Waiting For a Sign

Acts 1:1-11

Acts 1:1–11 NIV

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 instructions 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.”

Acts of the Apostles is Luke’s second book in the Bible, as he also wrote the Gospel according to Luke It was Luke’s rendition of all that Jesus BEGAN to do. And yet, as we read through the book of Luke, we find that it is the entirety of His life on earth.

The Gospel of Luke tells us about Jesus - His birth - His life - His ministry -His death - His resurrection. It’s all there. It is the beginning of the story of Christianity - only the beginning. It is the beginning of what Jesus did - it is a summary of what he had done while living on the Earth, but still it was only the beginning. If the story had ended with the Gospels, it would be a tragic tale, but it does not end there. In his second book, the book of Acts, Luke goes on to tell us about the rise and spread of Christianity in the early days.

For all of us, we think of life on Earth as the entirety of all that we will do or accomplish, so we have poems like “The Dash”

The Dash Poem (By Linda Ellis)

I read of a man who stood to speak At the funeral of a friend He referred to the dates on the tombstone From the beginning...to the end

He noted that first came the date of birth And spoke the following date with tears, But he said what mattered most of all Was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time That they spent alive on earth. And now only those who loved them Know what that little line is worth

For it matters not, how much we own, The cars...the house...the cash. What matters is how we live and love And how we spend our dash.

So, think about this long and hard. Are there things you'd like to change? For you never know how much time is left That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough To consider what's true and real And always try to understand The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger And show appreciation more And love the people in our lives Like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect And more often wear a smile, Remembering this special dash Might only last a little while

So, when your eulogy is being read With your life's actions to rehash... Would you be proud of the things they say About how you spent YOUR dash?

It’s a poem that is often read at funerals, or even at graveside services, because we want to encourage people to live out their dash in such a way that their lives have purpose and meaning. Life is short, and we are limited in what we are able to do by the date of our birth and death, but Luke says that the Gospel that he told in his first book was not the full story of what Jesus was able to do. In fact, he says that it was just the beginning of all that He was able to do!

John Peter Lange, in his Commentary on Acts says: “The ascension of Jesus is not only the leading event which is common to both treatises, but it is also the turning-point of both. It was the glorious termination of Christ’s visible walk on earth, and also the beginning, alike momentous and rich in promise, of his invisible presence and his operation on earth.”

John Peter Lange et al., A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Acts (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), 8.

On the day that Jesus was taken up to heaven during His ascension we find that The beginning of all Jesus had accomplished was completed, but now the Gospel pauses, and the history changes. It is no longer the story of what Jesus was able to accomplish in His person, but now

The history of the Acts of the Apostles, and the church begins.

This ragtag group of disciples that really just wanted to go back to their life squeezed every bit of teaching and instruction from Jesus. They watched until they could see Him no longer in their sight. They wanted to be with Him. They wanted to experience all that He had to offer them until He was gone from their sight. Then, their desire was to just get on with their lives. But Jesus gives them one final command: they were to go back to Jerusalem and await the arrival of the Holy Spirit. This is not what they wanted, but it was necessary for them to continue the teaching and life of Jesus in the world. It meant self-denial on the part of His followers.

As Jesus promised the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples wanted more information. We are so often guilty of the same thing! We are given a little bit of information, and we want the full scoop. Sometimes, the full story is not for us to know, and so there is this uncertainty. The disciples wanted to know - they had no doubt that God was going to restore the kingdom to Israel. Jesus doesn’t really refute that claim, but He does tell them basically that it is not their concern! They were still stuck in this mindset that since Jesus was the Messiah that it must mean that Israel would be restored to its place of prominence.

For many, many years, long before any of us were living, literally every time something highly unusual takes place, there are those that tout it as a sure sign that the end is near. Throughout my life, I have seen all kinds of predictions and claims about the end times. There will come a day when Christ will return, and the dead in Christ will be raised to new life in heaven. Jesus tells us that two men will be walking in a field, one will be taken and one will be left behind. The end of times will come, for sure, but I am more concerned about the end of life for any one individual than I am about the end of time for all people. Each individual life is only given so much time, and a decision to live for Jesus must be made during that time. It’s all the time we have, and none of us knows how long that is.

I think I told you about the time we offered a Sunday School class on the book of The Revelation called “The End” and how many people showed up thinking we had some insight into the timing of the end times. Over the last several weeks I have seen all kinds of claims by people of faith that this experience that we are going through right now is “obviously” a sign that the end of the world is coming soon. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories out there, and Christians are certainly not exempt from conspiracy theories.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I do not buy into conspiracies. I will say that people will use any chance they get to forward their own personal agenda. Democrats will use anything they can, including a worldwide pandemic to try to oust Republicans from office, and Republicans will use anything they can, including a worldwide pandemic to oust Democrats from office. Those that will make money off of a vaccine will do anything they can to put their own vaccine forward, that is true. That hints more at the selfishness of sinful humanity than it does at the reality of the situation at hand. You’ve probably heard all kinds of conspiracy theories, and getting to the truth can be difficult these days.

I came across this fun little video that pokes fun at all of the theories out there:

Video

Can I just encourage you to be careful about falling for every conspiracy theory that comes our way. Can I also encourage you not to jump to conclusions about the meaning of all of this as to the end of times and what may or may not be coming as a result of this virus. It may be that God is bringing time to an end - it may not be. That is all we can claim for certain. Jesus said here that the Father has set the times. In other words, it was not something that the disciples should be concerned with. They were to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the promised Holy Spirit. They were to continue the work that Jesus started on Earth. They weren’t to get caught up in conspiracy theories and be so concerned with things that they could not effect. They were to be involved in the work of Jesus in the world.

I would suggest to you this morning that that instruction was not just for the disciples that were there that moment, but as disciples of Jesus, the instruction is still very much for us today as well. There is so much more for us to do than try to figure out when the end is coming. We are to advance the kingdom of Jesus — we are to live our lives as Jesus would — caring for the poor and the hurting. We are to stand up for the helpless and the deprived. We are to do good to as many people as we possibly can while we walk this Earth.

Jesus didn’t argue with the disciples about what was coming next, he simply pointed out that there was more for them to do. He gave them quite the task to fulfill, and they certainly needed to not get distracted by worrying about things they couldn’t change. And what a task he had for them.

They were to be witnesses of all that Jesus taught them, and they were to start right where they were!

Thankfully, they were not going to have to do it on their own. They were to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The message was of utmost importance, but they were told to wait. After the Holy Spirit came on them, Jesus said they would be His witnesses, not only in Jerusalem, but in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the Earth.

They would wait: Francis Chan says, in his book The Forgotten God: (The disciples obey because that’s what people do when someone rises from the dead and gives instructions.) Jesus’ disciples had no idea what or whom they were waiting for, or what it would be like. But they were expectant and trusting because Jesus had instructed them to wait for this good gift.

Chan, Francis. Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit (p. 30). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.

The word, ‘power’ comes from the Greek word, ‘dunamos’. We get our word dynamite, from the word dynamos. It means a force, it means a miraculous power. It means the explosive power of God. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will have dunamos, the explosive power of God. Then he says to his disciples, “You are going to be empowered by the Spirit to take my message into all the world.” You have to remember when you read those words exactly who Jesus was talking to. He was talking to his disciples, who for the last 3 years, couldn’t get much right. Never 1 time did Jesus say to his disciples, “Man you guys have such great faith, I can’t even believe I am here with you!” Over and over again, he said, “Don’t you guys get it? You are with me and yet you still have such little faith!”

And yet, the future of the movement that Jesus began was placed in the hands of these disciples. These people that so often didn’t get it were being left with the responsibility of moving God’s purposes forward and completing what Jesus began to do. The Acts of the Apostles is the description of how that bumbling group of 11 apostles and a little over 100 others who were Jesus’ followers would do just that. It was not by their own might or by their own power or by their own intuition or their own brilliance that the kingdom would be advanced. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that would come to them on the Day of Pentecost. But first they had to wait!

Waiting is hard! I don’t like to wait! I wish we could have not had to wait during this time to be together for worship, but there is value in waiting. If we are going to be the church that this community needs at this time, we will not do it because we are brighter or stronger or wiser than others. We will be the church that our community and our world needs if we will wait on the Lord to fill us and to guide us in all that we do. We will be the church that this community and this world needs if we will seek God’s direction for everything we do. We don’t want to get out ahead of what God has for us to do, but we don’t want to miss the moment! He has much for us to accomplish — there is much that the church of Jesus is to do, and it is about so much more than gathering in a building.

We will do that again - we will begin doing that next Sunday, but there is so much more that God wants us to do! Let me ask you a question in closing this morning. Do you find yourself looking up toward heaven, hoping that Jesus or someone will do the very thing that God has called and empowered us to do? That is the challenge for us today! I beg of you — as we begin to come together again next week — may we never be the same. Let’s not just “go back” to what we were before. Let’s “go forward” into all that God wants us to be as we are empowered by His Holy Spirit.