The Promise

The truth of the matter was and still is that apart from the power of the Spirit operating in your life and mine, you cannot fulfill the rest of this verse. Part of our problem as believers into whose life the Holy Spirit has already come is that we're not terribly convinced we need Him. Has there been anything happen in your life this week where you felt you needed Him? How long could this church carry on its mission and program if the Holy Spirit left?

How long would it take us to catch on that He'd left? Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. This program is produced by Wisdom International and features the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey.

Far too often, people live their life with a sense of sufficiency in themselves. The catchphrase is, I've got this. You need to remember that when it comes to your spiritual life and spiritual ministry, nothing of significance happens unless it's empowered by the Holy Spirit. Today, we return to a vintage wisdom series from the book of Acts. Stephen first delivered this message almost 30 years ago.

It's called The Promise. The CEO of a major corporation, so the fable goes, had to leave town on short notice. Only a few people knew that he had left knowing that his staff would need direction while he was away. He composed on his corporate jet a letter giving descriptive and detailed information for them to carry out. He talked about some of the clients that he wanted contacted. He talked about some of the projects he wanted fulfilled. And as soon as he arrived at his destination, he mailed the letter back to his company.

It took him longer to return than he expected, but after a few months, he did return. And as soon as he pulled into the corporate parking lot, he knew something was wrong. The campus had not been cared for.

The grass hadn't been mowed. As soon as he walked into the lobby of his headquarters, the receptionist was doing her nails and music was blaring and he thought something is terribly wrong. He rushed to the elevator going up to the corporate suite.

As soon as the doors opened, he could hardly believe his eyes. They turned that large workroom into a modified gymnasium game room. They had everything from weights to pool tables to ping pong tables and all of his executive staff were playing and laughing and having a wonderful time. As they noticed him standing by the elevator with his mouth hanging open, they quieted down and came over to him and he had one question for them. He said, have you received my letter? One of them responded, received your letter? Of course we received your letter. In fact, we thought it was so tremendous, we photocopied it so that every employee of the company could have their own copy. He said, well, did you read the letter?

Another one said, read it? Of course we read it. It's a magnificent letter. We're studying the letter.

We've broken, in fact, the corporation down into small groups that meet to discuss this letter. We've just been talking about how we ought to get together for a couple of hours a week and just have special discussions on the letter. We've got a man in the company who memorized the whole letter. We call him the walking letter. We have quotes from your letter on coffee mugs and t-shirts. What a magnificent, uplifting, encouraging letter it is.

By this time, he felt weak. He said, did anybody do anything in the letter I asked to have done? Do? Well, you know, the clients I wanted contacted, the projects I wanted accomplished, business to run as usual.

Did anybody do any of that? And there's a hush fella over those corporate VPs. One of them finally responded with the words, no sir, you see, we're still studying your letter. If there is a fable that aptly describes the contemporary American church, it is that fable. The difference between the church in Acts and the church in America today is the church in America today makes a lot of motion.

The church in Acts created a movement. The Father knew that we would fall into the deceptive, seductive trap of intellectualism, of pietism, a trap that would lead us to believe that receiving the letter was enough. Reading the letter was enough. Studying the letter was enough.

Owning a copy of it was enough. And so right in the middle, at the hinge of his letter, he drops into it a book called the Book of Action. And we are immediately confronted by believers who dared to do what they knew. I want you to look with me at our directive from the Chief Shepherd, the CEO of our church, a directive that the early church obeyed.

They simply did it. Look at verse 8. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. That's the promise.

Now here's the result. And you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth. Now according to this verse, ladies and gentlemen, the measure of a church becomes not the size of our membership, but that church's commitment to its mission. Furthermore, we can personally apply it to our own lives and say that the mark of maturity, as other scripture validates this point, is not how much of the Bible you've learned, but how much of the Bible you are in the process of living. And this is what he's going to talk about today in this particular passage in the Book of Action.

Let's set the stage, shall we, for this timeless promise and challenge. We've read in verse 4, he gathered them together and commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised. Now in Luke's first letter to Theophilus, which we all know by now is the Gospel of Luke, Acts is the sequel to that, we learned that this was spoken to the disciples in an upper room where they had gathered.

The command to wait in Jerusalem occurred in this upper room. But there's something interesting by way of study that we need to tuck away before we can understand the rest of this passage, so I want you to go back to Luke and take a look there with me. Luke chapter 24, the disciples are eating together in this upper room and Jesus suddenly appears, look at verse 42, and they gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate it before them. The text indicates that they're not eating, they're watching. Is he a ghost? Well, he's eating fish, so we should see the fish go down and sort of right hang in midair there.

They're watching. They're amazed and so he before them eats fish. He's not a ghost or an apparition or some fleeting vapor. Verse 45, skip there. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and he said to them, thus it is written that the Christ or the Messiah should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day and that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. Now go to verse 48. You are witnesses of these things. Behold, I am sending forth the promise of my Father upon you, but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

Does that sound familiar? In the book of Acts, Luke simply picks up the story where he left off and in the first verses of Acts, we really have just a reminder of this last chapter in the book of Luke. So would you go back to the sequel now to the book of Acts and let's pick it up with verse 6. Now verse 6 reads, follow this carefully, and so when they had come together, they were asking him saying, we're assuming this is happening in the upper room, right?

We'll follow this. Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel? And all of us immediately think, at least I did as I would read this, what a dumb question to ask the Lord. Lord, is it at this time you're going to establish the kingdom?

And the reason that I think it's a silly question is because I don't understand where they've come together. In verse 4, they have gathered together in that upper room. But in verse 6, they have gathered together on the Mount of Olives.

They've had a day's journey between that event, at least a day between that and this event here. In fact, we know that the Father, or the Lord after saying these words, doesn't ascend to the Father through the sealing of that upper room. We know he ascends from the Mount of Olives. In fact, if you'll look at verse 9 there, it says, and after he said these things, he was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received him out of their sight. Now look at verse 12, this makes it even clearer. Then, that is after the ascension of the Lord, then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they had been staying. So this presents an altogether different picture. Wait here for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He's saying that to them in the upper room. Now he gathers them together where he will say a few more things and then ascend.

This represents a different idea. Lord, is it at this time that you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Why did they ask that? Was it a good question?

Yes, it was. It was a great question. Because they had been hearing Jesus Christ talking about the restoration of a literal kingdom, which will now come at some distant time when Jesus Christ will literally rule on planet earth. It is not a secret kingdom. It is not an invisible kingdom. It is not a kingdom necessarily within you.

This is a literal kingdom. Lord, are you going to restore the literal kingdom to Israel? They put together the passages or the notes they had taken on Jesus' teaching, especially over that 40 day period. And they had in the back of their minds the prophets, which they all knew full well. Zechariah 14 said, and when his feet, the Messiah's feet, touch the Mount of Olives, he will in effect restore the kingdom. They are putting that all together. Here the resurrected Christ, clearly the Messiah, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, is now standing on the Mount. We know what the prophets said. Lord, is it now?

Is it now? Great question. In fact, Jesus Christ never rebukes them for asking about the kingdom. They were right about the truth of a literal kingdom that will come. They were just wrong about the time of the kingdom. There was something Zechariah didn't know. There was something that the prophets didn't know. They sort of melded the two comings of the Messiah together, and we've had now about a 1900 year period called the Age of Grace that they didn't know anything about, where this brand new creation takes place, a new race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, not just incorporating those who are circumcised of the flesh, Israel, but all those, including the Gentile nations, who have had their hearts circumcised through faith in Jesus Christ. Now while you'll not read one word of rebuke related to the question of the kingdom, you will hear a rebuke about asking about the timing of the kingdom, and I think the Lord kind of rebukes them, not so much for them.

But for us, the rebuke seems to go unheeded as to trying to establish times rather than just studying for the truth. In fact, I like the way G. Campbell Morgan wrote it, a man who taught the scriptures a generation ago, a British expositor. He's one of my favorite authors. He talked about how after one meeting, a woman came up to him. She was perplexed and troubled, and she said, Dr. Morgan, do you think that God is concerned about my little problems? And he looked at her and very kindly said, Dear lady, do you think that any of your problems are big to God?

None of them are. It's a great assurance to his disciples here, by the way, who are standing on that windswept hilltop, who would soon face incredible persecution to hear that the Father had determined the epochs and the events of history and future, and that he alone rode the winds of time with authority and sovereignty. Now that's not all. Verse 7 reads, it's not for you to know times or epochs, but you ought to circle the word but.

In verse 8, in the original language, it is Allah. It could be translated, but on the contrary. In other words, you don't need to be worried about trying to establish the times of these future events. Don't fill your mind with that. On the contrary, fill your mind with this wonderful promise. Here's something that ought to captivate your attention. Here's something that ought to move you with interest. Stop worrying about the timing of that.

Here's what I want you to think about. Let me give you a promise. He says, but you shall receive power.

I happen to believe that there wasn't any disciple, including the brave Simon Peter, who responded to that promise, but you shall receive power with the words. What do we need that for? We're ready to go. We've seen the resurrected Christ. That's all we need. Let's start the movement.

Oh, no. The truth of the matter was and still is that apart from the power of the Spirit operating in your life and mine, you cannot fulfill the rest of this verse. We will never impact our generation nor our world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ if the Spirit doesn't come. We are powerless. Part of our problem as believers into whose life the Holy Spirit has already come is that we're not terribly convinced we need him.

Has there been anything happen in your life this week where you felt you needed him? How long could this church carry on its mission and program if the Holy Spirit left? How long would it take us to catch on that he'd left? We're not too convinced we're nothing without him. I happen to believe that every disciple here knew he was nothing. I love the quote of Martin Luther, the reformer, who said it this way.

He said, God created the worlds out of nothing, and when we are convinced we are nothing, he can make something out of us too. Two weeks ago, I made a revolutionary discovery. I learned the value of an invisible power called electricity. I don't understand electricity.

AC, DC, BC, PC, whatever. I've never seen electricity. I love electricity.

Don't you? You also discovered that no matter how good your appliances looked, no matter how new they were, you know, we, my wife and I moved into a home, an older home, and it had all the original appliances that matched the sink. It was that beautiful burnt yellow look, you know.

We rejoiced every time one would break down. We could get a new, and now it's, you know, that kitchen is, it's all matching and it has white appliances with black trim, state of the art. I can put my glass in the refrigerator and I can get that ice out of there.

My parents, you have to crack that, not me. It's all state of the art. But you discovered, as I did, that without that unseen invisible power, your appliances were worthless.

They were worth about as much to you as cardboard boxes, weren't they? We have all of the components to work. Fascinating book by Tony Evans on the Holy Spirit makes an interesting analogy. We have everything that we need to operate except that which puts it into practice.

We have to be plugged in, as it were. We have to have the dynamic of the Holy Spirit, that unseen power that makes it work, without which we aren't worth very much to the cause of Jesus Christ. You could write in the margin of your Bible by verse 8, circle the word power and then make an arrow over to the margin and write the word dynamic.

That word power comes from the word dunamis, also gives us our word dynamite. But you shall receive dynamic when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Gentlemen, it's as if He said, you're about to get a deposit of dynamite. Get ready.

It'll happen in a few days. And it will be a revolutionizing dynamic, a source of power that will make you work, like God wants you to work, like you were created to work. But you need to understand, this is not an impersonal force. It is not a thing. This power is not an it.

It is a person. They were waiting here for the Holy Spirit, the person, the third person of the God had to come. His dissension was dependent upon the Lord's ascension. If the Lord didn't ascend, He, the Spirit, couldn't descend.

That's what they were waiting for. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not something you and I wait for anymore. He came. Pentecost occurred. The church was created. You and I have been given the Holy Spirit. At the moment we receive Jesus Christ, that invisible person with his accompanying power invaded our lives with a dynamic that is intended to work for the cause. What I'm excited about is that the Spirit didn't come to them because of their spirituality. The Apostle Paul didn't tell the Corinthian church, you were all baptized because of their track record.

They were a divisive, carnal church. If the Holy Spirit's residence in your life and mine, if the power comes only because we are worth it or we pray for it or we plead or fast or tarry for it or weep for it or whatever, if it's because of us, we're in deep trouble, ladies and gentlemen. It came because that was God's plan.

And it came regardless of the disciples' track record, regardless of their education, regardless of their understanding, regardless of their failure. And you need to understand that this power is a person. The empowering person of the Holy Spirit is the source of power.

Thinking, contemporary with our day, it is the thinking, although it may not be stated this way, it certainly is applied this way, that the power of the Holy Spirit is an end of itself. I want to feel the power of the Holy Spirit. Why? So that I can experience certain gifts. I want to feel the power of the Holy Spirit. Why? So that I can be healed. I want to know the dominating power of the Holy Spirit. Why?

So I can move mountains. Oh no. In fact, verse 8, you need to understand there's not a period after the word you. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

Although that's exactly what those movements focus on, you. Look again, it says when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, it is an end of verse, end of chapter, end of believer's pursuit. There's something following that that will occur upon the reception of that dynamic power through the person of the Holy Spirit. In fact, you need to understand, ladies and gentlemen, that the Holy Spirit did not descend for the purpose of announcing himself. He is not the one we are to seek. He didn't descend so that he would magnify his ministry and magnify his gifts and magnify his purpose. Jesus Christ was very clear in John chapter 16, where he said, I'm going to ascend to the Father and when I do, the Spirit will descend and he will magnify me. Now does that mean that the Holy Spirit is less important than the Lord Jesus?

No. It has nothing to do with deity. They are all equally God. It has nothing to do with essence.

It has everything to do with function. Each member of the triune God seems to have specific functions, even though those seem to be interrelated. But according to Jesus' own words, the Holy Spirit will come and primarily magnify his work of redemptive ministry that is now open to not only the Jewish nation, but it goes to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit is the advertising agency of the Son. Now, I got a little bird in my saddle and I began thinking about the advertising world. You see the commercials? You know, the ads in the newspapers and the magazines? It struck me, you know what you never see in the advertisements? The name of the agency that created the advertisement.

You just see, you know, big words. Pepsi. Got the right one or whatever it is.

Okay? Who created that ad? The advertising agency that probably was, did that job, you have no clue. In fact, their job was well done because you didn't walk away thinking, what an incredible ad agency. I've got to contact them. No, your mouth started watering.

I've got to have a Pepsi or a Coke or whatever. I pulled one out of a magazine. Twice the color printer the others are. You see, you can barely see the big words in the middle there. Twice the color printer the others are. And you read through this, you know you'll never have to swap ink cartridges. You can create and print stunning color graphics from the minute you unpack the box. Well, they took a little license there, but if you've been looking for the best coloring jet printer for under $200, you just found it. The big letter says twice the color printer the others are and in red letters and it's yours for only $199. There is nowhere on this page where I see the advertising agency saying, you know, aren't we clever?

Not at all. The Holy Spirit moves into the life of the believer who is the witness to motivate and empower us to be the advertising agency for the Son. We're in effect saying, He is the one and only true God and He can be yours for free. We're going to see why the Apostle, as he records the words of Jesus, doesn't miss a moment of it, as Jesus says to his disciples and creates this courtroom scene where we are pulled into the sort of the drama of a worldwide courtroom. And he informs us that we are not in that courtroom, the defense attorney. We are not the judge. We are not the jury.

We are simply called to take the stand and testify. Before we quit, let me read you this quote. Here's how it impacted the world around that first century church. You can close your Bibles and just listen here. This is written by a man named Aristides.

He was a first century, just sneaking into the second century individual who was a statesman for Greece, an unbeliever. But he wrote these words about the Christians who evidently put into practice what they read. The Christians persuade others to become Christians by the love they have for them. And when they have become Christians, they call them without distinction, brothers. They do not worship strange gods and they walk in all humility and kindness. And if there is among them a man that is needy, they fast two or three days that they may supply him with necessary food. They observe scrupulously the commandment of their Messiah. They live honestly and soberly as the Lord their God commanded them. They praise and laud God and over their food and their drink, they render him thanks. They pray before they eat.

We can't figure that out. And if any righteous person of their number, listen to this, passes away from this world, they rejoice and give thanks to God and they speak of him as though he were moving from one place to another. Such is the law of the Christians and such is their conduct. Ladies and gentlemen, the question remains for those of us who have received Christ by faith plus nothing, who have received the gift of the Spirit, having been baptized into the body, having received from him, our leader, our CEO, our Chief Shepherd, the letter. Are we just reading it and studying it and memorizing it and enjoying it?

Is there anyone here who is living it? Living out the truth of God's Word is ultimately what God desires for us as we study, read or even listen to a sermon like this. But in order for us to live out the truth of God's Word, we need the Holy Spirit to take that Word and apply it deeply to our hearts. This is wisdom for the heart. We've gone back to the archives of the early days of Stephen's preaching ministry to bring you this series from the book of Acts called, The Harvest Begins. Today's lesson is called, The Promise. Join us next time for more wisdom for the hearts.