Becoming Kingdom Minded part 3

Transcription

1 World Christians Acts 1:7 8 Becoming Kingdom Minded part 3 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. Acts 1:7 8 The introduction to Acts contains two verses that are of special importance for anyone who wants to understand this book. In them is an outline for it. There are four geographical references in verse 8: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. In the New International Version the middle terms are combined by the verse s punctuation so that there is a three-part progression: Jerusalem (comma), Judea and Samaria (comma), and the ends of the earth. This is because in the Greek text, Samaria does not have a definite article before it. The article occurs before Judea, which suggests that Judea and Samaria belong together, and this makes a threepart outline for the book. Acts 1 7 deals with the preaching of the gospel in Jerusalem. In Acts 8 12 the gospel expands beyond Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria. Acts records the expansion of the gospel throughout the Roman world. The Great Commission But it is not chiefly for that reason that we need to study these key verses. They are also important because they give a plan for witnessing that has made Christianity a world religion. Each version of the Great Commission has its own emphasis. Like Acts, John s version speaks of Christians being sent into the world, but his emphasis is on the nature of the Christian s witness: As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world (John 17:18, italics mine). That is, the disciples were sent into the world as Jesus was sent into it. He was to be the model for their ministry. Matthew stresses the authority of Jesus on the basis of which they were to make disciples of all nations: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me (Matt. 28:18, italics mine). They

2 2 were to call all people to Christ because the Son of God had authorized them to do so. When we turn to the seventh and eighth verses of Acts 1, we find the emphasis on two other things. First, the disciples were to be empowered for their task by the Holy Spirit. Second, they were to be agents of a world-wide geographical expansion of Christianity. The two go together. Jesus said they would receive power from the Holy Spirit and that when that happened they were to go into the entire world with the gospel. That is, their witness was to begin at Jerusalem; then it was to expand outward like ripples on a pond, embracing Judea and Samaria, and then overflowing beyond those known communities to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. I do not sense that Christians today are always fully aware of how thoroughly that plan was carried out by the first generation of the church. The entire pagan world acknowledged as fact the early Christian apologists claim that Christianity had permeated everywhere. Tertullian, who wrote around the year 200, declared in his Apology, We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods. Historians have asked how this first generation of Christians, who for the most part were unlearned men and women, could have propagated the gospel so rapidly. Adolf Harnack, a German church historian of the nineteenth century, knew how. He said, We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries. That was the secret. Every Christian not just a formal order of missionaries supplied by the Christians at home considered it his or her obligation to bear witness. How many people have you talked to already this week that are outside of your normal circle? WE MUST BE KINGDOM CONSCIOUS AT ALL TIMES. A Profound Misunderstanding Acts 1:7 8 also corrects a misconception of the Lord s plan by the disciples. Jesus told them that they would be empowered by the Holy Spirit, but the

3 3 disciples were not thinking about spiritual things at this time. As we learned in chapter 1 of this study, they were thinking about earthly kingdoms. Jesus had taught them differently, of course. He taught that his kingdom was spiritual, saying, The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21). They did not understand that. What kind of a kingdom were they looking for? 1. They were looking for a political kingdom. They betrayed this by their use of the verb restore. The disciples could have thought ahead to a new and different kind of kingdom, a kingdom that up to then had never existed on earth. But that is not what they had in mind. They wanted the restoration of something they had already known. If you had asked them, they would have said, We want the Davidic kingdom. We want it to be like it was when David was on the throne and Israel experienced her greatest glory. 2. They were looking for an ethnically restricted kingdom. We know this because of the way they asked their question. They did not ask merely, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom? They asked, Are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? (v. 6, italics mine). They meant to us Jews. They were not interested in a gentile kingdom. They despised the Gentiles. Of course, they would have granted that Gentiles are welcome: God has all kinds of people that serve him. They are welcome if they wish to join our kingdom. But it was still a Jewish kingdom that they had in mind. 3. They were looking for a geographically restricted kingdom. If you had asked them where this kingdom was to be located, they would have answered, There can be no question about that. This kingdom is to be in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is God s city. That is where David and Solomon reigned. That is where the Messiah will reign, too. What about the Greeks? What about the Romans? They are welcome to come to Jerusalem any time they want to. When Jesus answered them he did not say, as we might have expected, Really now, have we come to this point and you still don t understand the nature of this kingdom? Don t you understand that there s not going to be an earthly kingdom? I notice that Jesus did not say, There will never be an earthly kingdom. He simply said that it would be in the future, in a time not known to them, though certainly known to God. He added, in effect, In the

4 4 meantime, there is another task for you. People may disagree with me here, but that is the equivalent, it seems to me, of saying that one day God will establish an earthly kingdom. Our present task is to go out into the world and proclaim a kingdom that Jesus established by his death and resurrection. The Nature of the Kingdom Against that background, notice what Jesus Christ taught about the nature of the kingdom. A Spiritual Kingdom Jesus emphasized the coming of the Holy Spirit because the kingdom is spiritual. He did this earlier in verse 5: John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now he does it in the context of the Great Commission itself: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses. I do not know what your reaction is when you hear someone talk about a spiritual kingdom. I suspect that many, if not all, have a reaction that says, Oh, I see, a spiritual kingdom. Who cares about a spiritual kingdom? We think a spiritual kingdom is not really important because no one can see it. We do not want to put a spiritual kingdom down. It may be nice that Jesus is in the business of establishing a spiritual kingdom. But we are formed by our culture, and our culture thinks that something invisible is not really that important. If we think that way, we should notice that when Jesus spoke of the spiritual nature of his kingdom, he did not use the word spiritual, though he could have. He could have said, It is a spiritual kingdom I have in mind. What he actually said was, The kingdom I have in mind is one that is going to be established by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Godhead, so Jesus was actually saying that this was going to be God s kingdom. What does spiritual mean? We use it to refer to somebody who is not in touch with life, to a person living in the clouds. Actually, spiritual has to do with God the Holy Spirit. What is spiritual is what the Holy Spirit does. I was in Washington, D.C., at a meeting in which a number of us were talking about the impact of Christians upon culture. We were talking about

5 5 various Christian social service agencies and what they should be doing. We mentioned the importance of having Christians involved in government. Present at that meeting was Doug Coe, a man whom God has used in a remarkable way over the years. Coe is so successful in what he does that you almost never hear of him. He works behind the scenes. He knows all the members of Congress, senators, and staff persons. He meets with them and prays with them. It is through his ministry and that of people like him that Fellowship House was established. Doug Coe was listening to what we were saying. He was not disagreeing. But after a while, when we turned to him and said, Doug, you ve been in Washington a long time. What kind of counsel do you have for us as we try to think along these lines? he said, What you re saying is very important. But I want to leave this with you. Remember that it says in the Bible that the visible things pass away, but that the invisible things are eternal. Christians believe in things that are invisible. We believe in God; God is not visible. We believe in eternal life; eternal life is not visible either. We talk about redemption, regeneration, justification. None of those are visible. Yet we believe in these things. We are committed to them. In the same way, we must be committed to the invisible spiritual kingdom that, although it is invisible, is eternal and will never pass away. A Powerful Kingdom The word Jesus used in verse 8 is significant. It is dynamis, translated power. In some versions of this text power occurs twice, once in verse 7 ( It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power and once in verse 8 ( But ye shall receive power ). This is misleading, because in Greek these are two entirely different words. The New International Version translates the first word as authority ( It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority ), which is right, and the second word as power ( But you will receive power ), as most of the other versions do. Actually, it is only in the second instance that the text speaks of power as we understand that term. The Greek word dynamis entered the English language when the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Bernhard Nobel ( ) made the discovery that became his fortune. He discovered a power stronger than anything the world had known up to that time. He asked a friend of his who was a Greek

6 6 scholar what the word for explosive power was in Greek. His friend answered, Dynamis. Nobel said, Well, I am going to call my discovery by that name. So he called his explosive power dynamite. That is the word here. And it refers not to the power one has by intrinsic or even by a delegated authority, though these are also important kinds of power, but to the explosive, life-changing dynamic of the Holy Spirit operating through the proclamation of the gospel. This is not political power. Political power is what the disciples wanted. They asked Jesus if he was going to set up a political machine. They could understand that kind of power, but that was not the power Jesus was talking about. He was talking about power that flows from God. Do you have that power? How do you see yourself? Power for change comes from another source entirely. What is it that really changes the world? If I were speaking in secular terms to a secular audience, I could say, quite rightly, that it is always the power of an idea. It is not armies that change the world. Not really! They just put different people in charge of the problems. It is not money that changes the world. Not even laws change the world. Americans should understand that very well, because we passed a law prohibiting the sale of alcohol and it did not eliminate drinking. As a matter of fact, it did the opposite, which is what Paul said laws tend to do. It encouraged people to drink, so that there was actually more traffic in liquor in those days than had existed beforehand. Laws do not change things. Only ideas change things. Changes occur when ideas possess people s minds. In the spiritual realm, real changes come when the Holy Spirit uses the gospel to regenerate fallen men and women, causing them to repent of their sin, seek righteousness, and live for Jesus Christ. Changes follow in a big way when that happens. Then you have reformation. What is the goal? A larger FBCPG or to grow God s kingdom? What is most important, our local church or Christ s universal church?

7 7 A Kingdom of Truth When Jesus stood before Pilate to be tried by him, the Lord described his kingdom with the word truth. He had been accused of setting himself up as a king. Pilate asked if he was a king, and Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place (John 18:36). Pilate did not understand what this meant. So he said, no doubt in a questioning tone, You are a king, then! This time Jesus answered in words Pilate could understand: You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me (v. 37). Pilate understood that, of course, but he wasn t interested. He dismissed the notion of truth entirely. This is what Jesus was talking about in Acts before his ascension to heaven, telling the disciples that they were to be his witnesses. Our English word witness comes from an old English word we do not use very much anymore but was used in Elizabethan times and afterwards. It is the word wit. To wit means to know. A wit is a knowledgeable person. So a witness is one who knows something and testifies to it. In the case of the disciples, these men were to be witnesses to who Jesus was and what he had done. Above all, they were to be witnesses to the truth of the resurrection. They were to advance Christ s kingdom not by coercion, but by testimony to the truth. In the evangelical church we often think that we can advance the kingdom just by raising money. Of course, we live in a world where money generally is a necessity. I am not against money. In fact, one of the blessings promised to the people of God in the Old Testament in a general sense not always on a personal basis, but generally is material blessing. The problems come when we think that raising money is the way spiritual work must be done. We think if we are able to raise $100,000 for an evangelical cause one year that we can do twice as well the next year if we can only raise $200,000. When we think that way, we are falling into a trap. In fact, the more we think this way, the more dangerous our situation is.

8 8 I have always said that one reason God does not give more of us more money is that he cannot trust us with it. He knows that if he gave us more, it would ruin us. The second mistake we make is to think that we can advance the gospel by law, which ultimately comes down to advancing it by force (see p. 24). I am not against trying to change the country s laws as part of the political process. If we have bad laws, we should certainly attempt to change them for better laws. I think there are examples of where that might be done in our country right now. But changing laws does not in itself advance the kingdom. Rather it is the other way around. Where the kingdom advances, good laws follow. Why is it like this? God has made it like this because law always means force. Get a country to change its laws, and then what? Then the power of the state, which boils down to the power of the policeman with a gun, forces compliance. But even then it is only an external compliance that is achieved. Christians know, or should know, that spiritual changes, above all, can only be effected spiritually and not by force of arms. There is another error into which some are falling today, and this is the error of thinking that the kingdom of God is advanced by the miraculous or by what those who argue for it sometimes call signs and wonders. The argument is that where the Holy Spirit is active, signs and wonders follow. According to exponents of this view, we should seek healings and miraculous demonstrations of God s power in the church today. If that is what we are looking for, we are in error, because that is not what Jesus taught. Jesus taught that when we receive the power of the Holy Spirit, the result will not be miracles, signs, or healings, but witnessing. There are fourteen filled with the Holy Spirit occurrences phrases in the Book of Acts; of them, ten of which refer to the present era. I looked at the circumstances in which these phrases occurred, and I discovered that in each case in which a person or a group of persons was filled with the Holy Spirit the people involved immediately began to witness powerfully for Jesus Christ. THE ONE SURE EVIDENCE OF THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN PEOPLE S LIVES IS THAT THEY TESTIFY TO JESUS.

9 9 Revelation 12:11 speaks of the victory of the saints over the devil. This is how victory comes: They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. Do you want to be Spirit-filled? Do you want to experience the power of the Holy Spirit? Testify to Jesus Christ. You say, But I stammer. It doesn t matter. The Holy Spirit doesn t stammer. He will speak clearly. You say, But I make mistakes. That is all right. The Holy Spirit does not make mistakes, and he will cause them to forget your errors. You say, But I don t know my Bible well enough. Work at it. But in the meantime, testify to the portions you know. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you understand the gospel at least, because if you did not understand it, you would not believe it. Testify to that. You say, But I am afraid it won t work. Really? It worked with you. Besides, how can you say it won t work when Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit will work through your testimony? A Worldwide Kingdom The final point is that the kingdom is worldwide. The kingdom of God must embrace all the nations and regions of this world and it is doing it. The wonderful thing about this commission is that the disciples really understood what Jesus was talking about. They were like us, of course, awfully thick. Even after having been with Jesus for three years they still did not have the point quite in mind. Yet in the end they got it. We know because their error in Acts 1 is the last flicker of their earthbound misunderstanding. We never read about them making this mistake again. When they understood, they actually carried out the Great Commission. What they did is what the Book of Acts is all about.