A New Day Begins - Ben Stuart

Well, there was a popular little run on Instagram this week to post pictures of 2016. What were you up to 10 years ago? And for me, at January of 2016, I was preaching in Texas at a ministry called Breakaway that I led, and I was preaching a series on dating to some college students, having no idea it would later become a book. But by the end of that series, I had said yes to transitioning out of leadership of that ministry and transitioning onto the staff of Passion and moving my family to Atlanta to study at Passion City Church and prepare to launch a church in some city I did not know where. And so at the end of 2016, I remember visiting for the first time Washington, D.C., and began to pray about whether or not God was calling us here to launch Passion City, Washington, D.C. Crazy thing is, when we got here, I remember one of the first meetings I had was with the chief of staff of a senator, and I asked him, how can I serve the people of Washington, D.C.? And he said, nobody here knows how to date. You think you'll ever speak to that? I was like, huh, maybe, maybe so. Actually, one of the first sermons I ever gave in this town was at the Capitol, because I was asked to speak on dating. And I thought, what a strange trip we've been on. Lord, what a wild way to approach the city.

And yet here we were, having no idea to talk about dating back then, would open the doors of the Capitol here. God is a strange and wonderful master of history, right? And I tell you that because, at some level, it's kind of fun to hear the stories of the history of a church. That's some of the early days of Passion City, D.C. It can be interesting information to know, and it can kind of inspire and instruct us. But the truth is, that's not really the farthest back we could go. I could go back to how Pastor Louie and Shelley began to pray in faith and launch Passion City Church in Atlanta that eventually launched us here. Or I could go further back into the 90s, when they launched Passion Conferences. And when I attended Passion Conference in 1997, as a kid taking his kind of first shaky steps of owning his own personal faith, and sitting at a family group at a conference with a bunch of other college students and one 40-year-old man from Nepal, and seeing that God was gonna use that moment to unlock for me a vision of God's work among the nations. And so it's cool to hear stories like that, but the truth is, we could go even further back than that. It's great to hear stories of the history of Passion City Church, but this is not where the church begins and ends.

There's a Peanuts comic strip written in the 70s. A few of us were alive back then. And it's got Charlie Brown looking at his little sister, Sally, who's writing an essay on church history. And she opens the essay by saying, when writing about church history, we have to go all the way back to the very beginning. To begin, our pastor was born in 1930. And Charlie Brown rolls his eyes, because that's not really the beginning of the story. Our family tree goes deeper than that. We've got ancient roots, and there's something beautiful about studying history. I remember when I first moved here to D.C., I said, I need to learn about the city. I started reading biographies of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and Ulysses S. Grant. And I remember when we lived on Capitol Hill, standing in the Lincoln Park and going, Douglass and Grant stood here as they dedicated a statue to Lincoln. This is crazy. Trying to learn history so I could learn how to relate to you people, right? And yet, over the couple of years, I've continued to read these history books, because I realized it's not just getting information for me anymore, it's to inspire me. It's to help me see, as I read these biographies of different leaders, hey, sometimes good things

are really hard. And hard things can be good. But there's a benefit to endurance. I'm reading Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs right now. And as a 20-year-old, he was in the Army, didn't want to be, and was shipped down to Texas, where he didn't want to go. And yet, he wrote in his memoirs, I was in a place I didn't want to be, doing a thing I didn't want to do, but as I look back on it, I was dying of consumption in the Northeast, and got moved in the heat of Texas, having to exercise outside every day, actually saved my life. So doing a thing I didn't want to do in a place I didn't want to be is what saved me and led me to save the Union, right? How about that? And so he wrote at the very beginning of his memoirs, man proposes, but God disposes. God runs the story, and yet weaves us into it. And I've read that, and I'm like, I'm so encouraged by that, because sometimes I look up and go, God, what are you doing? And you go, if there's a purpose for Ulysses S. Grant in Texas, maybe there's a purpose for me and for you wherever you are now. And so I want us to look at history, not just to be informed, but to be inspired,

that through endurance and encouragement, we would have hope. But I don't want to just go back to any history. I want to take you back to the most important moment in human history. It's interesting, if you just Google that, what's the most. Important moment in history. People give different answers. Fire, the wheel. One of them was like, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. I'm like, wouldn't fire? I don't know, okay, there's some debate here. But I wanna take you back to the most important moment in human history, when the Son of God, Jesus Christ, ascended from the grave and commissioned his people to go forth in his name, right? We're gonna look at the very roots of our family tree, the birth of the Christian church. This season, we're studying the book of Acts. Now, to tell you what we're gonna do this morning, we're gonna do three things. Number one is, it's an orientation to the book, which is gonna feel a bit like you're back in school, and it's gonna be a bit of like looking at the syllabus, so I apologize for that, but we'll make it interesting. So we're gonna do a little bit of orienting to the book, and then we're gonna look at this historical moment together

of Jesus Christ commissioning his church. But then we're also gonna apply it, because we're not just looking at what they did back then, it's meant to instruct us in how we live today, right? But to begin, to give us a sense of where we are, look at verse one. It says, in the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach. Now, right away, if you're new to this book, you might be thinking, the first book? What does that mean? Well, this is your first point orienting you to the book of Acts. The book of Acts is a sequel, right? Acts was written by Luke, who we'll see later in this book, was a companion of the apostle Paul, right? And Luke wrote the gospel of Luke, and it did well, so they greenlit the sequel, and that's what we have. I'm just kidding. No, but really, he wrote them to be a single story together that we're meant to read of. And you can kind of tip it off in a couple different ways. One is the similarities in the introductions. If you look at Luke chapter one, verse one, it says, inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word

have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you've been taught. And so these matching intros show you Luke and Acts are meant to be read together, right? That it's one extended story from the gospels through here, right? It's kind of like Godfather 2 or Superman 2 or Lord of the Rings. You're really meant to watch it as a series, right? Or else it won't make much sense, right? And we learn a couple things from these introductions of Luke and of Acts. Number one is that Luke acknowledges there were other accounts of the life of Jesus. Did you know he said there were other narratives and we have those. Mark, who we'll meet in this book, was a companion of Peter. And Mark wrote what many believe was the first gospel. It's compact, distilled, the shortest. It's like a high concentrated shot of Jesus, right? Just trying to let people know who this man is and what it means for you. Matthew and John were disciples of Jesus and they have much of Mark bedded in them.

Matthew does. And yet they added, they say, no, there's more that Jesus said and more that he did that we need to make sure we write down so people can know. And Luke said, and I felt concerned to do the same thing. And if you look at Luke, much of the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Mark are put in the gospel of Luke, but there's additional material because he says, I knew some of the eyewitnesses. He was friends with the disciples. He knew Mary, that you'll see her in the book of Acts, that Luke knew Mary and we get the infancy material of what it was like to be the mother of Jesus because Luke knew her and said, hey, for people like Theophilus who never came to Jerusalem, hey, you need to know this, so I'm gonna write these down, right? And so here he gave us the sequel, the continuing work of Jesus in the book of Acts. And Acts is not just a sequel, it's also history. Notice he says, I'm gonna give you an ordered account. These are real events that really happened. This is not make-believe or mythology. And he says, I'm writing to you, Theophilus, so you can have certainty, confidence in what you believed, right? That you can know this is really true. There's an archeologist named William Mitchell Ramsey

that lived in the late 1800s, early 1900s. He was a renowned Oxford professor and archeologist, but he was trained at Aberdeen and Oxford under professors who just dismissed the Bible as a work of fiction. And so he believed that, sort of untested. And then when he went to go do his archeological work in Asia Minor, he said, you know what? Part of what I'm gonna do here is just discover what really happened in the ancient world. Not many of the cities that are mentioned in the Bible had been discovered in his day. And so he was like, you know, I'm gonna show that this really is just a work of make-believe. And yet he was surprised as he began to dig through the earth that the cities that Luke mentions, the denominations of money, even the titles of government officials, Luke, and these things that are verifiable, historical facts that Luke names, he's right 100% of the time. And Ramsey wrote, I found myself often brought into contact with the Book of Acts. as the authority for topography, antiquity, and society of Asia Minor. It gradually was born upon me that in various details, the narrative shows marvelous truth. He says the book could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art, and perception of truth that to be a model of a historical statement. He's like, I don't even want to believe this, but in everywhere I contested, it's true. And so he had to take it seriously, and then as it began to speak about metaphysical ideas,

Ramsey became a Christian and spent the rest of his life proclaiming the gospel that he had seen verified in the dirt of Asia Minor. So we're going to look at history, people, places, things that happened as God moves. Third thing about Acts is it's long, so we're going to break it up. We're going to do part one here, and then we'll take some breaks along the way, and we're going to do part two and part three later. But it's long for one reason, it's because Acts is a bridge. It's interesting, if you read your Bible in the Old Testament, you've got a lot of Jewish prophets speaking to the Jewish people of God in the Old Testament, and then you have the gospels, the long-awaited Jewish Messiah coming and really staying in this little piece of real estate in Israel, and then dying and resurrecting in Jerusalem, right? And if you didn't have the book of Acts, it would end with Jesus in Jerusalem, and if there's no Acts, the next book in your Bible would be a book called Romans. And if there's no Acts, you go, wait a minute, Romans aren't Jewish. Who's Paul, and who are the Romans, and what do they have to do with this? Or the Corinthians, or the Thessalonians, or what is going on here? How did this go from a Jewish movement that was geographically bound to a global movement encompassing multiple ethnicities across the known world? How did this movement of Jesus expand to be a multi-ethnic force in the world? The book of Acts is going to show us how we got here, how Gentiles, like many of you and me, got into a place like this, worshiping the Jewish Messiah, right? But it's not just the historical bridge of the gospels to the New Testament, really the Old Testament to the New, as it shows us this is a new movement, but it's not novel. This is something God prophesied and is now fulfilling. It's also meant to be a guide, that we're going to see profiles of courage, ordinary men and ordinary women like you and me, saying yes to God and finding he can use ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

And so Paul writes to Theophilus, which really is just a combination of the words God and love. So it could be lover of God or loved by God. Some people are like, is that just a symbolism to everyone who loves God, this book's for you? Most commentators think no, because he calls him most excellent Theophilus, meaning he probably was someone with a high-ranking position. But he's telling this man, I'm writing to you so that you may have certainty about what you believe. And it applies to us too. For those of us who weren't there, Luke will give us a painstakingly accurate account to give us confidence as we take up our turn to live by faith, right? That's what this is for. So with that orientation done, let us begin to see what Jesus was up to. And here, I want you to notice in that same verse, he says in that first account, meaning the gospel of Luke, he said, I ordered or communicated what Jesus began to do and teach. Interesting because you think the gospels is Jesus' whole life. And Luke just called that the beginning. Implications being, Jesus is not done. Jesus is leading his church in volume two, both in this day and in our day. As we prepared to launch this church in Washington, DC, I was in so many Ubers where people would ask why you're here in DC. And I'd tell them, we're here to start a church. And they'd say, what kind of church is it? And my wife and I would say, we're a Jesus church. And no one liked that answer. They were like, no, give me a denominational particularity

or a stylistic particularity by which I may judge you. And I'm like, I'm not quite sure what to say to you other than we're going to teach this book as it lies. And as it proclaims the name of Jesus Christ, the hope of the world, that's the kind of church we are, right? And so here you see, Jesus began his work on earth. He's going to continue it through his people, right? This is actually one of the great apologetics for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. N.T. Wright talks about this. How do you get the Christian church that suddenly a monotheistic people worships a man as God? How did you get us? It's because that man didn't stay dead. And he launched a movement that continues to this day, right? All that he began to do and to teach, Jesus's ministry was word and action. And those are meant to go together. Much harm is done in the church when our actions don't match our words. And Jesus will minister by word and truth. And then he's going to call us in the end to do the same, right? But Luke... is gonna pick up right where his gospel left off. You could literally have started this section with previously on Jesus, right? And he says, all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day that he was taken up, after he had given commands to the Holy Spirit, to the apostles whom he had chosen.

That taken up refers to his ascension. And we don't have time to go into all this. Really this first chapter is kind of like an overture, a little sampling of all that's gonna come. But the ascension of Jesus was the fulfillment of a lot of Old Testament prophecy. One of the most quoted Old Testament verses in the New Testament is Psalm 110. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. It's a great mystery in the Old Testament. Who's the Lord calling Lord and telling him to sit by him? And here you're gonna see Jesus ascended, ruling and reigning. It was quoting that idea that got Jesus killed. You're gonna see me sitting at the right hand of power. And like, that's it, you're dead. And then he didn't stay dead. Whoops, now we gotta take him serious. And he says, hey, I am the Lord that the Lord said sit at my right hand on my throne. That Jesus is ruling and reigning as he sits above. And so he's gonna start with his ascension. Right before Jesus was taken up, he gave commands to his apostles. That word apostle means sent ones, official delegates. It's interesting, these are the same guys that were called the disciples in the Gospels. You remember them. And they were a bit of a mess, right, in the Gospels, making a lot of mistakes.

And Jesus told him, I just want you to listen to me and learn from me. That's what the word disciple means. Be a learner, learn at my feet. But then as his ministry progressed, he started to identify particularly these 12 and call them apostles. That means sent one, official emissary of the king, because this is kind of how the Gospel works. I wanna train you, but I'm gonna train you so I can deploy you. That's the idea, that I am meant to learn, but it's never meant to stay housed in me. We are blessed to be a blessing. We looked at that last week. And so here he says, I've gotta give some commands to my apostles, those who will be my official emissaries in my name. But before he sends them out, we get in the next verse, something interesting he does. And this is where we're gonna move to the application phase for us. And what we've got here is not just how the local church was born and not just how the church universal is born, this is how a Christian is born. I'm gonna give you the first steps of what it is to be a person who walks with Jesus. And you see it right here in verse three. He presented himself alive to them after his sufferings by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days

and speaking about the kingdom of God. Notice what Jesus did at the beginning. After he raised from the dead, he appeared to them presenting many proofs. He was showing them I'm really alive, right? And proof means to cause something to be convincing in a decisive manner. And so he said, guys, I didn't stay dead. And he did it over 40 days, multiple appearances. Many of them we have written down in the book that you see he showed up to the women at the tomb, to Mary Magdalene individually, to some disciples walking on the road to Emmaus, to some scared ones that were hiding out in the upper room. He appeared to Thomas and he gave convincing proofs. Do you remember Thomas? He's like, it's really me. Hey, put your hands in the wounds in my hands. See where the nails went in. Put your hand in my side. Ghosts don't have wounds. I'm physically resurrected from the dead. When he showed up to the disciples in the upper room, do you remember? He was like, I'm alive. Do you have any fish? And he started eating fish. He's like, ghosts don't eat fish. It's really me, boys. He cooked them breakfast on the beach.

Ghosts don't make fish tacos, but Jesus did. And he did this over 40 days. You know what I love about the 40 days? He didn't rush it. Hey, I'm about to send y'all out to be witnesses, but where does the church begin and where does faith begin? It begins with proof. To be spiritual is not to be anti-intellectual. Some of you think that. Oh, this is all for feel good, but you kind of have to check your brain at the door. No, you do not. That God welcomes your intellectual questions. And before Jesus sends them out, he says, let me help you understand what it is I just did. A real man who really claimed to be God, really died, really rose. That's really me. Let's talk about it. And you see, he didn't just appear. He taught them. At the end of Luke, it tells us that, where he kind of overlaps the book. Luke 24, it says, Jesus said to them, these are my words. I spoke to you while I was still with you. That everything written about me in the law and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Jesus said, hey, let's take some time and look at things written centuries before

and how I fulfilled them perfectly. And then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures he taught them. He says, thus it was written that Christ should suffer and on the third day, rise again. And that repentance. for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You're witness of these things. And behold, I'm sending the promise of my father upon you, but stay in the city until you're clothed with power from on high. He doesn't rush it with them, and he doesn't rush it with you. Some of you are here and you go, I didn't really sing because I don't have some allegiance to the great king. I'm not longing for his return. I'm here because she's cute and invited me. I'm here because I'm trying to turn over a new leaf, trying to get something right in my life. I don't know if I'm ready to commit my whole life to Jesus. I don't know. That's okay, man, he's not rushing you. He's not offering you the ring on the first date, but he did change human history. Even if you don't believe this book, no one lived a life like this man. So much of what is true about the world today has been shaped by the words and the thoughts of this carpenter from Galilee.

It would be the wisest thing in the world for you to do to take him seriously. He's not rushing you, but it is important. And so take the time you need to learn. When I was a freshman in college, I went through a crisis of faith. I was raised going to church, but I had a series of disappointments where in my life I just didn't think God showed up for me. And I remember in that moment just going, how do I even know he's real? Mom told me to believe in God, but mom could be wrong. And I would struggle with God as I would read his word and kind of fight with him in this field. And then I remember I started walking to this nearby church and there was a pastor that would read the Bible, a paragraph at the time, and I didn't understand it. And then he would explain it and I'd go, huh, that kind of makes sense. And over the course of a year, not only did I start to understand it, I started to go, it doesn't just make sense, it fits with reality. It answers some big questions. It speaks to some of my deepest longings and needs. This is not a normal book. And I love that God was gracious to give up a frustrated young man time to investigate proof that Jesus is who he says he is and can do what he said he can do.

So if you're uncertain, you keep coming back because we're gonna keep talking about him. He's the only thing we sell around here, okay? So he's speaking to them about the kingdom of God. God always rules over history, but God is breaking into the story in a new way through his son, Jesus Christ. And so here he says, I'm bringing this kingdom of God, but it's not just intellectual in nature. This is your second point of application for you. He says, hey, yes, I'm gonna give you proof so you can be certain that I really am the son of God who lived and died and rose again. But Christianity is not just the ascent to some metaphysical ideas or some commitment to a moral set of rules. It's more than that. It's not just proof, it's presence. I need the supernatural spiritual presence of God in my life. What does it mean to be spiritual? To be spiritual is to be rightly related to the Holy Spirit of God. If you say you're spiritual, but don't know what it is to be filled by the Holy Spirit, then I don't know what spirits you're playing with. But here Jesus says, I'm not just here to give you intellectual proof. Oh, that's where it starts. True spirituality begins in the mind. Think well, read well, study well, ask questions.

He's not scared of them. As I wrestled with my faith, I found out the questions I had had answers, and there were actually harder questions that I hadn't thought of yet, and those had answers too. But it's more than just proof, it's presence. And you see in verse four, it says, while he stayed 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. He says, you guys need proof, but don't try to do this by your own power. You don't just need intellectual proof, you need the presence of the Holy Spirit. What he said in Luke, clothed with power from on high, baptized, immersed in the intimate and animating presence of the Spirit of God. This is what so many of you are longing for, whether you know it or not. And the good news is, the Trinity's on the move to give it to you. Did you see that? What the Father has promised, the Son procured by a sacrifice, and it's the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives. This was the great hope of the Old Testament.

I don't have time to show you all the verses, but you see this all the way back in Genesis, as God is talking about the creation of man and woman in Genesis chapter two, it's so poetically and beautifully says that we are made from dirt, and then God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life. In Hebrew, the word wind and breath and spirit are the same word. And here you see this beauty about humanity, that we are made from dust, there's a humility to us. And then yet like no other animal, God breathed his breath into us, and we became dust. him alive. One commentator says it has the intimacy of a kiss, him breathing into our nostrils, that mankind at the beginning is dust and the breath of God, the intimate presence of God, animating us and bringing us to life. That's the picture in Genesis 2. The great tragedy of Genesis 3 is that when Adam and Eve broke faith with God, something broke in us. And God told them what my two-year-old wrote to me in my Father's Day card, right? That from dust you came, and to dust you shall return. Why she felt like I needed to be reminded of that. But that was the tragedy of Genesis 3.

We were dust in the intimate presence of God, but now the wind is gone. Something's wrong with us. And you see throughout Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament that we advance in arts and technology, there's something wrong with our hearts. And if you're doing your read through your Bible, let me give you a little spoiler. As God gives his law, you will see the demonstrable failure of human beings to keep it. Basic things, like take a day off, they won't do it. Take a day off or I'll kill ya, and they still won't do it. And some of you will read through this book and go, I don't know what I'm sure to get out of this, but these people are a mess. That's what you're supposed to get out of it. That though the law of God is perfect and beautiful, there's something wrong with us. We cannot ascend to what we know we're meant to be. And even if you haven't read the law in the Old Testament, we fall short of our own moral standards. That I'm not all I want to be. That's why some of you are here, because I have a vision of what kind of man or woman I'm supposed to be, and I just can't seem to get there. Is there a technique? There might be something that'll help, but at the end of the day,

what you need is not a couple little practices. You need presence. You need the very spirit of God filling you. And that's the hope of the Old Testament that he begins to speak. Isaiah, the prophet, begins to whisper, one day the seed of the great King David will come, and the spirit will be with him. And when the spirit is poured out from on high, there'll be life. That's what the prophet Ezekiel saw when God took poor Ezekiel and brought him to a valley filled with dry bones. He said, Ezekiel, can these bones live? And Ezekiel gives the perfect Sunday school answer, I bet you know. And God says, prophesy to the breath, tell the wind to blow. And as he begins to prophesy, these bones come together, skin comes upon them, and then God helps him understand this vision in Ezekiel 36. He says, you know what this is? As the wind blows, what's happening there, one day it will happen again. My spirit will come, and he will move within you, and he will move you to obey my decrees. That what you are powerless to do on your own, my spirit will empower you to live a spiritual life you're not capable of on your own. Do this or that the law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands.

A better word the gospel brings, it bids me to fly and gives me wings. You tell me to love my enemies, pray for those who persecute you, that's not a normal response. You're right, it's a supernatural response, and you need a supernatural spirit of God to give it to you. That's why Jesus said before he died on the night he was betrayed to his disciples, it's good for you that I'm going away, because when I go away, the paraclete, the helper that walks along with you will come. And Jesus who knew no sin became sin on the cross. If the wages of sin is death, Jesus never sinned, didn't deserve to die, and yet he took on death, whose? Ours. He said that thing that separated you from God's presence, your sin, I'm taking it on the cross, I will pay for it and be buried. The wages of your sin was death, I'll take it. And then God will prove that my sacrifice was sufficient by raising me from the dead, and he says, and now I get to unleash on you what you were meant to have from the beginning, the very intimate and animating spirit of God, the firstfruits guaranteeing what's to come, that a day will come where you'll be in God's very presence, but I'm sending his spirit now. So he looks at his disciples and says,

I'm about to send you out to be apostles, sent out to preach my name. Don't go do this by your own power. You will not do it. Wait until the promised Holy Spirit comes forth, which will happen in not many days from now. That's next week. And so here he says, true spirituality begins with proof, but it's also presence. Jesus is the son of God, and it's through him I can have an intimate and life-giving experience of Jesus and his Holy Spirit. That's what I want. One of the Spirit's main goals you see later in the Bible is to help free you from the confines of your sin. So many of you thought racing into sin was freedom, and you found it wasn't freedom, it was bondage. So many of you are here because you say, is there any hope to get out of the depression I feel, the anxiety I struggle with, the failures in my life? For so many of you, that answer and that resolution will come to the power of the Holy Spirit working in your life. But it's not just to set you free from sin and just enjoy being free. It's interesting, as you see churches. growing around the world today. So many people say, I just wanna be in the church to experience God's presence. But when you dig a little deeper what they mean,

what they mean is, I wanna feel good. And you go, amen, yes. There are better and worse ways to feel good. This is a great way to do it, highly recommend it. Keep coming back. But that is not the end. This feeling is meant to go someplace. And here's where you see our last point. That he says, I'm giving you proof that I am the son of God. I'm giving you the presence of my empowering Holy Spirit, but it is with a purpose that you can do something bigger with your life than you'd ever conceive of on your own. And so here in verse six, they ask him. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Their guy just beat death. And they were like, yes. Is this where you just take over, destroy the Romans, eliminate our enemies, establish the kingdom, we'll rule at your right hand. This is gonna be great. And do you notice they're asking, is this when you take over? And there is some precedent to that. There are Old Testament prophecies that do predict one day Jesus will rule the whole world in righteousness. And so he goes, is this that moment? But even the way they're asking it

is a bit political and nationalistic. Jesus doesn't rebuke them like you're wrong. He just says, you're not quite seeing the whole picture. I'm doing something else here. And so he kind of clarifies the eschatological calendar. Is this the time to restore the kingdom to heaven? The challenge they're having is they thought when Jesus inaugurated the kingdom by his coming, they thought that would also be the consummation of the kingdom, where he shuts down history and we all go to be with God. And Jesus is letting them see, no, my first coming was the inauguration. The kingdom of God is here, it's within you. And there will be a day of consummation. Well, I'll return and shut this thing down. But there's a key piece in the middle called proclamation. We need to let the nations know their king has come. There were Old Testament verses about that. The boys just seem to have missed them, right? Isaiah 49 says to the Messiah, it's too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Judah and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I'll make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth. The disciples were seeing the Messiah's first arrival and his second, like sometimes when you're hiking, you see two mountains and you think they're close together. Oh, let's get on that peak, that's neat.

Look at all those cute little bushes. And then you climb on this mountain and you go, oh no, that's a different mountain. Those aren't bushes, those are trees. And there's some distance between us. And Jesus is like, yes, I inaugurated the kingdom. I will consummate the kingdom. But you need to proclaim it because I'm not just here to save one nation. I'm here to collect people from all nations. I am Lord of all, and that's good news for all, right? And so he tells them in verse seven, it's not for you to know times or seasons that the father is fixed by his own authority. They're asking about the end times, when will it come? And he says, that's none of your business. That's the father's business, not yours. So if TikTok tells you the world's ending, don't believe them, right? Because Jesus says, you don't get to know. You don't know when it's coming, but you know that it's coming. So you live like it's coming. And like a good parent, Jesus redirects. Don't get too wrapped up about what my father's doing. He's got it. You need to worry about what you're supposed to be doing. So he says, but, in verse eight, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem

and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Witness is someone who helps establish facts objectively. That will be your job. The apostles foremost, because they were witnesses to Jesus personally, and as they record faithfully his story, but it'll extend out through them, through people like us. That the Christian life is proof. I get convinced that Jesus is who he says he is and can do what he said he can do, namely forgive me. But I don't just get proof, I get presence of the empowering Holy Spirit changing my life. And then I get a purpose, proclamation, that I want the world to know a Jesus who changed me. And he says, you're getting power, but that power is for proclamation. In Jerusalem, the city that they were in, as they stood here on the Mount of Olives, looking just a half mile away over the city, he says, you're gonna start there and let the city know their king has come. But it's not gonna end there. It's not just for your little tribe. It's gonna go to Judea. That was the surrounding region, which made sense to them. But then he said, it's also gonna go to Samaria. You can see it on a map. Samaria. was not the wider region, it was the neighboring region

of people who were very different ethnically. And he says, I want you to preach this gospel not just to the people who look like you, I want you to preach it to the people who don't look like you. The people that you don't get along with culturally. The people that you're gonna rub against. The people who have different political ideas. I want you to go proclaim good news to them. That's gonna challenge the boys later. He says, and not just them, the ends of the earth. That I wanna bring Romans into my family, Corinthians. That I have a kingdom that has implications for the nations. I am calling you to a purpose bigger than you and I want you to be a part of it. Jesus is not just a little regional deity just for a handful of people. He is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and he says the world needs to know me. So a few months ago I was on a boat, very big boat, with college students from over 70 different nations. And I remember as we boarded this boat, I was there to preach. It was just a mix of all these young people from all these different nations of the world and they were learning each other's different cultures and ideas. And so you had like Norwegian kids playing African drums and I was like, that's surprising. You know, and just sort of different dances going on

from different cultures and mixing of people. I'm like, what's going on here? And these were all Christians. People who had put their faith in Jesus from countries all over the world and God had knit them together. And they started telling me, here's some of our cultural challenges. Here's some of our very different beliefs, but a common allegiance to Jesus has knit us all together. And so they were showing up at ports in nations around the world and people would go because they had a bookstore on there. You could buy books for the cheap, not a lot of Barnes and Nobles on some of the islands in the Caribbean. And so they would roll up in these big boats and people would walk on and see people from 70 different nations worshiping together. And every time they saw people coming to faith, hundreds, thousands putting their faith in Jesus. Why? Because they saw if your King can bring peace among the nations like this, would that the whole world was like this boat. And so Jesus is saying, hey, I'm giving you proof to who I am, the power from the presence of my spirit. And I am doing this as the exalted King, enabling you for the experience of expanding my kingdom. That's what we're doing here, that the world may know.

And as he was saying these things, they looked on and he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes. That's often how angels are described. The behold, that you know they weren't there before and then suddenly they're there. And they said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven. It's a funny question from the disciples' point of view. Why are you looking up into heaven? Well, because a man just floated into the sky and left and we're wondering if he's coming back. That's kind of incredible. It's a reasonable thing to be looking up. But from the angels, it's a reasonable question to ask. The word angel means messenger. And so they're like, hey, we're given commands from God and we go execute them. Hey, did y'all not hear, he gave you your orders. Go to Jerusalem, pray, wait for the spirit, proclaim his name. So why are you standing here? Don't look up, move out. It's time for you to go. And they're like.

And God begins to move in a movement that has swept through history and is right now sweeping through the Lincoln Theater, calling people to himself for his glory and his good. And you get to be a part of it, that there is a purpose bigger than you. God has given you particular skills and abilities that you will use in particular jobs, but your purpose is bigger than that. And so we get proof that Jesus is the king, the power of his spirit, so we can proclaim his name. You have a purpose that's bigger than just making a little money and eking out a little modicum of happiness in the world before you kick the bucket. That we can be a part of telling the world there is forgiveness and hope and life in Jesus' name. So as I struggled deeply as a freshman, the gentleness of pastoral care helped me get the proof I needed. I really believe these are the words of God and Jesus is the son of God who lived for me and died for me and rose. And then with my first steps of that trembling faith, I showed up at Passion Conference. And as I showed up there, they would put us in family groups and I was there with those college kids and DB Lama, right? And I remember as I sat there, I was so curious. I know how all these college kids got here.

How did you as a 40-year-old man arrive in this place? And DB Lama told us, I'm from Nepal. And someone came to my village up in the mountains and they told me about Jesus, that I can be forgiven and have intimacy and peace with God in his name. He said, and I believed. I was born again. And that cost me my job and it cost me a lot in life. but I have a deep burden. I want my people to know the forgiveness and the hope and the joy I have in Jesus. I want to teach them the Bible, but when I read it, I don't understand it. But I heard in America, there were resources about Jesus. So that's why I'm here. And I was kind of waiting for the next sentence. I'm like, oh, that's the whole plan. You just came to America because America could teach you about Jesus. Wow, hey man, America's a big place, all right? And that was your whole plan? You didn't have like an organization or a group? And I realized this is kind of wild, and yet he managed to find his way here among us. And as we were in this family group, you had to raise hands to appoint who the leader should be. Everyone took a vote and they voted me as the leader. And I'm like, guys, I don't know that I'm emotionally or spiritually in a place where I should be leading anybody.

But I realized, oh, all I have to do is ask questions. I can do that. So I was like, hey, where are you guys from? Oh, I'm from this university, that university. I'm from Nepal. Okay, that's interesting. Hey, what can we pray for? Well, my quiet times are a little dry. I'm not sure if my girlfriend's the one. I have a deep burden that my people would know Jesus. Okay, you know what, guys? I feel like he's operating on a different level. Something else going on here with David Lama. And I remember as he left, we were praying over him that he could learn the word of God so he could proclaim it to his people. And it suddenly dawned on me, wait a second. I spent the last year having someone explain this to me in ways I could understand. And at that church, they have a closet. And every week in that closet, they stuff an old man in there. And so I went to visit that old man because it was the tape ministry closet. It was a team of volunteers consisting of one very old man surrounded by cassette tapes of all the sermons that had ever been preached in this building. And I came up to him and I said, hey, I wanna help someone really understand the word of God. And we started to talk about it.

In the book of Ephesians, it's very short, but it's the whole gospel presented in its most distilled and compact form. And I was like, that's what I want. And he pulled down this tape binder. It was huge and all these cassette tapes taking you verse by verse through Ephesians. I said, I wanna send that to D.B. Lama. And he said, that'll be $40. And I did not have $40. My freshman, sophomore year of college, I remember there's one week where I lived for actually two weeks off of nothing but a bag of Bisquick. That's a true story, I wish it wasn't. But I said, let me get back to you. And I left and mowed lawns and raised some money. And I came back and it was a very significant moment for me. I took that money and I bought that big binder of cassette tapes. And I took it down to the post office and said, I wanna send this to Kathmandu. And they told me how much that would cost. And I said, let me get back to you. And had to go mow some more lawns. And I mailed these teachings on Ephesians to Nepal, to my friend D.B. Lama. And over the course of the next several years, I would get letters from Nepal. And this is really wild, I just found this. I was going through my garage and I found I still have one.

From Don B. Lama, Kathmandu, Nepal. Greetings to you in the most precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I received your kind letter. Thank you so much for remembering me in your prayers. Praise the Lord. Well, I'm doing fine by his grace. And I'm so much thankful for his faithfulness to this very day. He's called me for Nepal to serve him among my people. As you know, I'm now a pastor at my small fellowship or church. I also started a small Bible study group along with our house fellowship. And we've also started a couple of adult literacy classes in the village to teach people how to read and write. Even these classes have been so helpful to share the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm working on a pastoral and leadership training tools too. Please pray for us. And then he wrote in the back, this is about five years later, And then he wrote in the back, this is about five years later, maybe. Thank you so much for sending those wonderful message tapes. I am still learning many spiritual insights through them. Please send me more if possible. If possible, materials about church, leadership development, and missions. And I look at it and go,

there was still a lot I was trying to figure out in life. What am I supposed to do as a job? Is Donna the one or not? These things matter. But getting letters like this just helped me lift up my gaze. But there's a bigger story playing out here. Jesus Christ is moving among the nations and I wanna be a part of that. So my job may change, my city may change, but my purpose doesn't change. not change. I've been convinced of the proof that you are my Lord. I've been filled with the presence of your Holy Spirit and power, and I've been enabled for a purpose bigger than me, for proclamation of a kingdom that is welcoming in all. And it's the same with you. You are more than your job. Your job matters. The gifts God gave you mattered. How you use them mattered. I'm praying you use them with righteousness and wisdom. And yet you have a bigger purpose. There is a kingdom that will never fade, and you're being invited to be a part of it. So if you've never put your faith in Jesus, that's where the story begins. The exalted Lord, empowering people to expand his kingdom. Do you know him? And if you've put your faith in him, friend, I hope it's a wonderful experience as you come and worship among us. I hope you feel great every time you leave. But I also hope you see it's more than about your experience of personal peace. It's about his purpose and action. That's why it's called the book of Acts. We are not meant to simply look up. We are just meant to move out for his glory and for the good of those around us.