Acts 1:6-11

⁶ So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” ⁷ He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. ⁸ 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.” ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, ¹¹ and 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 as you saw him go into heaven.”

 

Last week, after attending the Southern Baptist Convention gathering in Baltimore, Roni and I took a day to look around Washington, DC.  After arriving at Union Station, we took a cab to a restaurant for lunch.  As we were riding to the restaurant, we began to pass through an area of town where the buildings began to look very interesting and very distinct.  We then realized that these were the embassies of foreign countries.  The architecture of the embassies reflected the country that embassy was representing.  It was like seeing little glimpses of foreign countries here in America.

As we drove through this area I began to think about the nature of embassies.  Each of these embassies represent the interests of their respective nations.  They are, in fact, bearing witness to realities beyond our own borders.  These embassies are actually considered foreign soil, little pieces of the nations represented.  The ambassadors of these nations are here not only to represent the interests of their homelands, but also to bear witness here, in a foreign land, to the reality and existence of their nations.  In an odd way, each embassy says to any who drive by, “There is something beyond your borders.  There are other lands and other peoples and other rulers.  We are here to bear witness to them.”

It is a fascinating thing, these embassies, and the ambassadors that head them up.  It is also fascinating to see Paul using this term in 2 Corinthians 5:20.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

We Christ-followers are ambassadors.  We represent and bear witness to the interests of our King and His Kingdom.  We are here to remind the fallen world order that there is another order:  a Kingdom of love and life and light and mercy and peace and forgiveness, a Kingdom entered through repentance and faith in the crucified and resurrected King, Jesus.

It is abundantly clear that this was the self-understanding of the first century Christians, of the Church.  If we are to regain the passion of this first generation of believers, we must reclaim this understanding of the Church.  As we consider now the ascension of Christ and His words to the gathered Church, watch closely what He called them, and is calling us, to be.

The Church is called to go, not to speculate.

Our text begins with a speculative question asked out of a serious desire on the parts of the followers of Jesus to understand what is going to happen next.

⁶ So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

The question was whether or not Christ was going to bring the Kingdom as they conceived of it and as they desired it:  an earthly Kingdom of power that would oust the imperial might of Rome and restore the homeland of the Jews to them under the righteous and just rule of a warrior King.  They were still, even now, on this side of the cross and the empty tomb, trying to conceive of the agenda of Christ in human terms.  Jesus’ reply is as telling as it is direct.

⁷ He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”

When I was a boy, I asked my mother how much money she made.  Her response was that that information was frankly none of my business.  She was not trying to be mean to be.  Rather, she simply understood that my young mind really did not posses the conceptual framework to make sense of that information and that, practically speaking, there was nothing good I could do with it.  It was not for me to know.  She was being a good parent.

So it is with us and God.  We always want to know more than we can handle, especially about the final culmination of all things.  The late church historian, Jaroslav Pelikan, put it well when he said:

The history of the church suggests that Christians are not very good at such waiting, as they have oscillated between an occasional eschatological fervor that stands on tiptoe and asks eagerly (and repeatedly), “Lord, is it at this time that you will bring about the restoration, and when will the kingdom of Israel be?”…and their more customary torpor, which has needed to be reminded yet again “that the end of the world comes suddenly,” as Cyprian put it on the basis of this passage from Acts.[1]

This is a good way of saying that we do not need to know so much about final things that we get sidetracked in idle waiting and watching, but we do need to know enough to know that He is coming again and what the signs are.  Which is simply to say that Christ Jesus has told His people precisely enough.

Even so, speculative theology has its allurements and it is difficult not to give in to the siren sign of greater and deeper knowledge.  There have been more and less effective ways of dealing with this speculative impulse.  One approach was that of St. Augustine who, when asked, “What was God doing before He created the world,” allegedly responded, “He was making a hell for people who ask stupid questions.”

Well, that’s one approach.

The other approach, and, of course, the superior one, is found in God’s response to Job when Job demanded to know the mysteries of human suffering and why God had allowed Him to suffer as he did.  His response is found in Job 38 and 39.  I shall summarize:  “I am God.  You are not.”

We cannot know all that we would like to know.  We are not equipped to do so.  But we can know what we are intended to know, which is a great deal to be sure.  The mysteries of the Kingdom have been revealed clearly but not exhaustively.  We do not know all, but we know enough, and we may thank God for this.

In truth, we are not called to speculate but to go, as Christ reveals next.

The Church’s witness should reflect the fact that the Church is indwelt by the Spirit of the living God.

The Lord Jesus continues.  He has told them what they cannot know.  Now He reveals to them what they can.

⁸ 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.” ⁹ 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.

We see here the primary calling of the Church:  to be witnesses.  Witnesses to what?  A quick survey of how the word “witness” is used in just the first three chapters of Acts will help us at this point.  Later in our chapter, when the apostles are choosing one to fill the vacancy left after Judas’ betrayal, Peter says:

²¹ So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, ²² beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.”

In Peter’s Pentecost sermon in chapter two of Acts, he says this:

³⁰ Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, ³¹ he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. ³² This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.

In Acts 3, Peter is preaching in Solomon’s Portico when he says this:

¹⁴ But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, ¹⁵ and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.

This is but a sampling of many such examples, all pointing to the same object of the early Church’s witness bearing:  the resurrection of Christ.  That is, the story the Church is to tell time and time again is the story that Jesus, who was crucified, has overcome death itself and that in Him is life now and everlasting.

It is a beautiful calling.  Bearing witness to the most astounding event in human history is the privilege of the people of God.  For two thousand years, this has been our calling:  to say that God wins, that God has won, and that Christ is King of Heaven and Earth.

It was a calling that God, through the prophets, had issued before to His people.  Thus, in Isaiah 43:10, we find:

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen,
that you may know and believe me
and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
nor shall there be any after me.

God’s people are always called to be witnesses to His character and His work, and to be so to the ends of the earth.

⁸ 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.”

This commission, as well as the geographical parameters of it, is beyond significant.  The late New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce said that the phrase “you will be my witnesses” “might be regarded as announcing the theme of the book” and pointed out that many people see the geographical locations mentioned as an “Index of Contents” in which “‘in Jerusalem’ covers the first seven chapters, ‘in all Judaea and Samaria’ covers 8:1 to 11:18, and the remainder of the book traces the progress of the gospel outside the frontiers of the Holy Land until at last it reaches Rome.”[2]

Whether or not the geographical categories form an outline for the book, they most certainly provide an outline for the church.  We are to be, if anything, a worldwide witnessing people.  We are a witnessing people or we are nothing.  This is why the Church’s abandonment of its calling to be witnesses is such a tragedy and travesty.

In the mid-1800’s, from 1854 to 1855, Soren Kierkegaard launched a withering attack against the state Lutheran church of Denmark on just this point, arguing that the leaders of the church were bearing the title of “witness” without fulfilling the responsibilities of being witnesses.

Now I ask, is there the least resemblance between these priests, deans, bishops, and what Christ calls “witnesses”?  Or is it not just as ridiculous to call such priests, deans, bishops, “witnesses,” just as ridiculous as to call a maneuver on the town common a “battle”?  No, if the clergy want to be called “witnesses,” “witnesses to the truth,” they must also resemble what the New Testament calls witnesses, witnesses to the truth; if they have no mind at all to resemble what the New Testament understands by witnesses, witnesses to the truth, neither must they be called that; they may be called “teachers,” “civil functionaries,” “professors,” “councilors,” in short, what you will, only not “witnesses to the truth.”[3]

Yes, we should not take the name of “witness” if we do not intend to be witnesses to the resurrected Christ.  This is because Jesus linked the Church’s witness to the indwelling power of the Spirit He was about to pour out upon them.

⁸ 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 then Jesus ascends!

⁹ 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 being caught up into Heaven and subsequent coming of the Spirit is a picture that we have seen before in the Bible.  Ben Witherington suggests[4] an interesting parallel between the events recorded in our text and Elijah’s passing of his mantle to Elisha in 2 Kings 2.

9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, “Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.” ¹⁰ And he said, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.” ¹¹ And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. ¹² And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. ¹³ And he took up the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. ¹⁴ Then he took the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and struck the water, saying, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over. ¹⁵ Now when the sons of the prophets who were at Jericho saw him opposite them, they said, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” And they came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him.

In both cases, the man of God is caught up and the Spirit falls to a successor.  The major difference, of course, is that Jesus is God-with-us whereas Elijah was not.  Even so, it is a fascinating point, for if the images parallel, then Christ leaves His mantle to the Church just as Elijah did to Elisha.  Furthermore, the Spirit falls:  the Spirit Who empowers the mantle-receiver to continue the ministry of the one caught up.

Regardless, the truth of this does not really even depend on a parallel to Elijah and Elisha.  It likely means that Elijah and Elisha are foreshadowings, types, of Christ and His Church.  But the point is sufficiently evident in Acts alone:  Christ commissions His Church, ascends, and sends the Spirit to enable the Church to fulfill the commission.  The Church, then, must live as Spirit-filled witnesses to the resurrected Christ.

A standing and staring church is a scandal.  MOVE!!!

The inescapable conclusion confronts us in our complacency:  a standing and staring church is a scandal.  Move!!!  The Church is not called to stand and to stare.  On the very heels of the ascension of Christ, the standing, staring, gawking Church is called to move and not to stand.

¹⁰ And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, ¹¹ and 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 as you saw him go into heaven.”

In a sense, one feels for the disciples.  Why, after all, would they not be standing and staring?  Christ Jesus had just been caught up into the air in their very presence!  But the mild rebuke is timely nonetheless.  There is no time to waste!  The Church must go!  The Church must move!  “Why are you standing looking into heaven?”

Carl F.H. Henry once famously said, “The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.”  This is wise indeed!

We are not called to loiter, shuffling about discussing our favorite theological topics.  We are not called to be so deep that we do not go.  Some of you feel the desire to be deep in your faith.  It is an admirable goal.  But deepness for deepness’ sake is not a Christian virtue.  Simply knowing more while doing less for the Kingdom negates the more we know.

We are not the Church so long as we wait and stare.  We are not the Church so long as we debate and discuss.  We are not the Church so long as we consume.

No, we are the Church when the truths of the gospel, the reality of the risen Christ, and the power of the indwelling Spirit compel us to go, now, for the sake of the Kingdom.