Patience & Power

Introduction

We are continuing our study of Acts this morning. Last week Devyn asked me if I would preach one verse at a time because if so it was going to take a very long time to get through the book. My answer: “depends on the verse.” This morning, we’re going to pick up the pace and see what God has for us in 5 verses. So, we’ll be going over Chapter 1, verses 4-8.

As a recap of last week: Jesus Christ’s Resurrection was proven by Him in many ways over the course of 40 days. In addition, His Resurrection itself is proof that He is all that He ever claimed to be and all He ever claimed would happen. In Him, we have certain hope of our own resurrection one day, at a time appointed by the Father. This hope is not one of wishing it might happen but of knowing it will happen, because Christ said so, and the Holy Spirit verified Christ by raising Him from the dead.

What we have here in these verses, 4-8, is a discussion between the disciples and Christ that could take place today, with very much the same language. The world is obsessed with knowing the future and with human beings having the power to control it. The Church is, sadly, no different than the world in this regard but we should be. We should be eager for Christ to return and establish His Kingdom on Earth but we shouldn’t worry about when it is going to happen. We must remember that He said He would build His church and the gates of hell would not overpower it. Our zeal for seeing the Church of Christ built should not be misplaced faith in ourselves to see it done. We are but under-shepherds and workmen; we do as we are told and He bears the brunt of the work. After all, it is the Holy Spirit who changes hearts towards God, not my preaching or anyone else’s for that matter. Have you ever tried to change someone’s heart? That’s not easy work and I’ll posit that it is truly impossible without the Holy Spirit.

The Good News is — there’s always Good News with Jesus Christ — the Good News outlined by our risen savior in these verses we’re immersing ourselves in this morning is that the Father promised power through the Holy Spirit to His witnesses. This is righteous power, not self-interested power, not power to make ourselves glorious or rich or powerful from a material standing — but power that matters for eternity, power that goes beyond being remembered by man, power that results in us one day seeing our Lord in Heaven face to face. This is Holy Spirit Power.

Prayer

Most magnificent Father. Thank you for this time together with your people, your Word, and You! Open our minds this morning to receive your divine wisdom. Help us to understand your Scriptures and to apply them to our lives. Quicken us, Lord, to obedience and action. For your glory. For the sake of Jesus Christ. With the Power of the Holy Spirit. In the name of Christ, Amen.

Acts 1:4-8

Acts 1:4–8 NASB95

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.”

Well, there you have it, the discussion between Christ and His disciples. These are among His last words during His earthly ministry and He’s still pointing His people in the right direction.

Gathering & Waiting -v4

Acts 1:4 NASB95

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;

The phrase “gathering them together” is one that hasn’t enjoyed a unanimous translation so some of Bibles may show it as “eating with them,” or “staying with them.” Regardless of this, the meaning is not lost and remains the same for us: Christ was with His disciples.

“He commanded them” to stay in Jersualem and wait. Our Lord didn’t tell them it would be wise to be patient. He didn’t tell them to try to wait there. He didn’t tell them to take things into their own hands and get the work started. No, He commanded them to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father.

There are appointed times for everything and we will drive ourselves into despair trying to bring about anything for which it is not yet time. More on that when we get to verse 7.

“Wait for what the Father promised, ‘which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me;” - the Father promised His Spirit in ancient history and Christ had reiterated that promise during His ministry.

Ezekiel 36:27 NASB95

27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

Joel 2:28 NASB95

28 “It will come about after this That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions.

Cf. Isa 44:3; Eze 39:29; Joel 2:28

John 15:26 NASB95

26 “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me,

Cf. John 14:16-17; 16:7-15; John 7:37-39; Luke 11:13; Galatians 3:14;

Baptized - v5

Acts 1:5 NASB95

5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Here, Jesus recalls the beginning of His earthly ministry and the baptisms performed by John. In the 3rd chapters of both Matthew and Luke we find the words of John, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

John prepared the way for Christ - not that Christ needed the trail to be cut through for Him but that the hearts of people needed to be warmed up - softened - to the truth of the Messiah. Man had gotten the Jewish religion so out of whack that all of its signs & symbols, which God established to point His people to Himself, had been corrupted, turned into mechanical means of obtaining favor and oppressing the people themselves.

John called people to repentance - to confessing their sins to God and turning from them. His baptism was a symbol of repentance. He used water to symbolize turning away from sin.

“But, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” - this is a new kind of baptism. It is not done by a man and it is not readily visible. For those on the day of Pentecost it was both visible and invisible — but we’ll get into that when we get to chapter 2. I encourage you to read ahead each week, read through the chapter we’re in and the next each week to prepare yourselves for Sunday.

This baptism with the Holy Spirit is “the act of Jesus Christ, from Pentecost on, of placing every true believer with the Holy Spirit into the church at the moment of salvation.”

1 Corinthians 12:13 NASB95

13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

This is Christ immersing true believers into the Body of Christ - the Church - by means of the Holy Spirit. This happens to every believer and has since Pentecost. It happens once for that is all it takes. God is Sovereign and when He does a thing, it is done. When He stakes His claim on the soul; that soul is His. Period. End of Sentence. (Cf. John 10:27-29; Romans 8:38-39, 11:29; et. al.)

Once someone has faith in Jesus Christ as Lord of their life and Savior of their soul, they’re His forever. The evidence of this true faith is in a changed life - sudden or gradual, or both.

“Not many days from now.” - He has commanded them to wait in Jerusalem and now He tells them they won’t need to wait for long. He knows their condition; their propensity to worry and He helps them by telling them they will not need to wait for the Spirit very long.

Misplaced Priorities - v6

Acts 1:6 NASB95

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?”

Proverbs 8:5 NASB95

5 “O naive ones, understand prudence; And, O fools, understand wisdom.

They still did not understand the Kingdom. Verse 3 tells us that He taught them “things concerning the kingdom of God” yet here they are wondering about the temporal - the here and the now - the world they lived in. Now, I say it this way because we often talk about our ancestors in the faith this way.

We read Scripture; we read about the vacillating of Israel - the back and forth - the lack of continued trust in God to do all that He promised. We read about the disciples getting it wrong and Jesus having to explain things to them again, and again, AND AGAIN. Then what do we do? We doubt God and we try to do things our own way. We forget the witness the Holy Spirit has provided us in the Word of God and we seek understanding through other men. Never, in the history of the world has it been easier to read the very word of God. We can carry the entire bible in our pockets and search it for keywords and phrases in seconds. We no longer need to have giant books or carry 35ft scrolls. If we aren’t great readers, we can have the scriptures read to us in all kinds of languages and we can even be picky about the accent of the narrator. But, with all of that, with all of those blessings, we still forget the Word of God and focus our minds on the things we want instead paying attention to His Will. O, naive ones, indeed!!!

But, God is the very definition of patience. He will continue to guide us, just as Christ did here. These that had spent so much time with Jesus before His passion on the cross and so much time with Him after His resurrection, didn’t get it right and asked our Lord about restoring the kingdom to Israel but in their folly they prompted Jesus not to rebuke them but to redirect their attentions to more important matters.

Not For Us - v7

Acts 1:7 NASB95

7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority;

“It is not for you to know” - Jesus didn’t say this restoration wouldn’t happen but rather that it wasn’t for them - or us for that matter - to know when it would happen. He removes the burden of knowing all things.

Some folks want to know when they’re going to die or who their children will grow up to be or many other things that we know we just can’t know until it happens.

When I was a young man, a devout gentleman took me under his wing as an apprentice. He owned a computer business and I was charging headlong into that industry. When he offered me a job and the opportunity to learn from him, I jumped at it. Little did I know that the reasons God had for intertwining our lives was more for spiritual blessings than business. To be fair, I learned a lot from him about technology and business, but it was Mark’s continual discipleship of me that stuck. Had I known that Mark would use our time together to speak to me about God and the Scriptures, my response to his job offer may have been very different; after all, I was already a Christian and I wanted to learn about computers. I went to church on Sunday for the God stuff.

One of the things Mark told me has been ingrained in me ever since the day he said it. We were on one of many car rides visiting customers and I mentioned something about not planning much for life because Christ was going to come back soon. He smiled, turned into a parking lot, put the car in park, and explained to me how when he was about my age then - probably 15 or 16 - he thought the same thing about Christ’s return and didn’t think much of his life beyond the current day and how that set him up for hardship in life. His attitude, and mine, as teenagers towards the return of Christ was not an attitude of eagerness to see Christ and to see prophecy fulfilled. Instead it was an attitude of complacency and foolishness. We had decided, for ourselves, that Christ would return any day so there was no reason to do anything with our lives. That had pretty severe implications for Mark and he didn’t want to see the same for me so he corrected me while also explaining that we shouldn’t be foolish about our future, we also shouldn’t worry about it; that we can plan for the future without being so concerned with it that we leave God out of the plan.

We don’t need to know when the events of Prophecy will occur. We know many details about what will happen and even where but not when. That is for God to know, not us. There a great many theologians and preachers who claim to have figured out when Christ will return, for instance. Charles Spurgeon commented, at least once, about these people and he on one hand said he would “pass no censure upon” them “but time has passed censure of the strongest kind.” Those he spoke of had come up with their predictions in the 19th Century and before and that they had all been proven wrong. Many had died before the dates they predicted. Spurgeon said all of this in 1889 - that’s 137 years ago. It’s not hard to go through history and find the predictions of man laid to waste by God. Today, we have the same thing going on. Any time there is some kind of drama unfolding in the Middle East, someone claiming to be knowledgable in all things Scripture starts telling the world this is it, Christ is coming, scripture confirms it!

My friends, Scripture confirms a lot about the 2nd Coming of Christ but it doesn’t confirm a time or epoch - a season. In fact, Scripture confirms that we will not know until it happens.

Matthew 24:42–44 NASB95

42 “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. 43 “But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. 44 “For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

Cf. Lk 12:39-40; 1 Thess 5:1-2; 2 Pt 3:10; Rev 3:3, 16:15

It is a great comfort to know that it is not for us to know when things of the future will unfold. We are to spend our time being witnessing for Christ and doing all He commanded us to do. We should be comforted by the very idea that all things are under His power and authority so we need not worry.

For Us & Him - v 8

Acts 1:8 NASB95

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.”

I’ll remind you that we already discussed verse 8 a little a few weeks ago as being the “Table of Contents” of the Book of Acts. We started the year with Matthew 28, which is about the resurrection and the Great Commission. You may have noticed that the first 8 verses of Luke’s second book are a summary of the crucifixion, resurrection, and commission. I could have skipped these verses with the thought of allowing those two sermons on Matthew 28:16-20 to state the case but, at the risk of you growing weary, I believe it is imperative to preach the Word of God as it is and if that means there are repetitions, so be it.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” - Christ told them they would receive power, not that they would wrestle it away from someone else, not that they would claim it, not that they needed to pray for it or that they needed to do anything for it, except wait together in Jerusalem.

This power is a gift of the Holy Spirit and there is a purpose for it. That purpose is not for our Glory but His. The purpose is to give the ability to perform the task laid before us.

“You shall be My Witnesses” - This is the Great Commission yet again. We are to be Witnesses which means we will witness. Notice, Christ doesn’t say “you shall witness” — that leaves the chance of someone thinking “okay, I did it, done with that.” No, Christ says “You Shall Be” — “BE” — this isn’t what we will do, this is what we will BE — His Witnesses.

“Both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” - Notice the word here, “both.” Paul alludes to this in Romans 1:16 “16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” And, Christ in Matthew 10:5–6 stated that the Gospel would be proclaimed in amongst the Jews first. “5 These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them: “Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; 6 but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

The Gospel is for the world but the order in which it was go out was in the seat of the nation of Israel, Jerusalem, first, and then into the rest of Israel and then the rest of the world. And that’s what we see as the book of Acts unfolds the beginning of the Church of Christ.

Summary

In summary, Christ gathered his disciples, instructed them to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father. That promise is the Holy Spirit, who resides with every believer and has since the Day of Pentecost. The command of Christ to wait should comfort us because if He tells us to wait, we are assured that He is going to act.

The disciples did what we do and put the cart before the horse, worrying themselves about the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. Christ again provides comfort with a simple exhortation - it’s not for us to know the times or seasons which God has fixed. With the knowledge that He tells us to wait for the time fixed by God, we can rest our minds about the coming of anything He has promised.

And, finally, Christ comforted His disciples by telling them they would receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them. This power was so they would have the ability to do the work Christ was setting before them. For us, it is no different, we have work to do for Christ. The first disciples were called to BE witnesses, not just to witness, and we have been called to the same ministry. We have the same assurance of power - of ability to be - that the first disciples had. This power is manifested differently for us but it is still power to be that which He has called to be.

The sermon today is titled “Patience and Power.” We are to be patient because Christ has told us to do so. There are a great many verses I could have referenced for you on the virtues of patience but I didn’t feel the need to. All Scripture is indeed profitable so those verses are important as well but here in this passage of scripture Christ commanded his disciples to wait and told them some things aren’t for them to be concerned with. He went on to tell them they would have the power to do the things they were supposed to do and be the people they were supposed to be. These commands and assurances are for us today as well. We are to be patient because Christ said so and we will have power because Christ said so.

Prayer