It’s good to be here and see you. We’re going to look together at Acts 1 this morning. One of the reasons, I think, for having a Missions Conference is maybe just to simply remember that there is a mission, sort of a moment of renewal every year, to remember that simple fact. And we’re going to see that here in Acts 1. We’re going to pray and I’ll read the first nine verses of Acts 1 with you. And this prayer, as we look at God’s Word, is written by Saint Augustine in the 4th century and it’s a prayer he wrote as he read God’s Word. So let’s pray this prayer.
O Holy Spirit, love of God, pour out Your grace and descend plentifully into our hearts, enlighten the dark corners of our soul, overrun with briars as they are, and in Your mercy, make us fit to receive You in Your Word. Amen.
The first nine verses of God’s Word in Acts 1. And Luke writes this:
“In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them 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 said, ‘you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’
So when they had come together, they asked 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. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end 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 their sight.”
This is God’s holy Word.
There’s so much in this passage that is very pregnant; we can’t deal with all of it. But I want to look at four things that I think Luke teaches us about mission here. And he tells us first about the fact of mission, and then about the nature of mission – what it is – and then the problem we face when we try to do it, and then the power that we need to be able to do it.
The Fact of Mission
So first, let’s look at the fact of mission. You can see down in verse 1, Luke refers to the first book that he had written. And that means that the scholars, the commentators, they’ll say that it’s best to think of the relationship between Luke’s first book, the gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts as actually one book in two stages. And this is the way Luke describes that. He says, “In the first book, the gospel, I told you all about Jesus, what He began to do.” And that implies that the book of Acts is what Jesus continues to do, even after He leaves the earth. And it’s important to see what Luke is not saying then about the relationship between Luke and Acts. He’s not saying that in the story of the gospel, in the gospel of Luke, that’s what Jesus did, and now the book of Acts is what the church does. And that’s not how he puts it, not at all. Instead, he says it’s what Jesus started and carries on with, even after He ascends into the heavenly realm.
Now the title of the book of Acts came later in history. The early manuscripts do not have a title to this book. And so “Acts of the Apostles” was something that we gave it later. That means that we can change it or we can suggest something else. And I think maybe it could be titled – “The Acts of Jesus Christ by the Spirit in the First Generation of Christianity.” Now that’s clunky, but it’s a better description, in some ways, of actually what Luke tells us here. Now here’s what it means. It means that Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is the primary actor in all ministry forever – both then and today. Now if you’re a Christian this morning, you might ask a question like, “Is it Jesus doing ministry in me or am I doing ministry for Him?” And the answer for Luke is, “Yes.” Jesus, listen, if you are a believer today, Jesus Christ is doing His ministry for the world in you. And theologians, they’ll ask, “Why did Jesus have to ascend into heaven in the first place? Why not just stay and carry on, on earth?” He has a physical body. He can do that. And there’s lots of reasons, but one of the reasons is that if Jesus stays on earth, His presence is merely local and His ministry is local. You know He only occupies so many square inches. But if He ascends into heaven and He sends the Spirit of Jesus Christ to every Christian, then all of a sudden the ministry becomes universal. It goes to the ends of the earth. That’s why He ascended. That’s why He went up. And oh boy, there’s something heavy here. It’s not heavy like a burden; it’s just meaningful. And what’s meaningful is that, Christian friends, you are the instrument of Jesus’ active ministry today. It’s actually Him working in you and not you merely serving Him. He’s active in you.
Now there’s one more thing before we move on, a challenge perhaps, and it comes in verses 2 and 4. Because when you look at it, you realize that all that Jesus is doing in these first nine verses and beyond, He’s instructing the apostles about their ministry. He’s saying to the apostles, “You are going to be my witnesses,” to the apostles’ 40-day discipleship program of what it’s going to look like when He leaves. And so some people have come and said, “Is it not the case that the ministry is actually, that the call here is actually an apostolic call merely?” Who does He say, “You are going to be the witnesses?” He tells the Twelve, the apostles. So is it the same for me? Can we really say today that I’m on ministry for Jesus like He says to the apostles here?
Now two things. One, by the time you get to the end of chapter 1, verse 15, you realize that when He said, “Wait for the Spirit and you will be on mission,” there were 120 people in the room when the Spirit comes down and fills them up for ministry. Men and women. All types of people. It wasn’t just the apostles. The Spirit came down on 120, and that’s what happened at the beginning of Acts 2. But even more than that, Jesus says in verse 8, “You are going to be My witnesses from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.” Now the apostles did this ministry, this mission, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Antioch, North Africa, Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Italy, maybe France. That’s probably about as far west as they got. But if you go east, they got to Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, and some even suggest by tradition, maybe China. But no apostles made it to Mississippi, as far as I know. But you did. You’re here. And you see, for the Gospel to go to the ends of the earth, it has to mean you. It has to mean all of us. It can’t just be apostolic. And the word “apostle” just means “to be sent.” And so there’s a capital “A” Apostle – that’s not us – and there’s a lowercase “a” apostle – that is us. We’re sent. If you’re a Christian today, you’re sent.
Now that just simply means, if you’re following Jesus today, His mission is in you and you in Him. You follow Him. There’s a primacy to that. It really is the meaning of life. Verse 8 really is the great thesis of our current age – that Jesus is doing the mission from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. And that means, if you’re a Christian, that’s who you are. There’s a primacy. One of the things a Mission Conference might be for is just to have a bit of an awakening of a mission consciousness. You know, do you wake up and say, “This is who I am? There’s a primacy in my life for the mission of Jesus!” There’s a call here to see that.
The Nature of Mission
Now secondly. We’re on mission. Secondly, what is the mission; the nature of it. Verse 8 tells us, “You will be My witnesses.” Witnesses to what? And there’s two things here. There’s more, but we can only do two. There’s no time. You see, from verse 3 on, it says over and over again that He spoke to them regularly about the kingdom of God and that He called them to be witnesses to the kingdom of God ultimately. And that means the first thing that we need to say is that there is a broad mission where you have been called by God, if you are a Christian, to have your witness to the kingdom of God. Now what does that mean? It’s quite simple. Jesus Christ ascends into heaven at the end of this passage, and that means that in that moment, God the Father crowns Him to be King of the cosmos. Meaning, He owns everything. He’s the King of everything – every nation, every person, every creature, every sphere. He’s the King of sports. He’s the King of work. He’s the King of all of it. And so the first way to think about the mission is that you are actually a witness to the kingdom of God in every domain of life because of the simple fact that Jesus is your King and He commands kingship over everything, you have to give Him everything.
You know, there’s a call here in the mission to simply try to do the very hard work in your life of figuring out how Jesus Christ matters for everything you do. Now we could take – if we had time, if we had a series – we could walk through that and try to think about exactly what that means for work and for the way you attend a sporting event and for everything, everything. But you see, the witness to the kingdom is where you live in such a way now that your life points somebody to a life that is to come, what it might look like to be loved in the kingdom of God. That doesn’t mean you build the kingdom. Only Jesus does. But it’s the simple call to be salt and light. It’s love. It’s good works. It’s hospitality. That’s the broad mission. And Abraham Kuyper, he helpfully said this. He said that, “The mother idea” – this is how he put it in Dutch- he said, “The mother idea of the Reformation,” the big idea, “is that because we stand before God’s face at all times, God has to matter for everything we do.” And that’s the broad mission.
Now we can’t leave it there. There’s also a specific mission, and it’s right there built into the word “witness.” The word “witness” is the word in Greek “martyr, martus.” And the word martyr does not first and primarily mean to die for your faith. That’s a later meaning. The word “martyr” here in the text is actually a courtroom term and it means “to bear reliable witness, eyewitness testimony in a courtroom.” That’s where it’s adopted from. And the reason I think he chooses this word is because this specific mission is, at some point, you have to talk about Jesus. You know, you can’t just stay at the broad level of hospitality and love and good works and being salt and light and trying to figure out every way that Jesus matters for your whole life. You have to do that. But at some point, the specific mission is talking to people about Jesus, bearing the testimony.
And one of the interesting things that the New Testament scholars will point out is that when you look at Paul’s letters, for example, and Paul’s ministry in Acts, there’s a difference and it all has to do with this word “witness.” Witness really is simply telling the story of Jesus Christ in a way that people can hear it, giving it to them through your own life in a way that people can hear it. It’s different, actually, than telling people doctrine or telling people theology. So when you look at the book of Acts, Paul goes out and he witnesses; he tells the story of the cross and the resurrection and what happened to him in a way that every audience he appears to can hear it. He contextualizes it. He talks to the men of Athens differently than he talks to the Jews, but he always tells the story of Jesus. But then when he writes his letters, he’s writing to established churches and church leaders, and it’s, you know, “This is what justification means. This is sanctification. This is glorification. This is the relationship between baptism in the Old Testament.” He gets down into it. You know, ST, systematics. But when he goes on mission, he tells the story of Jesus to people in a way that they can receive it, and that’s the specific mission.
Now late modern people, the times they are a-changing, even here in Jackson, and the wind is blowing in a different direction and we’re moving into an age – I’ll potentially talk about this more tonight – we’re moving into an age of secularity where the predominant mindset of the culture is indifferent secularism. And in indifferent secularism, people do not want to be the object of a mission. They feel like it’s objectifying.
And that’s why it’s so critical that you combine the broad mission and the specific mission together because – let me just give you four words to think about this, a model I think that really helps do mission today in your personal life. It’s friendship, fellowship, chaplaincy and church. So friendship. Be friends with non-Christian people. Make non-Christians your good friends. Pursue them, love them, serve them. Go to their stuff and go to their kids’ stuff. Show up at the games. And then secondly, fellowship. Open your table. Sit down with non-Christians at your table, and even more important, invite your Christian friends to eat with your non-Christian friends. Sam Chan calls this mixing your universes. And let non-Christians in the city see the beauty of the Christian community gathered together around a table. Friendship. Fellowship.
Chaplaincy. If you do that, if you pursue non-Christians and you really serve them put your faith is also public, you’re not hiding anything, you’re transparent – you’re not pushy but you’re genuine – what will happen, we’ve seen this happen a lot in Edinburgh in our church, is that people who don’t necessarily believe in any religion so they think when crisis comes, they look for a chaplain in their life. You’ve seen this where a person might not have a stated religion but then all of a sudden when something disastrous happens, they call the one person they know in their life that is very religious and they say, “I don’t believe in prayer but would you pray?” And it’s actually when people are at rock bottom that they most need and can hear the words about Jesus Christ.
So friendship, fellowship, chaplaincy and church. And then finally you can move from there to say, “Would you like to step into this community, this church, and see what it’s all about? Would you like to know more? Would you like to belong for a season in order that you may believe?” And in the late modern world, this is a simple model but, we don’t even have to say it’s for today – actually the historical theologians say that since the time of the early church, the primary way people have come to faith in Jesus Christ has always been through close friendship and family association. And that’s regularly accounted for in the scholarship about the early church.
What could it mean – we’ve got to move on – what could it mean, what could it mean if many of us, half of us, all of us this year deeply pursued one non-Christian friend for the hope of their salvation all year long? What are the possibilities of what that could mean? And you know, when you see in a church an adult who goes through a journey like that from no faith, so they think – secularist, atheism, whatever it may be – to the moment where they get baptized, when you see an adult go through that and come to the front and they’re baptized, oh boy, there’s nothing in the life of a church as good as that.
The Problem We Face
Now third, nevertheless, there’s a problem, and it’s the problem we face with the fact of the mission. There’s two really. The first problem I’ve already mentioned. It’s that people in our world do not want to be the objects of a mission. But a more specific problem that we face, I think, is that we don’t actually want to be on mission. We don’t want to live a life of mission. We never face the first problem – that people around us don’t want to be the object of mission – because we struggle so much to be on mission ourselves. And that’s not an “us” problem. That’s not First Pres or St. Columba’s or First Baptist down the street. It’s not a modern Christian problem. And we know that because it’s exactly the apostles’ problem.
And you can see it here in verse 6. Verse 6 tells you – oh boy, the apostles! They said, when they came together, they asked Him, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Now as modern people, it’s very difficult to see exactly what they’re asking, but Jesus has already done the 40-day discipleship program with them. He’s been telling them the whole time what was happening. So verse 8, when it says, “You will be My witnesses,” that’s not the first time He’s said that. That’s a sampling of the fact that this has been the message for 40 days. “The Spirit is coming. You are the witnesses. It’s going to cost you. It’s going to cost many of you, all of you Twelve, your lives.” And they turn around here in verse 6 and this is what they say. They say, “So you’re saying, Jesus, that you’re staying here, that you’re going to become the new emperor, and we’re going to be in charge of the treasury?” That’s the response that they’re giving here! And John Calvin says, “There are as many errors in this question as there are words.” And John Stott says, “The verb, the noun, and the adverb of this sentence betray doctrinal confusion about the kingdom of God.” The verb, they say, “Are you going to restore the kingdom?” They’re saying – this is code for, “Are you establishing a political, earthly empire today and displacing Caesar? You know, are you doing the opposite of 1 Corinthians 1?” God wants to go into the world and take what’s foolish and weak like preaching and make it the power. But they’re saying, “Why don’t you just get an army and be the power of the world, stay here and go to Rome and take over the palace?” That’s the verb.
The noun, Israel, they’re saying, “Is it not going to be a national kingdom, not universal kingdom?” So it’s for specific people, specific geography. It’s not for the cosmos. And then the adverb, they say, “at this time.” “Aren’t you going to do it today? You’re not leaving. I know you keep saying that, but you’re not. You’re not really leaving.” In other words, they’re divvying up property, you know. That’s what this question is. It’s Peter saying, “Alright guys, I’m going to take Italy. And Andrew, you get the French Riviera. John he’s topnotch, he gets Greece. Who’s going to get Scotland? That was the question. Who’s going to be that blessed?” It’s temporal, it’s earthly, it’s entirely physical, it’s financial, it’s about comfort. They’re saying, “You’re going to make us very comfortable, right?”
And you see, the problem we face, it’s apostolic. Jesus says, “You’re on mission and it’s an age where I’m not physically present and the kingdom is not yet.” And the old self, as Paul puts it, comes back up. We regurgitate and the old self comes forward and the old self says, “I want to be comfortable. I’m not here to give; I’m here to get.” And that was the apostolic mindset and that’s the struggle because this is actually the originating sin. Bavinck called it “the pride of life” following the old theologians. It’s just simple self-centeredness and it comes back up and it comes back up and it comes back up and it makes it really hard for genuine, growing Christians to stay on mission, to be on mission, to have a mission consciousness. It’s my problem. It’s all of our problem. It’s the old self. It keeps coming back.
And let me close this and we’ll move to the last point just to say I think it’s actually harder than ever, though. And I think that because every day I take a break from work and I walk down the Royal Mile of Edinburgh, beautiful street. All sorts of crazy things happen on the Royal Mile, but one of the things that’s one the Royal Mile is just an array of statues and these statues are all dedicated to the great Scottish thinkers, so many great academics and theologians from Scotland historically. But one of those statues, right behind St. Giles’ Cathedral, is a 10 foot tall Adam Smith. Now you remember 11th grade AP History, Economics – Adam Smith? He wrote The Wealth of Nations. He’s the father of modern economics. And in The Wealth of Nations he asked the question, “What is it that drives the market?” You remember? “The invisible hand.” And the invisible hand – what’s that? It’s self-interest. It’s self-preservation. It’s that I’m always going to come to the market and be more interested in my profit than yours.
Now we know that we need that in the market. That actually keeps the market going. There’s a right place for self-preservation and self-interest, of course, in the market. But what can happen? You see, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, before he died, wrote an article in the Times in the UK where he said that the world, the world culture is now just the market economy. Amazon is in every nation. We live on it. And that’s not necessarily bad, but what it simply means is this. For us late modern people, the market mentality can creep into the covenant mentality. And we have market relationships – they’re very good, we need them. We need a market relationship at the market. But when it comes to the covenant, the covenant’s completely different. The market says, “I’m here self-interested, so can we make a deal?” The covenant, totally different. The covenant comes and it causes you, when you experience grace, to say, “I will go. I will be on mission because Jesus, You are on mission for me. And I will lose. I will lose my time, I will lose my money, I will lose my table. I will lose my reputation because You lost everything at the cross for me.” And it says, “I’m willing to be self-forgetful because You were so self-forgetful.” That’s the covenant mentality and we’ve got to be very weary, I think, as modern people, that the market mentality doesn’t overtake the covenant mentality when we need the covenant mentality. Paul, in 1 Corinthians says – very strange way to put it but he says this is Christian mission – “to fill out what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.” There’s nothing lacking when it comes to salvation in the sufferings of Christ, but what he’s saying is, he’s being pithy. He’s saying we’ve got to go give away ourselves in all the places of the world that Christ never got to, and that He’s actually the One doing that in us and through us.
Now we’ll move on, but let me just say that this feels heavy and burdensome perhaps, but I think it’s just important to say – we can’t develop it now, but that it doesn’t take much experience in life, and everybody here knows this – celebrity culture has proven it time and time again that real joy in life, real joy in life actually comes in losing yourself to a greater mission. When you’re chasing self-interest, you end up empty. And that’s the great irony. It’s hard and it costs, but at the same time it brings you something you never would have gotten otherwise, which is actual contentment. And that’s why in the contemporary world, this late modern world, we’ve never been so comfortable. We’ve never had hospitals like we have today and bathrooms like we have today and food aplenty like we have today. We’ve never been as comfortable in all of human history, and yet the culture at large is sadder, more lonely, emptier and more anxious than ever. And that’s because when you lose the costliness of divine mission in your life, it leaves you without joy.
The Power We Need
Now that’s an invitation, but the final thing here as we close is that that means we need power. This is too hard. We need power for mission. And just very quickly, you say today, “I’m a Christian. I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But I’m not sure that I very often wake up with any sense of mission consciousness.” Is that you? That’s me, often. And maybe you’re here today and you say, “This teaching and sermon doesn’t feel directed to me because I’m not sure I’m a Christian at all.” But actually for both of us we need the exact same thing. And what we need is to actually see the big idea of the ascension here at the end of the passage in verse 9. Jesus goes up in verse 9 into heaven and this is simply what it means. It means that at the ascension of Jesus, Jesus Christ is pronouncing to every single one of you, no matter what you believe in today, that He is on mission for you, that He’s still on mission for you. That’s what the ascension is. The ascension is when Jesus goes to His heavenly Father, the holy temple above, and He presents His own blood to God the Father and says, “Look what I purchased for that person.” And He’s doing that now. He ever intercedes. You see, what the ascension means is that Jesus Christ is still on mission for you, even if you don’t know it, even if you don’t feel it.
And we said late modern people don’t want to be the object of mission – has anybody ever wanted to be? I mean that’s the exact story of the Bible is that God comes into a world on mission for humans who do not want Him to be on mission for them. And in the middle of history, we, through our sin with the crowd shouted, “Give me Barabbas! I’ll take Barabbas! I don’t want to be the object of Your mission!” And in the grand irony of all ironies, that was exactly the thing through which God saved us. And that means that you’ve got to think about the ascension to know that Jesus Christ loves you right through your struggle to be on mission. He went to God’s heavenly throne and presented His blood for you. It’s what every one of us need.
Now let me say two things and we’ll close. Two things. Maybe three. One is, that means that guilt cannot be a motivator. You can’t come today and say, “I’m not sure I have a vibrant mission consciousness and I feel bad about it.” We all feel that at times, but guilt is no motivator. The only power is to see Jesus Christ on mission for you today. His love. The second thing, if you do see that, that probably means that you have the Holy Spirit. And one of the big things here is that Jesus says over and over again, “Wait for the Spirit. You need the Spirit or you can’t do this.” But if you’re here today and you’re saying at all, “I want to be conscious of the mission. I want to be on mission and I see the love of Christ,” then that means very likely – Paul, Acts 2, Peter, he connects simple faith and repentance with having the Spirit. If you have simple faith today and any sorrow over your sin, you have the Spirit. You have the Holy Spirit. And what that means is you can leave today knowing you have the exact thing you need for mission power – the Spirit. The Spirit, who is God, is literally with you. And so you can go out and take courage and take courage in the potential losses because you’ve got the Spirit. You’ve got ministry power, mission power.
Last thing. Maybe you’re there and you’re there – you see how much Jesus wants you and loves you in the ascension. You see that you have the Spirit. Maybe the third thing that we can take away is this. We all need, we all need a 40-day discipleship program to get back on the mission. That’s exactly what was being talked about here. Jesus put them through a discipleship program. And the reason for that – it doesn’t have to be 40 days, okay. It can be any amount of time. The point. The prerequisite for an effective mission life is that you’re actually following Jesus. It’s discipleship. That’s why in Mark 1 Jesus says to the fishermen, “Follow Me and then I will make you a fisher of people.” So if you say, maybe the mission consciousness and the hardness towards that – are you following Him? You’re a Christian, yes, but are you pursuing Jesus? Are you wanting Him and chasing after Him even in the times where you don’t know if you want Him? He says, “Seek Me and you will find Me if you seek Me with your heart.” Discipleship is the prerequisite for the life of mission. And if we follow Him and we seek Him, our desires will be reshaped and over time we’ll wake up and start to think, “I really do want to live for Him in a way that’s different from a year ago, in a way that’s different from five years ago and ten years ago.”
So let’s ask the ascended King now to give us mission power. Let’s pray.
Father, we need mission power, and that’s the Spirit. So come, Holy Spirit, and give it to us. Give us that great gift of Your presence and send us to extend Your kingdom, Lord. And we pray this in Christ’s name, amen.