Presence and Power

Acts 1:1–11 ESV

In the first book, O 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 and 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.”

Continuing in our mini-series: Why Are We Here? - examining the instructions Jesus gave to His church

Last week, we considered our responsibility as the church and as Christians. We all have a responsibility to proclaim the Gospel - to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus.

And that means we each have a responsibility to repent and believe. To change our lives to conform to Christ in Whose name we proclaim the Gospel.

And I ended with this:

God doesn’t expect you to do this alone.

That is why He sent His Spirit.

Pray for the Spirit. Pray that you would be aware of His presence. Pray that He would work His power in you. Pray that you would hear Him - be sensitive to His voice and His promptings.

Pray that He would reveal Christ to you more and more and turn your heart to love Him more and more.

We need to be clothed with power from on high, so we need to pray for God to clothe us.

So today, I want to explore this idea a little more fully. I want us to consider the responsibility we have and the role of the Holy Spirit in carrying out that responsibility.

And to do that, we are going to consider another post-resurrection appearance of Christ - the last appearance, in fact. We are going to see His final instructions to His church right before He ascends to heaven.

But in order to understand these instructions, we need to consider a few preliminary issues first. Because Luke sets this encounter with Jesus up in a very interesting way.

He starts with this:

Acts 1:1–2 (ESV)

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up…

Luke addresses the book of Acts to the same person he addresses his Gospel account. And here, Luke explains the difference between the two books.

In his Gospel account, Luke has already dealt with what Jesus began to do. His public ministry. His perfect life. His death and resurrection. All He did to provide salvation for us. But note: that’s how He started. That was only the beginning of His work.

So the book of Acts tells us what Jesus continued to do. In other words, the death and resurrection weren’t the end. There was still more to do.

And Luke lets us know that Jesus Himself will do more physically. This is how he ends this encounter - Luke bookends these instructions with what Jesus has done and what He’s going to do:

Acts 1:9–11 ESV

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.”

Jesus ascended physically, and these angels tell the disciples that He is going to come again the same way. But Luke doesn’t expound that here. He just wants his audience to know that Christ is physically coming again, because He has more to do.

He will complete the work He began.

But that is not Luke’s point in Acts. The purpose of this book is to show what Jesus continued to do in between His two comings. And the book of Acts records all that Jesus did through His church. Through the Apostles and their companions.

Through the disciples that followed Him, and the disciples they made that followed Him.

And we know that those disciples followed the commands to proclaim the Gospel and make disciples, and so did the disciples they made, and so did the disciples they made, and on and on and on it goes until we get to…you. And me.

Until we get to Montclair Community Church. Until we get to today, and we get to us.

And Jesus is still working. There’s no question about that. The only question is: What is our part in that?

In other words: why are we here?

And as we have seen, we are here because there is still work to do.

And thankfully, Jesus prepared us to do that work. First, Jesus didn’t leave until He told His church what was coming. Look again at what Luke says:

Acts 1:1–2 ESV

In the first book, O 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.

Note two things:

First, Jesus gave commands. Not suggestions. Not instructions to follow if the Apostles wanted to continue the work. Commands.

There are some who separate the God of the Old Testament from the God of the New Testament. The Old Testament God is all rules, and wrath, and judgment. The New Testament God is all love, and forgiveness, and freedom.

“So, you know, I’ll accept the command to love God and love neighbor because Jesus said these were the only commands I have to follow.”

Except Jesus never said that. He said these are the greatest commandments and they sum up the Old Testament Law. That I am on board with. But He never said they were the only commands we had to follow.

Not at all. Jesus gave commands to His church.

He has given commands to us. That’s first.

Second, note here that the commands came through the Holy Spirit.

Last week, we talked about how Jesus identified with us in every way, except for sin and repentance. And we talked about how He even accepted baptism - a baptism of repentance - to identify with us even though He had no sin to repent of.

And we all know the baptism story so well, don’t we? He comes to John to be baptized, John argues that Jesus should be baptizing him - why? - because he knew Jesus had no sin to repent of. But Jesus insists, and John baptizes Him, and heaven opens and… what?

The Holy Spirit descends and rests on Jesus, and the Father speaks from heaven: “this is my beloved Son with Whom I am well pleased.”

And we all know how important this scene is to the doctrine of the Trinity because all three Persons are present in the same place at the same time. And we know how important it was to serve as an announcement of Who Christ is - but there is more to it than that.

This shows us that Jesus was empowered by God the Holy Spirit. Jesus - the man from Nazareth - the human Who was just like us - He was given the Holy Spirit in order to carry out the work He came to do. He was given the Spirit in order to live obediently to the Father.

That’s why, right after this happens, Jesus gets to work. He goes off to the wilderness to face off against Satan. And He overcomes those temptations by the power of the Spirit.

And He then starts His ministry, preaching repentance in the power of the Spirit.

And He carries out His ministry, and stays perfectly obedient to the Father, and He went to the cross, and suffered without wavering, and died, and was raised on the third day all in the power of the Spirit.

And even after His resurrection, the raised and still human Jesus gave these instructions - these commands - to His disciples, as we see here, in the power of the Spirit.

Why is that so important? Why is Luke sure to point that out?

Because this same Spirit is given to all those Jesus passes His work on to. This same Spirit was given to the Apostles. And this same Spirit has been given to us.

So we can be obedient to His commands in the power of the Spirit. So we can proclaim the Gospel in the power of the Spirit. So we can each get to work by using the gifts He has given us in the power of the Spirit.

Luke is focusing on the Holy Spirit’s role in our mission as the church.

He goes on and says this:

Acts 1:3 ESV

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.

We have seen some of these appearances in the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke. We saw that He offered proof to His disciples in Luke’s account that we considered last week. He showed them His hands and feet. He offered to let them touch Him. He ate with them.

Remember, the Apostles were having trouble believing it all, especially the whole physical resurrection thing.

And the fact that He appeared to them over the course of forty days would indicate that we do not have a record of all His appearances, and we therefore do not have a record of all He taught about the kingdom after His resurrection.

But in what we do have recorded, we see two common themes. And they are: commands, and the Holy Spirit.

He tells us what to do, and then He tells us how He’ll do it.

In the Great Commission, we see commands and the Holy Spirit. We don’t only have the baptismal formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we have Jesus’s final words. He says to make disciples by:

Matthew 28:20 ESV

teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

We see the commands. We are commanded to teach all that He has commanded as part of making disciples.

And we see the Holy Spirit because Jesus said He is with us always, and His Holy Spirit is how Jesus said He would be with His church. He is physically in heaven. His body is glorified, but it is still human and can only be in one place at one time.

And He will return, as we saw, to finish what He started.

But until then, He is with us - He is with us always - by His Spirit. As Jesus gave His explanation of the ministry of the Spirit the night before His death in the upper room, He said this:

John 14:15–18 ESV

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Jesus told them that He is going away, and yet He says He will come to His disciples. This is not the Second Coming, this is the sending of the Spirit.

And He explains this by tying in the commands He gave them with the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit will come and that is how Jesus will come to His church. But note also that the Spirit is our helper. And what will He help us do? Obey Christ’s commands so we can carry out the work that Christ is still doing.

Just like the Spirit enabled Jesus to carry out His work and obey the Father during His earthly ministry.

And we saw much the same last week: Jesus gives the command to proclaim the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins in His name, and He ties it in to the ministry of the Holy Spirit:

Luke 24:46–49 ESV

and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

He tells them what to do, but then tells them to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes to begin the work.

Why?

Because the Spirit is Who empowered them to will and to do the work that Jesus gave them to do. And it is the Spirit Who empowers us to will and to do the work Jesus has given us to do.

And this is what He apparently preached to them throughout that 40 days of post-resurrection appearances:

Acts 1:3–5 ESV

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 Jesus continued to teach them what they needed to know to carry out the mission of the church, and He told them to wait until the coming of the Spirit to carry out the mission.

And He refers them to the baptism of John, which as we just saw, for Jesus, is when He was visibly baptized with the Spirit. He is telling them they will get the same baptism of the Spirit that He received.

And in His final day on earth, Jesus gave the command and the promise we saw last week - to proclaim the Gospel once the Spirit had been given to them. And if we continue on we read:

Luke 24:50–53 ESV

And he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.

And this parting and carrying off to heaven on the Mount of Olives - Bethany was on the Eastern slope of the mountain - is what we read about here in Acts, where we get the details of Jesus’s final words to the Apostles before His ascension:

Acts 1:6–8 ESV

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 and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

So notice a few things here. The Apostles had been with Jesus throughout most of His ministry. They heard His teaching. The saw His miracles. They heard Him again and again explain to the religious elite that their understanding of the Scriptures was very lacking.

Then, after His death and resurrection, they saw Him again. And they had now been with Jesus for 40 days hearing about the Kingdom of God. They have been with Him for 40 days getting more instructions - receiving more commands - because the church was given a mission - proclaim the Gospel and make disciples.

They were with Him for 40 days, as we just read, hearing about being baptized with the Holy Spirit before the work would begin.

And they still don’t understand. They ask Him if He is now going to restore the kingdom to Israel. If He is going to fulfill the rest of the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah as they understood them.

They didn’t understand what He was doing.

And if we’re going to be honest, there are plenty of times in our lives that we just don’t get what God is doing, aren’t there? When we can’t see how the circumstances we’re in are any good for us or the mission we have.

When we just can’t see how God can possibly use… this… to further the kingdom.

And so we ask the same thing: “Jesus, are you going to do something about this?”

Like the disciples here. They heard all Jesus said, understood their mission, but then looked around at their circumstances and said: “Jesus, are you going to do something about this?”

Because they knew the situation they were in. As we saw, Jesus told them to proclaim the same message He proclaimed: repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus told them to make disciples just like He had made disciples of them. Jesus told them to do what He did. And what He did got Him killed.

The Jewish leaders were against Him. The Romans were now involved. What was a ragtag band of fisherman and tax collectors going to do any differently than Jesus did.

So they ask: “Jesus, you want us to go proclaim the Gospel and make disciples? Look at the situation. We are going to be hated by our own people and the Romans are in charge and now very aware of us. Are you going to do something about this before we start? Are you going to restore the kingdom and be the Messiah we were all expecting?”

And we know the answer. Jesus told them not to worry about that right now, but to just carry out their mission in the power of the Spirit.

So too, for us, as I’ve said, this has nothing to do with how great our faith is, how long we have been a Christian, or how ready we feel to be part of the mission of the church. Our situation, like that of the Apostles, is irrelevant in this regard.

We have the power - the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We have the presence - Christ is with us to do the work. We have the commands - we have the Word of God.

We have everything we need!

And of course, when the Apostles asked this, the Spirit had not yet been given to them, so they couldn’t really understand. But once the Spirit was given, and they understood and they had the power of God working in and through them - all of those questions went away. And they just got to work. They didn’t question. They obeyed.

We have all received the Holy Spirit. And that means we just need to get to work - even through our questions, even through our doubts, even though we so often can’t understand why God works the way He does.

And notice Jesus’s response to their question. He tells them: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”

You see, Jesus doesn’t tell them it’s a stupid question. He doesn’t tell them their faith is weak or that they should know the answer. In fact, He tells them that they’re absolutely right. That He is going to fix the situation.

He is going to come as the Messiah Who will destroy all of His enemies and reign on earth.

He tells them they’re right to believe that and to look for that.

He tells them to believe it will happen. But that the “when” of it is not for them to worry about.

Believe it will happen - that ultimately everything works for good for those who love Him and are called by Him, and that ultimately He will be glorified in all the earth. Ultimately, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.

This is happening. This is what the two angels tell them - He ascended bodily, and He’s coming back bodily to finish the work.

But when is not our concern. When He makes our circumstances perfect is not for us to worry about. Just like it wasn’t for the Apostles to worry about. Jesus called them - and calls us - to do the work we’re called to do because we know He is coming again. We know in the end that everything will be perfect. So we shouldn’t concern ourselves with the when.

Because we are called to concern ourselves - not with what Jesus will do then - but with what Jesus is continuing to do now.

And that’s what Jesus says next. He tells them what He is going to do in them, and what He is going to do through them.

He is going to give them power. The Holy Spirit is going to come, which means He is going to come to them.

This is what we saw in the Great Commission. Jesus said that all authority is His. The word can also be translated as “power” and is in the Bible. Jesus says that all belongs to Him, and then tells them that He is with them.

He does the same thing here. Jesus will come to them in power: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”

He says “I will give you everything you need to be what you’re called to be and do what you’re called to do.”

And what are we called to be?

We are called to be His witnesses.

We saw this last week in Luke:

Luke 24:48 ESV

You are witnesses of these things.

But here it’s a little different. Here we see:

Acts 1:8 (ESV)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses…

Who we are is tied in here with the Holy Spirit. Who we are is tied in with Who the Holy Spirit is. Who we are, we are because of Who the Holy Spirit is.

We are those invested with the same power as Jesus of Nazareth. Yes, He was God in the flesh, but brothers and sisters we have God in us!

The same Spirit that enabled Jesus to obey is in us. The Spirit that empowered Him to carry out His ministry is in us.

We are Jesus’s witnesses because the Holy Spirit is in us.

Christ has given us all we need to be who we need to be.

So we need to be it.

“What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use.”—E.M. Bounds

MCC, the Spirit wants to use us. He wants to use us to carry on the work - to continue the work He began in Jesus.

We heard all about this a couple of weeks ago when Pastor David preached on the gifts of the Spirit. The Spirit has filled each of us, and He has gifted each of us - so He can use each of us.

Ephesians 4:4–16 (ESV)

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

… And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

This is what Christ command us to be when He said:

Acts 1:8 (ESV)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses…

And as you have heard me say: who we are will always work itself out in what we do. Christ has made us into His witnesses by sending His Holy Spirit.

So we would believe. So we would be willing to work. So we would be able to work.

And we are. As I said, Jesus has not left His church unprepared to fulfill our calling. He has given us everything we need.

He has granted us new life through His death and resurrection. He has made us into new creatures.

He has granted us faith to believe and has opened our minds to understand the Scriptures.

He has given us His Holy Spirit to work in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

He has given us gifts to use to be part of what God is doing through His church.

He has made us what we are - what He has called us to be.

Now we just need to do what He has called us to do:

Acts 1:8 ESV

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, and to the end of the earth.”

The church needs to be Christ’s witnesses to the world.

I want to notice a few things about this. First, unlike the Great Commission where we are to make disciples of all people and the command to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ’s name to all people, this command in Acts 1:8 has a purely geographical element to it.

Remember what we saw, the word in those commands for “nations” means “peoples”, as in, “people groups”. It isn’t a word that usually has a geographic connotation in the New Testament. Jesus was saying that nobody is excluded based on any worldly distinction.

And that is why we should not consider those purely missionary commands. They are first about being who Christ has made us and doing what He has called us to do as individuals and as a church.

But here, this is a purely missionary command. This is about spreading the message of the Gospel - being Christ’s witnesses - ultimately to the end of the earth geographically.

But I want us to think a rightly about this command. I’m going to challenge perhaps the way you have understood this command. I can’t tell you how may times I have heard a pastor preach this as a model for missions in their own church.

The apostles were to start in Jerusalem, which is a city. Then go to Judea, which was the province or “state” that Jerusalem was in. Then they should go to Samaria - which the Jews would have considered a different ethnic group from them, but Rome would have considered part of Idumea along with Judea and Galilee. Either way, once the Apostles were witnesses in their state, they should then move on to the next.

And then, following that outward pattern, they were to expand the mission over the whole earth - to the ends of the earth.

And so the model goes: we are to start in our own town - we should be witnesses in Montclair. Then we should be witnesses in New Jersey - expanding the mission outward. Then, we go to New York or Pennsylvania and we keep moving outward until the Gospel reaches the whole world.

But there are two huge problems with this understanding of this passage.

First, Jerusalem was not the Apostles hometown and Judea was not their home “state.” They were all from Galilee. By this model, their own “state” of Galilee would be at best a third priority for them.

Second, this model always makes the church that follows this pattern the center of the mission. There are about 300,000 churches in the United States. Was Jesus commanding 300,000 different missions just in our country?

I mean, think about it. If this were the model, then imagine we evangelize all of Montclair - likely doing what other Montclair churches are already doing or have already done. Then, once we’ve done it, we expand to the neighboring towns. So we start to evangelize Bloomfield. But Skyline has already done that, and they’ve already moved on to their neighboring towns, including Montclair.

Do we see the issue?

So what was Jesus really talking about here?

Well, let’s talk about Israel’s geography for a minute. I know that may seem very unspiritual, but just give me a minute. We’ll see that it is very spiritual.

Keeping in mind that the Apostles were not Judeans, why would Jesus start them in Jerusalem

Remember, before He died, Jesus told His disciples that once He was risen they should meet Him in Galilee.

Then, when some of the female disciples come to the tomb on the first Easter Sunday and find it empty, they are told by the angels there to tell the Apostles to go to Galilee. According to Matthew’s Gospel account, as the ladies are going to deliver this news, they meet the risen Jesus Himself Who tells them “don’t be afraid, go tell my brothers to go to Galilee where they will see me.”

Then, we saw that the giving of the Great Commission was given in Galilee.

All of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus recorded in the fourth Gospel take place in Galilee - the conversation with Peter likely in the hometown of the four original disciples, Capernaum, since they were literally right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee where Peter’s fishing boat was.

But then by the time we get to the appearances in Luke we considered last week - which is the day Jesus ascends - the Apostles are back in Jerusalem.

And then this, the same day as those appearances, Jesus takes them out of Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives, to Bethany, where He ascends, but not before telling them to go back to Jerusalem.

And we saw in Luke’s Gospel that the proclamation of repentance and forgiveness is to begin in Jerusalem, but that they were supposed to stay there until the Holy Spirit was given.

Here, we see that Jesus again gives the promise of the Holy Spirit, and tells them to start the mission in Jerusalem once He comes, and work outward from there.

And the point of it all starting in Jerusalem is a matter of geography. He sent them to Galilee first to meet them, then sends them back to Jerusalem to finish His instructions and fill them with the Holy Spirit. Because this is a matter of cosmic geography. It is a matter of Spiritual geography.

This is about the presence of God. This is all about where God dwells on earth.

In the Old Testament, as early as the book of Deuteronomy, God tells His people that there will be a place that He will choose to make His name dwell. And the idea of the “name” of God means His presence and His power. When we invoke the name of God, it is calling on Him to use His power.

And this place of God’s dwelling is a theme throughout much of the Old Testament. And ultimately, God chose Jerusalem to be the place where His name would dwell. That is where David put the Ark. That is where Solomon built the Temple.

Jerusalem was more than a city in Israel - it was where God chose to dwell among man. That’s why it was the capitol - the focal point geographically for the Jews. That is where God dwelt.

And He did, until God’s judgment in the Babylonian captivity. After the destruction of the Temple, the Ark was never seen again. God’s presence had left the Temple. This is what Ezekiel sees in a vision while in captivity.

And God’s people suffered centuries without His presence.

Until He came as One of us. Until our Emmanuel came in Jesus Christ. His presence was in the man Jesus.

And He was clothed with power from on high when the Spirit was sent to dwell in Him.

And He proclaimed repentance and forgiveness of sins in Israel, and was rejected. And He was brought to Jerusalem, where He was killed.

And after He was risen, He brings the disciples back to Jerusalem. And the presence of God in Christ leaves Jerusalem, as we read earlier, and is taken up to heaven.

And the Apostles are sent back to Jerusalem to begin their mission. But not before God would come from heaven and make His dwelling among them. Not before He would make them the place of His presence.

Remember what we saw in the Great Commission - Christ is with us always, to the end of the age! His presence is with us.

Jesus gave His disciples their mission, but not before His church would be where He would make His name to dwell.

Remember, repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be proclaimed in His name! That means in His presence and in His power.

There is something so much bigger going on in this command than a model for missions. It explains the mission more fully than I think we realize sometimes.

The mission - God’s mission - is spreading His presence over the face the earth. He is taking His presence that He chose to place in Jerusalem, and there in Jerusalem, He placed it in His church. And now, we bear the name of Christ, and have been sent to bring it to everyone, everywhere.

So this command is not a model for each church. It is the mission of the whole church.

And that means, we should not think about this as something we need to do as a church. We should understand that this is what we are already part of, as the church.

We are part of this mission to the ends of the earth. We are part of the mission that began in Jerusalem when Jesus made His home in the church by His Holy Spirit.

We are not to just send missionaries as a church, we are missionaries as a church. We are a church plant of the original mission Christ empowered His church to carry out by dwelling in them.

And that means, His name is here. His presence, and His power are here in us.

He truly has given us everything we need to carry out our mission.

Because it is His mission. God is the missionary that goes to the end of the earth!

And He does that through His church, in the power of His Holy Spirit. He does that through all of us - the Temple of God - by His Holy Spirit. We are where the presence and power of God are on earth.

So that means, we need to let the Holy Spirit do that through each of us, whose bodies are Temples of the Holy Spirit. You are where the presence and the power of God are on earth.

I am.

Each of us are.

And we are together.

We need to believe that, and as we saw last week, we need to cultivate that.

When we come together, we are the place where God dwells. Where His presence and His power reside. Do we come here on Sunday mornings expecting to meet our God and experience His power? Because that’s what we’re here to do. That is how we will all be His witness.

Do we each live our lives as if God is always with us? Because He is. Do we live as if His power resides in us? Because it does. And living in light of that is how we will each be His witnesses.

Are we using our God given gifts to be part of the mission God is carrying out through His church? Or are we waiting for our situation to change first?

“Once xxxxx happens, then I can commit to xxxxx.”

“One day, and I look forward to it, I will be able to take the time to really study the Bible.”

“One day, when xxxxx isn’t an issue anymore, then I can start going to the prayer meeting or join a community group.”

“One day, when my weeks aren’t so crazy, I can start to serve in a ministry.”

The Apostles said the same thing to Jesus. They wanted Him to change their circumstances before they embraced the mission He gave them. But He told them not to worry about their circumstances changing. Instead, He told them He would change them.

Acts 1:6–8 (ESV)

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…

If you know Christ, He has changed you. He has empowered you. And He is with you.

And He has commanded you to be His witness.

And I say to us as a church, we need to obey that command. Because we are where God’s power and God’s presence are when we are together. He has given us everything we need.

And I say to each of us, we need to obey that command. We know what we should do. The question is: what will we do?

Because you have God’s power and God’s presence within you. He has given you everything you need to do what He has called you to do.

So I repeat what I said last week: Pray for the Spirit. Pray that you would be aware of His presence. Pray that He would work His power in you. Not just right now - pray continually.

And I repeat what Pastor David said two weeks ago: decide what you believe your next step should be as a witness of Christ, and come speak to an elder about it, and take that step.

Or speak to someone you trust and ask them what your gifting is so you have an idea how to be a part of what God is doing - and be a part of it.

Get in the Word like never before and seek Jesus - know Him more and believe Him more.

But please, as Christ’s witness, as part of the mission of the church that began in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, as the very place where God dwells: don’t do nothing.