A Spirit-Led People

Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons,

a ministry of Second City Church in Midtown Harrisburg.

It's our hope that these sermons will draw you

more into the life of following God, Father,

Son and Holy Spirit. Please consider coming and

joining with us each Sunday morning at 10 a .m.

in the heart of Midtown Harrisburg. You can find

us online at SecondCityChurch .org and on Facebook,

Instagram and YouTube. We hope you enjoy this

sermon. God bless. Lord God, we do thank you

for today Sunday this resurrection day Thank

you for gathering us together Or to worship you

we thank you for your word. We thank you for

the promise of your Holy Spirit Who is with us

Jesus tells us who guides us who directs us a

Spirit of God, please bless us now as we turn

and consider you in this text before us hear

us we pray amen all right our text is going to

be the New Testament passage we've been in the

Gospels we're going to be in this New Testament

passage of Acts chapter 1 many of you know this

Acts 1 · chapter mention

but acts I mentioned this actually in a in the

education hour before service but acts is really

the second part of the Luke acts duo Luke could

be called the axe of Jesus, and axe could be

called, often it's called the axe of the apostles,

but it could be called the axe of the Holy Spirit.

And it's kind of funny for us because we have

them in our Bibles as Matthew, Mark, Luke, John

axe, and John gets in the way. I don't know who

did that. We should have been Matthew, Mark,

John, Luke axe, so that you knew Luke and axe

go together. As you might imagine, When one is

thinking of preaching about the role of the Holy

Spirit there is so much that could be said There

are many fine books on the work of the Holy Spirit

actually Bruce Weatherly I just read his book

that he is having published in and much of it

is about the work of the Holy Spirit and It sort

of feels a little bit I will say this and this

is often the case when you preach But I will

say this it felt a little bit more this way this

week overwhelming. There's just so much that

could be done and studied and said and all this.

It's sort of like when you start to clean your

house on Saturday mornings with your kids, as

I did yesterday, and you begin and you go, where

do we stop? What do we focus on? I want you to

think for a moment of all the things that you

might That we might want to do as a church or

maybe that we should do as a church just think

about that for a moment, okay Should we do might

be be about as a church My guess is even if I

just gave you that short moment you thought of

things like preaching the gospel and caring for

the poor Supporting local and foreign missions,

the expansion of the good news of Jesus. Maybe

administering the sacraments, celebrating baptism

and communion. Maybe creating spaces where we

can gather together and engage with God's word

together. Allow him to ask questions of us and

to dig into the Bible together and do this. as

a body. Maybe you thought of things like evangelism,

just simply we should be sharing the good news

of Jesus with others. Maybe you think of raising

our children, and actually the truth is that

even if we take these big categories and then

we kind of break them down, we could spend all

day long, I could break you up into groups, we

could spend all day long just brainstorming what

do we do as the church? How do we do it? And

the same thing could be said for us as individual

Christians, right? what are the things that a

Christian should be doing and Of course you can

think of things like loving God and loving our

neighbor and then we could just take that and

we can just break it down We could spend a long

long time about being peacemakers and those who

seek justice and walk humbly with God and then

we could think of just the the fruits of the

spirit how they're to be present with us and

be patient kind and self -controlled and all

the rest and When you start to kind of do that,

there's this sense, I have this sense of just,

it is a little overwhelming, one. But then I

also have this sense of, let's get to it! Let's

go! It's kind of eagerness, urgency. And of course,

we should be those who are eager to share the

good news with others, eager to serve others,

engage with the Word with others, train our children

in the ways of the Lord. But really, there's

just a lot. And I think that sometimes our impulse

is just like, let's go, come on, come on, let's

go. We've said quite a bit, it is Pentecost Sunday.

Pentecost Sunday is remembering the 50 days after

Easter when the Holy Spirit came upon the people

there waiting for Him. We remember the descent

of God just as Israel actually, 50 days after

they were saved out from slavery in Egypt. were

with God there at Sinai. God descended there

on Sinai. Once you think about that, they had

been saved. They were to be brought into the

promised land. They were to be the blessing that

God had promised Abraham to them that they would

be, right? The blessing to the nations that you

make them a great people and give them a land

and that through them all the nations of the

earth will be blessed. Then he pauses them, pauses

them for a little while at Sinai. and he descends

on the mountain. Loud trumpets, clouds, smoke

and fire, just as he did again in Acts 2. But

I want you to think about that. So much was to

be done. God bring in the kingdom, just bring

us to the promised land. He pauses them. So much

to do to be the instrument of God's blessing

in the world, right? Our text this morning, Acts

Acts 1 and I chose this because we have been

in this little series since Easter with these

narratives of Jesus with his disciples after

the resurrection and we've been looking at at

how he interacts with them post -resurrection

and As we've lived through these stories what

we've really been saying is what does it mean

for us? How does this shape us as a resurrected

people? What does it mean to be the church in

light of these narratives of Jesus with his disciples

after the resurrection? How are we resurrected

people? And the first thing we read there in

verse four, I skipped the first few verses because

they're really just kind of ties into the book

of Luke. But there in verse four, what we read

is says, and while staying with them, he ordered

them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait

for the promise of the Father. He says, wait.

I've done this great work, but wait. And I kind

of want to take on this text and this morning

this idea of the reality of the spirit with these

two, kind of two points, okay? The first one

is this, is that there is an understandable urgency,

sort of that. And then there is the essential

waiting, okay? An understandable urgency and

an understandable waiting. So first an understandable

urgency. So he tells his disciples, don't depart,

don't go. Why would he do that? Well, maybe as

I've kind of alluded to, it is kind of, you know,

helping us to remember what God did when he brought

his people out and he met with them there in

Sinai. But why would he do that? Well, I can

think of a lot of reasons why they might depart,

why they might want to go, okay? The first reason...

If you hearken back with me to Easter Sunday

if you were here is that they had actually engaged

with the true fantasy The thing that made the

most sense of the world the story of stories

that resonated most with the way the world is

Declared the world to be really good and deeply

bad If you've been around for a while you have

probably heard me say that one of the reasons

why I am a Christian Which I think is just worth

asking yourself occasionally, but I'm a Christian.

One of the reasons why I'm a Christian is because

the Christian story makes the most sense of the

world. I don't know how you cannot look out in

the world and say that this world is deeply lovely.

Each person in me is incredibly beautiful. And

you have to hold that. with this other reality

that things are not remotely how they are intended

to be, that everyone has in them actually unbelievable

darkness too, that the world is so messed up

and you have to hold these things together. You

have to say, how do I make sense of this? And

these disciples had actually engaged with the

thing that makes the most sense of this, God

himself dying and yet doing so willingly for

the good of the world. They had engaged with

the greatest story of all. And if you hear a

good story, do you tell that story? Of course

you do. Let me tell you about the movie I just

saw. Let me tell you about this book. Oh man,

my kid did something so funny. Of course you

do. There's an urgency to say, I just engaged

with one of the most amazing story ever. You

need to hear it. So that would be the first reason

why they're like just a little bit, you know,

unable to sit still. The second reason is that

they had been with the Lord and because they

had been with the Lord, he had brought hope to

their places of despair with his word. He had

met them in their despair and brought his words

of hope. He had opened to them the scriptures

and they'd seen how he and his suffering and

in his resurrection was the whole point of it.

The whole point of the scriptures is found in

Jesus. He meets them in their place of despair

and he brings them their hope They had witnessed

the bread broken for them and been fed with the

spiritual food that nourishes their languishing

hearts and The truth that God came for them.

He died for them He loved them while they were

still enemies and strangers and far off and in

their despair and That meant that they had this

real experience that the slog of life Right the

long kind of journey slow journey making their

way back to Emmaus if you will with its many

many many many reasons to hang your head and

To think about giving up and to live a hopeless

life Was met by God with them in the flesh Which

was to say that he knows our sorrow He knows

our despair He's one who is acquainted with grief,

Isaiah tells us. And yet he brings his hope,

his resurrected presence into that. And that

again is something that you would want to run

to others who have lost children, who have mental

illness that plagues them, who were torn from

their children or from their parents because

of substance abuse and all kinds of other things.

You would want to run into this world and say,

I know how bad it is. The despair is real, and

yet God brings his hope into this world. We worship

a God who does not stand far off away from it,

but comes into it. He conquers it, taking on

death, conquering it. He was despised. He was

rejected. He knows that. This is the God we proclaim,

and he brings hope into that world. These disciples

would have been antsy. Let's do something about

this. Let's... Share this of course they need

to be told not to depart It would have been like

Joseph of Arimathea right who had known the bad

was bad Like the Mary's there at the empty tomb

who knew how sweet Not the sense that covered

death were but life after death is They were

like the two on the road to Emmaus just like

you and I have been on that road to Emmaus who

plotted along thinking all was lost and yet we

were brought the hope of resurrection. But there

are other reasons. Let's keep going through them.

So we kind of rehearse this Easter tide. Third

reason they wanted to depart, no doubt, was that

their doubt had been engaged with lovingly and

they had grown in faith and belief. How lovely

is the story of Thomas and Jesus? How lovely

is it, right? Jesus meets him and his doubt and

he doesn't despise him because of it He doesn't

toss him off as though he weren't truly a disciple

because he doubts But he lovingly says look touch

You remember just two weeks ago we looked at

the end of the gospel of Matthew the Great Commission

How even right there before the words of the

Great Commission, sorry, Matthew tells us, some

doubt it. And they're still sent, they're still

commissioned out into the world. And you and

I can think today of how often almost any community

that you exist in cannot stand sort of the doubters

who question the community narrative, right?

I mean, you and I know how particularly technology

has... exacerbated this, how our feedback loops

are just coming before us all the time. How much

social destruction happens because of this, but

also how quickly one is outside of the community

if they simply doubt the narrative of that community.

And Jesus lovingly engages that doubt and he

brings greater faith in the midst of that doubt.

Jesus does long for our belief just as he did

the disciples in the storm that we heard earlier

this spring. He invites us into a greater life

of deeper faith and deeper belief, but he does

not despise our doubt. And that would have been

radical then and it's radical now. And they would

have then said, we need to tell others about

this kind of God who comes among us, who rises

from the dead and yet even welcomes us in our

doubt and commissions us out to the world. Okay,

another reason. why they would have wanted to

depart, to go out, is that they had been a restored

people because they had been restored by Jesus.

And how much do we need the restoring work of

Jesus? We live in a way, sort of a default way

out of our failures and the ways that we've been

sinned against. The default way that we engage

with the world is out of our failures and the

ways that others have failed us I Know many of

you have engaged on some level with the personality

typing system the Enneagram somebody once asked

me recently. Do you guys talk about that as a

church? I was like I try not to But there's a

lot of good there and I think one of its strengths

is that it names how this is true, how so often

we live actually out of sort of coping with the

reality of how we've been sinned against and

how we are sinners. But why I say that is because

we actually tell these stories primarily of how

others have failed us and how we have failed

others. And Jesus actually invites us into naming

that, but living a new story. Jesus with Peter

right there on the beach having just cooked the

fish over the fire. Restoring him as he restores

us. We so often live in fear and scarcity and

in shame in what Jesus does in restoring us as

he gives us new story with the forgiveness of

sins where he gives us abundance, where he gives

us love that covers our shame and our fear. Because

perfect love always casts out fear. And they

would have wanted to share that. Okay, one last

reason why they were urgent, why they had this

urgency and it would have been understandable.

Jesus had just told them this, all authority

in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore, make disciples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and

of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them

to observe all that I have commanded you. Behold

I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

Jesus very likely had these two conversations,

Acts chapter 1, Matthew 28, as one conversation.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

These are both narratives of the ascension, which

we would have celebrated last Sunday. I wasn't

here with you to celebrate that, but these would

have been part of the same conversation, right?

Go! Don't depart yet. Here's part of what I'm

trying to say. There are so many things to do

as the Church. There are so many things to do

as Christians, as the people of God, sent out

into the world, touched, changed by His Word.

Those who are growing in belief and faith and

trust. Those who have had our stories re -storied

by the resurrected Christ. Those who have been

sent. These things that Marcus as a resurrection

people enlist. Just go on. We all know this is

true. Of course, this is partly why in verse

six, they say this, verse six. So when they'd

come together, they asked him, Lord, will you

at this time restore the kingdom of Israel? Which

is sort of like, let's do it. Let's go. It's

not a wild question to ask. God acted definitively

the prophets of old had said then then God would

bring his people back from exile which we don't

have time to get into how he does that in the

second chapter, but It's a very reasonable thing

to ask that let's get going It's an understandable

urgency in the disciples But the second thing

I want to say is this that there is an essential

waiting essential waiting So six again So when

they come together they asked him Lord will you

at this time restore the kingdom? To Israel he

said to them It's not for you to know the time

or seasons that the father has 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 all Judea and Samaria

to the ends the earth. Which is interesting,

he doesn't really address their question necessarily.

He says the father knows, but he does address

what is essential for the going out, for the

doing. Turn with me in your bulletins to the

front cover. If you read these often, you will

notice there's a couple names that come up a

lot. And one of those is Leslie Newbegin, the

great missionary to India, and then to Great

Britain in the 20th century. He says this, mission,

going out of God's people, the work of God's

people in the world, it's not simply the self

-propagation of the church by putting forth the

power that inheres in its life. To accept that

picture would be to sanction an appalling distortion.

of mission. On the contrary, the active agent

of mission is a power that rules, guides, and

goes before the Church—the free, sovereign, living

power of the Spirit of God. Mission is not something

that the Church does. It is something that is

done by the Spirit, who is Himself the witness,

who changes both the world and the Church who

always goes before the Church in its missionary

journey. The truth is though that we so often

see the long list and continue the long list

and just go and do without being led. A .W. Tozer,

writing in the middle of the last century, he

wrote, if the Holy Spirit withdraws from the

church today, 95 % of what we do would go on

and nobody would know the difference. The Holy

Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament

Church 95 % of what they did would stop And everybody

would know the difference Jesus says in a way

you want the kingdom You want the reality of

my reign as you saw in my ministry here among

you Preaching of the kingdom lives transformed

the lame healed the dead raised, new life brought

to a strange folk like the woman with the uncontrollable

bleeding shunned from the community, or the woman

there at the well who had five husbands and the

man she was living with wasn't her husband, how

Jesus brought her and restored her to community.

You want that kind of thing, the reality of the

kingdom of God among you? The Holy Spirit. Wait.

upon the Spirit. There is no kingdom without

the Spirit of God among us. There is no going

out without the Spirit of God among us. There

is no fruitful church without the Spirit of God

among us. There's no fruitful Christian without

the Spirit of God. There is no hope. There is

no belief. There is no restoring. There is no

mission. There's none of it without the Spirit

of God. The spirit must lead in all things. Now

I'm guessing some of you, because I've had this

question posed to me a number of times, are thinking,

what is the Holy Spirit? I think I kind of get

the idea of God the Father. The Son is sent by

the Father. He has sort of an authority there.

I get the idea of Jesus and the flesh God with

us. Hard to understand, but I think I can get

my mind around a little bit. What about the spirit

Well, the first thing about the spirit is it's

a who and The second thing is God That's that's

the big thing that Christians believe about the

Holy Spirit God with us The gift of God's presence

the real presence of God with the people of God

Spirit is the reality of God with us doing what

we cannot do in and of ourselves. I think Luke

includes this whole bit about Jesus telling his

disciples not to depart because he knows what

we're inclined to do. Just go do it in and of

ourselves. We've heard these things, let's just

go share them. We've got some good ideas. We

want to do good things. Just go. We're inclined

to do even to do good things by ourselves. We're

inclined to work and to strive and to accomplish.

We are not inclined to yield, to wait. To be

okay with the timing and the work. Maybe just

the slow abiding of fruit bearing. But think

of this too. How often, when we do these things

in our own strength, in our own urgent timing,

are the fruits of the Spirit evident in the doing?

When we are eager to get something done, is love

often evident? How about peace? Is peace often

evident in the urgent doing? I mean, this almost

sounds silly. Is patience often evident in the

urge in doing? Or kindness, or goodness, or gentleness,

or faithfulness, or self -control? It's almost

laughable to think about. The fruits of the spirit

are so rarely evident when we just do do. But

they are so often evident when we wait, when

we abide. when we are patient for God among us,

when we sit with him and wait upon him. Now when

we seek to do the work of the kingdom in our

own time, in our own ways, the spirit is strikingly

absent. The fruits of the spirit are strikingly

bare. There is, that's what I'm saying, there

is an understandable urgency to the work that

we are to do, that God calls us to do and to

be as his body. But there is a necessary waiting

and if you don't do the waiting you don't do

the work But but you know what happened when

they waited So if you know what happened when

they waited and God showed up God came Descended

like he did long ago upon Mount Sinai and upon

the temple, creating new temples within the church,

his presence among his people. And that first

Pentecost Peter preached, having been restored

by Jesus and 3 ,000 people responded, what must

we do? What are we to do? They repent and they

were baptized and brought into the life of the

church. Disciples waited the church moved out

filled with the Holy Spirit Preaching but then

early on actually what we learned is that their

their economic life was transformed I'm giving

their lives The word spirit the fill with the

spirit is all over the book of Acts you think

of Stephen He filled the spirit. He was a deacon

in the early church preaching the good news and

he was stoned He had a confident Think of Jed's

sermon. Almost confident people. He had a confidence,

right? A belief that what God had done in Christ

would be done for him. He could give himself

freely and fully because the Spirit of God, God

himself, was with him. They cared for their poor.

They loved those who cursed them. They were filled

with the Spirit and they gave themselves over

to the life of the mission of God in the world.

friends It is Pentecost this morning and The

promise of Pentecost is nothing less than the

promise of Jesus. I am with you always Let's

wait on the word but then that then let's do

the work of the church with that promise of Christ,

with that reality of the Spirit, I am with you.

Amen? Lord God, we bless you. Holy Spirit, we

adore you. God, we need you. God, I pray that

for us who are so eager to just do and we see

the massive amount that there is God I pray that

you would teach us to be those who abide in you

and bear much fruit To be those who wait upon

you and yet you show up Got to be those who desire

to be this resurrected community and are because

you are with us in your Holy Spirit God we think

of foul Pentecost is leading us into what the

church often calls as Trinity time or ordinary

time or the growth time of the church. God, I

pray that this reality of your revelation to

us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God with us,

be the growth that we long for, that we would

bear the fruit of love and joy and peace and

patience and kindness and gentleness and faithfulness

and self -control. That you would bear much fruit

through this body and through us as individuals

God have your way with us Do what we cannot do

in and of ourselves, please Lord Bear much fruit

Through the presence of your very spirit among

us pray this the name of Jesus The one who actually

said it's better that I leave the spirit come

Amen. Thank you for listening to Second City

Sermon's podcast. We hope this sermon has encouraged

you to worship God and to celebrate the gospel

of Jesus. Please consider subscribing to this

podcast and joining us in person each Sunday

at 10 a .m. You can find us online at secondcitychurch

.org and on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Thanks again for listening. God bless.