You Will Be My Witnesses (Acts 1.4-11)

Introduction

We’ve started a series of Sunday morning talks today on a book in the Bible called the Acts of the Apostles. Andrew started it off at 9am with an introduction and overview - and you’ll be able to listen in to what he said on the church website from Tuesday if you’re interested.

Our plan is to go through the whole book of Acts, all 28 chapters, so it’ll take us some time but I think it will be great because this is one of the most exciting parts of the Bible to read..

The Acts of the Apostles is all about what happened in the first two or three decades after Jesus lived, died and rose again.

What the Church Should Be Like

It mostly describes how the church got started - by which I mean the people, not the building. You see, the word ‘church’ in the Bible is translated from the word ‘ecclesia’ from which we get the English word ‘ecclesiastical.’

That’s misleading because ‘ecclesia’ doesn’t mean church buildings, or church structures or church administrations. It doesn’t mean anything churchy at all. ‘Ecclesia’ simply means ‘a gathering together of people.’

In fact, the very first church was a gathering together of quite ordinary people who owned no premises for the purposes of worship (they met in their homes), they had no money to speak of, they held no power, and they didn’t have ordained clergy as such.

Let me say a little bit about the world in which the very first church sprang up.

Just as English today is the universal language of business, the trade language used by everyone around the Mediterranean Sea at the time of the Acts was Greek. 

In the universities, the theatres, the forums, the political arena and in published literature it was Classical Greek. This was Greek for the cultivated classes, for the privileged, for the educated. This was the Greek of Aristotle, Socrates, Virgil and Homer.

But in people’s homes, in the marketplaces, amongst the slaves and in everyday conversation, there was a simpler, popular dialect called Koiné Greek.

When they wrote the New Testament down, the good news about Jesus, instead of the literary language of the educated classes, they used the simple language of ordinary people that everyone knew. Because the good news about Jesus is for all people, not just the privileged.

The last thing we want is a church that is intellectually detached.

We want to be a church like the early church in which everyone is welcome to discover more about the God who loves them and wants to fill them with joy as they grow in faith.

The popular media portrayal of the church in our day is one that is institutionally dull and in decline. But globally, the church is still rapidly expanding like the early church did, especially in parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Even in this country, there are some areas where the church is growing fast. We were down in London the other week where we heard that the diocese of London has grown by 100,000 people in the last 7 years.

The very first church in Acts of the Apostles wasn’t a perfect church. There were disagreements and disappointments – it was human and it made mistakes.

But it was praying, it was growing, and it was making a huge impact on the world. It was vibrant. It was a little bit of heaven touching earth.

As we travel through Acts we will learn how to be a church that becomes more and more what God has designed it to be; the hope of the world.

Baptised in the Spirit to be Witnesses

I’m not going to be long this morning, but I want to share a few thoughts with you from these first verses in Acts chapter 1.

Jesus says to his closest followers in v4 “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

This was about 40 days since the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. There had been several clear, distinct incidents in which he was seen alive by eye witnesses. And now as he is about to leave them he tells them to stay where they are, to wait and to prepare for what’s next.

And he says that something extraordinary is going to happen. And this extraordinary something is still happening in many people’s lives today.

For example, let me tell you about Robert Taylor. Robert was a complete atheist. He had been to church four times in his life. He’d been to his own wedding, his brother’s wedding and to two funerals. 

He was successful in his business but sadly he was unsuccessful in his marriage. So much so that he’d left his wife and two young children. His marriage was over.

One time, he went to a business meeting and his business partner said, “Have you ever considered going along to an Alpha course? It’s a Christian discovery thing.” And Robert said, “Of course not, I’m an atheist, I don’t believe anything like that – why would I go along to something like the Alpha Course?”

Ten days later he was doing another business deal and another businessman said to him, “Robert, have you ever considered going along to the Alpha course?”

To cut a long story short, he decided to find out more and sign up. When he got there he decided to make it absolutely clear to his discussion group that he was not the least bit interested.

His opening remark in his small group, the first night of the course, was “Look I nearly died of cancer when I was thirty. I find life pretty difficult, and not a great deal of fun, and as far as I’m concerned eternal life is the last thing I want, so I really can’t see what Christianity has got to offer me.”

But about half way through the course things changed. He found that the reasons why he dismissed the claims of Jesus Christ were not as convincing as he had thought. He began to feel differently about Christianity. A little bit reluctantly, he prayed a prayer turning away from everything wrong in his life.

He later wrote these words: “I felt a real glow, and had to sit down. As I sat down I just started crying and couldn’t stop. That night I knew I had become a Christian... Everyone said I was beaming like a Cheshire cat for the rest of the weekend.”

When Jesus said to his followers “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” that’s what he was talking about. That’s what happened to me when I was 17. Two weeks ago, I was talking to someone here who has become a Christian recently and they said the very same thing happened to them.

God doesn’t want us to go through the motions of religion – he wants us to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Anyway, two days later, Robert decided to tell his estranged wife what had happened. When she heard his story, she laughed at him. She said, “You’ll get over it, Robert.  This is another one of your crazes - it’s like golf and scuba diving and sailing.” 

But she soon began to see that he had changed, and within a few weeks, she invited him to come back and to live with her and the two children. The elder of the two children, aged 7, was called Samuel and, to use his own words, he thought it was “completely fantastic.” He started reading the Bible, and he came across the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. This is what he said, “Dad this is a great book!  I’m in it, not once, but twice!” 

Well, not long afterwards, Robert’s wife started to go along to the local church and their lives were utterly transformed.

One time, Robert looked out of the window and he saw his two children playing in the garden. They’d got two sticks together and two skipping ropes and they’d made them into the shape of a cross, which they’d leant against a tree.

Robert was a bit puzzled about this so he went down and said, “Boys, what are you doing?” And Samuel said to him, “Daddy, we’re thanking Jesus for bringing you home.”

Now, that family’s life was completely transformed by Jesus Christ and by the experience of the Holy Spirit.

On the next Alpha course, Robert helped lead a small group, and since then he’s gone on to help many others to find new faith in Christ. He changed from someone who was hostile to someone who was actively speaking about the Christian faith, through his experience of the Holy Spirit.

That’s exactly what Jesus was talking about in Acts 1; the baptism in the Holy Spirit. It’s a tangible experience of the power of God that you feel and that changes everything. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” said Jesus, “and you will be my witnesses.”

I witnessed the birth of each of our four children. After our daughter Anna was born, I got a taxi home across London. It was about midnight and I got talking to the taxi driver about the amazing thing that had just happened in my life. It was late, I was probably his last passenger before going home to bed and he was like “Yeah, yeah, that’s cool.”

Like Robert’s wife, who absolutely wasn’t interested until she saw the difference it made to his life I’ve found that people only take notice of Christian stuff that they can see is real.

There’s a vicar down in London who, when he was a very enthusiastic young Christian, decided he should witness at a party he was invited to. He bided his time, picked his moment, and went up to a young lady standing on her own, and he said to her “Hi. You look terrible. What you need is Jesus!” The thing is he genuinely didn’t get why she wasn’t interested.

I once talked about my faith with a member of my wider family. They made it clear that they didn’t want to know and told me, basically, that faith is a private matter. It’s a bit like asking someone how they vote or how much is in their bank account. It’s none of anybody else’s business.

And you see faith is personal, because only God really knows our hearts and what we really believe.

But if faith was a private matter, if Christianity was something that nobody should ever really talk about, it would have died out in about A.D. 90 when the last of the 12 apostles died. It would have been just their little secret.

But people in every generation between A.D. 30 and A.D. 2014 have refused to accept that faith is just a private thing. And that’s the only reason you’re here today. You heard about Jesus from somebody else.

There will only be people here tomorrow if our generation is as ready to share faith as all those who have preceded us.

Christian Country?

There’s been a bit of controversy in recent weeks about Britain being a Christian country. Or not. The Prime Minister said that he thinks it is - and that we should be proud of it. Other politicians disagreed. 

Then a group of celebrities wrote an open letter to a national newspaper to show how dismayed they were and that this was unhelpful. But other people said that the Prime Minister was right.

What do you think? In some ways it is a Christian country and in other ways it isn’t perhaps. Maybe it depends what we mean by “a Christian country.”

I say this because of the question the disciples ask Jesus in v6. “They gathered round him and asked him ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel’?”

What is that all about? It’s a request for a change at the top. They want Jesus to put someone on their side in charge. Israel at that time was ruled by the Romans. Pontius Pilate called the shots in Jerusalem. So this question is a request for regime change. They want Israel to be like the good old days when they had a monarchy and great leaders like David and Solomon.

I think it’s a little bit like saying “Lord, if only you could put people who think like us in charge of the country, we would be a Christian country.”

But Jesus declines their request. You can’t change people’s hearts by Act of Parliament. You can’t make people believe in Jesus just by changing the laws. Britain won’t be a Christian country because Westminster passes some great legislation.

The kingdom of God is not a political and territorial one. It doesn’t - and cannot - feature on any map. And Jesus says as much.

The wonderful, glorious, righteous, mighty reign of Jesus our king will come when the good news about him has reached the ends of the earth. That’s the message of the Acts of the Apostles.

Ending

Thinking back to that story of Robert Taylor, I sometimes ask myself if more people would believe in Christ if they saw more dramatic changes to peoples’ lives like his. I don’t know if they would necessarily.

Countless people saw Jesus do great miracles, yet they refused to believe in him or give their lives to him. Please don’t let that be true of you!

The greatest miracle of all is the miracle of a changed life - and this can happen to anyone who opens his or her heart and life to Christ.

Make sure of your commitment to Christ today, then ask him to change you from within by the Holy Spirit, and make you a living witness to the miracle of his transforming power.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25th May 2014