Waiting for the Promise | Acts

Would remain standing. We'll read the Word of God. We'll be reading from Acts

Acts 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1 down through verse 8.

Hear now God's holy word.

In the first book, O 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 suffering by many proofs,

appearing to them during forty 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.

For John baptized you with water,

but you will 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?

He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father

has fixed by his 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 end of the earth.

This is the word of the Lord. You can be seated.

Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we ask you now that you would also bring

down your spirit that you have sent to your apostles and to this church and

that you have brought Christ through that spirit.

We pray now that that same Holy Spirit would be with us, direct us,

guide us, help us, and ultimately turn us to Jesus Christ. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

You can look to the Bible and we'll look at Acts.

Last week we started with an introduction of some of the themes of Acts,

and this week we're going to start in the actual text of Acts with a bit of

an introduction from Luke himself.

Luke is the author of the book, and in this book he is constantly drawing our

attention to the centrality of the church in the work of Jesus Christ.

You can't miss that. You're going to hear me say that over and over and over again.

It says here, in the first book,

O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach.

Luke is writing what I would call 2nd Luke. I think it's helpful to think of

this as 2nd Luke because 1st Luke was what we call the Gospel of Luke.

This book that we're looking at, sometimes called the Acts of the Apostles or

Acts, we might also think of as 2nd Luke.

We can think of it because that's how Luke is introducing it.

I wrote my first installment of what Jesus did, and now I'm writing my second

installment, you'll notice,

of what he is continuing to do, so that there's a serious connection between

what Jesus began to do in his life and ministry and what Jesus is now continuing

to do in the life and ministry of the church.

So Luke is writing this much like an ancient Greek author would write it,

making sure that we know that the connection is between the Gospel of Luke or 1 1st Luke and 2nd Luke.

The whole structure of this is written so that we're making connection.

One of the things Luke does in the Gospel of Luke, and you see it from the very

beginning that the announcement of the birth of Christ is he's constantly drawing

our attentions to promises and deliverance or promise and fulfillment.

He does many of the same things in this particular book, both what Jesus began to do and to teach.

The work of Jesus is the continuing work of the church.

Let me quote from one man named I. Howard Marshall who says,

the effect of this introduction therefore is to give the reader a brief summary

of the gospel before he goes on to the next stage of the story.

By writing in this way, Luke has emphasized the unity between the story of the

ministry of Jesus and the story of the beginning and ongoing work of the church.

And we see that particularly in the ascension, which will focus next week almost

entirely on the doctrine of the ascension and its relationship to the promises

given, promises fulfilled, and the future we have in Christ.

You'll notice the promise, as they're waiting for this promise,

the promise is the coming of the Holy Spirit.

And all throughout the book of Acts, this is another thing that you may get

tired of me saying, but I want to emphasize it.

When the Holy Spirit comes in the book of Acts, he's not coming as an addendum

to the work of Jesus, or as an addition to the work of Jesus,

or as an extra special Holy Spirit blessing added on top of salvation through Jesus.

He is bringing us Jesus.

The Holy Spirit brings the church Jesus Christ, not extra things,

signs, miracles, wonders.

All those things come. Indeed, they do, but they don't come in addition to the work of Jesus.

They come as they bring us Jesus in promise and,

We're in fulfillment of the promises that Jesus has given us.

The Holy Spirit is working to prepare the apostles for the coming of the Lord here at Pentecost.

Off and on through this study, we're going to look at that phrase,

the coming of the Lord, particularly the coming of the Lord with fire, with fire.

But first we'll notice that he tells them in the book of Acts that they're there

and they're waiting for 40 days.

Now, when you see the phrase 40 days, it should draw attention to us,

for us, because we've seen that number before.

And I don't, like I said last week, when we look at numbers in the Bible,

I'm not gonna tell you to multiply by seven and divide by two and look at it sideways.

What I'm saying is that when you see this 40-day period, we've seen it before.

When God brought the flood, when God brought rain, it rained how many days?

40 days and 40 nights. When Moses went up to Mount Sinai, he was there, 40 days.

When the spies went into the wilderness to check out the land, 40 days.

Come on, you're better than this. 40 days. It's not a trick question.

Over and over again, for every day, the spies were in that land looking,

and for every day they're rejected, the Israelites were forced to wander 40 years.

This number 40 is not a special number in terms of numerology or addition or

subtraction, but it is an important number because we see that in this number,

we also saw that Jesus himself was tempted for 40 days. Thank you.

40 days, of course. And now the apostles are there waiting 40 days.

But this time it's a different 40 days. All the other 40 days were times of

trial and temptation, faithfulness. Will you make it? Will we be there?

When Jesus ends his 40 days, all the days of trials and testing and temptation are finished in him.

This 40 days is not a 40 days in which we were wondering, will the church make it? Will they survive?

Can they reach through this period of some temptation? No, they're waiting.

This is 40 days of preparation for this wonderful promise to begin to come true at Pentecost.

40 days means also in Christ, there is no salvation in any other.

Henceforth, after Jesus' 40 days, he causes the church to wait patiently for

40 days, and then he will bring the promise.

One of the things we're gonna focus on this morning is that the nature of that

promise. They're waiting for Pentecost.

They're waiting for the promise of the Holy Spirit. That's what he tells them

to do. He charged them to do two things.

Stay in Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit.

So they're to stay there and wait. What is this promise?

What is the promise he's speaking about? Number one, you'll notice the promise is Trinitarian.

It says in the text, this is the promise of the Father or from the Father.

The promise of the Father also indicates that it's a promise rooted in the promises

of the divine covenant of grace.

It's not something new. It's part of the covenant of grace. It's part of the ongoing fulfillment.

In redemptive history. So that Pentecost is a grand redemptive event where the

promises of the covenant made thousands of years ago for the coming of Messiah

and his work would be fulfilled in the church at Pentecost.

Keep this in mind, Pentecost is a redemptive event, and it's not something that

we're going to see or expect to be repeated any more than you would expect to

go today to the side of the Red Sea and expect somehow that it would part for

you and you'd walk through on dry land.

This event happened as testimony, as bringing signs and wonders to the work

of Moses and their deliverance from Egypt, from slavery.

So this promise that they're waiting for is one, he said, that comes from the

Father and that you heard from me.

When did they hear this from Jesus? Well, Jesus said that he's going to come

and not leave them alone.

But even before that, I want to touch on a couple of Old Testament prophecies

that will be relevant to what we see even in Acts chapter two.

In Acts chapter two, there's a strange recitation of the prophecy of Joel,

which if you're looking at Joel, you wouldn't necessarily connect it to the

coming of the spirit of Pentecost.

You might in fact expect it to be referring to the last days of the end of the world.

And this is one of the other things I'm gonna try to keep talking about here

in terms of last days madness, last days theology versus what we see fulfilled in Acts.

I'll even mention it later. Today, there's much talk about Israel.

And I'm not, by the way, I'm gonna mention something about this in a little

bit, but I'm not gonna dare mention the war with Iran.

Are they right? Are they wrong? And that's not my place to mention any of that.

I'm a minister of the word, not a minister for Trump or war with Iran or anything else.

But I will mention something that I want you to tune your ears to when you're

listening to the current events.

And it's not because I saw one guy this week who showed on the chart,

by the way, I'm always suspicious of guys with charts, just so you know.

The guy showed us on the chart, there's Gog and there's Magog and this is Iran

and this is Russia and then China's going to come here and this is going to

come up, all these last days prophetic madness.

What I want you to see is that the promise and promises of the covenant are

being fulfilled in the church, in the book of Acts, in a different way than

even the apostles expected.

You're going to see that, they ask the question, will this be the time when

you restore the kingdom to Israel, this nation, this land?

Listen to some of the prophecies that we see fulfilled in Acts 1 and Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Isaiah 44 verse 3, for I will pour water on him who is thirsty and floods on the dry land.

Isaiah 44:3

I will pour my spirit on your descendants, my blessings on your offspring.

They will spring up among the grass like willows on the water courses.

Acts chapter 2, we have a direct quote from Joel chapter two,

Acts 2 · chapter mention

verse 28 and forward, which says, and it shall come to pass afterward that I

will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams.

Your young men shall see visions. And also my men's servants and on my maid

servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days. Which days?

Gog, Magog, future battle with Iran and Israel. No, in Acts chapter two,

I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, with blood and fire and pillars of smoke.

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood. Sure sounds like

the end of the world, right?

Unless it's referring to the end of an age, which it is.

Then we can see it fulfilled in the book of Acts quite clearly before our eyes.

And then we won't have this problem passage.

You know what a problem passage is? A problem passage is when you encounter

something in the Bible that seems patently obvious, but it doesn't fit with your theology.

I have this idea of Gog, Magog, charts, maps, everything.

I have this idea of how it's all going to be fulfilled in Israel,

and yet I come to this passage, it doesn't seem to fit.

So that's what? That's a problem passage.

No, it's not. It's a problem with your theology. We don't take a theology,

a preconceived structure of things, and foisted on all the passages of the Bible

that don't make sense of our theology.

We look at the Bible, we take things from the Bible, we exegete them out,

we pull them out, and if necessary, we change our theology, right?

Amen, are we together?

Good, yeah, we don't take a notion and say, well, how many times have you done this or heard this?

Well, that passage can't mean what it says. Ha, what?

Do you hear what you're saying when you do that? Well, that's a problem passage. It can't mean that.

Most of us, I encountered this when I first became a Calvinist.

I'm like, well, looks like predestination is there, but that can't mean that

because that doesn't fit.

So when we look at the Bible and look at the book of Acts, we have to just draw

from the book and allow the book to feed our minds, feed our hearts and souls,

and inform our theology so that our theology comes from the Bible and not the other way around.

In this passage, one of the promises we see fulfilled is the promise from the prophet Joel.

And it says, And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the

Lord shall be saved. Amen.

For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance,

as the Lord has said, among the remnant whom the Lord calls.

Pentecost symbolizes and brings the blessings of the Holy Spirit and the Lord with fire.

With fire. And it's referred to as a baptism.

Just as another side note, beyond the Gog Magog chart thing,

another side note, as Presbyterians, I want to encourage you,

you seek here another example of how baptism has the mode of coming from above,

of being poured out or poured down from above. That's a baptism.

That's what happens at Pentecost. The Spirit of God baptizes them by coming

from above and pouring himself down upon them.

And it fits perfectly well with the mode of baptism, but you see,

it's part of my problem. You see, I grew up a Baptist and I'm a recovering Baptist.

So whenever I see passages like this, I want to remind us all,

baptism as a mode is not dipping or immersing.

It's always pouring or lathing or washing from above.

It makes perfect sense since baptism is the work of God through the Holy Spirit

coming down on us, marking us for himself.

That was just a side note, a fun side note.

The promise of the Father, you'll notice, is also the promise of Jesus, where they connected.

All these promises that come from the Father, which means that way back in the

Old Testament, in the Old Covenant, a promise was made from the Father.

And Jesus comes along and reiterates the same promise,

that the Spirit of God is going to come in fulfillment of these promises,

not as a replacement temporarily, so that the church is temporarily replacing

Israel, but as a genuine fulfillment.

What was the concern? Well, we see in our passage that Jesus is about to ascend into heaven.

He's about to go away from them. He's going up. They are no longer seeing him.

He's clouded or covered by angels.

And then the angels speak to them about this. Well, they're wondering what happens.

Well, Jesus has already promised.

John chapter 14, let not your heart be troubled.

John 14 · chapter mention

You believe in God, believe also in me. And I will pray the Father,

and he will give you another helper,

that he may also abide with you forever, the spirit of truth,

whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him,

but you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

I will not leave you orphans.

This is their concern when Jesus is about to go away. They wonder who'll be

with us. If Jesus is gone, who will be with us?

He said, I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you and a little while

longer and the world will see me no more, but you will see me because I live, you will live also.

And that day you will know that I am in my father and you in me and I in you,

that these things I've spoken to you while being present with you, but the helper,

the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all

these things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, I do not give it to you.

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

The promise of the ancient prophets and the promise of Jesus is the coming of

the Holy Spirit to bring Christ to his people, to bring unity in the hearts

and souls of God's people with each other through Jesus Christ.

John the Baptist has pronounced this.

The problem is, again, it's not a problem if we think of it correctly.

The problem is it looks like John the Baptist is preaching judgment.

So how can the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit mean judgment?

Unless it's two things, judgment upon the nation of Israel and blessings for

the church of Jesus Christ.

It's not a problem if you look at it that way. Judgment on Israel is actually

one of the major focuses of John the Baptist's ministry. It's why we read Matthew chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

He went about in these strange clothing, eating strange things,

making these supposedly strange prophecies, criticizing the hypocrisy of the

Pharisees and the Jewish nation, and condemning the nation of Israel for the rejection of Messiah.

And here are the kinds of things he says. He says, Therefore bear fruits worthy

of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our

father. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.

And even now, this is the interesting language that somehow is a problem.

Even now, presently in the ministry of John the Baptist, the axe is laid to the root of the trees.

Therefore, every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

By the way, you'll notice there's an emphasis on fire a lot in the ministry of John the baptizer.

There's a big, all my friends in Africa who were Pentecostal were always shouting the word fire.

Fire. God will bring fire. I guess you have to say it like that too. Fire.

God's going to bring fire, by which they meant the great work of the Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist also predicts fire of judgment.

He says, I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he who is coming

after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Wow. They seem to be going together. The fire that comes at Pentecost through

the Holy Spirit has harvest imagery.

When God comes and he's coming soon, says John, the ax is already at the root.

This is a problem passage for you if you don't know how to make sense of the

eminent coming of Jesus Christ in judgment.

Some people look at the passage and say, well, John was incorrect.

John the Baptist was off a bit because we know the end of the world hasn't come.

So John must be off in his eschatology. But what if John didn't mean the end

of the world as everything collapses, but the end of Israel,

the end of an age, the end of the old covenant time and error in which Israel

was the focus entirely of the work of God.

Luke chapter 12 says, I came to send fire on the earth and how I wish it were already kindled.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

But I have a baptism to be baptized with and how distressed I am till it is accomplished.

Do you suppose that I've come to give peace on the earth? I tell you,

I have not come, but rather division. What's Jesus talking about?

What's John talking about?

John's talking about a day in which the promises of God are delivered and fulfilled

through the Holy Spirit, and that all those who reject them,

including this nation of Israel, will be burned, will be cut back,

cut away, and the blessings of the Holy Spirit will come on the church.

It's not that, by the way, I want to just maybe nuance it a bit.

It's not that the church has replaced Israel.

It's the church is the fulfillment of the promises to Israel.

All these promises aren't just done away with and changed, and they are fulfilled

in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit in the church.

And this is part of the reason Jesus rebukes the apostles. The apostles here

are wondering, they said, wait a minute, will this be the time when you restore

the kingdom to Israel? Will this be the time?

They had a very specific territory, nation, from the river to the sea.

We're hearing all of this jargon today in the Middle East and all the turmoil that's there.

And so many people are connecting it to end times prophecies and this and that,

why we should or shouldn't go to war with Iran, or why we always have to side with Israel.

And by the way, you heard nothing yet, and you won't hear anything about whether

you think it's Pastor Jackson for or against Trump's bombing of Iran.

It's not my job to talk about that. But it is my job to talk about this misnomer

and this bad idea that somehow Israel is still the center of the Holy Spirit

work or the people of God continuing.

Just this week, This is where I will dip my toes into at least contemporary political events.

Not on either side, just to say, I heard an interview with Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson.

I don't care what you think about either one of them. It doesn't matter.

To me, it was illuminating that a United States, a sitting United States senator

said out loud that the reason the United States should support Israel is because

God commands us to support Israel.

They are, he said, God's chosen people.

Whatever you think about the war with Iran or Israel, all of that,

and I'm not going to say anything. You don't know what I think.

And you won't, except for this. Whatever you think about, and we can sit afterwards,

and maybe we will, probably will now that I mentioned it.

Should we bomb Iran? Should we not? We can sit out there outside of worship

and wonder about this, and what do we know about that, and who is it? What's Israel?

All of that. But when we think about this, we cannot look at the Bible and look

at contemporary events and say, I have to support Israel because God commands it. He does not.

Okay? Whenever you're making these decisions about just war or this or that,

you may not use the Bible to say that Israel, the modern nation state of Israel founded in 1948,

is connected to the promises that God made to Israel because the church is the

fulfillment of those promises.

You see that? So whatever you think and however you think about it,

and I'm sure I'll get in trouble.

I don't care. After church, you can see me. I'll get my coffee and we'll talk.

But for now, please understand that what's happening right before our eyes in

the book of Acts is that Luke is saying what God promised,

what the Father promised in the coming of Messiah and what Jesus himself promised

is that the Holy Spirit would fulfill the promises in the church through Jesus Christ.

It's wonderful. It's wonderful for us because it's who we are. It's where we are today.

So Pentecost is Jesus' baptism, by the way.

That's another thing. It's not just a Holy Spirit baptism. This is Jesus' baptism.

Jesus is bringing baptism by the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is bringing Jesus.

And it's the promise fulfilled by Jesus himself. At Pentecost,

it is Jesus who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

It may sound like quibbling. It's not the Holy Spirit per se.

It's Jesus baptizing with the Holy Spirit.

And I'm gonna end on this. And this is what I wanna conclude because sometimes

my Pentecostal friends will say, well, if you discount all the miracles and

all the tongues and all the signs and all the healings and all the wonders that

we all want so much every Sunday, what are we supposed to do then?

What's the purpose of the Holy Spirit? The purpose of the Holy Spirit then and

now continues to be to bring Christ to us, to give Christ to us.

And you'll notice as this passage ends, it says that you might be my witnesses.

The mission of the church here in Acts continues, Jerusalem,

Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the world.

And the spirit of God is given to the church and to us today that we might be

witnesses of Jesus Christ.

And I want to warn you before you say, hallelujah, I'll witness.

Again, I'll confess I grew up in

a Baptist church. And as I understood witnessing, it was always attract.

I give someone attract. I ask them the question, if you died tonight,

would you go to heaven or hell? Sometimes you wait to the answer to give the track.

What's your answer? Well, you give it to the track and say, I just witnessed,

praise the Lord. Well, that's good. We're witnessing. We're supposed to evangelize.

I got news for you. The word here for witnesses is basically the word for martyr.

Martureo in Greek means eyewitness. It's not an unknown historical matter that

every one of these men, except the Apostle John, died as martyrs.

So before you say, let's have Thursday night witnessing, make sure you understand

what the Holy Spirit gives us the power in Christ to become.

These were guys who were squabbling and maneuvering for political position.

Which one would sit on which side of Jesus when he restored the kingdom of Israel?

And Jesus is basically saying, you're all going to be martyrs.

My witnesses and the Holy Spirit

of God gives to the church the power to conquer the world as martyrs.

That's who we are. It's a lot easier to give a tract.

It's a lot easier to ask the question, the bridge question. But here we see

they had a morbid curiosity about their duty and their place in Israel.

Jesus completely disarms them and says, you're going to be martyrs.

I'm going to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, cause Christ to dwell in you,

and your whole world will be turned upside down, and so will the rest of the earth.

This is how it's done. The Holy Spirit comes to the church.

The church has given the power by the Holy Spirit to cause Christ to dwell richly

in us, and we lose our lives.

We give up our lives. And that's an amazing thing because it's completely upside

down from every way you could ever think of world conquest.

If Jesus is telling his disciples, all right, guys, let's go out there and get them.

Let's go conquer the world for Jesus. Let's fulfill the great commission.

And these guys are like, yeah, when are we gonna rule? When's Israel gonna be

defeating the Romans and conquering the world?

The restoration of Solomon's greatness. Everyone will come to me. No, die.

This is the gospel. This is the good news that anyone who will lose his life will what?

Gain it, gain it. This is the power of the church. It's an ironic,

weird, upside down power.

That Paul says is foolishness to the Greeks, it's silliness to the world,

but it's the power of God into salvation for anyone who would believe.

And we need to ask ourselves the question as a church, we want this church to

grow. Yay, we have a new pastor. Are we all willing to die?

It's what we have to do. The church's mission is to die for Jesus Christ,

to become martyrs and witnesses, and the church will become victorious as martyrs. We will conquer.

We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

The coming of the Holy Spirit provides the power. The word power there is,

the Greek word is dunamis, like dynamite.

It's not the kind of power most of us are attracted to. It's the power of the cross.

It's the very example by which Christ has given to us. Christ died,

was buried, rose again on the third day.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father.

And now he calls all his followers to witness for him, to be martyrs for him and to die for him.

Life means death in the Christian church, conquest to martyrdom.

Are you willing to do that?

Is that what we want in Christ? A willingness to do anything Christ calls us

to do, to go anywhere he calls us to go, to be anything he wants us to be.

That's what Christ was reminding his apostles, that that's what's going to have to happen.

And when they did that, yes, they died. And the blood of those martyrs became

the seed of the growth of the church.

It always has been, and it will continue to be.

Not that we all have to be crucified upside down or boiled in oil or have spears thrown at us.

But we all do have to ask the basic question of the gospel. Am I willing to

give my life to Jesus Christ, to follow him, to do whatever he says,

to be whatever he wants me to be and to die for him?

That's a life worth living. That's a life worth living. And that's the life of Christ.

That's the life that the Holy Spirit gives to us through his power.

It's the life of the apostles. It's the life of the church. It's the power of

God into salvation. It's good news for those who believe.

It's bad news for those who don't. How is it with you?

Where are you in this? Because this will change your life, brothers and sisters.

It will change the entire direction of your life.

And it will give you, maybe some of you are as obsessed as my family is with

the movie Braveheart, right?

That phrase at the end, every man dies, but not everyone really lives, right?

That doesn't lend itself to Holy Spirit living per se, but it gives you the

idea that if you have a life that's worth living, it's a life worth dying for.

And that's the call of the gospel to all of us. That's the call of the church.

That's how the church moved from these frightened small band of 11 guys,

soon to be 12, who literally turned the world upside down. And that's our calling as a church.

We continue to be witnesses for Jesus Christ.

And I would call you in the name of Jesus to commit yourself to that as was

given in the Acts of the Apostles. Let's pray together.

Lord, I pray by the power of your Holy Spirit, would call us to truly and genuinely

live, which means that ironically, the last will be first and the first will be last.

Those who seek to gain their lives will lose it, but those who give their lives will gain it.

Take all those ironic and upside down things, those paradoxes that don't seem

to make sense and help us to set them aside and help us as a church,

Lord, to follow in the pattern of the church of Acts, the apostolic church,

which was sent out to be witnesses to the world for Jesus Christ,

which meant martyrs, which meant those who were willing to die for Jesus Christ.

Give that same spirit of Jesus Christ to this church and bless us,

we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

As a proper seal to what you have heard.