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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:
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:
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.
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