“You Will Be My Witnesses” (Acts 1.1-11)
The beginning of September is the time of year where it feels like everything resets. School has started again for kids, vacation is finished, life returns to its normal rhythm. And we start asking all of the questions that come with that: What do I have to do? What priorities do I need to change? What do I want to do differently this year?
It’s the same for the church: we start thinking about all the new things that are going to happen this year, the new opportunities and challenges, and we ask ourselves, What does the church need? What’s working well, and what do we need to change? What’s coming on the horizon that we need to prepare for?
Nearly all of the questions we could ask ourselves at the beginning of a school year are good, important questions—but they’re not the most important questions.
The most important question is, What is Jesus doing?
We’re going to begin a five-week mini-series on Acts chapters 1 and 2 to kick off the school year, and this is exactly how the book of Acts begins—by asking, What is Jesus doing?
The book of Acts was written by Luke, who was the apostle Paul’s physician and collaborator, and who spent a long time collecting as many eyewitness testimonies as he could to what Jesus had done. When we begin the book of Acts, we’re starting in the middle—the book of Acts is essentially “The Gospel According to Luke: Part 2”. But Acts is not the story of what happened after Jesus finished his work. It is the story of Jesus continuing his work from heaven through the Holy Spirit.
And that simple fact changes the way we think about what we do as a church. When we plant a church, when we live the life of the church together, we are not trying to create something for Jesus. We have been caught up into something Jesus himself is already doing.
We’ll be looking at the first eleven verses today, and we’re going to see four very basic truths about the church:
1. We have a living Lord to proclaim;
2. We have a power that we cannot produce;
3. We have a mission that is bigger than ourselves;
4. We have a King who reigns and will return.
1. We have a living Lord to proclaim (v. 1-3).
In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 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.
That little word “began” in v. 1 is enormously important. Luke’s Gospel told the story of Jesus’s life, ministry, death and resurrection. Luke’s gospel, like all the gospels, told about what Jesus began to do and teach. And we’ll see in a moment that about forty days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven. It feels like a passing of the baton, in a way—Jesus is gone now, and leaving the responsibility of his ministry with his apostles.
But that’s not what’s happening. The gospels tell about what Jesus began to do and teach; the book of Acts tells about what Jesus continues to do and teach.
Jesus has ascended into heaven, but he’s not sitting on a beach under an umbrella doing crossword puzzles; Jesus has not retired. He is still doing what he did all along—he’s just doing it in a different way.
So how is he doing it? He’s doing it, first of all, through the testimony of the apostles. This group of men don’t come with a philosophy, or a moral program, or a political vision, or with heartwarming stories about Jesus. They come with their own eyewitness testimonies of a crucified and risen Lord.
V. 3:
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.
The mission of the church rests on an objective event: it’s not based on an idea, or an ideology, but on something that happened. Christ lived the sinless life we should have lived; he died for the sins of his people, in our place; he was physically resurrected from the grave. Jesus is alive.
And when he appeared to his followers, for forty days he taught them about the kingdom of God. That’s been Jesus’s message since the beginning, and it’s still his message. The kingdom of God has come. The King that God promised to send his people has come. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom of God.
This is really good news for us—it’s really good news for me. I am painfully aware of my limits as a pastor. I’m not particularly innovative, and I have as much difficulty living out the gospel as anyone. But I don’t need to be perfect, and I don’t need to be innovative—we don’t need to come up with a catchy message capable of drawing people in, because we have something infinitely better than a catchphrase.
We have a true story to tell about Christ, who is alive.
The question is never, How can we get people interested in coming to church? The question is always, How can we faithfully proclaim the reality that Christ lived, died and was raised to save us?
We have a living Lord to proclaim.
Secondly:
2. We have a power we cannot produce (v. 4-5)
Luke picks up his narrative during these forty days after Christ’s resurrection, and he tells of the orders Christ gave his followers. It’s a surprising command.
V. 4:
4 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; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
The apostles have just spent three years with Jesus; they’ve heard his teaching, they’ve seen his miracles; they’ve seen him raised from the dead; and they’ve received their marching orders from him. Surely after all that, they’re ready to go out and preach the kingdom of God.
But Jesus says, “Eh—hold on. Wait here for a while.”
Why? Because knowledge of Christ isn’t enough; knowing everything there is to know about Christ doesn’t make them sufficient for Christ's mission.
What will make them sufficient? He says in v. 5: you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
We need to realize really quickly that the mission of the church—the mission of being disciples of Christ who live faithfully for him and who teach other disciples to do the same—is humanly impossible. We can do a lot of things. We can organize; we can plan (I say “we”, I mean “a lot of you”). We can preach; we can invite; we can lead Bible studies; we can improve our structures.
We can’t give sight to people who are spiritually blind; we can’t raise spiritually dead people to life; we can’t bring people to repentance; we can’t give people faith; we can’t take hearts of stone and make them become hearts of flesh.
Only God can do that. And if you’re a Christian, you know that, because one day it happened to you, and you didn’t do it, and neither did anyone else.
God is the one who saves, and as he decided the salvation of his people, he also decided the means by which we are saved. He saved us through the gospel proclaimed in the power of the Spirit.
Acts is going to show this over and over again, and though I know so much talk of the Spirit may make some Christians uncomfortable, it’s unavoidable: the work of the Holy Spirit is not an add-on to the life of the church. Some Christians talk about the Holy Spirit like the weird uncle who comes around on holidays and won’t stop trying to do close-up magic for people. Like, “Yeah, he’s strange, but what can I say? He’s family.”
We never hesitate to talk about Jesus, to emphasize Jesus, and we should not hesitate to speak in the same way of the work of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ: without the Spirit, there is no church, there is no salvation, there is no power in the gospel.
The Word and the Spirit belong together—the apostles proclaim Christ, and the Spirit opens hearts to believe in Christ.
I remember the first time I ever preached, this would have been about eighteen years ago in our little church in Normandy. It was awful—just awful. I listened to the recording afterwards, and it was just atrocious.
But surprisingly, I wasn’t nervous. And it wasn’t because I was used to speaking publicly; I wasn’t, at least not in French. I wasn’t nervous because I knew what Jesus tells his disciples here: that the power of their ministry wouldn’t be coming from them. I knew that it wasn’t up to me to make something happen through my preaching. The Spirit would do his work; all I had to do was be as faithful as I could with the tools God had given me.
We have a living Lord to proclaim; we have a power that we cannot produce. Next:
3. We have a mission that is bigger than ourselves (v. 6-8).
V. 6:
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
This is what the Jews had been waiting on for centuries. They’re still living under the occupation of the Roman empire, and most of them are still interpreting all of the prophecies of the Messiah as being political in nature: the Messiah will come and throw out the intruding nation and give the kingdom back to Israel.
It seems like the disciples are still imagining that Jesus is about to do something like that: something relatively national and immediate.
But Jesus enlarges the scope of their vision: he wants them to think way bigger than that.
V. 7:
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.”
V. 8 is essentially the summary of the entire book of Acts. The apostles receive power from the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, and they are Christ’s witnesses in Jerusalem (Acts 2-7), in Judea and Samaria (Acts 8-12), and to the end of the earth—in other words, the rest of the known world at the time (Acts 13-28).
And again, Jesus chooses his words carefully—he doesn’t say, “You will be my marketing department.” He says, “You will be my witnesses.
A witness tells what he knows to be true.
The apostles have a unique, foundational role as eyewitnesses of the resurrection. The church does not possess their apostolic office; we weren’t there. But their testimony has been preserved for us in Scripture, and the entire church now bears witness to the Christ that the apostles proclaimed.
So the church’s mission necessarily involves speaking. The idea that you can merely “show” Christ is nonsense. The Christian witness is more than talking, but never less. Our lives, our holiness, should make the gospel credible, should help show why the gospel is beautiful. But eventually we will have to say who Jesus is and what he has done.
And we’ll have to go outside to do it. You’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem (where they are), in Judea (a little further), in Samaria (even further), and to the ends of the earth (as far as you can go).
The natural tendency of every church ever is inward—we tend to focus on our people, our challenges, our meetings, our needs. And while that’s not bad, it is incomplete: Jesus continually pushes his church outward.
This outward trajectory, if we’re faithful, will play itself out in multiple ways. One way is when the church multiplies. If you’ve been with us for a while you know that l’Église Oberkampf is in the process of being planted out of Église Connexion—essentially, a group of people from Connexion will be leaving our church and beginning a new church in the 11th, not far from here. In two weeks, they’ll be celebrating their official launch service, and today is their sending service—we’re going to be hearing from them and praying for them at the end of the service today, because we won’t be seeing them on Sundays after this; they’ll be assembling weekly in the 11th.
Why do we do this? Because the most effective way to reach different parts of the city with the gospel is for churches to be planted in these different areas. People who live in the 11th will walk down rue Amelot and see that there is now a church there; people from the church will invest in their neighborhood and have a place to welcome their neighbors when they have the opportunity to invite them.
The church, as a whole, is an outward-moving body—planting churches is just one way that we do it.
Another way is through the individuals who make up the church. If you’ve been coming to the church for a while, you can look around today and see new faces. (If you’re new, we’re glad you’re here!) So we could be tempted to ask, Who is coming to us? That’s a good question to ask, because we want people who are new to the church to know that they’re welcome.
But that’s not the question we should start with. Rather than asking, “Who is coming to us?” we should begin by asking, “To whom is God sending us? Who has God placed around us?”
I am terrible at this, because I have pretty severe tunnel vision and strangers frighten me. It’s an area in which I constantly need to grow. Who has God placed around me? Neighbors; colleagues; classmates; parents in front of our kids’ school; people in cafés or on the bus; friends; family.
The mission of the church always begins very close to home.
And it’s also important that we see that what Jesus says here isn’t an order; it’s a promise. “You will be my witnesses,” he says—and the apostles will be. He doesn’t say, “You will be welcomed.” The apostles will be opposed, and persecuted. Christians will be imprisoned, many of them martyred…
But the gospel keeps moving forward. Even in the face of opposition, the gospel keeps moving forward.
This should give us enormous confidence, because the future of the kingdom of God doesn’t depend on the strength of any one church, whether it’s a huge, well-established church or a tiny, local church in the middle of nowhere. The future of the gospel depends on Christ: he has promised to gather his people from every nation, and he will.
We have a living Lord to proclaim; we have a power we cannot produce; we have a mission that is bigger than ourselves; and lastly:
4. We have a King who reigns and will return (v. 9-11).
V. 9:
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.
In case it’s not clear, this isn’t meant as metaphor or symbol; Jesus is actually lifted up, disappears into a cloud, and is gone. But one thing I love about the Bible is seeing how God works throughout history, to make actual events mean something more than the events themselves.
When Jesus is lifted up and disappears into the cloud, that isn’t simply Jesus leaving; it’s his enthronement. The cloud is used many times in Scripture as an image of the presence and the glory of God. When Jesus goes up into the cloud, that’s God saying, “What I promised about the Messiah has taken place.” Jesus, the Son of God, is now seated at the right hand of God, where he has received dominion and a kingdom—Daniel 7, Psalm 110, these Scriptures have been accomplished.
To put it another way, the ascension of Christ into heaven means that Jesus Christ reigns over this world right now.
Acts is not the story of a vulnerable church trying to keep Jesus's memory alive. It is the story of the reigning Christ advancing his gospel.
Which means that we do not enter our neighborhoods wondering whether Christ has any authority there. Every street belongs to Christ. Every nation belongs to Christ. Every person will ultimately bow before Christ. So we can proclaim him without embarrassment.
And we must proclaim him—the ascension doesn’t just give us assurance; it keeps us from becoming spiritual spectators. V. 10:
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.”
These two men in white robes are angels, in case that wasn’t clear; and I love that the angels ask such a dumb question. If any of us had just seen a person be lifted up and disappear into a cloud before our eyes, we’d be looking for an awfully long time.
But I don’t think the angels ask this question because they don’t know the answer; they ask the question to prod the apostles to action.
Why are you still standing here? Jesus will return. And between his ascension and his return, there is work to do.
The reflex of the Christian, if we understand the gospel, should not be to escape this world and stare toward heaven.
It should be faithfully bear witness of the gospel because our King is returning.
To put it another way, the mission of the church has an expiration date.
One day evangelism will end. Christ will return. Every Christian will have been gathered. Every enemy will be defeated. The kingdom will come in fullness.
Until then, we have work to do.
Conclusion: What kind of church should we be this year?
Acts 1 gives us four convictions:
We have a living Lord to proclaim. So we speak about Jesus.
We have a power we cannot produce. So we pray for the Holy Spirit's work.
We have a mission bigger than ourselves. So we deliberately turn outward.
We have a King who reigns and will return. So we go with courage and urgency.
And notice where all four of these convictions are focused: not on us. On Christ.
The mission does not begin with: “What amazing things can our church accomplish this year?”
It begins with:
“Jesus Christ is alive, Jesus Christ is reigning, Jesus Christ is building his church, and he has chosen to use ordinary Christians like us as his witnesses.”
At the beginning of this year, perhaps every Christian in the church could ask two very simple questions:
1. Who has God already placed in my life who does not know Christ?
2. What would it look like for me deliberately to bear witness to Jesus among them this year?
We don’t need a grand strategy.
Just a name. A relationship. Prayer. Hospitality. A conversation. An invitation. The courage to speak about Christ.
The church in Acts did not change the world because it discovered an extraordinary technique. The risen Christ poured out his Spirit upon ordinary believers—and they became his witnesses.
That’s still how he works today.
