The Rest of the Easter Story: Acts 1:1-11

Thank you, Chip, for that beautiful reading from John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

All four Gospels record the account of the resurrection of Jesus, and so important that in the book of Acts, for instance, there are 20 sermons by people like Peter and Paul and one by James and Stephen, and every single one of the sermons in the book of Acts also says something about the resurrection of Jesus.

And the one that Tip just read from John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

I hope you noticed, I don't know if you did, but I hope you noticed that Peter and John have this foot race to the tomb.

And in John's Gospel, John is careful to tell us all that he won the foot race.

And he beat the old geezer Peter to the tomb.

That's great.

But John's also humble enough to tell us the real truth that he didn't go into the tomb.

He stayed outside.

The implication is his religious rule follower wouldn't go into where a dead body would have been laid because that would have made him ceremonially unclean.

And John, I think, in doing that, reminds us that some things have to be entered into before we start to understand them and believe them as we could.

Peter probably reminds us that with Christ, Peter, who had just denied Christ three times just a few hours earlier, a couple nights earlier, he reminds us really that there's always hope for those desperate for reconciliation with God and for redemption.

And the other character that Chip read of there as well, Mary, she reminds us that there are some things that can only be seen through tears.

And there she is weeping.

And she's concerned about where the body of Christ is.

And there Jesus comes to her and speaks to her and calls her name.

And I don't know if you identify with any of those characters from the story.

I do.

I sort of identify with all of them at different times in my life.

The following verses include the account of Thomas.

Jesus appears to the disciples in a quiet room and a locked door, and he just appears in the room.

Thomas isn't there.

The other disciples later meet up with Thomas.

They say, Hey, we saw the Lord.

And not long after that, Jesus appeared to all of them again.

And he looked at Thomas and said, Here, touch my hands, touch my side.

And so gently alleviated his fears and gave him the evidence he was looking.

So taken collectively, this passage that we've heard reminds us Jesus is patient with perfectionists and rule followers.

Is that you today?

Rule follower?

Don't raise your hand.

Probably not.

People next to you probably might want you to raise your hand, but Jesus is patient with the John who stood outside, didn't wouldn't go in because he wanted to follow the rules.

Jesus wants to restore those who've completely failed him.

I bet that's all of us at some point in our lives, isn't it?

Like Peter, who denied him.

Jesus wants to restore us.

Jesus also is tender toward all those who have broken hearts.

And I bet that's all of us at some point in our lives as well.

We've suffered some loss or something that hasn't happened that we wanted to happen, maybe something that did happen that you didn't want to happen, and you leaned upon the Lord.

You needed the Lord to break through the fog of your tears.

Our theme for Holy Week this year has been the memorial acclamation, which says, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

And I'm calling today's sermon the rest of the Easter story because we're going to look at Acts chapter one.

If you'll turn in your Bibles if you have a Bible, just turn there.

Acts chapter one, look at the first 11 verses.

And it's really the rest of the Easter story.

There's a lot that's going to go on in this text.

And I just want to read it for you, and uh, and we'll let it let it speak, and then I'll highlight just a couple of things from the rest of the Easter story.

The first account I compose, this is Luke, the same author of Luke's gospel.

We're pretty sure this is Luke that wrote the book of Acts.

The first account I composed, Theophilus, and that's the name he addresses the Gospel of Luke to as well.

It means Theophilus is a Greek name.

It means lover of God, but can also mean one loved by God.

And I hope I'm both.

I hope you're both.

I hope I love God, and I hope I can really rest in the love of God for me.

I hope you can do that as well this Easter Sunday.

The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up after he had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen.

To these, he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of 40 days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

Now notice in the verses that come how many times there's a reference to seeing something.

So Jesus appears to them many times.

Matter of fact, if you take all of the information, we've shown this on slides before on Easter Sundays, but there's about 12 different occasions where there is a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to an individual, to two people, to a handful of people, to over 500 people.

And so this is not mass hypnosis.

You can't do that with 500 people.

And it's all at different times and different settings.

And so you know that there's something happened here.

And there are all these eyewitnesses, and the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says, and some of them are alive to this day as he's writing the letter to the Corinthian church.

Meaning you could talk to the eyewitnesses yourself who saw him alive again.

So he gathers as Luke is describing what's going on here after this 40-day period of Jesus speaking with the disciples of the things concerning what?

The kingdom of God, verse 3, verse 4, gathering them together, his disciples, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, which he said, you heard of from me.

John baptized with water, you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.

The Holy Spirit's mentioned 57 times in the book of Acts.

He plays a prominent role moving forward as the church grows, as the gospel spreads like wildfire around the Mediterranean throughout the Roman Empire.

Verse 6.

And so when they had come together, they were asking Jesus, saying, Lord, is it at this time you're restoring the kingdom to Israel?

They're still thinking Jesus has come as a political, socioeconomic messiah.

Some of them still have that in their heads.

Are you gonna drive the Romans out?

Are we gonna, you know, take over our own country again?

That kind of thing?

Some of them are thinking that way.

When in reality Jesus is coming as a much bigger messiah than political, economic, or social messiah.

It's important for us to know.

That's one of the reasons that we will seek to persuade you and to remind all of us here that we look to him.

Because when he rose from the dead, he did something so unique.

When he ascended on high, he did something so unique.

And his promised return, which I'm about to read about, is something, that's an offer so unique, it changes literally everything about past, present, and future.

So he's talking about the kingdom.

Verse 7, he said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons or the epochs, which the Father has fixed by his own authority.

In other words, I'm not gonna tell you right now exactly when I'm gonna come and bring the kingdom in its fullness.

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit, there it is again, has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses.

The word is martyrs.

That's what witnesses are.

They're martyrs, they're telling a story.

They're suffering for something, but they're telling their eyewitnesses and they're telling a story.

And you become my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and in Samaria, and a couple of them would have twinged just then because they hated the Samaritans, Jews did, and Samaritans hated the Jews.

So Jesus is breaking all social categories.

He's breaking all of the sort of prejudice, racial, geographic prejudice, religious prejudice, he's breaking all of that when he says, You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and even to the uttermost parts of the earth, including, guys, Nashville.

He had that in mind.

He had us in mind there.

To the uttermost parts of the earth.

Well, after he had said these things, verse 9 says, Jesus was lifted up while they were looking on.

Another phrase about them being eyewitnesses to what's going on here.

A cloud received him out of their sight as they were gazing intently into the sky while he was departing.

Behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them.

I like the live body detail here.

It's not two guys in camo.

It's not two guys in dirty old robes.

It's not two guys in microfiber.

It's not two guys who just shopped at HM or Johnson Murphy or anything.

No, these are just white clothes, and that's sort of symbolic, even from all the way back in the Old Testament, when people in these brilliant white clothes would show up.

These are representatives of heaven.

These are angels.

And they said to them, verse 11, men of Galilee, why do you stand, here it is again, looking into the sky.

This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in just the same way as you have watched, another word of visual impact.

You have watched him go into heaven.

And you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop with the text for right there, but I can just see the guys as Jesus is disappearing, going, wait, wait, what about predestination and election?

What about tithing?

What about how often I'm supposed to go to church?

What about wearing a tie in church?

What's a tie?

So many people today have come into the first service.

They're going, like, dude, what's with the tie?

Man, where's our pastor?

You know, that kind of thing.

It's like, but it's it's Easter Sunday.

And I love that these symbolize that Jesus can bring life out of death.

You know?

And so, yeah, let's wear something special once in a while and symbolize how great and wonderful this story is.

I think that these events, and we could go back further, the incarnation of Jesus, the life and teachings, the ministry of Jesus, the death, his death on the cross, which we focused on on Friday, yeah.

The resurrection, this glorious thing that we celebrate as well.

But also what we just read about, the rest of the Easter story, his ascension, his being seated at the right hand of the Father, which we hear about if you read the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Peter, if you read the book of Hebrews, you read that Jesus is seated in the heavenly realms, seated at the right hand of the Father.

That means something.

All of these things point to something, that in Christ, all of our biggest questions and all of our deepest longings have all been met.

I am one who loves big questions.

Last name is Thomas.

I ask why a lot.

I wrestle with doubt a little bit here and there.

But the older I get, the more convinced I am of a few things, and I'm really holding that now.

I'm really convicted of them as I grow older and live longer and see the way the world is and see the way the Lord can transform and change things.

But I ask questions, maybe you do too.

I ask questions about the origin of all things.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Big question philosophers have asked for years.

Where did everything come from?

How's the universe so beautiful, so intricately with great detail designed and complex?

Does the design and complexity of the universe point to something beyond the universe itself, the physical realm?

Transcendence.

Is there more to reality than the physical universe?

Maybe there's an immaterial reality, perhaps a mind, or perhaps what we call God behind all of this.

More and more, yeah, it's it's fascinating to watch the way the world is unfolding right now.

More and more scientists, yes, people of you know, sort of rational scientific viewpoint, are actually coming to faith.

It's amazing.

Um there's a resurgence of belief in God right now in men, ages 18 to 24.

And it's it's it's like a tidal wave.

And it's amazing, it's interesting to me.

I think people are longing for transcendence with all of our scientific and technological advancements, with the power to visualize and create virtual reality itself, and yet still find ourselves longing for more.

What is that chronic dissatisfaction?

That chronic disenchantment point to?

It should give us a clue.

We are looking for something more than we can discover or that we can define.

Um identity, who am I?

Big question always.

What does it mean to be a human being?

Am I just a physical body?

Am I the one who determines what I am?

Or do I belong to someone else?

Something else?

Was I created with purpose in mind?

And um, do I define myself?

These are all really important questions.

Belonging, so important.

How why is it that we long for connection?

Why is it we need relationships and community?

Why is it that you can stay online with your friends from all over the world who might not even be who they say they are and just find yourself chronically needing the presence of others?

That's one of the reasons I love our gatherings.

Real people are in the room.

We're looking at each other.

We're seeing the Lord move in our lives.

It's a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Knowledge, can we truly know anything?

How do we come to know anything at all?

With what certainty can we know it?

Morality, these are big questions we ask.

Is there such a thing as right and wrong?

There are people right now who don't believe there's any such thing as right and wrong.

I don't want to drive on the same road with them.

You stay on your side of the double yellow line, I'll stay on my side of the double yellow line, and we'll be able to be safe together.

I think it's important for us to know these things and to think these things through.

Um, yeah.

Justice, will evil ever be reckoned with aesthetics?

Why do you enjoy beauty?

What is it about beauty?

Why is it when you look up in the night sky and you can see with the naked eye, if it's a really clear night, and we were just in uh Arizona, it's so beautiful up there.

You I mean, it's it's just amazing.

You you can see thousands of stars, and it's been estimated we can see about 4,000 stars.

We can identify 4,000 stars.

But with the our microscope, I mean with our telescopes and all that, millions and millions of stars.

In other words, this universe is wonderfully complex and massive, and yet somehow or other, on this planet, we can look up and be wowed and astonished by God's penchant for beauty and his painting of creation.

And does that smallness uh generate within you a question about why I'm alive?

Um, what is it, what's my purpose in life?

Does my life have any meaning?

Sure it does, and it ought to.

Because I think the Lord put within you and within me the question, why?

So that we would be drawn to who.

And the who is him.

And he wants to draw us to himself, and he does, he uses beauty, he uses everything that's going on on this planet to draw us to himself and destiny.

We've asked questions about this before, and you have as well.

Is this life all there is?

I stood beside a grave this week.

I've done it dozens and dozens of times.

Is this life all there is?

Is a reasonable question.

And you will confront it if you have not.

Is there anything beyond this life?

Do I have a choice in what happens to me after this life?

The Bible begins to answer some of these questions in really meaningful and powerful ways.

And these events that have happened in the life of Jesus that we've, you know, just focused in on just this way: the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension and promised return of Christ.

They all make a huge difference in the way you approach and begin to respond to these kinds of big questions.

Christianity, Michael Reeves says, is not about learning to live with a disappointed longing.

It's about discovering the one in whom all longing is fulfilled.

And so we point to Jesus every single week.

We come to Jesus.

He is our treasure, our greatest treasure.

The Apostle Paul said it this way: all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him.

Who's him?

Jesus.

That's who the Apostle Paul was writing about.

So here in Acts chapter 1, we see Christ resurrected, Christ reigning as he ascends back into heaven, he's seated at the right hand of the Father, as the other New Testament passages will tell us, and you can look for them later yourself if you want to.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

But he is reigning now from heavens, from the heavens, and he's returning.

We read about that promise right here in Acts chapter 1.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

Let's talk just for a second about each of those three before we wrap up here.

The rest of the Easter story includes, yes, Christ resurrected.

And his resurrection confirms his victory over death.

And I, for one, am really glad that someone has defeated death.

Because that answers the question, is this life all there is?

And the answer from the Bible is resoundingly, no, this life is not all there is.

And we don't walk away, we still grieve, we still mourn the loss and the temporary separation.

Yes, that's true.

Just as the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, I don't want you to be ignorant concerning those who have fallen asleep.

1 Thessalonians 4 · chapter mention

He doesn't want us to grieve as those who have no hope at all.

But when we mourn, we are hopeful mourners.

We miss them, but we're promised we will see them yet again as we read in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.

1 Thessalonians 4 · chapter mention

The resurrection of Jesus, as Leslie Nubigan has said, and I don't have this on the screen for you, but I'll just read this.

Listen.

The resurrection of Jesus was a kind of nuclear explosion which sent out a radioactive wave, not lethal, but life-giving.

And the mission of the church is simply to continue communicating that joy.

Joy in the Lord.

Joy in Christ.

It's not joy just in being religious.

It's not joy just in following the rules like John as he got to the opening of the tomb.

It's not just the joy of running running recklessly into the tomb like Peter or all that.

I'm like all of those guys, and maybe you are too.

But it's about Jesus himself, you see.

And so we keep pointing to him.

The disciples, having seen their Lord, arrested, knowing how brutally he was scourged and then crucified, now stood in the presence of the risen Savior right here in Acts chapter 1, yet one more time in that 40-day period, for the last time in that 40-day period.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

And their doubts were evaporating.

Once bound by fear, they became bold in faith.

Their faith was not merely humanistic positive thinking.

It's not just faith in faith.

It's faith in the risen Christ, who in space-time history got up from the dead in a bodily form.

So it's not merely imaginative mythology.

This is actually something that happened in space-time history, something that we can count on.

Christ's victory over death, his victory over sin, over Satan, and all the forces of evil is not.

Theological stuff.

This is a reality that we can walk in when Christ Himself is the foundation of our hope, the basis for our hope.

If Christ is risen, then death has been conquered.

Sin and evil have been defeated ultimately, and our future in Christ is secure.

At the heart of Christian belief is the mysterious, exciting idea that the invisible God has in fact acted to make the divine nature known in the most humanly accessible way in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Pulkinghorn, who wrote that in his book, Exploring Reality, was a world-renowned Englishman, professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge, author of many books exploring the intersection of science and faith.

One yet again of the many people in the world of science who are actually turning to faith and coming to the conclusion there must be something to this story.

Secondly, the rest of the Easter story includes the idea of Christ reigning, and the ascension declares Christ's reign over all of history.

I think that's really important for us to know.

He ascended into the heavens.

He wasn't simply saying farewell, I'll see you in a while.

No, this was a coronation.

He ascended into the heavens, sat on the heavenly throne next to the Father, and literally is King of announced, pronounced King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Okay?

And so this means that from his throne in the heavenly realm, Jesus can indeed see all that's going on in your world and in my world and in the world around us.

And he, when he was walking the earth, he said to his disciples that even the hairs on your head, the hairs on your head are numbered.

So he's that aware of you and of me.

How's it possible?

I mean, I lose track of, you know, did I go to the refrigerator to put something back or to take something out?

I mean, I don't know about you.

You know, and yet Jesus is able, and it's because I don't think we finite creatures have any idea what it means to say that God is infinite.

We haven't got a clue what that means.

The Bible tells us that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing.

And if he can do that, he can certainly keep track of all of the stuff that he's created, all of the people he's created, and he can manage the course of human history as it goes on its way.

Jesus is very unique in this way.

And in no other person, as John Stott says, has God become human, died, been raised from death, and been exalted to heaven.

There's no other savior since no one else possesses his qualifications.

You see how uniquely qualified Christ is to be your Savior, to be your redeemer, the one who actually redeems you, buys you back, and transforms and changes you.

We become new creations in Christ.

And that you can actually count on his promise to return one day and set the world to rights.

I don't know about you.

I'm excited about that.

I don't have a death wish, I have a life wish.

I'm tired of the fact that sometimes when I get out of bed, I'm not really sure if there's a reason or a purpose for my feet to hit the floor.

Or when I get out of bed, everything hurts.

You know, a little a new heavens and a new earth and a new body looks pretty good to me.

I'm pretty excited about that.

And if you're over 40 or 50, you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

But Jesus is uniquely qualified to be able to promise all of that and to be able to say, He will set the world to rights one day.

So I look forward to that.

I'm glad Jesus has ascended back into heaven and is watching over all this, waiting for the Father to say, Gabriel, blow the horn, wrap it up.

And Jesus will come.

Thirdly, he's returning, as we just said.

Promise of his return stirs hope and gives meaning to all of life.

For exactly the reasons I just said.

Again, he's not gone forever, but since he's promising to return, it requires that he goes away.

You understand?

For there to have been a resurrection, there had to have been what?

A death.

So it's part, they go together.

I don't like death.

I don't like sickness.

I don't like sorrow.

His promised return means an end to all of that.

If you've studied the book of Revelation at all and you've read to the end of the book, you understand.

You know what Jesus is promising.

No more disease.

No more death.

No more sorrow.

No more crying.

I don't know about you.

Amen.

Let's go.

I'm all there for that.

I want that.

In the in-between time, what do we do?

Eugene Peterson said it beautifully.

Between, in this between time, Christ, between his ascension and his return, in this time, we do not wait passively.

Come on, God.

Go ahead, do it.

No, no, no, no, no.

We live expectantly, working for a kingdom while watching for the king.

Working for the kingdom.

Join Christ in the mission that he has for us in this world.

And that's the whole book of Acts is sort of the launching of the church, the beginning of the church, right?

And it's a beautiful study, great study for you sometime if you would like to do that.

But we're watching, we're working for the kingdom and watching for the king all along.

Acts 1 through 11, what a beautiful way to give us the hope that we can live in the reality of what God has done, what God is doing.

That is, he's reigning right now, we can serve him, and what he will do in the future.

We can live with that hope, with that basis for our hope.

Christ has died.

The price for our sin has been paid in full, once and for all.

No reason for you or for me to have any guilt or shame for our past sins.

Do you understand that?

Nobody else really offers that to you.

This is a unique offer of the Christian faith.

All of the other religious belief systems are about you balancing out the moral scales somehow.

If you can just do a little bit more, 51%, or even like 49.5% against 40%, you know.

You just gotta balance this.

Well, the symbol of the Christian faith is not a set of scales, it's this cross right here.

Where Jesus took the nails so that we could have the flowers.

He took death so that we could have life.

And that's why we trust him.

That's why we turn to him.

And all of the lesser difficulties and traumas of our lives, we can trust those to him as well, because he's already defeated our last and greatest enemy, death itself.

Christ is risen.

He's our hope in life and death.

Christ has ascended and now reigns over all of history.

Christ will return and set the world to rights.

I'm very excited about that.

And therefore, we can join him in his mission.

Until that day, let's not stand looking around at the sky trying to figure out and predict the date when Christ is going to come back.

I know that's been done by a lot of people for the last 2,000 years, but I got news for you.

We are not on the planning committee, we're on the welcoming committee.

So get on the welcoming committee and get busy joining Jesus in his mission in this world.

Trust in him.

Turn to him.

Hope in him.

You may need to do some work with him and repent from your sin.

That's right.

But he's paid the price in full.

You know his response.

His response to all of your sin, past, present, future, is to he'll show you his cross.

Where you not only can get saved, but you can get loved by him.

That's what drove him to the cross.

His great love for you, his great love for me.

I'll close with this quote from Tim Keller.

The resurrection is not merely a consolation prize for those who have suffered, it's the conquest of death itself.

It means that everything sad is going to come untrue.

And yes, Keller was a big fan of Tolkien, those of you who know the quote there from Tolkien, that everything uh sad will become untrue.

But that's exactly right.

And I think knowing that Tolkien himself was a believer and that that image for him is exactly, he's definitely representing the promises that God has made to set the world to rights one day.

Because Christ is risen.

We have a faith that is grounded in past history.

It's remarkable history.

But it's past, it's happened.

We also have a mission that means our life in the present has great meaning and purpose.

And then we have a hope that looks forward to a future destiny in God's kingdom for eternity.

These New Testament events are really important.

They offer us the most visible, the greatest display of God's love, grace, mercy, wisdom, and power, that he can actually accomplish these things is profound evidence, really great convincing evidence about all of his other promises.

They reassure us that God's love is not determined by our moral or religious performance, but rather by God's massive heart of love for sinners like me and sinners like you.

Christ's triumph demonstrates his sovereign control of all the ultimate outcomes.

And it reminds us that his love casts out all fear.

Who wouldn't want that?

Believe him.

Turn to him.

Trust him.

Rest in his promises.

Pray with me.

May the good seed of your word, O Lord our God, find fertile soil in our hearts and our minds.

And may the Holy Spirit cause our study of your word today to take root and bear fruit in our lives, in our relationships, in the way we do our work, in the way we play, in our imaginations.

All of that, Lord.

Transform and change us.

Draw us that we might take our place, our role, that you would have us play in your kingdom as it unfolds.

May the risen Christ fill us with resurrection hope.

May the Holy Spirit empower us, like his original, your original disciples, to be an Easter people, to walk in resurrection power.

And may the promise of Christ's return fill our souls with joyful expectation.

In Jesus' name we pray, Amen and Amen.