Acts 1:1-8 - Witnessing, Waiting, & Wondering
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
[READING - Acts 1:1-8]
1 The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. 3 To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. 4 Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, “Which,” He said, “you heard of from Me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
[PRAYER]
[CIT] The Apostles were witnesses of Jesus, and would be His witnesses to the remotest part of the earth but not until they were baptized by the Holy Spirit.
[PROP] When we are finished with our study of Acts, I pray that we all are Holy Spirit-empowered witnesses to Jesus Christ crucified, resurrected, ascended, ruling, and reigning—and returning one day soon.
[CONTEXT] Luke, the author of Acts, begins by mentioning Theophilus and the first account he composed.
This refers of course to Luke’s gospel, which was also written to the most excellent Theophilus, whose name means loved by God, lover of God, or friend of God.
Besides the meaning of his name and that he may have been of some rank because he is referred to as the most excellent Theophilus in Luke’s gospel, we don’t know anything about Theophilus, except this: Jesus loved Theophilus so much that He moved Luke to put not only Luke but also Acts in Theophilus’ hands.
Consider how much Jesus loves us that we have this record in our hands as well.
Let us not waste what Jesus has given to us Acts.
[INTER] So that we take full advantage of what Jesus has given to us in Acts and so that we study with more understanding, we want to spend our time this morning answering this question: What is the book of Acts about?
And I’m going to give you the ANSWERS right off and then they’ll serve as our headings this morning.
#1: The book of Acts is about Jesus.
#2: The book of Acts is about Jesus working through His Apostles.
#3: The book Acts is about Jesus working through His Apostles by the Holy Spirit.
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
ANSWER #1: The Book of Acts is about Jesus (Acts 1:1-2)
ANSWER #1: The Book of Acts is about Jesus (Acts 1:1-2)
1 The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen.
[EXP] As we already noticed, Luke brings Theophilus’ mind back to Luke’s gospel—Luke’s biography of the life and ministry of Jesus including His death and resurrection.
After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples and “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).
He then told them to wait in Jerusalem until they were “clothed with power from on high,” (Luke 24:49).
Then Jesus “parted from them and was carried up into heaven,” (Luke 24:51).
Now, all of that—Jesus’ resurrection, the Apostles’ understanding of the Scriptures, the order to wait on the Holy Spirit to come, the ascension of Jesus—we get all of that again in Acts 1, but notice that Luke says that all of it was just the beginning for Jesus.
All that was what Jesus began to do and teach.
Luke’s gospel was the beginning, Acts is the next chapter in what Jesus did and taught.
Before His ascension, Jesus did and taught on earth.
After His ascension, as v. 2 says, Jesus did and taught by the Holy Spirit through His Apostles.
Jesus still ministers from heaven today by the Holy Spirit through the teaching of the Apostles as recorded in the pages of the New Testament.
[ILLUS] If I bought you a Where’s Waldo? book, you would understand that the point of the book is to find Waldo on every page.
Well, Acts is about finding Jesus on every page, and He isn’t hard to find.
[APP] Until His ascension in Acts 1:9 we see Jesus in the flesh, but afterward we see Him in the move of the Holy Spirit who is called the Spirit of Jesus (Rom. 8:9; Gal. 4:6; Phil. 1:19; 1 Pet. 1:11).
And we also see Him in the ministry of the Apostles.
When they preach, they preach about Him.
When they baptize, they baptize in His name.
When they perform a miracle, they perform it by the power He supplies.
When we are finished with our study of Acts, I hope that you encouraged by the courage of Peter and John.
I hope that you are moved by the faithfulness of Stephen, the first martyr.
I hope that you are challenged by the tirelessness of Paul.
But more than being encouraged, moved, and challenged by those guys, I pray that we are amazed by Jesus who ascends to the Father’s right hand and still ministers to us here on earth by the power of the Spirit through the teaching of His Apostles.
[TS] What is the book of Acts about?
The book of Acts is about Jesus.
ANSWER #2: The Book of Acts is about Jesus working through His Apostles (Acts 1:3)
ANSWER #2: The Book of Acts is about Jesus working through His Apostles (Acts 1:3)
3 To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.
[EXP] The word “apostle” can just mean messenger, and surely all Christians are to be messengers of the Gospel. But the way the word “apostle” is used in v. 2 refers to a certain group of men who had certain experiences with Jesus.
First, they were chosen by Jesus.
Verse 2 says that Jesus chose His Apostles. Luke 6:13 says that during Jesus’ public ministry…
13 And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles:
Of course, we know that Judas the betrayer wasn’t really an Apostle. Referring to Judas, Jesus said in John 13:18…
18 “I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats My bread has lifted up his heel against Me.’
Judas will be replaced with Matthias at the end of Acts 1, and although it happens different, Matthias is also chosen by Jesus as an Apostle.
And we also know that Saul, who we first meet in Acts as a persecutor of the church, will become better known as the Apostle Paul. And he too, in a direct encounter with the resurrected Jesus, is chosen to be an Apostle.
The Apostle were chose by Jesus.
Second, they were shown by Jesus.
Acts 1:3 says that Jesus showed the Apostles that He was alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs.
It would have surely required many convincing proofs to convince the Apostles that Jesus was alive.
They saw how he suffered, how He was nearly beaten to death before the cross.
Some of them witnessed His agonizing death on the cross and saw when He was pierced in the side with a spear.
Blood and water flowed out proving that Jesus was dead.
This was devastating to the Apostles because they believed Jesus was Messiah, and Messiah was supposed to conquer not be crucified.
So when Jesus appeared to them after His resurrection He had to do so repeatedly in order to convince them.
He had to eat with them to prove that He wasn’t some sort of ghost.
He had to invite them to touch His wounds—the wounds left behind by the cross.
These things He did for forty days, so that by this time in Acts 1, the Apostles are unalterably convinced that Jesus is alive.
They were chosen by Jesus.
They were shown by Jesus.
Third, they were taught by Jesus.
Verse 3 says that during that forty days in which Jesus appeared to the Apostles that He spoke to them of the things concerning the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God refers to the rule of God over everything and everyone. He is King of kings and Lord of lords.
As we know from reading the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) the Apostles had some misunderstandings concerning the Kingdom of God, but it was during this 40 day period that Jesus taught them about the Kingdom of God in light of His—i.e., the Messiah’s—death and resurrection.
The death and resurrection of Jesus proves that the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, a Kingdom that cannot be destroyed.
The death and resurrection of Jesus means that when all other kingdoms pass away, the Kingdom of God, will eternally stand.
The Apostles were chosen by Jesus.
They were shown by Jesus.
They were taught by Jesus.
And fourth, they were sent by Jesus.
They were sent by Jesus to be His witnesses.
And fifth, they were empowered by Jesus.
They were empowered by Jesus when He sent the Holy Spirit to rest on each one of them.
We’ll cover those two things a little more when we look at vv. 4-8 and when we look at Pentecost in Acts 2.
For now, just know this: Jesus had His Apostles, and you’re not one of them. Neither am I.
[ILLUS] I once went to a evangelism event for teenagers that featured a guy who was not only a supposed evangelist but was also a motorcycle stuntman.
At the beginning of one of his talks, after the worship band took a seat, he rode into the arena on his dirt-bike, did some stunt, and told the teenagers that they were all apostles like Peter, John, Paul, and the rest.
[APP] That was many years ago but there are still many people who refer to themselves as Capital-A Apostles. They don’t simply mean that they are messengers of the Gospel as we all are, they mean that they have the same apostolic authority that Jesus gave to His Apostles in the Bible.
This isn’t true.
There are not Capital-A Apostles today.
Paul was the last one chosen.
And John it seems was the last one living.
But while we can’t be Apostles like Peter or John, we can give ourselves to their teaching.
We can follow their lead by obeying what they tell us in their writings, which we have in the New Testament.
We can’t be Apostles, but we ought to believe their witness concerning Jesus.
The Apostles are the masters on the Master.
[ILLUS] Perhaps you’ve hear of Master Class, a website that allows you to learn from masters in their field for a price.
You can learn basketball from one of the best basketball players.
You can learn cooking from a world-renown chef.
You can learn singing from a Grammy-winning musical artist.
But if you want to learn Jesus, you must go to the Apostles for they are the masters on the Master.
We’ll see that as Jesus works through them in Acts.
[TS] What is Acts about?
It’s about Jesus working through His Apostles.
ANSWER #3: The Book of Acts is about Jesus Working Through His Apostles by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-8)
ANSWER #3: The Book of Acts is about Jesus Working Through His Apostles by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-8)
4 Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, “Which,” He said, “you heard of from Me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
[EXP] Gathered together, and as some translations have it, eating together, Jesus commanded the Apostles not to leave Jerusalem until they had been baptized by the Holy Spirit.
In John 20:22, Jesus breathed on His Apostles, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Now in Acts 1:5 Jesus told them that it was about to happen.
By the overwhelming power of His Holy Spirit they would be His witnesses.
Notice that the Holy Spirit is the promise of the Father that the Apostles heard about from Jesus. In John 14 Jesus said to His Apostles…
16 “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;
26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
Notice that the Apostles’ baptism of the Holy Spirit is compared to John the Baptist’s baptism of water.
John the Baptist himself said that he baptized with water but that the Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit (Matt 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16).
In fact, when John became certain that Jesus was the Messiah, he said in John 1:33…
33 “I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’
The baptism of John was a symbolic physical washing that represented purification and repentance from sin by being immersed in water.
The baptism of Jesus is an actual spiritual cleansing that purifies the sinner and empowers repentance by immersion in the Holy Spirit.
The baptism of the Spirit joins every believer to Christ Jesus so that, in the words of Romans 6, we are “buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life… knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin…”
Because of the special circumstances regarding the birth of the church, the Apostles had to wait for Pentecost before they received this baptism of the Spirit.
Ever since then, however, all believer’s are baptized with the Holy Spirit at salvation.
But all this talk of the kingdom of God and the coming of the Spirit got the Apostles thinking about passages like Ezekiel 36 and Joel 2, passages that connect the ideas of Kingdom and Spirit. So they asked in v. 6, “Lord, is it as this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”
It seems that the whole time the Apostles had been following Jesus, they had been thinking about the Kingdom—or at least their idea of it and their place in it.
One time they argued about which one of them would be greatest in the Kingdom.
Another time the mother of James and John asked if they could sit on each side of Jesus when He came into His kingdom.
And another time, when they came with Jesus to Jerusalem, they expected the Kingdom to suddenly appear.
Here, it seems they thought the kingdom might appear after the Holy Spirit came upon them.
In response, Jesus doesn’t rebuke their idea of a kingdom, for when Jesus comes again He will make His Kingdom manifest on the earth.
Jesus doesn’t rebuke their idea of the Kingdom being restored to Israel, for when Jesus comes again the Israel of God (i.e., Jews and Gentiles who have faith in Jesus as Messiah) will rule alongside Him (Rom 9:6; Gal 3:7, 29; Phil 3:3).
What Jesus rebukes is their desire to know when the restoration of the kingdom will take place.
As Jesus said, it’s not their place to know the timing of something like that either generally or specifically. The Father by His own authority has fixed the time when Christ will come His kingdom a full reality on earth.
The Holy Spirit is coming upon these Apostles, not so they can determine when the King will come in His Kingdom, but so that they can be His witnesses on the earth until that day arrives.
[ILLUS] Every now and again we hear about some crazy who thinks he has figured out when Jesus will return and setup His kingdom on earth. Although it wasn’t for the Apostles to know, it is apparently for him to know.
This guy and others like him can’t wait to show you how they’ve calculated the days or interpreted the signs or broken the Bible code, but it always ends the same.
These guys are wrong.
And they’re wrong because it’s not their place to know when such things will take place.
[APP] As followers of Jesus, it is not our place to know when; it’s our place to witness to who.
When don’t know when Jesus will return, but until He does, we have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to be His witnesses “both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth,” (Acts 1:8).
The whole book of Acts will follow this outline.
Acts 1-7 is shows the witness of the Apostles in Jerusalem.
Acts 8-12 shows the witness of the Apostles in Judea and Samaria.
And Acts 13-28 shows the witness of the Apostles going to the ends of the earth.
The Holy Spirit empowered the Apostles to witness to Jesus Christ and Him crucified and resurrected throughout the known world.
The Greek word for witnesses in v. 8 is the word martyrs. A martyr is one who dies for his faith.
Most if not all of these Apostles in one way or another would die as martyrs because of their witness to Jesus.
What power could could have convinced them to lay down their lives?
Only the power of Jesus, the power from on high, the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.
[TS] …
Conclusion
Conclusion
Do you believe the Holy Spirit-empowered witness of the Apostles concerning Jesus?
As we’ve seen, they believed Jesus was alive after He suffered and died on the cross.
Do you believe that Jesus suffered on the cross?
Do you know why He suffered on the cross?
He suffered and died on a Roman cross as God’s sinless Son, the one sent to pay the price for our sin so that we could be saved from God’s wrath.
Every sinner—and that’s everyone except Jesus—who has not called on Jesus for salvation is under the wrath of God and deservedly so.
But Jesus took that wrath in our place on the cross so that we would be saved.
And having paid for our sins and having no sins of His own, Jesus rose from the dead three days after His death because death could not hold Him.
His resurrection is proof that all who call on Him for salvation shall be saved.
11 For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; 13 for “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Will you call on the Name of the Lord this morning?
Will you be saved?
Will you believe the witness of the Apostles?
Will you give yourself to their teaching?
And what do they teach but that Jesus is alive!
Will you be His witness to the ends of the earth? Will you be His witness here at home?
Oh Lord, if no other will. Let it be me. Lord, I have called and I am calling on the Name of Jesus for salvation. I have been joined to Christ by the baptism of the Spirit. I have professed my faith in Christ before your people through the baptism of water. I believe the testimony of the Apostles. Cause me to give myself more and more to their teaching. Empower me with Your Spirit so that I might witness to the truth of Your Word to the ends of the earth.