"From Doubt to Mission: Empowered by Faith"

G'day. Thanks for joining the Heights Church podcast today. We hope you enjoy our message.

If you're in the Sydney area, be sure to join us at the Heights Church at Goldstone

Road, Cornstone Heights, Sue Mearsville.

Good morning, Church. Our Bible reading is from Acts 1, verses 1 to 11.

Acts 1:1–11

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach.

Until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instruction 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.

He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them 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 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.

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a 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. This is the word of the Lord.

Now, I don't know whether you've ever moved house or not. You're in an awkward

transition stage when you move house.

I know the halls are going to be doing that very shortly.

And it's a time where you're in the now but not yet. You're kind of almost into

the place, but you're not there yet. You may be in the place,

but none of the boxes are unpacked and it's kind of not really home yet.

I know that we even experienced that with Cody. He's moved, but all his stuff is still at our place.

So he thinks he's in the now, but we're going, not yet. You need to get rid

of all the stuff that's there.

Now, in the same way, the disciples were feeling some kind of dislocation that

mirrors that experience where we read about it in Acts 1. Jesus had risen, but not yet ascended.

The Spirit had not yet come. The church was alive, but wasn't active in this world.

And they were in some sort of transition time.

They were wondering and they were waiting. They were preparing for all that's happened.

Now, we've gone through a bit of a series. You may not realize it or not,

but we've gone from Easter Sunday, where Jesus rose again to all these disciples being in doubt.

And then Jesus appeared to Thomas. And then from then on, he started to appear

to the people over and over again to reassure them, to do things.

And Acts 1 shows us what Jesus was doing. He was preparing his people for mission.

And in doing so, he teaches them four key things. One is that he's strengthening

their faith or their trust.

He's widening their vision that goes beyond what they can just see to something

that God is doing in this world.

He weakens their pride thinking that they're going to do the whole lot,

but rather he gives them the Holy Spirit and they eventually realize that they

do nothing but listen to the Holy Spirit and walk with them,

with the Holy Spirit. And he revitalizes.

He brings back memories of his teaching as he's going through.

And as we walk through this section, we're going through that Jesus is all on

about training, and that's verse 1 to 5. He's on about entrusting them to an

immense responsibility, and that's verses 6 to 8.

And he kind of leaves them with a bit of a crisis when he just leaves and goes.

First of all, he trains them for an awesome task.

Jesus spent 40 days after his resurrection teaching the disciples,

and 40 days isn't just a fluke, not like a number, we kind of want to work out what 40 days is.

40 days, Moses went to Mount Sinai before he went into the promised land.

40 years, Israel wandered around the wilderness to try to get their act together

before they went into the promised land.

Jesus was tempted for 40 days before he started this mission on earth.

It wasn't just some random time between Jesus' resurrection and his ascension.

Jesus was preparing and training his disciples to carry the mission that he started forward.

And there's two key aspects, I think, to the mission. First of all, that they were chosen.

He gave the command through the Holy Spirit to the apostles that he had chosen.

See, Jesus had become selective. It wasn't just everybody that he gave the mission

to, although eventually it was through them. but he dealt with a particular

group of people, apostles with a capital A.

Because it was these 12, after a new person came along, Matthias came along

after Judas went AWOL, who had an awesome task to perform.

They were to begin to spread the message of Jesus Christ, salvation through

him, forgiveness through him, and the message that he was king.

So the mission wasn't based on their commitment of the 12.

It wasn't based on their skill. It wasn't even based really on their zeal.

It was grounded in the sovereign choice of God.

We read in John 15, 16, you did not choose me, I chose you and appointed you

to go and bear fruit. What was the fruit?

Well, they were like a disciple tree and they're going to bear the fruit of disciples.

And the Holy Spirit was going to work in them and through them to enable them

and equip them for that task and empower them for that task.

But it wasn't just like that mob over there that he called.

It wasn't kind of like anyone that walked by that day that said,

oh, come and follow me. You're here.

No, he purposely chose them. He said, come and follow me.

It was an intentional, directed, they were called by name.

Sometimes we In our world, we're just called by number, aren't we?

We go to the RMS, we get a number, and number 365A, go to window number four.

I put my tax in, I have a tax file number, I go to Woolworths Deli and I have

a number. Even when I go to evoke a fish and chips, I get a number.

And for various reasons, we kind of live in an impersonal world where we're

known only by numbers and not by name.

But I don't know whether you've ever had the experience, or I have,

where a shop doesn't want to give you a number. They want your name.

And so, for example, we have a house up at Copacabana and we hand out with a vodka a lot.

A vodka cafe was the first time for a long time that I'd been asked my name

by Paula. and every single time we went in during COVID and we've gone in pretty

much every time we're up there, Paula knows my name and knows my order.

And over the time, she has known all about you and all about our family and

all about Heath's family.

Every single, I mean, it is personal. It's connected. She knows our name.

And even though our world gives us numbers, Jesus knows us by name.

And has called you by name.

He has made himself known to you, not as a number, as a person who's just walked

by, but you who has been chosen before the foundation of this world to know

him, to grow in him, and to show the world about him.

You were chosen, you were called by name. And so what he wants to do for you

is he wants to strengthen your faith.

He presented himself alive in verse 3, to them with many convincing proofs.

Remember how I was talking about last week is that doubt and faith comes along

and there's no way that we can be absolutely certain.

We need our faith strengthened.

And so what Jesus did is he repeatedly showed himself to his followers that he was truly alive.

It was necessary for him to do that to strengthen their conviction in him.

Because if he didn't do that, they'd all be just guessing on whether Jesus was

risen from the dead or not.

I've shared this story before, but it's a true story. I was walking down the

local shopping center in Canada when this woman came running up to me,

and she said, call the cops because a man's following me, and she was scared

to death and scared for her life.

I looked around, couldn't see anyone following me. I looked back.

She was gone. What do I do?

Do I phone the police and just say, there was a woman here who told me that

someone was following her and was going to attack her? Oh, where's the woman? I don't know.

Where's the attacker? I don't know. I'd be arrested.

Jesus was minimizing their weaknesses

or their doubt and maximizing their strength, which was their faith,

a strong faith that ultimately led them to risk their lives for the message

that they were going to give for their mission that was entrusted to them.

Acts 4.20, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and what we have heard.

If they hadn't seen, if they hadn't heard, they probably wouldn't have got to

that point. So Jesus was on about strengthening their faith.

And Jesus is on about strengthening our faith too.

Because I believe evangelism doesn't come from guilt.

It comes from conviction if I want to witness boldly I need a real relationship

with Jesus now here's a hard part for a pastor to say.

Don't focus on doing evangelism focus on strengthening your faith in Jesus and

like the disciples you could not help but speak about Jesus is.

That's what will happen. As you draw closer to Jesus, as you draw closely to

him and learn about him and walk with him and are strengthened by him,

well, then you will not be able to close your mouth. You will open it up to anybody.

You'll witness to the lamppost, anyone who will listen.

It's not about doing evangelism, but about being evangelistic,

about being people who want to share the good news that you've experienced,

that you walk in with anybody who is out there.

So first of all, he wants to strengthen our faith. The second thing is he wants

to entrust us with an immense responsibility.

Why he does that, I don't know. There's some things you can find out through the Bible.

There's other things you can't find out. Why he entrusts the message of the

gospel and the building of his church to a failed group of sinners, I don't know. but he has.

He's entrusted you. See, we see how inadequate even these 12 were.

They still thought that Jesus was going to storm the castle and take the world politically.

You, Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?

And Jesus doesn't go, oh my goodness, I need another 12.

He doesn't rebuke them harshly, but rather he corrects their focus.

He widens their vision from just Israel to the whole of the world.

It's not for you to know the times, but for you to be my witnesses,

it says in verse seven and eight.

He widens their vision to the kingdom, a kingdom that wasn't just for Israel,

but was for the whole world.

So Jesus was training his apostles concerning the kingdom of God as a present

participle, if you want to get into it.

If you don't know anything about present participles, see Dave.

Is that right? Do you know anything about present participles?

So he didn't just mention the kingdom of God once or twice.

He spoke about it regularly over the 40 days.

The kingdom had been the key theme of Jesus embraced during his pre-resurrection

ministry that Jesus, what Jesus did revolved all around the kingdom.

He came proclaiming it. He spoke about how to enter it. The parables spoke about it.

His miracles pointed to what it would be like.

Now, if the content of Jesus' teaching was all about the kingdom of God,

that pretty much set out the agenda for the disciples, wouldn't it?

That they should be concerned about God's rule and transformation of his rule in people's lives. Yes.

That would also be a responsibility for us as well.

That as we read the whole of Acts and we get into Acts 28 and we're told to

go throughout this world, we shouldn't be preoccupied with anything but the kingdom of God.

And as we follow the mission of the kingdom, we should emphasize that.

See, wherever we're involved with speaking to others about Jesus,

we must make sure that the content that we share with them is consistent with

the content that he has left for our mission.

It's easy to become sidetracked, isn't it, and focus on all sorts of issues

rather than the simple profound truth that Jesus has died, he has risen,

he is now enthroned at the right hand of God, he has sent his spirit to empower

and equip his church and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

You want to know the gospel? You want to know what should be on our lips and

how eventually we would need to speak to people about it.

I'm not talking about you walk up to somebody and say, I want to tell you that

Jesus died, Jesus rose again.

He's enthroned upon things. His spirit has come and he's going to come again.

In our conversations, in where we have it,

we pray that in our thinking and in our talking to people, and as we journey

together and build relationships with people,

that eventually we'll be able to talk about that or be able to invite them to

an event where they can hear about the death of Jesus, the resurrection,

the coming of the Spirit, and that he will come again.

See, at the end of the day, Jesus doesn't need an election campaign or a vote

from people to be king. He's king.

And their mission was to witness to that gospel, not to speculate,

not to plan revolutions, not to set dates for his coming again.

I mean, so many people focus on things outside and have arguments outside of the base of the gospel.

Focus on the end times, the reading of the signs, the chasing of headlines.

When I was growing up, I can't remember what year it was, really,

but it would have to have been the mid-80s.

Everybody stood underneath the Harbour Bridge waiting for Jesus to come in on

a jumbo jet. Do you remember that?

And no doubt in that church, they were talking about the great coming of Jesus

on a jumbo jet that was going to fly under the Harbour Bridge.

It seemed amazing to me. It's easy to get into discussions about theological

positions and philosophies and other religions, and we can find ourselves sucked

into the argument or discussing anything and everything but the gospel.

Instead, we should remain central to the message of the kingdom of God.

And the bottom line of that message is that Jesus is king.

And he is so because we read in Matthew 28 that he's been given all authority

over heaven and earth. he is king over all.

Where Albo might be prime minister of Australia today for the next three years

and however long he's going to be in, Jesus is king forever, for all eternity.

And the kingdom is about Jesus defeating every other power through his death

and through his resurrection.

And in keeping with that.

That should be central to our conversation. Now, don't go off in theological position arguments.

Listen to this carefully. We live in an hour, but not yet.

Jesus is enthroned, but not every knee has bowed yet.

Eventually, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

Jesus will restore all things.

But in the meantime, we groan in anguish, waiting for ourselves and our world to be fully restored.

Death has been defeated. We know that. We've seen that through the resurrection

of Jesus. But people still die.

But there will come a day when death will be no more. Great message from David

Ray in his Hope series to listen about that even more. Yet God is merciful.

He does transform us now. He does renew us now.

He does interact and intervene into our broken world so that we might know that

he is king and he is Lord and he is bringing in his kingdom and he's bringing

in his lordship into our world.

We pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So we should expect that Jesus is going to be doing that.

But in the meantime, we wait for it to be fully restored and fully known.

We grow in our relationships with him. We show each other and our world, his love and concern.

We are witnesses of his rule and we spread the message, the ultimate message

of the consummation of his kingdom when he returns again.

Here we have the disciples. They've been given an immense responsibility,

huge responsibility to spread the news that God has come as King and as Lord,

and we should announce Him as our Lord and our King.

So in the meantime, what do they do? Do they just rustle up as much strength as they possibly can?

Do they try to figure out devised methods, have endless amounts of committee

meetings on how they're going to do things and what they're going to do and

what dot points they want to have and what resources they need to build.

Now, what happens is that they were told by Jesus to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit.

See, Jesus' training involved a spiritual dimension, all of it spiritual,

but specifically a spiritual dimension.

Jesus had built into their lives all that they needed to about having knowledge

and how they would accomplish the task, but they had to wait for the outpouring

of the Spirit so that they would receive power.

Power for what power to be the witnesses to the end of the world.

And that's a vital lesson for us.

We sometimes get caught up in thinking that the Spirit's purely given,

as Ephesians 1 says, as a down payment, guaranteeing what is to come.

That's our inheritance in heaven.

Or purely given to allot spiritual gifts for us. And they are true.

The Spirit does give us spiritual gifts. And the Spirit is given as a guarantee

with inside of us of what is to come.

But it's so incredibly important to understand that the Spirit is given for

a whole lot of other reasons that help us to walk with Jesus as he fulfills

his ministry into this world.

The Spirit was given to convict the world of sin, righteousness,

and judgment. the Spirit was given to guide people into all truth.

See, evangelism is not about personality. It's not about persuasion.

It's a Spirit-empowered witness.

And in doing that, not only has Jesus strengthened our faith and not only has

Jesus widened our vision from our own backyard to the whole of the world,

he also weakens our pride,

because at the end of the day, without the Holy Spirit, no one would be converted.

He works within the hearts of people to convict them of sin,

righteousness, and judgment, as he has worked in your heart to do that.

He guides people into all truth.

We speak faithfully about Jesus to others, and he works through us.

But as soon as we learn that we cannot evangelize or do anything else really

in our Christian life, without the Spirit, we will not learn. We will not grow.

Galatians says that they are encouraged not to go alone, but it says we live

by the Spirit, so let us keep in step with the Spirit.

The apostles met all together around the Mount of Olives,

probably at Jesus' request, and Jesus had gathered them there and he commissioned

them for the great commissioning of going into all the world.

They were on a different wavelength, like I mentioned.

They just thought Israel's going to be it, Jerusalem's going to be it,

we're going to storm the castle, the Romans are going to exit,

we're going to come in and you're going to be the whole king.

But he absolutely blew their mind.

See, they were struggling to understand what Jesus meant, what he meant about the kingdom.

Verse 6 talks about when Jesus, it is time for your ascension,

you're going to intervene to take the kingdom back from the Romans' hand and

find a new way for the Jews. And they said, no.

Jesus said to them very graciously, it's not for you to know the times of the

day, it's for you just to witness.

The Father is set by his own authority at that time.

So as you widen their vision, as you strengthen their trust,

he set them out for the great commissioning to go throughout the whole world.

What's the most important part about go to the world and produce disciples,

baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit?

It's the going part. We're to go into all the world. We're not to get sidetracked from that.

Sometimes we can. So he'd go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and all the ends of the earth.

So he's talking about witnessing in our own backyard. first and foremost.

But then what happens is just amazing, isn't it?

Jesus is coming there in between his resurrection and his ascension,

and he's strengthening them. He's widened their vision. He's empowering them.

He's giving the spirit for empowerment, or hadn't quite yet,

but he promised the spirit to empower and to move forward. And then he just leaves.

Talk about COVID derailing the church and this world Can you imagine Jesus and his resurrection?

He's standing there and everyone thinks that he's going to be there in this

kind of weird way that he's come back from the resurrection and then he just leaves.

Would have gone what has happened they would

have felt lost they would have felt overwhelmed they would have felt about what's

going on is the story over is he coming back

again and all the things that needed to happen and he says no the work for you

is not finished I'm all you need for the task I'm all you need for the power

that you need to spread the gospel throughout this world Don't lose your focus. Focus on me.

Your work is not yet finished.

Because they're standing around saying, when's he coming back again?

That's their whole focus. And two people said, well, don't just stand around.

Don't just go home either. Start being my witnesses throughout this world.

Where were they to start? Like I said, right there, right at their home,

right in Jerusalem. and our first responsibility is to be witnesses,

not in Africa and Asia, but in our own backyard. That's our first responsibility.

In your backyard, to your neighbors, to your work friends, to your friends,

the people that God has placed into your lives, that's our first port of call for witness.

And then from there, Jesus widens our vision, says, again, you're going, go to all the places,

widening your circles so that you eventually reach as many people as God empowers

you to do and opens up your eyes to do it.

Isn't that amazing? What a great, incredible vision that he has given us.

And maybe your vision's small, certainly not insignificant.

Maybe you're just saying, I'd just love to witness to my neighbor.

I'd just like to speak to my kids. I'd just like to speak to their friends.

And that might be your own backyard. Maybe you have had the privilege of going

overseas or widening your circle. So it's not only your friends,

but it's your workplace. And maybe you've had the vision of reaching Sydney.

Maybe you've had the vision of reaching places in Australia or overseas or wherever it might be.

Mick Alley certainly did, didn't he? He came from Sydney, had the vision of

church, and then he went overseas, and then he's now in Samburu,

and he's doing all this stuff within that.

And then where God is going to lead him next, I don't know.

But he's widening the vision.

What do we do to start that?

The disciples teach us. How did they respond?

They didn't form committees. They didn't form a vision statement.

They didn't rustle up as much finances so that they could move.

They prayed. Why? Because prayer is the ultimate act of dependence upon God.

It weakens our pride to a point that we know that God is at work through us,

through his grace and his kindness.

It strengthens our trust in him because we know that God is at work and it aligns

our hearts with Jesus' mission as we pray.

So our call to action is to first and foremost pray. Will you pray?

Not just part of it is opening our eyes and seeking opportunities that God places before us,

but let me say that if you start your day

every day with praying that

the Spirit would open up my eyes to the people

who are around me and open up my eyes and my ears to the conversations so that

I might have the chance just to extend my conversation with somebody else and

maybe even share the gospel with them at the right appropriate time.

Will you pray that? That's a gutsy move. You know why?

Because as you start that every single morning, right throughout the day,

you will be looking and listening to the conversations that you have to see

how God is going to answer that prayer.

And he will. he will open up conversations he will lead you to people where you can have that talk.

To do that every day. The other day, I think it was on Wednesday morning,

I went down and had a coffee.

I'm here early in the morning, went down at seven o'clock. There's not a lot

of people in the coffee shop.

And the guy said, how was your Easter at church? And I went,

oh, great. And we did this, this, and this, and this.

I said, do you celebrate Easter?

And he goes, no, no. What do you talk about Easter? That was his next thing.

And unfortunately, somebody came in and want to order another coffee,

but it's that continuing conversation.

So pray for those people down there as I do. I pray for the people that you're in conversation with.

Why? Because Jesus has chosen you. And our job as a church is to equip you and

train you for that task. And we're going to do that throughout the year.

We're going to talk about evangelism. We're going to give you opportunities.

We're going to give you an opportunity to invite your friends to a course called Taste and see.

And taste and see is a very low impact sort of way in which you can invite your friends along.

Basically, what will happen is they'll come along and the first meal will be

vegetable, vegetarian, fantastic platter.

And at the end of it, we're going to explain how God created the heavens and

the earth in much incredible way and vegetarian and they were in the Garden of Eden.

And then the next meal will be Maccas because it just felled bits.

And then eventually we're going to get after the four weeks to a point that

God wants to restore and make it beautiful again. And we'll have the most cordon

bleu meal, not here at the church, but people's homes.

And if you'd like to host one of those, well, then be part of that and host

people along, whether it's going to be four people.

It won't be any more than about four or five people.

And you'll have all the materials supplied by the church. We'll sit there and

we'll talk about it for the hosts and we'll train people to how to present the

message of what's going on so that you might be able to open up your homes and

that you might have an opportunity to invite somebody to someone's home so that

they can hear the gospel. Sounds great.

Sounds awesome. There's another thing that's happening is that Peter Thomsett,

who is a bit of an evangelist in his mission and his time, is going to teach

us what to say and how to say it to people. along the line.

So the challenge that we have from our passage is to stop looking at the sky.

Don't look for Jesus to come back someday, some when, you know, whenever it is.

He's come back in his spirit and he's empowered you and equipped you to be his

spokespeople into this world.

And then if he so chooses to widen your circle so that you might go into other

places in spreading the good news of the kingdom of God, that he's rule,

his reign, and he has conquered death, and so can you. Let's pray.

Lord, we sometimes look at the disciples and think they are at the very beginning

of, not only at the very beginning of you building your church,

But how come they couldn't have a clue?

How come they couldn't do the things that they wanted to do,

but rather they were full of doubt and wanted strength and they wanted empowerment,

they wanted all those things?

But we read Acts and we recognize, Lord, very quickly that you're on about building your church.

You're on about equipping your church and empowering your church to be your

witnesses throughout this world.

So, Lord, I pray for those who need their faith strengthened, who is all of us, Lord.

Strengthen our faith so that we might take steps of faith with you as our Lord

so that people might hear about you or they might see the incredible love that

you want to give to them and you might work in and through us to show your love

to each other and our world.

I pray, Lord, that if we have a vision that's too small, that not only will you widen it, Lord,

but you might open up doors in which we're to walk through and that we will

be very, very clear and open to see what you have opened and empower and equip us,

give us the power to walk through those doors as you weaken our pride and we

might rely upon you and everything that you give.

Lord, be at work in those that we know who don't know you.

We'd ask that you would convict them of their sin, righteousness,

and your judgment upon this earth as Lord and Savior and the one who has all authority.

And open up conversations, Lord, where we might speak to people in love and

kindness so that they might know your love personally and your forgiveness in their life.

Help us lord to stop looking at the sky but rather be active at work for you

on this world and i pray this in your name amen.