Sermon Tone Analysis

When we last met we began looking at the book of Acts.

It was really just an introduction to this glorious letter.

There was one thing I wanted to do as we began to look at this letter and that is to clear out the presuppositions we have heard about this letter.

This letter although very clearly provides for us an accurate history of the church its inception and its growth I don’t want us to miss what is going on in and through this letter and who is at work through out the entire letter.

The force behind the inception and growth of the church is the Holy Spirit and the purpose of the church is a means of building up the Kingdom of God.

Possible put in Matthew 16:16-19.

The church is comprised of people who are actually very fallible.

We are depraved and we are full of sin.

We have issues of pride and selfishness and as I said the last time we are self indulgent and self centered and self serving.

It is a wonder the Church has made it this far.

The good thing is the church is not about us, it is not about what we do but it is in fact all about the trinity.

If it were not for the Holy Spirit the church would be nothing but a cesspool of depraved groups following after a charismatic shysters.

The key to understanding the true purpose of the church comes when we understand the One who has brought the church into being.

The church although has many facets, many components, it truly only has one real purpose and mission, and it is not to follow some flashy charismatic fool.

The mission of the church is to spread the gospel and the only way the church can stay on point is if the church understands the force behind its empowerment.

As we look at our passage this morning we will continue to focus on the Acts of the Holy Spirit as we look at The Holy Spirit will Empower Witnesses to Spread the Gospel.

The Holy Spirit will Empower Witnesses to Spread the Gospel

We will see this in our text today in Acts 1:4-8,

Now we have here in the first eleven verses of this chapter a more detailed account of Jesus commissioning His eleven apostles.

We saw a summarized version of this in the last four verses of Luke.

Luke repeats the event here with a little more detail because He is highlighting what Jesus has done and the coming of the Promised Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit Promised

Verses 4 and 5 we find a command to stay and wait.

Look with me at verse 4. “Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised.”

The phrase here ‘Gathering them together’ can be better translated staying with or eating with.

The original Greek has the idea of getting together to eat.

So Luke is not so much here referring to being on the Mount of Olives but at some point while Jesus was coming and going through out the time the disciples were gathering in the upper room in Jerusalem.

Just like we saw in Luke 24 when the men were all gathered together and talking about how the two on the road to Emmaus ran into Jesus and Jesus taught them the Word and as they are speaking Jesus appears in the middle of their group.

The men were astonished and He told them to look at His hands and feet and see the holes as proof of the fact that Jesus was not dead but alive and He was not a spirit but flesh and bone.

Then right after that what else does He ask for, food.

They were gathered together.

In fact in Portuguese we say juntar for lunch now the word doesn’t mean lunch it actually means join or get together which is what they are doing here.

They are getting together for a meal any one of those which Jesus had during His forty days on the earth prior to the ascension.

It is at one of these moments when they are eating together in Jerusalem Jesus tells them to stay and wait.

They are to stay and wait on the One who has been promised to them by the Father.

This is not new news to them Jesus told them many times the Father was going to send a Helper.

The Helper has been promised from long ago look at some of these texts in the Prophet Isaiah

Also in Ezekiel 39:29

And of course the passage in Joel 2;

So these men should have already had an idea of the promise of the coming of the Spirit and if they were a little fuzzy on what Jesus was talking about and if Theophilus didn’t know then all they would have to do is look back at Luke 24:49;

This is all Theophilus would need but the apostles would probably have remembered these words of Jesus.

Listen this event that is about to transpire in a few days shouldn’t come as a surprise to these men because it is made very clear what they are to do they are to stay and wait until they receive the power from the One who has been promised, the Holy Spirit.

Jesus affirms the promised One and the reason why they must stay and wait in verse 5.

He continues, “for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Jesus is associating John’s baptism with the baptism of the Holy Spirit, why? Well first of all John’s baptism is in and of itself identified with a water baptism.

It is a baptism of cleansing one that prepares for the coming of the One who will usher in the Kingdom, namely, Jesus Christ.

So in the same way the water baptism is identified with John, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is identified with Jesus Christ Himself.

Which mind you is why now water Baptism is synonomous not with John but with Jesus because now when we are baptized in water it is an outworking of our faith and our identifying with Jesus’ death burial and resurrection.

It doesn’t make us clean like it did with John.

So Jesus is saying the baptism of the Holy Spirit comes from Him.

Also the baptism of the Holy Spirit is associated with John’s water baptism here because it also looks back at Jesus being baptized by John.

Jesus needed to be baptized by John for the sole purpose of identifying with mankind.

Just as man needs to be cleansed of sin Jesus had to identify with mans need.

No this doesn’t mean Jesus had sin that He need to be cleansed of.

He only identified Himself with us so that all righteousness could be done by Him.

Since He is our perfect and righteous substitute He had to fulfill what man had to do and since man needs to be cleansed He needed to do so as a picture of His submission to the Father’s will.

In Him we truly have a perfect high priest.

One other element of the association of John’s baptism and the Holy Spirit baptism has everything to do with the equipping and the commissioning of the servants of God.

When Jesus was baptized by John it was something of an ordination for Jesus.

It was the beginning of His earthly ministry.

At the baptism we see the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all at once working in conjunction with One another.

John pointed to the Kingdom coming and Jesus is the One who brings on the Kingdom.

This is a bit of a picture of what is to come.

Not many days from now the Apostles will be baptized with power by the Holy Spirit it will be their full commissioning into the ministry.

But for now they have to stay and wait on the coming Holy Spirit.

The promised Holy Spirit will come, it will be about a week in a half to two weeks but they are to stay and wait in Jerusalem.

Now Jesus provides instructions for these men and provides for them a promise of the Holy Spirit yet these men still have a narrow view of what God is doing and what God is about to do.

Let’s go ahead and look at how these men still had a narrow view of Kingdom and restoration.

Verse 6 we have the reaction of the apostles to Jesus.

Verses 1-5 were a basic summary of what occured in the entirety of the gospel of Luke.

Now is when we actually arrive at the Mount of Olives and they receive their orders from Jesus.

First they are to stay and wait but that is only for a short time.

After their stay and wait period is over they will move and Jesus provides for them the orders in verses 6-8.

These men are still stuck on the little picture, look with me at verse 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?” Remember what the nation was waiting for.

They were waiting on a Messiah who would free them from the oppression of the Roman Government.

They were looking for a national and political leader.

Jesus is this leader, He is the Messiah, the Christ, the One chosen by God to sit as King.

The only problem with what these men were thinking is they were looking at a narrow scope of the Kingdom.

Yes, the kingdom of God will consist of the nation of Isreal and yes it will restore Isreal to its rightful place and land and God will reign forever over a perfect and righteous nation and fulfill His promises.

But the restoration Jesus is bringing and the oppression He has Saved people from is so much deeper then political and national, it is the oppression of sin and it is a restoration back into a right relationship with God the Father.

Spirit Restoration

Jesus’ response to their narrow view of the Kingdom tells us two important truths about God’s promise to Isreal.

First is He is keeping His promise; Jesus responds in verse 7 “He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority.”

See there are some churches today and some sects of Christianity that will teach Isreal is cut off.

I am not sure exactly how they would handle this passage here because if Isreal was cut off then why wouldn’t Jesus have said so.

He doesn’t.

All Jesus does here is redirect their focus from a national, political purely ethnic and physical restoration which is all they are focused on to a future national, political, physical restoration.

God has not taken away His promise or gone back on His promise to the nation.

If God has gone back on His promise and cut Isreal off from the kingdom and transferred it to a new group then that would make God a lier and God can’t lie.

Look what Jesus is saying here is don’t be focused on when the Kingdom will be established.

This is a time God has fixed which means it is a date already written down.

I personally keep a task list.

On my list I have projects and one of them of course is my sermon.

It has to be ready by 8 a.m. on Sunday Morning whether I am ready or not it has to be completed.

It is a fixed time it is similar to God fixing the time of the coming of the Kingdom.

It is fixed it will happen.

We are not to know when this will happen it is not our focus.

That is why people like Howard Camping and the proponents of the blood moon prophecy are foolishly wasting their time and in my opinion just out to make a little extra money.

There is no reason to focus on these foolish things, because the truth is the kingdom of God is coming and that day is already fixed and the only one who knows it and the only one who can make that happen is God Himself.

Jesus doesn’t want them to be focused on the times and epochs of when this will happen because then it will deter from the true mission of the church age and the true reason for the message of the gospel.

It will deter people from being restored spiritually back into a relationship with God Himself.