Beloved, this is God's Word. In the first book, O Theopolis, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day when He was taken up, and He, having given commands to the Holy Spirit, to the apostles whom He had chosen, To them he presented himself alive, 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 had said, You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. And when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel? And he said to them, it is not for you to know the times or the 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 of Judea and Samaria to the ends 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 sight. And while they were gazing into the heavens as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why are you standing and looking into the heavens? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we reflect on this day, about the ascension of Your Son, about the foundations of the Christian Church, preparing us to think about Pentecost in the weeks to come. Father, I pray that You bless the reading of this Word and its hearing. I pray that You would prepare our hearts by Your Holy Spirit's work. That everything that is said and everything that is dwelt upon are things that would strengthen us in our faith. And as they strengthen us in our faith, may they strengthen us in our witness of Christ to this world. And may people come to know Christ through us and through that witness. I pray that if there are those here who do not know you, Father, I pray that you would indeed call them to faith through these words. and that you would be made profound in each one of our lives. That we not simply fall into a trap of thinking of you on Sundays and then going about our days just like the rest of the world. Father, that you would be at the center focus of every single one of our lives. That we would see you as glorious and wonderful and majestic. and that we would love you and seek to serve you in all things. Father, I pray that you are glorified, and that you are honored, and that you are praised and proclaimed for the things that we do this day. And I pray that you would do this either through me or in spite of me, and this I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. We're going to spend some time looking at the birth of the church, or at least the Christian church in the Book of Acts, but I need to tell you something up front. The book of Acts is a history book. And before some of you kind of go, ooh, because I know not everybody gets really excited about history. We're all wired differently. And I get that. And I understand that. But bear with me for just a minute as we kind of talk about what that means. Because for many of us, history was taught to us when we were in school. And this is not to knock any of our school teachers. I married to one of them. But many of us when we were taught history in school, we were taught history in the context of more or less an exercise of memorizing names and dates and battles. And largely the only thing that that produced was a generation or multiple generations of people who dreaded history because that's all they associated history with. when we approach history is just a list of names to memorize or a list of dates to memorize. And I understand that names and dates are important, but when we approach history just in that context, we forget the largest portion of the word history, those letters, They spell the word story. In fact, the word history in English comes from the old Greek word historia. So you didn't think you knew that much Greek. You now know another Greek word, historia, which simply refers to an account of one's personal experiences, a narrative, a story that is told. That's where we get the word history in English. And everybody enjoys a good story. I mean, as a daddy growing up, both of my kids loved to have those bedtime stories read to them at night, whether they were stories that we would make up and have adventures and things like that, and putting them into those adventures, or stories from a book that we would read together. And those of you who are parents, which parent did spend some time reading stories to your children or maybe to your grandchildren at this point. We love those good stories and and as kids we enjoyed them when going to bed you know at night and we look forward to those stories. Can you imagine what our history classrooms would look like if we approached history in the same way that we approached those stories that we all loved as children growing up and even as parents loved reading to our children? You know, if history was approached that way, I think there would be far more people that would be much more interested. God, that's interesting and that's fun. And folks, that's how The book of Acts tells you the history of our church. History, when told as it ought to be told, is told from the perspective of those who are going through that history, reminding us that they were real people with flesh and blood, and real worries and concerns and challenges and trials, and that they too had adventures that they needed to trust in God for. The book of Acts has stories about arrests and challenges that people face, trials and murders and miracles and rescues and shipwrecks at sea and venomous serpents and mysterious visions and conspiracies by evil people. It's got all of those kinds of things that a good adventure story needs to have. And not once does it give us a list. to memorize of names and dates. Again, I understand that names and dates are important and have their place. But let's tell history from the perspective of those people who were struggling through it as we explore this book of Acts for a little while, as we tackle these chapters over the next few months to come. This is a story about some remarkable people and some remarkable events that God brought together and that He used at the very beginning of the most important institution in the history of mankind. the Christian church. Now the church, most of us know, was established all the way back in Eden. Adam and Eve kind of founded the first home church, or house church. We call it garden church, if you will. And the church has continued throughout history. But here, at Pentecost, which is next chapter, but here at Pentecost, we find the church becoming distinctly and undeniably, even very narrowly Christian in all its proper ways, shapes and means. That should be important to us. But why is it so important? It is because the Christian church is the ark, if you will, that God has provided for the salvation of mankind. Now I want you to hear that right. We are not saved by the church. We are saved by God's grace through faith. It's not faith in the church. It's not faith in Jesus Christ. You must be born again to see the Kingdom. That's a work of God in us. We don't do it. That being said, Paul also reminds us that it is that faith comes by hearing. And hearing by the word of Christ. It's Romans 10, 17. In those verses around that. And so God established the church. as the normal and ordinary means by which the gospel is preached to us, by which we go into the world and make disciples, both baptizing and teaching, as we look at Matthew 28 there. He established the church to be a place where the ordinary means of grace, are found, where we pray together, where we confess our sins together, where we worship together, where we sit under the preaching of God's Word together, where we sing praises together, where we have gathered together to grow in our faith. It is a place both for evangelism to take place and discipleship to take place, and especially discipleship in the life of God's people. Directing some to faith and exhorting others to live out their faith in such a way that they grow more and more mature. So to borrow the language of Peter, that we might make our calling and election sure. This is Apostle Paul even, in Galatians 4.26, speaks about the church as our mother. It's the place in which God normally and ordinarily gives birth to His people, and gives birth at least to the faith in His elect people. The 3rd century theologian Cyprian, who was a pastor in the city of Carthage, very famously put it this way. He said, outside of the church, There is ordinarily no salvation. In other words, to use the analogy of the ark again, to be saved from the flood, you had to be inside of the ark. There was no salvation outside of the ark. You had to be inside of Noah's boats. You can't be born without a mama. We're separate from your mama, to use the analogy of the church being our mother that the Apostle Paul will use. John Calvin in the Institutes, book 4, chapter 3, or paragraph 4, for those of you who might want to look that up, says that the visible church is the mother of believers. And away from her bosom, one cannot have hope for forgiveness of sins or of any salvation. Not that the church forgives you or saves you, mind you, but that the church is the place where the Word is taught and disciples are made and thus we enter into a right understanding of God and thus confession of our sins and that forgiveness that comes from Him. The Heidelberg Catechism question and answer 54 speaks about the church as that chosen body which Christ gathers, defends, and preserves for himself to eternal life. In other words, you want those benefits and blessings of being gathered together, defended, and preserved for eternal life, ordinarily that is found in the context of Christ's church. The Belgian Confession, which is kind of Heidelberg's counterpart at that time in the continental churches, Reformation churches, speaks of the true church as the assembly of those who are saved, outside of which there is no salvation. So why is this story important? It's a story of the institution that Jesus Christ founded to be His body, to be His people gathered together, fed and nourished in the Spirit. And it is in the context of that institution where we grow in our faith and mature. And beloved, as I look out this morning, most of you are in the context, whether it be through your baptism as children into the visible church, or through your profession of faith into the invisible church. Most of you are in that context, so you're connected to this history that is found beginning in the book of Acts. Our story, then, begins in verse 1 with Luke kind of writing this as a note to Theophilus. Luke's the author of Acts. He also, of course, wrote the third of the Gospels. And so this is kind of two parts of Luke's writing. Luke was not an apostle. He was a student. He was a physician by trade. learning under the Apostle Paul. And so he writes this to this guy by the name of Theophilus, which is who he wrote the Gospel of Luke to. And he points out, this is his second book. In the former book, that's the Gospel, I wrote about the beginnings of the work that this Jesus did. And he continues, he says, now these are the results of this work. We don't really know much about who this guy is. We know what his name is. His name literally in Greek means Beloved of God. That could be a title. Some people have suggested. We just don't know for sure. He seems to be a person of some standing in the community. If you look to books that are outside of Scripture, the extra-biblical book of 3 Corinthians mentions Theopolis as an elder in Corinth. Now, I say that with some clarification, because 3 Corinthians is not inspired scripture. It's not part of the text. It wasn't written by the Apostle Paul. It's something that somebody wrote and kind of attributed to the Apostle Paul probably about a hundred years after Paul's death. It's just church tradition. We've got to take it at that. But that being said, there's some church tradition that says maybe, possibly, could be. We just can't put the kind of weight on it that we can put for what the inspired word gives us. But that's pretty much what we know about this man. We just don't know much. A lot of people speculate about things. Some people speculate that the Book of Acts may have been part of Paul's defense when he stood trial in Rome. Wrap your head around that one for a little bit. We just don't know. But again he goes on then and by the time we get to verse 3 he speaks about what the apostles have been doing. And for 40 days they have spent time with Jesus. Now we know when we compare this with the gospel accounts that immediately after the resurrection The first appearance is on Resurrection Sunday there. They got up and they went to Galilee. And they spent time with Jesus there. So what it looks like took place is that they left Jerusalem. They went up to Galilee. They spent some of that 40 days in Galilee with Jesus teaching them. Why Galilee? It's a safe place. It's a place where they can retreat. It's a place where they can regroup. It's a place where they can kind of get their heads together after all of the traumatic events that took place with the crucifixion of Christ. And now, He's alive again. And what do we do with that? And how do we make sense of that? They were from Galilee. It was a good place for them to go, and Jesus instructed them in the Gospels to go there. You can see that in Matthew 28, verse 10, for example. But now they've come back, and somewhere towards the end of that 40 days, prior to the celebration of Tabernacles, or the celebration of the Festival of Weeks, which is just another name for the same event, they've come back to Jerusalem. That was one of those required festivals that the good Jews had to practice. And they come to Jerusalem for, if they were able to do that at all. So they continued this on-the-job training with Jesus, this teaching. And we're told that Jesus has been spending this time across these 40 days with them, showing Himself to be alive after His suffering, but there's this phrase in there, with many proofs. The Greek word that we translate as proofs literally refers to those things that cause something to be decisively known. Those things that we would need to assure us of the reality of some events. We're all wired a little bit differently, right? And thus we have maybe a different burden of proof for different situations. Because we love our children and we know that our children are truthful to us. Our children will come to us and will take their word at face value a lot of times. But maybe that kid down the street that has never told an honest story or tale in his life, we're going to take with a few more brains to solve. We have different standards depending on the context and situation. Jesus is engaging them across these 40 days and saying, I want to make sure that you have a clear understanding of the fact that I'm alive, that I've resurrected from the dead, and that that's a good thing that you're, you know, That you're of one mind, if you will, of that. We know a little bit of what he taught from the Gospel accounts. We know that certainly he allowed Thomas to touch his wounds. So there was a physical element. He ate with them. He mingled with them and spent time with them. But we also know that he taught them the Scriptures. The Book of Luke ends with this. And he showed them and revealed to them everything. written in the Old Testament, which is pretty much everything in the Old Testament. So he spent time teaching them the scriptures. The bottom line is, the focus is that they clearly understood that he had resurrected from the dead You've heard me say this before and I will continue saying this over and over again. One of the most important truth statements, if you will, one of the most important doctrines that we hold in the Christian Church is the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. If we lose that, we lose our faith altogether. Apostle Paul says if we lose that then no one's resurrected and we are to be pitied above all people. So for some, maybe seeing is believing. For some, maybe hearing from a credible source is believing. But for some, they may need more and more of those scripture proofs to go see all these prophecies in the Old Testament fulfilled in Christ. For some of them, they might need more reasoning and logic to understand, OK, philosophically, what does this mean now for us? Jesus spends 40 days with them, making sure they get to that point. And I think it's important to kind of notice that. Because there's really no one-size-fits-all model to evangelism. When we came to faith, we came to faith in very different ways. Each and every one of us has a story to tell. Some of you were believers before you remember anything other than that. Praise the Lord for that. Others of us have points in our lives where we remember not being a believer when God brought us to faith. But even in those contexts, God brought us to faith in different ways. And so we have a different story to tell. As a result of that different story, God engaged us through His Holy Spirit in various different ways. Same thing with apologetics. There's not a one-size-fits-all model of doing apologetics. And for some of you who have done apologetics, you know that. Because this kind of line of reasoning works well with this person, but then you try the same thing on that person, and they just beat you up for it. And you go, what happened? It's not a one-size-fits-all model. And thus, Jesus doesn't leave it at that. He spends 40 days with them, basically getting them to the point where they're all of one mind and ready for the next step, passing the baton off, if you will. And by the way, that's not something that ends with Pentecost. There should always be a process by which we are passing the baton, sharing our faith with those who come behind us, not necessarily being ever one deep in the life of the church. So there's always this sense that we're passing something along, skills, responsibilities, to the next person, but especially what we know about the faith. We get to verses 4 and 5, there comes this challenge, this charge. He says, look, you guys need to remain in Jerusalem, Until the Holy Spirit comes down upon you. He speaks about power. But there's this phrase here about being baptized by the Holy Spirit. And I want to spend just a minute talking about that or so. Because that's one of those phrases that causes a lot of confusion in the life of the church. First of all, it's simply a reference back to something that John had spoken in Matthew 3.11. John had spoken about himself baptizing with water. And that being kind of an outward expression, if you will, of repentance and being part of the visible church, that kind of language. That's why we baptize not only professing believers, but we baptize their children, that they enter into the visible church in that context. But baptism in the Spirit, he goes on to say, that comes from Jesus. So what is that? In scripture when you look at that phrase and you kind of look at how it's used in different ways and things along those lines, normally it's used in the context of spiritual rebirth. Kind of language of John 3.3, that you need to be born again. Be born again of the Spirit, born from above. All of those kinds of language. And thus, if you are a born again believer in Jesus Christ, it is safe to say that you are born, or that you have been baptized with water, and have been baptized by the Holy Spirit. But wait a minute, aren't these apostles already believers? Aren't they already indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Weren't some of the Old Testament saints indwelt by the Holy Spirit? The answer is yes. So what is going on here? Why is there this speaking about this kind of a second thing going on that they had not yet experienced? I think Calvin does a really nice job of summarizing that. He says, look, he says, because of the momentous events that is about to take place with the explosion of spiritual power coming upon these apostles. Jesus is setting it apart as something new. Just as the Holy Spirit came upon Samson and he did those mighty works. Just as the Holy Spirit came upon David and he did those mighty works. Soon the Holy Spirit would come on in power, not in regeneration, but in power upon those apostles. And they would begin doing mighty works. That's the context, I think, of what's being said here. Not so much that they're about to be born again. They haven't been born again yet. They've been born again. But the context there is about their coming into that role. And this is essentially this giving of power that's to come is just one more sure proof that the Holy Spirit is coming and working in the birth of this body, this institution. So should we expect kind of second things like that? You know, doves coming down, flames of fire and things like that in the light of the church? No. Pentecost was a very unique event and it's not something that we expect to be normative for the life of the church. But there is something wonderful that took place on that day to begin the birth of that distinctly Christian church from within the larger body of the Jewish church. And so we get to this passage and we move through our passage, then Jesus prepares them to leave. And for His leaving, the 40 days of training is over. It's about to go into their hands. Anybody who's ever kind of gone through job training at work, kind of knows that transition where you move from that point where the person who's been training you kind of walks alongside of you and does everything with you. to that point where he or she kind of says, okay, it's all yours, turns around and walks away. And you've got that for at least for a moment, at least this was my experience, that fear going, oh, what if I forgot something that I was just shown or instructed? What if I wasn't paying close enough attention? And now I'm responsible for this giant piece of machinery or equipment or whatever it happens to be. This is that point for these guys. Jesus is about to ascend into heaven, and that is exactly what He does. He passes the baton to them. Again, that's really part of what Paul talks about in Ephesians 4. Training up the saints to do the work of ministry in the life of the church. That's our job, is to equip others to do the work of the church. And then they're also sent off with that spiritual message, the gospel, that Jesus is alive, that he conquered the grave, and in him and there is life. And there's a reminder to a part of this charge. This is verse eight. As they go out, they're going to take the gospel to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. If you kind of, you know, maybe turn to the map in the back of your Bible or have a picture in your mind, you know, Jerusalem is kind of the center city where they are. And it's located in the region of Judea. And Judea is just south of Samaria, which is kind of the area that was once part of Israel, but they were kind of half breeds and nobody liked them much anyway. And then the rest of the world. In other words, you've got a job to do. You're going to start here locally, and you're going to continue out, and that's going to fan out. That's going to cover the globe. And beloved, we are still participating in that final part of that. The book of Acts, when it closes in its final chapters, kind of leaves you hanging. What's next? Well, part of the reason it does that, in terms of the what's next, is it's still ongoing. The story is still continuing, and we have entered into that as part of the church. And Luke is going to use this as the structure, even, as he tells us the story of Acts. He's going to focus on Jerusalem. And there's going to be problems in Jerusalem, and they scatter out from there. And he continues out to the works of Paul and his missionary journeys to the ends of the earth, at least as they knew the earth at the time. That's how that kind of explodes and structures. And then they're given one final proof. Jesus ascends into heaven, no gimmicks, no illusions, no camera tricks. He ascends and rises into heaven, and I don't know about you, but as for me, that's not something that I kind of expect to see every day. I see the illusionist do it on TV, David Copperfield kind of type stuff. But I know the illusion behind that. Jesus does a real deal. And so for me that would be about as good a proof as any and probably better than most. Jesus ascending into heaven. And I love the final scene there. And by the way, this is the fulfillment of the Apostles' Creed. That He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. But I love the final scene there. The Apostles are kind of standing and looking up. Because Jesus has risen up and a cloud kind of passes by. And He's gone. And they're still kind of standing up going, Wow, you don't see that every day. And there's two men, two angels, come and they walk alongside them. The angels aren't flying around, but they walk alongside of them and say, Man of Galilee, what are you doing? Don't you understand? He's going to return to you as He left. But you've got a job to do. Go into Jerusalem and wait to the Holy Spirit. You've got work to do in the meantime. I want to close with that as a final application. Because too many Christians, in their faith, are still kind of staring, at least proverbially speaking, standing and looking at the sky. Going, alright Jesus, you coming back today? Because I could really use you to come back today. There's stuff that I don't want to face, and I'd really like that to happen. We're not given to know the time, or the day, or the hour for those things. We have a job to do. Worship is part of that job. And remember, in that context, worship is not entertainment. It's not passive. It's active. We come to engage in worship. It's actually service. Part of our service to God. It's not necessarily an emotional recharge. So we feel recharged and then leave it behind and so that we go live our lives for ourselves the rest of the week. We look at it in a lot of different ways. We look at that job as a lot of different ways. We say, you know, the work of ministry belongs to somebody else. Let's either pay somebody to do it or wait for Jesus to come back again. We're going to pray real hard for it, but we're not going to engage it ourselves. Worship was never meant as entertainment. It was not meant as a recharge. And the work of the church is not meant for some individual bodies. There are individual bodies that are given gifts and callings to do specific things, but as a whole, the work of the church belongs to the church. Every single one of us are given a job. The purpose of our gathering here is to equip you, to send you to that work, both in terms of your faith and your maturity. and to continue doing that work until Jesus comes again. Because yes, when Jesus comes again, he will fix and make right all things that are broken and messed up. But until that time comes, it's our job as a church to do that. If we want to complain about the mess that our culture is in, that's okay as long as we take action to fix that mess. Because it's our job to take that action and fix that mess. You know, it's interesting, there's a lot of debate going on in the conservative churches about this question of social justice and a lot of churches are beginning to triumph over social justice and getting beaten up for it by other conservative bodies and things along those lines. It's not that social justice isn't important for the life of the church. It is. We're commanded to seek justice. That's part of the command that God gives us through Malachi in chapter 6 verse 8. The question is what are our motives? And remember our motives are important. If your motive to do justice is just because you've been given a guilt complex. for whatever reason, your upbringing, your background, your culture, etc. etc. etc. That's the wrong reason. That's the social justice warriors that are going out and chasing every windmill that they're going to find. If your motive for justice, let me just rephrase that, as a Christian, your motive for justice should be to glorify God, one, and to remake this world and the culture around us into something that honors that God. My parents used to tell me as a kid, If you see something that needs to be done, do it. If you see trash on the floor that needs to be picked up, pick it up. If you see something that needs to be repaired or fixed, don't wait for somebody else to do it. Just jump in there and do it yourself. Beloved, the Bible would teach us that if you see injustice in the world, fix it. not for your glory, but for Christ's glory. You see, work that needs to be done in the world, do it. You meet people that are defaming the name of Christ, fix that, rebuke them, and correct their view. Engage the world, engage the culture, and don't sit back with your remote hand on the couch waiting for somebody else to do that task. The Book of Acts is about a group of people who are commissioned to do a job. And because of that commission, and their willingness to do what God has called them to do, and empowerment by His Holy Spirit, the church goes from just over 100 people, just scattered across the globe. And you and I are here today as testimonies because of that. That's pretty cool stuff. That's something to be excited about, and that's something to be involved in. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you. And we thank you for your grace and your mercy to us. And we ask you forgive us for all of those times where we do fall short and we don't engage and fix those things. The culture is distorting. But Father, I pray that you would use the reminder of the saints who have gone before us to put us on a path where we are working to straighten by the power of your Holy Spirit that which is crooked, We are putting together lives that have been broken by the sins that surround them in this world and even of their own. And that we are pointing this world towards Christ rather than itself. May we be engaged in doing that. And may you be praised in our doing that. These things we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.