try to describe him by our
own terms, don't we? So we read passages talking
about God's love and his mercy and we start to talk in a way as
if God is all love and all mercy and all compassion and it it can
almost become tyrannical and and take over our view of Jesus.
Or we may read other passages about his judgment and his fury
and think, wow, the fear of God, he must be harsh.
So this is how I understand God. We don't balance those well.
We don't often leave room for the complexity and the immensity
of God and our Lord. He's very complex,
understandable to us, but also still beyond our thoughts.
We begin to think then that he wants what we want.
And so when the apostles then here, going back into this
passage, ask Jesus about restoring the Kingdom to Israel,
it's an honest question that honestly reveals their human
hearts. It's an honest question and we
have to admire that. What they're most excited for,
seemingly, is for Jesus to take up their cause.
And we love leaders who take up our cause, don't we?
My mom, the house I grew up in, there's a little alley behind it
in Rochester, PA, small little town.
And there was a pothole like right behind her driveway.
And it was there for for years and years.
And she kept calling the borough and saying, can you fill in this
pothole at at some point? And they kind of kept putting it
off, putting it off. And then eventually she found
someone that would lend her an ear and they filled the pothole,
right? Even those sort of things.
Filling a pothole feels good, right?
When somebody kind of takes up our cause or maybe a a national
leader takes up our cause. And once what we want, those are
good feelings because it feels like what we desire is coming to
fruition. It can be like, finally, I've
been hoping for this, even if it's outside of biblical
qualities or values. We can find ourselves wanting
what we want. That's how we live our lives.
The disciples here, they ask what I'm going to call an empire
building question born out of self-interest.
Are you going to restore the Kingdom to not, not to the
people of God necessarily in their minds, but to Israel, to
this geographic center? Are you then at this time to
going to restore the Kingdom to Israel while we're here, while
we're living, so we can see it right now?
Jesus responds then to this empire building question with a
Kingdom witnessing answer. What does he say?
It's not for you to know the times and dates the Father has
set. And then he follows it up by
saying, But you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea
and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, not just where they
were, but to the ends of the earth beyond their comprehension
at the time. The disciples, the apostles here
want Jesus to want what they want.
The missional church is oriented to want what God wants.
And how do we know what God wants?
Because often times we can say, God, I'm here for you, I'm
available. I want to want what you want.
I want to do what you design for me to do.
And that can feel paralyzing. I work with young adults at our
church. I worked with middle school and
high school students for years. And so now the middle school and
high school students are the young adults in our church.
So I've just kind of moved up with them and a lot of our
conversations are difficult because they're in the stage of
life either not having gone to college or gone to college and
then moved home and they're unsure of what they want to do.
They they feel like they have this greater purpose and this
greater calling and this zeal and desire to serve the Lord,
but they're caught in between. You know, your 20s can be a
really value setting time of life, but it can also be really
confusing and disorienting. Just coming out of my 20s, I can
confess that it was disorienting for me to living at home with my
mom and trying to figure out everything.
It can be difficult in these times to know what Jesus wants,
but friends, we have praise God His word for us and here in the
scriptures we see that Jesus did not tell his disciples that they
will build the Kingdom of God, but that they will be what's the
word witnesses. That brings us to our second
point that the missional church is to know God well, to know God
well. No, I'm not saying we have to
have degrees and and and education and formal education
because I believe the good news is to all people and available
to all people. Yet we need to know who God is.
Kevin Deyoung, a well known Christian author says this about
Jesus Kingdom and I'd ask for you to think about it and
consider it. He says when you look at the
gospels and examine the verbs associated with the Kingdom, you
discover something surprising. Much of our language about the
Kingdom is a bit off. We often speak of building the
Kingdom, ushering in the Kingdom, establishing the
Kingdom in our words, or helping the Kingdom to grow.
Rang collective song Build your Kingdom Here Jesus does teach
parables like the one of the Mustard seed that sure make it
sound like the Kingdom grows and is meant to be large and
expansive. But within those parables, if
you look closely, the Kingdom is not equated to something large,
expansive, and taking over, but to something small, potent,
often overlooked, or deemed insignificant by the world.
God is the master, friends, of using the things that don't seem
like much in the world to humble the things that claim to be
significant. And in heaven, I truly believe
the people that are not known at all will receive standing
ovations by the angels and by the hosts of heaven.
So then when Jesus tells his apostles who will who they will
be in Acts 18, that famous Acts 18, we should be sure to note
that he does not say and you will be an influencer.
Although having a positive influence for God is a good
thing. He does not say you will be a
business leader, though you can lead in a godly way.
He doesn't even say you will be Kingdom builders.
He could have instead, he says what you will be my witnesses.
Doesn't that sound a little less inspiring to you?
Witnesses. It's kind of our point today.
So I'm I really want to hammer at home, but it's also it it's
it's kind of a little more quiet, isn't it?
Witnesses. I mean, if if I told you right
now go out and be leaders for God, that sounds a little bit
better, right? Or go out and be the best
version of yourself for God, Go out and and love everybody right
from here for God. But if I say go and be witnesses
for God, how many of how many of us are going to leave here with
burning hearts or even a clear idea of what that means to be a
witness for God? But friends, I want to convince
you and and convince myself and argue today that a witness is
really important, essential. So important that Luke uses the
same word to describe Christians again and again in chapters
235671013. You get the point.
Also in his Gospel of Luke, when Luke wants to talk about who a
Christian is, he chooses to use the word witness.
Why witness? A few years back, my cousin is a
little bit deeper, but my cousin was was actually passed away in
a drug deal gone wrong and it's still a hard event to sort
through. But I can remember sitting in
the courtroom and the proceedings with my uncle who
had just lost his son and listening to other high school
students at the time that had witnessed the event.
And it was extremely important that their witness would be
accurate because this other high school student that was being
tried is guilty. He was.
He was essentially being potentially put away for almost
the rest of his life. This witness that these high
schoolers were giving was so important.
It was so important that it had to be accurate.
Have you realized or do you need reminded today that a large part
of your role as a believer is to accurately represent Jesus?
Now, I don't mean to put so much pressure on you necessarily.
That's that It's just like crippling, but rather to call us
up like Paul does, to know what the Bible says about God.
In an age of of low biblical understanding and literacy.
I'll admit that I don't often see my role as a witness, but
this is the role that Jesus leaves his apostles with.
Not to go around putting words in Jesus's mouth or putting nice
slogans that are attributed to him saying that he was going to
restore the Kingdom to Israel soon and, and, and then
therefore mix their hopes with his word that would be shaping
Jesus to their agendas. But instead, Jesus wants them to
go around accurately portraying who Jesus is, who he is, and
taking on his agenda because he did have one.
It was clear. And I want to ask us today, how
would our church look different if it was made-up of Christians
who know knew Jesus really well, who saw their role as being a
witness? And it takes time, friends, to
understand his will and his plan.
If you don't believe me, just look at the disciples.
Just look at yourself, myself. Faith in Jesus, like fly
fishing, which I've taken up recently, is a lifetime sport,
isn't it? We never graduate from the
gospel, but there's always more to learn, and that's a good
thing. Through this personal
relationship of knowing God, we get to be his witnesses,
attesting truthfully to his Kingdom and carrying out God's
mission for his church in this world, for the life of the
world, so that it would flourish and see God and know him.
So the missional church is to know God well, but we cannot do
this alone. Jesus knew this, the apostles
knew this. And this brings us to our final
point. We see that the missional church
is to go transformed by God's power and by the power of the
Spirit and the leading of the Spirit.
So when Jesus promises that the Spirit would give the apostles
power, when they hear that, that word power, when we hear that
word power, they probably got excited again about this vision
for restoring Israel. Power sounds like it can restore
a Kingdom. Actually, it sounds like it can
take over a Kingdom. But in his very next words,
Jesus tells them that Israel will not be their sole focus.
Jesus gives us and his disciples a very clear picture.
He doesn't speak in parables here.
He's very straightforward. He says that in he does not give
a parable, sorry, but a prophecy, telling them that he
they will be his witnesses, not just in Israel or Jerusalem, but
then in Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.
And he's right, because the course of the book of Acts goes
exactly this way. If you trace the progression of
the new church's missional journey in Acts, you'll find
that this is the exact route laid out by Jesus gone on by the
disciples. Chapters one through 5 of Acts
concern their witness in Jerusalem.
Chapters 6 through 9 of Acts cover their ministry in Judea
and Samaria. And chapter 10, chapters 10
through 28 trace the witnesses in far reaching places like
Rome. And obviously the Gospel
continued far beyond that. The witnessing ministry begins
in Jerusalem, goes out to Judea, again to Samaria, and out beyond
the reaches, far beyond what these apostles, simple people,
would have ever imagined. These concentric circles of
missional journeys continue to expand and broaden the horizons
of who the gospel is. For it will no longer be for one
ethnic group or one people or one church, but for all people,
gathering a multitude from every tribe, nation, and language.
The power that Jesus spoke of would not be used to restore the
Kingdom to ethnic Israel, but to bring a potent breaking in of
the Kingdom of God. A potent breaking in of the
Kingdom of God. When I thought of this, I
thought back to Jesus's parable of of the mustard seed.
And when I thought of the parable of the mustard seed, I
thought, I've never tasted mustard seed.
So we had some in our, in our spice cabinet and in our pantry
and I went in, I don't know if you've ever done this kind of a
strange thing to do actually, now that I think about it.
And I took a little mustard seed.
I wanted to just see what 1 was like.
And I popped it in my mouth and I was, oh man, after I crushed
it, really, really potent, really potent flavour.
Wouldn't recommend it. So let me just tell you about it
and save, save you from that. But this is one of the parables
that he uses. A mustard seed.
Just one small seed contains all that flavor.
It barely had a scent. It barely seemed like much.
But when planted, it spreads. When crushed, it's potent.
Even when seemingly destroyed, it still has its taste.
The church in Acts has this potency.
When the church seems crushed. It's actually most potent when
where it's planted, it breaks through and doesn't return void.
Where the seeds of faith are carried, the Spirit is there.
The missional church goes by God's power.
Finally, friends, how do we know this to be true?
Well, God the Father doesn't just give us Acts chapter 1,
Matthew 28, or missionary efforts of Paul.
We have historical evidence that the gospel continues to go forth
even in countries that do not allow it.
Even in countries that say that church is not allowed, the
gospel there actually is very potent and breaking forth and
coming through. And what's more, we also get a
glimpse of our final day, of the final day in Revelation 7, the
same 1 the apostles asked about in Acts 1.
And here in this scene, Kingdom witnesses, like I had mentioned
earlier, from all reaches of the globe are gathered to worship
one person, the Lamb, and attendance so high none can
count. All praising the Lamb, the ends
of the earth together in one place for one purpose, to enjoy
the Lord. Finally to rest.
So we get to go forth today, not just waiting in full certainty
of that day and saying I can, I can relax.
It's not a la Z boy faith or recliner that we sit back into,
but rather friends as participants now in our world
and in our communities. Not hiding from the world, but
actually engaging with it. Because we have the hope that
the world needs. We have the hope that we need
every day as we wake up, the wait is over.
Then we can stop asking because the Kingdom of God is at hand.
So what does this all mean for us?
What does it mean for you to be a witness, to know God well, to
want what He wants? It means we can and are free to
seek the flourishing of our city and of our town and of our
households, of our communities, of our blocks, even amidst
population decline or times of scarcity and uncertainty.
It means we point to practical hopes of food and water and
lasting hope found in the living water and bread of life.
It means that we're not afraid to know God well and make
changes to our lives right now as it's revealed to us because
God tells us. It means that you and I as a
church are called both as individuals and then also
together to want what God wants, to know him well, and to go
transformed by the love of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and the fellowship found in the Holy Spirit.
Amen. Can I pray for us, Lord God, we
thank you for your love for us that empowers us, that does not
leave us nor forsake us. We thank you, Lord, for your
patience with us when we don't get it.
We thank you for the power of your spirit that leads us when
we're unsure or uncertain. And we thank you, Lord God, for
your continued presence with us that you don't leave us, that
you go before us, that you're here today.
So we come with Jesus today, and we pray this all in His name.
Amen.