Acts: The Reality of the Gospel Makes Go & Tell Disciples (1:1-11)

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This is the second lesson out of the book of Acts 1, verses 1 to 11.

Acts 1:1–11

In the first book, Oh 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 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 times 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, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

This is the word of the Lord.

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses to the end of the earth.

So let's pray.

Lord Jesus, beloved Son of the Father, you are not in the business of breaking bruised reeds.

And though we come to you weak and needful, though perhaps we come to you today with hearts heavy and burdened, you're not here to snap us in half.

But you're here to comfort us and to speak hope.

So Lord, we invite you, Holy Spirit, to work in our hearts such that we would behold our Lord Jesus again with fresh eyes this Epiphany Sunday.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So I remember a uh high school teacher of mine uh telling me the story of uh an English exam he took.

Uh he was an English major in university.

And whatever course he was taking, um, the final exam was uh long-form essay about uh The Lord of the Rings, of course, one of the great classics of the last century.

And as he says, you know, university students are prone to do, uh, he had the whole semester to read the book, but decided he'd rather hang out with his girlfriend and then read the book on the last night before the exam.

And Lord of the Rings is not exactly a short book.

Maybe we've been there ourselves.

But uh the night before the exam, you know, he makes a big pot of coffee and pulls out the Fellowship of the Ring and does his best to make it through start to finish the fellowship, which he does.

And he comes to the exam, and you've got to bear in mind this is before the movies.

This is before Lord of the Rings was ubiquitous in culture, right?

And he comes to the exam feeling good because he's read the book and discovers that in fact there's not just one book in Lord of the Rings, there's three books in Lord of the Rings, and he's read one of them.

Now, he says he was able to scrape together some answers well enough to pass the exam, which is great, but we can recognize that sometimes sequels are quite essential, aren't they?

Imagine if J.R.R.

Tolkien ended the story with the fellowship splitting apart and the fate of the ring completely unknown.

That's meaningful to you if you know the story.

If not, then it's time to pull out Lord of the Rings.

Some sequels are essential, and what we have in front of us, the Book of Acts, is a sequel, in a sense.

It is volume two of a two-part work that the author, Luke, has put together.

He's written the Book of Acts probably somewhere between 80, 62 and maybe the latest would be something like the early 80s, first century.

But we're talking 30, no more than 45, 50 years after Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, is Luke reporting the events that follow.

And this is more than just, you know, like in a we we just live in a world of sequels now.

Like Marvel pumps out a sequel every five minutes, and they're really unnecessary.

But this is not the sort of just money grab that that uh Marvel puts out, so to speak.

Luke sees the book of Acts, this volume two, not just as uh an addition to the story, not just as sort of an extended epilogue.

This is essential to the story.

We have to know where the story is going, where the story of Jesus continues.

So he's right, he's writing to Theophilus, whether Theophilus is a Roman official of sorts, someone who's seeking after Jesus, or whether Theophilus stands in for all of those who uh who are seeking after Jesus.

His name literally means lover of God.

Um it doesn't really affect the purpose altogether because Luke wants to give a historical and accurate report of the reality of the gospel.

That's the point of the Gospel of Luke, and that is the point of the book of Acts.

Luke starts the book of Acts by addressing Theophilus.

He says, I've dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach in my first book, the book we just went through this last fall, the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel according to Luke.

I began to uh deal with all that Jesus, pardon me, I've dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, implies that Jesus is continuing to do and teach something.

Right?

He's just begun.

We're just beginning here.

The book story is not over, it's being carried forward.

And it's the story of Jesus.

It's the story of what Jesus is continuing to do through the life of his church.

And that's really key to understand the book of Acts, I think.

It is so key to understand that Jesus and his church are inseparable.

Later on, we'll see Jesus confront uh the great persecutor of the church, Saul, before he becomes the great apostle Paul.

And we remember what Jesus says to Saul when he confronts them on the road to Damascus.

He says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Jesus identifies with his church so completely that he says, Whatever you do to the church, you're doing to me, Saul.

It's so key that we uh keep in mind that Jesus' work is carried forward through the church, because that is going to unlock the whole text that follows.

If the Gospel of Luke has been a come and see sort of book, it's been an invitation to come and consider who Jesus is, what he's about, what he's accomplished on our behalf, then the Gospel, pardon me, the book of Acts we could, I suppose, I mean the book of Acts has much gospel as as Luke in it, but the book of Acts carries forward that story.

The come and see becomes go and tell.

Because what Luke is trying to bear witness to is the transformed reality we live in by virtue of the gospel.

Let me put it this way followers who come and see the reality of the gospel become go and tell disciples.

Followers who come and see the reality of the gospel become go and tell disciples.

And we are dealing with reality here.

Let's make no mistake.

The Gospel of Luke is not a nice story, it's not a supposition, it's not a wouldn't it be nice to consider if these things happened?

Luke is giving a historical report.

He wants us to know that these things actually happened.

He wants to make the case that these are what he's reporting, we we said, was intellectually credible and existentially satisfying.

It's both of those things.

You remember when we said that about the Gospel of Luke?

Same is true of the book of Acts.

What Luke is telling us is intellectually credible and existentially satisfying.

That doesn't mean we might not wrestle with what's reported.

It doesn't mean that we might not have questions that come up.

Questions are good.

But we need to not make the mistake of thinking we can just file the Gospel of Luke or file the book of Acts under something like mythology.

Something like that's a nice story.

That's something like it gives us a good ethical basis or something.

No, Luke wants us to understand what we are giving words to is reality itself.

Reality as transformed by the person of Jesus.

How do we describe the reality of the gospel?

If followers who come and see the reality of the gospel become go and tell disciples what is the reality of the gospel, I think this is what Luke wants us to get clear on right from the get-go here, in the first 11 verses of the book of Acts.

This is a five-point sermon.

So buckle up.

And if that makes you nervous for the potluck afterwards, just know we will appreciate the potluck all the more having gone through these five points.

I'm going to try and be pithy here.

What is the reality of the gospel?

The gospel is the reality of Jesus' cross and resurrection.

That's number one.

Number two, the gospel is the reality of Jesus sending the Holy Spirit.

Number three, the gospel is the reality of Jesus' kingdom.

Number four, the gospel is the reality of Jesus' ascension.

And number five, the gospel is the reality of Christ's coming again.

But you notice the thing that all those have in common, right?

Reality.

We're dealing with what's real.

We're dealing with what has happened.

And so the question for us, whether we're wrestling with this, whether we've been lifelong believers, we have to consider this for the truth claim that it is.

Do we accept it, do we reject it?

But let's not play games as though this can just be a nice story that we keep at a distance from.

We're dealing with the reality of the gospel.

First off, the reality of Jesus' cross and resurrection.

Pull out your Bibles, pull out your order of service.

Let's look at three verses here.

In the first book, O Theophilus, Luke says, I've dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day that he was taken up.

That's how the Gospel of Luke concludes with Jesus' ascension.

And after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles, whom he had chosen, Jesus presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

Really important.

Luke reports that after his suffering, which is shorthand for the cross, for Jesus' Passion, for his sacrificial death, after his suffering, Jesus presented himself alive to the disciples, that is, raised, resurrected.

Jesus' resurrection was physical and bodily, not just sort of an existential or spiritual experience.

It was as real and tactile as you and I are right now.

Just as Jesus died, so too is Jesus risen.

And this is so significant for us to catch.

I'm not going to dwell on this too too much because we kind of rounded off our series on the Gospel of Luke talking about the cross and resurrection.

But if we're considering the significance of the cross, Peter has this to say in 1 Peter chapter 2 Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

By his wounds you have been healed.

So, in other words, the cross is just as much a theological reality as it is a historical reality.

It's a historical statement to say Jesus died on a Roman cross.

That's true.

It's a theological statement to say that Jesus died on the cross for us and for our salvation.

Peter's saying both of those things are true.

And just as the cross is a historical and theological reality, so too is the resurrection.

I am the resurrection and the life, Jesus says in John 11.

Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

See, the resurrection of Jesus means the way of new life is open to us.

Death is defeated.

For the first time in history, death has given way to life.

And that can be just as true for us in Christ as it is for Christ, who is the firstborn of the dead, is what Paul calls him.

And he proved this, he says, by many proofs.

We need to bear in mind that first century people, uh we have we have some things in uh uh uh different uh culturally and and all those things uh from first century, certainly.

But there's a lot of things we share in common, too, and we shouldn't we shouldn't miss that as well.

We may think first century were a lot more, you know, kind of supernaturalist, that was their worldview, and that's true.

We're kind of conflicted about that.

We talked about that last fall, right?

But uh even if it's true that they were more supernaturalists, they were just as skeptical about the resurrection as we were.

They knew just as well that dead people don't have a habit of coming back to life again.

And they would have had, even first century Jewish people who knew their Old Testament would have no conception.

They had a conception of a general resurrection way in the future.

They had no conception that one man would be raised to new life for the sake of God's people.

That was just not even something on the radar.

So we need to bear in mind that those that Luke is addressing here would have been in a culture that's just as skeptical to the words the resurrection as we are.

We think, well, we're in the kind of scientific age, so to speak, we know better than these things.

No, we need to bear in mind that we're just as skeptical, and we may be skeptical for different reasons, but we're just as skeptical.

So the truth, what we're encountering in the first century as in the 21st, is a historical truth claim that Christ died and Christ is risen.

That's the claim being made, and that's the reality of the gospel.

Christ has died for our sins, and Christ has risen, defeating the power of death and offering to us new life.

That's the reality of Jesus' cross and resurrection in the gospel.

But Luke continues the reality of the gospel is the reality of Jesus sending the Holy Spirit.

Let's continue in verse four and five.

And while staying uh with them, Jesus ordered the disciples not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

So here's uh Jesus in Jerusalem with his disciples, talking to them about the kingdom, and he's telling the disciples, for right now stay in Jerusalem, wait for the promise of the Father.

And we might want to say, Well, what's that?

And Jesus elaborates the promise is that you will be baptized with or in the Holy Spirit.

Just as John baptized you with water for the forgiv for the repentance, so too will you be submerged in the power of God through the Spirit.

Now, when we ask the question, who or what is the Holy Spirit, we we need to maybe just bear a few things in mind because it says a lot about where my imagination goes, but immediately I start thinking about Star Wars, and I start thinking about the force, and I start thinking about this, you know, mystical force that that Jedi use to manipulate the world around us.

And it's impersonal, and it's something that you know you can manipulate with your mind, and that's just not what we're talking about when we talk about the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is God's personal, empowering presence indwelling the believer.

God's personal, empowering presence indwelling the believer.

Now we might want to ask, well, if that's the case, what does it mean be baptized in God's empowering, uh personal presence?

This phrase baptism of the Holy Spirit uh can be a loaded phrase depending on what uh denomination you might be coming in uh uh joining us from or familiar with.

Baptism of the Spirit is often equated with particular spiritual gifts, say the gift of tongues, for example.

But I think baptism in the Spirit, if we're gonna look at the New Testament, we need to be careful to distinguish baptism in the Spirit as referencing the gifts or referencing the giver.

Baptism in the Spirit, I think, has far more to do with the giver of gifts than it does with the gifts themselves.

And here's what I mean by that.

I think the baptism in the Spirit being filled and empowered by God's personal presence looks like at least three things.

It looks like conviction, conversion, and comfort.

It looks like conviction of sins.

John 16, when the Holy Spirit comes, Jesus says, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

So the Holy Spirit gives us knowledge of ourselves as sinners who've fallen short of the grace and glory of God and who are in need of God's generosity towards us.

Conviction is a work of the Holy Spirit.

Conversion is a work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul writes in Ephesians 1, in Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the seal of God's promise of salvation.

In other words, the Holy Spirit applies God's salvation to our hearts.

He converts us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light in Christ.

The Holy Spirit works conviction of sin, conversion to Christ, and comfort.

Galatians chapter 4, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

In other words, the Holy Spirit grounds us in the reality of God's generous, fatherly grace towards sinners.

The Holy Spirit tells us who we really are, how needful we are.

But the Holy Spirit also tells us how generous and gracious and good and comforting our God is.

If we know these things to be true, not just with our lips, but deep in our the fabric of our being, then that is that can only be the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the only one who grounds us in this reality, who causes us and animates us to live out this reality from the inside out.

This is the reality of the gospel.

Believers are transformed by God's personal presence in their lives, and therefore they're empowered for the work and mission that God has given us to do.

This is what Pastor John Stott says.

Just as the Spirit came upon Jesus to equip him for his public ministry, we just read about that in our gospel reading, so now the Spirit has come upon his people to equip them for their ministry.

The Holy Spirit would not only apply to them the salvation that Jesus has achieved by his death and resurrection, but would impel them to proclaim throughout the world the good news of this salvation.

See, it's the same Spirit that confirms these realities inside our hearts that impels us to proclaim reality to the world that God has redeemed.

So the reality of the gospel is the reality of Jesus' cross and resurrection.

It is the reality of Jesus sending his Holy Spirit into our hearts.

It is the reality of Jesus' kingdom.

So uh parents, you've been on long road trips with your kids in the backseat, right?

No.

You guys need to go on a long road trip then.

So um so you pack the you you spend the evening before packing the bags, you spend the morning loading up the car, your first stop is at Tim Hortons to get that coffee, and then five to ten minutes later, what can you expect to hear?

From the back seat.

Thank you.

It's just a chorus.

I'm hungry.

Yeah.

Let's focus on number one and then we'll go back to number two.

Are we there yet?

That's exactly what we expect to hear, isn't it?

And that's something of what the disciples are saying to Jesus in verse 6 and 7.

See, by the time you've you're in the car with your coffee, you've ticked all the boxes in the eyes of a child, haven't you?

You've packed the suitcases, you've loaded the car, you've made your first stop.

You're kind of thinking, okay, we're ticking all the boxes here.

The last one to tick is arriving.

So when's that happening?

The disciples are saying much the same thing to Jesus.

Jesus, we're watching all of the boxes get ticked with regards to your kingdom.

So are we there yet?

Verse 6.

When they'd all come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

Are we there yet?

Jesus said to them, It is not for you to know the times 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 in all Judea and Samaria until the end of the earth.

So the question here is, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

Now, Church reformer John Calvin has this to say about the question.

He says, There are as many errors here in this question as words, which is a fair assessment, I think.

See, in the minds of the disciples, as they asked Jesus this question, identify the coming of the kingdom with the immediate, with right now.

Surely the kingdom is right now, completely and fully.

And when they say, Will you restore the kingdom, then they have in mind that something would from the past would be brought forward, that it'd be re-established, that the national sovereignty of old covenant Israel would be would be reasserted, that Roman oppressors would be chased away, that this political reality would be ushered in.

And when they ask Jesus, would the kingdom be restored to Israel, they have in mind this particular ethnic group descended from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who gets renamed Israel.

But Jesus' vision for the kingdom is so much greater.

And Jesus doesn't so much rebuff them or rebuke them, so much as he redirects them towards a greater kingdom reality.

The kingdom is the dynamic reign of God as sovereign, not just over Israel, but over all creation.

Do we catch that just sense of the going outness of the kingdom?

There's nothing which Jesus doesn't point to, the risen Lord Jesus doesn't point to and say, mine.

That belongs to me.

This is the kingdom reality and this is what's getting carried forward.

Is the kingdom immediate?

Well, it's not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father's fixed by his own authority.

This is the Father's plan and time, not ours.

Will it be a restoration of national sovereignty?

Well, no, you'll receive power by the Holy Spirit, and you'll be my witnesses not just here in Jerusalem, the center of Israel's power, not just in Judea, the greater region, but in Samaria, cross-culturally, and to the ends of the world.

There'll be nowhere my kingdom doesn't reign.

And you're going to be my witnesses of this reality.

You are going to be the ones to proclaim and pronounce God's reign and rule over everything.

Justice is being restored, peace is being ushered in.

Jesus is in the middle of it all, and we are the heralds.

That's the commission here.

See, the reality of the gospel is first centrifugal before it's centripetal.

Centripetal.

Centrifugal motion goes outward, right?

Centripetal comes inward.

And the disciples have an inward sort of motion for the kingdom.

God sort of gets his favorites and draws them, you know, close.

What Jesus has in mind is the kingdom is first centrifugal.

It goes outward.

And that hasn't changed, by the way.

That commission stands for the church.

The gospel, to be truly the gospel, has to go out and then draw in.

I wonder how we think about our faith.

Do we think about it as something that's centrifugal or centripetal?

Do we think about it as something that's personal and private?

Or do we think about it as a commission to go out and proclaim the reality of the gospel in this world that God has redeemed through Christ?

The gospel is the reality of the cross and resurrection, the reality of the sending of the Holy Spirit, the reality of Jesus' kingdom.

It is the reality of Jesus' ascension.

Verse 9.

When Jesus had said these things, all these things pertaining to the kingdom, as the disciples were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

Now, immediately our 21st century Canadian grid goes, really?

He was he was beamed up.

Really?

Picture the tractor beam in science fiction movies, right?

As though Jesus just being elevated.

I mean, the resurrection might be hard enough to buy into, but he was just, he was lifted up to heaven.

It's like, well, maybe in a first century sort of cosmology where heaven is understood to be up there somehow.

But we know better than that, right?

See, I think we have to pay attention to this.

I don't think we should discount the reality of the ascension.

In fact, I think we should we should we should take it very carefully here and and and very hopefully because it's full of hope.

I think C.

S.

Lewis helps us to sort of sort through this imagery.

C.

S.

Lewis thinks that visually what the apostles would have seen was merely most like rising up into the air because, Lewis writes, Jesus was still in some mode, though not in our mode, corporeal.

He had a body.

And he withdrew at his own will from the nature presented by our three dimensions and five senses, not necessarily into the nonsensuous and undimensioned, but possibly into or through a world or worlds of supersense and superspace.

And he and he might choose to do it gradually.

Who on earth knows what the spectators might see if they say they saw a momentary movement along a vertical plane, then an indistinct mass, then nothing.

Who is to pronounce this improbable?

How appropriate it is that Jesus is pictured ascending.

That's the point.

How appropriate it is that Jesus is pictured as ascending.

Here's what Lewis is saying.

Lewis is saying, think of it like this.

Jesus isn't just sort of leaving our world and beaming up to the mothership.

Jesus is going into the super reality of God's glory and presence.

Heaven is not less real than the world we occupy.

If anything, heaven is more real because God is more manifest there, and in God all things subsist.

So here is Jesus making this kind of supra physical journey into the reality of God's presence.

And how appropriate it is that we would picture this as being lifted up into God's presence.

How else would we give words to it?

How else would we describe it?

But an ascension.

And this is the reality that Luke is giving witness to.

And the ascension is incredibly important.

We should not overlook it.

The ascension means that Jesus reigns.

In Ephesians chapter one, Paul prays that the Ephesians would know what is the immeasurable grace of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Did you catch that?

Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, Jesus is large and in charge.

That is the reality of the ascension.

There is no greater authority than his, and he now presently reigns at the Father's right hand, which is to say there is no greater authority than that, and this is where he executes his kingly reign.

There is no more security for the Christian than to know that Jesus reigns and fills and advocates for us in heaven.

Jesus Christ, the one who died, the one who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, is indeed interceding for us.

So the reality of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, is that he reigns and fills and advocates for us.

That is the significance of the ascension.

And so what might seem like a left turn in the text all of a sudden, that Jesus gets beamed up, suddenly we see the logic to it.

Because Jesus has been describing the kingdom for 40 days now, and now Jesus goes to reign as King.

That's the reality here.

The reality of the gospel is the reality of Jesus' ascension.

Let me spend a minute on the last one here.

The reality of the gospel is the reality of Jesus' return.

And while they were gazing into heaven, Jesus went, and behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

This Jesus will come in the same way you saw him go.

See, Christianity is a future-oriented faith.

It is not simply a um it's not simply relevant to our present moment.

It is that.

It is a future-oriented faith that points us forward to a sure and certain promise.

As surely as Christ is risen, as surely as Christ is ascended, surely Christ will come again, and he will reign on earth as it is, things on earth will be as they are in heaven, and heaven and earth will be reunited.

They will be made one again, and we will dwell with God in this kingdom forever, a world without end.

In the end, earth will receive her king, and all of the glory, justice, and peace and renewed creation that goes with it.

See, this is the good news, friends.

This is the gospel.

There is no greater news than this.

This is the happiest of all endings.

This is the return of the king.

And it's the reality of the gospel.

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

And the angels who are reporting this to the disciples, which I have to wonder, there are angels reporting Jesus' first coming, filling the sky and pronouncing it to shepherds.

I gotta wonder if these two heavenly messengers were a part of that very first pronouncement.

And now here they are bearing witness to the disciples, He's coming again.

Keep the faith.

See, the followers who come and see the reality of the gospel, the cross and resurrection, the sending of the Holy Spirit, Jesus' kingdom, his ascension is coming again.

Become, go and tell disciples, because how couldn't they?

How couldn't we?

We who know the reality of Christ's reign and rule over all things, the good news.

How could we not pronounce this good news to a creation which is being redeemed?

See, Jesus has won for us more than this material kingdom, more than public politics and reconstructing our ethics, more than just private piety and spiritualism and feeling really good about coming to church.

The gospel announces God's transforming work in reality.

It is real, it is objective.

God is renewing and restoring creation that we live in.

So we become go and tell disciples who make that known.

So, friends, if you are here this morning and and honestly, you just say, I'm just checking out who this Jesus guy is.

I'm not sure I can track with you on some of these uh claims that you're making.

If that's true for you, then I gotta say, right on.

Way to hang in there with us.

Keep investigating, keep asking questions, stay curious.

Let Jesus speak for himself through these documents and see if uh if it's true that Jesus began to do his work and now continues his work through the church.

Pay attention to what happens in Jesus' church here in the book of Acts and right here amongst us here at Newsong, because it will bear witness to what Jesus is doing in the world, the reality of his gospel.

Investigate, ask questions, come and see.

If you are figuring out what it means to follow Jesus, then consider the reality of the gospel.

What if it's true?

What if it's not just a subjective story that I tell myself?

What if this actually happened?

What if this is a truth claim that I have to wrestle with?

But what if it being true means I get to live with a hope that I otherwise wouldn't have?

And if you would consider yourself to be a disciple of Jesus, join us in what it means to go and tell.

New song, this commission is our commission.

We carry it forward.

Because the disciples took the gospel to the ends of the earth, guess what?

The ends of the earth include Port Perry.

And here we are.

And the Lord has called us to carry it forward exactly where we are today.

Will you join us in pronouncing the good news that God is at work transforming and renewing creation through the risen and ascended and coming again Lord Jesus?

This is our commission, friends.

You will be my witnesses to Port Perry and to the ends of the earth.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We follow a generous God who calls us to give willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially towards gospel ministry.

Newsong is one hundred percent funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you'd like to learn more about how to give towards Newsong's ministry, you can do just that at newsongportperry.ca slash giving.

God bless you and keep you today and every day.