Note: This sermon has been edited for readability

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1 Multiply (the book of Acts) Week 1 Acts 1 Darrin Patrick January 18, 2015 Keywords Jesus, Holy Spirit, church, mission, politics, consumer, missionary Note: This sermon has been edited for readability Copyright 2015 The Journey INTRODUCTION Well, today we begin a brand new series. We're calling it Multiply. We're going to be studying the book of Acts together, and we're going to go chapter by chapter. We're going to take every story. It's kind of one big story with a lot of little stories. It is a wildly exciting book. And it's strangely therapeutic for me because when I get discouraged, which happens almost daily, when I begin to doubt my own calling, which happens a lot more frequently than you would think, and when I get cynical about the church, this is the book that I go to. The book of Acts is the book that God used to convince me to start this church, The Journey, and I believe it is the template, it is the catalyst for what God wants to do with The Journey in the future. I think this book, as we study it together as a church, is going to give us God's preferred future for us. So if you read the book of Acts, you know you're going to read 28 chapters. If you just sat down and tried to read it, it's going to take you about 2-1/2 hours. It's a long book, but it's about the early church. That's really what it's about. It's church as it was historically, church as it should be theologically, and church as it could be potentially. Content I love this book. I think you're going to love this book. The author is this guy named Luke, and Luke was a doctor by trade. But he kind of turned into this historian. Many secular historians say he was the greatest historian because of his work. The book of Acts is kind of part 2 of his history. Part 1 is the Gospel of Luke. Part 2 is the book of Acts. So it's really one book with two parts. It's made up, this book of Acts with 10 sermons. So you have five by Peter, four by Paul, and one by this guy named Stephen. What I love about how this book is kind of broken up, it's clergy guys, Peter and Paul, but it's also lay guys, like Stephen. So this tells us something about the church: that it isn't just the paid professionals that do the work. It is normal, everyday people, who move the gospel forward. And Luke is really about Jesus. That's his concern. That's his focus. That's his foundation. So as you read the Gospel of Luke, for instance, you see an emphasis on the life and the death of Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 1 of 10

2 Jesus. In the Book of Acts, you see the focus on the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. In the Gospel of Luke, it's focused on how the gospel was accomplished Jesus living a perfect life, Jesus dying a brutal death. But in the book of Acts, it's how the gospel is to be proclaimed. We see this focus in Luke on Jesus, not just as Savior, but also as the one who is to be proclaimed amongst the nations. Not just a Savior for individual disciples, but for the whole entire world. You see this early on. Now in the Gospel of Luke, there's this great kind of preamble that is picked up upon in the book of Acts as well. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, verse 3, he says, "It seemed good to me, having followed all of these things," that he's going to write about, "for some time, to write an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus." Theophilus literally means "dear to God." Philos is the Greek word for love, one of them, and theo is the word for God. So one who is loved by God, one who is dear to God. Now, we don't know if this was kind of just a generic saying, but this was a greeting that was made towards educated people in the first century. But I tend to think this is his buddy. Now whether his name was actually Theophilus, or it was a code word, I think Luke is writing to his educated buddy, trying to persuade him that Jesus was who he said he was. He's writing this book to his buddy, saying, "I want you to believe. I want you to understand. I want you to experience what I've experienced." He's saying, "I have to show you something. If you're going to understand anything about Jesus, you have to get the fact that there are these witnesses," which is a key concept in the Book of Acts, specifically chapter 1. Witnesses A witness is someone who has seen something and heard something. Luke is saying, "These guys, they've seen something. They've experienced something. Something has happened that has changed the course not only of their lives, but of the entire world. These guys are witnesses to this thing called the Resurrection. Because of the Resurrection, these very simple people did supernatural things. These very broken people, God displayed his beauty in. You need to pay attention, my friend, to these witnesses." So when you think about the book of Acts, it's not the acts of the Apostles as much as it is the acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles. The hero is not Peter. It's not Paul. It's the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of very normal people who are on mission. Now if you're going to be on mission and by the way, that's the punchline for the book, that's the outline of the book. Acts 1:8, we'll see it: "You're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world." That's a concentric circle going out. The gospel is to go from the innermost parts of our heart, to the outermost parts of the world, that's the flow. That's the invitation. That's the challenge. If you sit in this study and you actually do what the book of Acts says, that's what you're going to become, a witness that takes the gospel from their heart to the world. Right? Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 2 of 10

3 JCM Jesus à Church à Mission Now, there's a model that I have adapted from a couple other models that I think gets at the heart of what we're trying to do and see in the book of Acts. The model goes like this: J's in the middle. What do you think that stands for? That's Jesus, right? Almost always the right answer in church. So Jesus is the center. Jesus is the core. Disciples spend time with Jesus. That's the foundation. From there we go out, right? And we go to the church. Jesus died for the church. Jesus said, "I'm going to build my church." Jesus was passionate about the church. If you're going to follow Jesus, you've got to be a part of the local church. You love Jesus. You worship Jesus. Then you do that with the church. If you're really a part of a New Testament church, a church that's trying to emulate the Book of Acts, you're going to go out into the world. You're going to be on mission with Jesus to the world. You love Jesus. You love Jesus with the church. And then you love what Jesus loves, which is people. So with the church you go out on mission. This is the model. This is what we're trying to do. This is what we see the Book of Acts is about. This is why we started The Journey. We say it this way: Love God. Connect people. Transform the world. It's the same thing, right? This is Bible. This is the book of Acts. This is mission. This is what his disciples have already done. Some of you may think, "Oh my gosh. Well, then I've really got to clean up my act and be perfect." Actually, no. If you're perfect, please leave our church. You're going to mess up our deal. Because we're not perfect. We're broken, but broken people who love Jesus with the church can become used by him on this glorious mission of the gospel throughout the whole world. The gospel in the innermost parts of our heart to the outermost parts of the world. That's what God wants from his church. The way this works is not because we're good and great, but because Jesus is alive. That's the issue. We're going to look a lot at the Apostle Paul. He writes to the church at Rome, chapter 8, that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from death lives in us. That's how it works. That's the secret sauce. That's the magic formula. You and I are going to be challenged to get out of our dry, boring, plastic religiosity. You and I are going to be challenged to get out of our esoteric kind of experiential spirituality that says, "I don't really need to think about history. I don't need to really think about Jesus. I can kind of do my own thing." It's going to critique all of us, and so this is going to be a beautiful but challenging book. I know, I'm sure you've had a boring history professor or teacher in your life. I know I have. There's nothing worse than someone taking something that's awesome and alive, even though it happened in the past, and making it boring. Luke is not going to do that to us. This is history on fire. There are all kinds of cool things happening over the course of church history, but this is the most exciting stuff. I ve been training Chinese pastors over in Korea where awesome things are happening, but I m telling you, everybody doesn t go, "Look at what's happening now." Everybody goes, "Look, this is kind of like what happened then. Look, this is kind of awesome. This is kind of feeling like the book of Acts" We all go back to this, right? This is alive, and this is Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 3 of 10

4 going to be awesome. I love it because it intersects with our own stories. It's not just this dry history. This connects with us on a deep level, because our hearts want to be a part of something bigger. Our desire is to see that God is alive and well in the world. Our passion is to be part of a family that has a mission. This is how God has always worked, right? Adam and Eve. Why didn't God just create Adam? No, Adam and Eve, family. "Adam and Eve, you're a family and you have a mission. Rule over my creation in my name." That went south. Genesis 3, sin enters the world. What does God do? Give up and say, "You know what? I'm just going to deal with solitary individuals." No. "Abraham, I'm going to choose you. You're a pagan. You worship the mountain, the moon, the stars, and the seas. But you know what? I'm going to pull you out. I'm going to build a family, and this family's going to have a mission. Israel, you're going to be a light to the Gentiles. You're going to show the whole world that I'm real." God doesn't give up his heart for family, so he builds a church, and this family has a mission, to bring the Savior to the whole world. Now, we know that that's going to take some empowerment. God doesn't just leave us to our own devices and our own strength. If you read the Old Testament, there's this kind of smattering of verses. I could have picked several, but here s one we have that Jesus kind of boots off of and it describes what we see in the book of Acts. It takes us right into chapter 1. In Ezekiel chapter 36 it says, "I will give you a new heart," God says, "and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to obey me. You shall be my people and I will be your God." This is a promise. This is the Old Testament. This is hundreds of years before Jesus. This is the description of what God is going to do. Then Jesus comes along and says, all right, John chapter 14, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper," code word for the Holy Spirit, "to be with you forever. 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." So Jesus is saying this Spirit that was promised in the Old Testament, it's not like you don't know about him, but he's coming to dwell within you. We're actually going to see that next week in Acts chapter 2. But the promise in Acts chapter 1 is that he's coming. He's coming. Luke leaves off in his first volume, Luke 24, and he says, "Hey, you've got to wait for him. You've got to wait. He's coming, but you've got to wait. He's coming." This is why Luke starts this book off and says, "I'm writing to you, my buddy Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to teach and to do." He began to do. The began part means it's just getting started. Like he started in his physical body, but he's going to finish in his spiritual body, that's the church empowered by his Spirit. Jesus didn't just ascend to escape them. He ascended to empower them. That's where this thing is going. Normal people empowered, infused, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but they had to wait. They had to wait. This is why the old song says, "The waiting is the hardest part." Look in verse 4. "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, Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 4 of 10

5 but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." The Holy Spirit had yet to set up residence within them. This had not happened yet. Jesus promised. We read it. John chapter 4. It was happening, but not yet. "Some of you are like, oh, thank God." Some of you got a little Bible knowledge like, "Okay. No wonder. They didn't have the Holy Spirit. I have the Holy Spirit, so I'm not going to have the same temptations as these guys in Acts 1, because I've got the Spirit." Well, wait a minute. You can have the Spirit, but the Spirit might not have you. Right? You can possess the Spirit, but not be possessed by the Spirit. You can really not yield yourself to God's Spirit, and in so doing you can make the same mistakes that they made. DISTRACTIONS FROM MISSION Unrighteous Politics One of the mistakes they made was unrighteous politics becoming the focus and agenda of the church. Some of us would argue there is no such thing as righteous politics. Well, what happens in the local church, if you're not careful, if you're not careful, is the mission becomes political rather than spiritual. This happened to them. Look in verse 6. This is exactly what happened to the disciples. "When they had come together," after waiting. This is post- Resurrection. Jesus shows up. After he's dead, he's alive. This is the first thing they ask 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." In other words, wrong question guys. This is a bad question. You still see the nails in my hands. I was dead. Now I'm alive. You're worried about the wrong stuff. Jesus, are you going to kick the Romans out? That's what they're asking. Rome was in charge of the whole world. Are you going to make our nation the superpower? Are you going to come back and everybody else is going to have to bow down to us. They've missed it. These are his disciples. They walked with him for three years and they're clueless. They totally, utterly, completely missed the whole point. Because Jesus was constantly talking about the kingdom of God, through the Spirit of God, in the people of God. That was his whole message, and they go, No, no, no. What about the kingdom of Israel? Jesus was like, Oh my gosh. The disciples were saying, Will you conquer Rome? And Jesus said, No, I want to conquer you. You're my people. If I can get ahold of you, it doesn't matter who's in charge. It doesn't matter what happens. I want ahold of you. You're missing the point. The church, when the Spirit is not in charge, gets distracted, even if our desires are noble. It's so easy for us to lose mission. It's so easy for us to get off course. Unrighteous Activism Now, you can have unrighteous political ambition. You can have also unrighteous activism. Look in verse 9. We'll come back to verse 8. It is the key verse of the whole book, I believe. Verse 9, "When he said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight." Verse 10, "And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 5 of 10

6 by them in white robes said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way you saw him go into heaven." So they're looking up in the clouds. I don't know about you guys, but I hate getting in trouble. I don't like it. I mean, I there was so much energy spent as a kid not getting in trouble. Now, I got in a lot of trouble, but I was trying not to get caught. Nobody likes that. I don't care if it's your parents, a teacher, a coach, your wife. Nobody likes it. But these guys are getting in trouble by an angel. That's a bad day. That's a bad day when an angel's like, "You're missing it. You're missing it. You don't get it." They're looking up in the sky. Here s how I think about this, because the church does this, right? We're looking up, and then we go, "Well, Jesus is gone. We better get to work. We've got a lot of stuff to do. It's all on us. We've got to have total, complete justice right here on the earth, so we've got to fix everything, because Jesus is gone. Right? We've got to do this stuff in our own strength." By the way, this is the mistake of the liberal church. The liberal church basically says, You know what, God doesn't really do miracles anymore, doesn't really intervene, so it's all on us. So we can't just stare up in the sky. We've got to go. We've got to get to work. That's an unrighteous activism. Unrighteous Passivism On the other side, there can be an unrighteous passivism. This is the mistake of the conservative church, where we're looking up in the sky and we're like, "Well, he'll come back and fix everything. We don't really have to do much. So we're just going to kind of bunker up and we're going to form our own culture, Christian subculture. We'll buy our own t- shirts. We'll have our own breath mints, New Testamints. It's a real thing. Google it. We're going to just kind of do our own thing, get our own music, get our own churches. We're going to hide from the big bad world. And then Jesus will come back and fix everything. Right? We won't be left behind. Everything will be fine." That's the mistake of the hyper- conservative church. We don't want to forget. We don't want to forget that Jesus is up in the sky. He really is. He really is. But he's on a throne. He's not just floating on a cloud wringing his hands. Right? No. He's on a throne. He's still in charge. And also, we don't want to stare up in the sky looking at the throne, going, "Well, as soon as you come back down here stuff will get done." We don't want to hide from the world. See, this is the delicate nature we're going to see in the Book of Acts of contextualization, which means basically the delicate balance between entering and challenging. The liberal church is awesome at entering. I mean, they come in and whatever the culture's doing, man, they figure it out and kind of swim with the stream. But they never challenge it. The conservative church is great at challenging, throwing truth bombs, protesting everything. But they're not great at entering in and being sympathetic to the kind of non- moral aspects of culture. They reject everything. Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 6 of 10

7 And the challenge, the balance, the call of the church is to enter and to challenge. That's our responsibility, and sometimes it's hard to discern that. But the church that is fulfilling its redemptive potential, that's what they do. They enter, and they challenge. Sometimes you enter too much and you don't challenge. Sometimes you challenge too much and you don't enter enough. That delicate balance gospel contextual equilibrium is our call and is our challenge. These guys and gals, in the book of Acts, had the balance. They weren't always perfect, but they were always trying to stay focused on the mission. CHURCH AS MISSION Jesus is talking to us about this reality of the church being the instrument of the gospel to the whole world. The innermost parts of the gospel in our hearts, to the outermost parts of the world. Now I love what my friend Ed Stetzer says, because I think it really helps reframe how we look at the church. Stetzer says, "It isn't that God has a mission for his church. It's that God has a church for his mission." You see the nuance. It isn't that God has a mission for his church. It's that God has a church for his mission. The mission has always been the same. God's going to reconcile the world. That's his heart. He loves the world. He's reweaving the world, making it into a beautiful mosaic of his glory. The church is the instrument. The church isn't the goal of the gospel, but the church is the instrument of the gospel which means, God takes it very seriously. Each person in the church, each person matters. Because in the church, God is showing the world something. Diversity without racism, right? Creativity without elitism. The only place where you find socioeconomic diversity and I mean, nowhere else do you see that kind of stuff. Why? Because God is saying, "I want to show the world I love them through the church." Certainly God can encounter people through individuals. He does all the time. But there's something that happens when the church is working right, when the church is fulfilling its redemptive potential, that looks like Jesus, and attracts people in ways that individuals simply cannot. That's the beauty of the local church. Every person matters. That's the whole point, by the way, of all the ink that was spilled as you read chapter 1. Because in chapter 1 you go through all this stuff, and then all of a sudden we've got to replace Judas. It talks about how he hung himself, and then his guts spilled. What is all that? Why doesn't the Bible take more time to explain stuff that's more relevant? This is extremely relevant. Because every leader matters. Every missionary matters. They go to great pains in chapter 1 to say, "We have to have someone. Eleven is not enough. We need 12." What's ironic and interesting is, we never hear about the guy who replaced Judas in church history. All the other 11 we hear about. We don't hear about this guy. So we don't know what happened. But God is saying something. Every missionary matters. Every leader matters. It is important what you do. It is important that you're here and on mission. It is not the job of the paid professional. It is not the job of the superstar Christian. It is our job. It is our burden. Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 7 of 10

8 CONSUMER VS. MISSIONARY But this is the part of the story that is challenging for us, because as Americans we have adopted a view of church that not coincidentally fits our own lifestyles, our own culture, our own millieu, the water that we swim in that we don't even know that we're wet in. That is consumerism. Consumerism essentially is this: Where can I go to get the most while giving the least. It's awesome at Target. It's awesome on Amazon. I'll do some comparison- shopping, and then I'll find what I want for the least in a lot of ways that's good stewardship, right? But the problem is we take and apply what we apply to commerce to our Christianity. This is where we get in trouble. Let me juxtapose it like this. Let me juxtapose it consumer versus missionary. Okay, we'll run through a few of these: A consumer says, "I can experience God by myself." Now, is that true? Yeah. Certainly. I am reading through the Bible in a year. I do prayers by myself. But you know what? I also do that stuff with my wife and my children. I also do stuff with some of my spiritual friendships. Like, you weren't made to do your spirituality solo. That's not how you were made. You were made, you were made to connect with the church. In fact, the commands in the New Testament were plural. So in other words, when you see the word "you" don't just think me, me, me. No, no, no. It's to the whole church. Right? But that's why a missionary says, "I can experience more of God through others. So in your own mind if you're thinking, well, this is my deal, and I come to church, and it's about me, you're off. Right? You're a great American, but you're a bad Christian. Okay? And I mean like bad Christian like I'm slapping your hand. But you're missing it. You're not getting as much. You're actually not being a good consumer in that sense. All right? A consumer also says, "I can participate in whatever I want to." So I do what I want to do. If I want to come to church, I come to church. If I want to join a group, I join a group. If I want to give money, I'll give money. But there's never any impulse, there's never any thought that, "Maybe I'm not on the throne. Maybe I'm not the king. Maybe I'm not the Lord." A missionary says, "Okay, I'm going to participate. I'm going to embrace what scripture says about the church. I'm going to not be the one who's in charge. I'm actually going to submit. I'm not the head of the church. Jesus is the head of the church. Therefore, I submit to Jesus. I want to do what God wants me to do. I want to participate in what God wants me to participate in, not what I want Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 8 of 10

9 to participate in. Now this is hard. This is what it means to submit to the head of the church. This is what it means that we're not the head of the church. This is what it means that Jesus is Lord, and not us. This is what it means to actually be a part of a spiritual community. We don't get to call the shots. Consumers as well will say something like this. "I'm committed as long as my needs are met." In other words, I'll plug in man. I'll submit. I'll do the deal. I'll do, but the second that my needs aren't being met, the nanosecond, I'm out. I'm out. That doesn't always look like leaving the church. Sometimes that means just kind of pulling back and just kind of sitting. That happens a lot to people. Sometimes that's good, but a lot of times that's not good, because we're not really dealing with our stuff. We're just kind of going, well my needs aren't being met community- wise. I'm not getting to do my little pet ministry project. Or my children aren't coming home and spitting out a bunch of Bible verses. We've got to find another church with a good children's ministry, instead of going maybe I should teach my kids the Bible, like the Bible says. All that. Here's what a missionary says. A missionary says, "I serve others' needs through the church. This deal isn't about me." Strangely, this is what's so counter- intuitive about life in general, but about church in specific. When you give, when you serve, when you sacrifice, what happens is, your needs do get met, in deeper ways than if it's just all about you. See, we have some repentance to do as God's people. Consumers ask, in closing here, "What can the church do for me?" But a missionary asks a different question. "What can I do for the church?" That's really all we're saying. Is the object you, or is the object others? That's really it. You can move churches, and you can move into different cities, and you can continue to focus on yourself, or you can come to the end of that and go, "You know what? This thing isn't about me. It's about God and other people." When you tap into that, it changes everything. It changes everything. This is our invitation as we study this book, to move from consumer to missionary. Listen, all of us need that movement. If you're not yet a Christian, you know what? It's okay to be a consumer. That's exactly where you should be. If you're a Christian, that is not where you should be. All of us are consumeristic because we live in the western world. Like I said, it's just kind of a part of us, it's a strong current, man. But increasingly, God's going to call us to move out, away from ourselves as the center to God as the center. As soon as we start following Jesus, he's going to lead us into the lives of broken people. That's what the Book of Acts, chapter 1, verse 8, promises us. That we're going to receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, and we are going to be his witnesses, in St. Louis, and Missouri, and the United States, and the ends of the earth. See, that's what this is. This is Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 9 of 10

10 just concentric circles going out. That's the mission we're on. That's the opportunity we have. Some of us are so bored because we're so focused on our own lives. If you really focus on your life, you realize how boring and pathetic it is. It's not because you don't have a life. Some of us may not have a life. But it's mainly because you weren't made to do that. That's not how God wired you. You were made for something bigger, a greater story than your own story, a bigger picture of your life than what you can see right in front of your face. This is the challenge. Remember, Jesus in us is better than Jesus beside us. We're not doing this on our own. The disciples are freaked out because Jesus was gone. "Now what are we going to do?" Jesus says, "It is to your advantage that I go. Because now instead of just being in one place at one time with one body, my Spirit can go with my disciples to the whole world, starting where they live." My challenge for you is to repent of your consumerism, to see yourself as a missionary. That's the way God sees you. That's God's call in your life. You may not go to Africa. You may not go to Mexico. But you might go to your neighbor. You might go to your workplace. He's with you. He's not just with you, though, he's in you. You have power to be his witnesses. Let's pray. Father, I ask by your Spirit that you would help us, your people, to go. Lord, we thank you that you've sent your Spirit. We thank you that we are not on our own. We thank you that we do not have to stare at the sky. We thank you that your Spirit is enough. So help us, Lord. Help us to love Jesus. Help us to love your church. Forgive us for being cynical. Expose our cynicism so that we can be on mission with you, to be a part of the family that's on mission to take the gospel to the whole world. In Jesus' name, amen. Multiply Week 1 (Acts 1) 10 of 10