Good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you in person on this as we kick off our new series in the Book of Acts.
And if you've never met me before, either in person or here on the screen, my name is Steve Jeffers.
I'm the senior pastor here at St. Paul's.
And it's great to be regathering again for those who are able to do that.
So if you've got, as Nick had indicated, if you've got a Bible in front of you, if you've got the St. Paul's app, that would be fantastic.
I've got an outline for today's talk there in front of you, and then you help you to follow along.
So let me pray, and then we're going to launch straight into Acts chapter 1 and set the scene for us for this series.
Gracious God, we thank you for every life and for every life that is tuned in now to your word.
We pray as we look at your word in front of us today, but also in the coming weeks, as we look at the Book of Acts, we ask that you would shape our lives.
Help us to get a big vision of what you are doing in your world.
God, the work that you have been doing for centuries and are continuing to do now in all the confusion and the chaos of our world right now,
that you are still working, transforming and changing lives.
And we pray that you would change our lives.
Align us as individuals, as a church, to your great storyline.
Amen.
So, Lord, we pray that you would mercifully send your spirit and do your work through your word.
Amen.
Edward Lorenz was a physicist working in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s on the computer modelling of weather systems.
He devised a program which, once you typed in certain data, it could kind of predict what the weather pattern was going to be.
However, one day in his work, he typed in the wrong data.
He made a mistake.
It wasn't a big mistake.
He meant to type in a six-digit number, 0.506127, but instead he only typed in a three-digit number, 0.506.
It's a very small error, really.
I mean, you know, my calculations with the tape measure, I wouldn't even notice it.
It's one in one thousandths of a difference, really.
He didn't think it would make that much of a difference to the outcome,
but he decided to test it anyway, what the difference would be.
This is what he went on to describe.
It's as if a tiny atmospheric disturbance in China,
no greater than the beat of a butterfly's wing,
a week or so later becoming a Force 12 hurricane in New York.
That's how big the difference was.
And his discovery became known as the butterfly effect.
When something very small, something very minute, minor,
grows and grows and grows in its impact.
Now, what could be depressing for us is that on the most part for us as people,
there's no butterfly effect in our lives magnifying the little contribution that we as individuals make to history.
Most of us have to face the fact that we will drop the little pebbles of our lives into the turbulent oceans of world events,
and in no time at all, it will bear no trace of us ever existing.
It doesn't take long.
It's kind of depressing, really.
It's kind of depressing way to start a sermon.
And it's depressing, particularly for two major areas in life or stages in life.
When you are old and you see the end realized, the fact of it ends coming sooner rather than later,
and you realize, well, will I be remembered?
But also for a younger generation that have grown up and heard consistently the words said to them,
you can make a difference.
You can change the world.
You can be who you want to be and change the world.
And there's a whole generation of young people growing up with the assumption that they are world changers
until they leave university and sit at a desk and realize that it doesn't happen so fast as they would imagine.
And so that's for most of us.
There's not a butterfly effect amplifying the contribution that we make in history.
But not so with Jesus Christ.
He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.
He grew up in still another village.
He worked in a carpenter shop in obscurity until he was about 30 years of age.
Then for three years, he was a traveling preacher.
Never wrote a book.
Never held an office.
Never had a family.
Never owned a house.
He never went to university.
Never traveled more than 300 kilometers from the place where he was born.
He never did the things that we associate with greatness.
And he was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him.
His friends ran away.
He was handed over to his enemies.
He was nailed to a cross, crucified, executed between two thieves
because he was regarded as a criminal himself and he was laid in a borrowed grave.
Wasn't needing it for very long.
2,000 years later, right across the globe, penetrating all kinds of people, groups and cultures,
this world is still enthralled by him.
All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed,
all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that have ever reigned,
put them all together and they're not even close to the impact on humanity
as the one solitary life of Jesus Christ.
The ripples of the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension of Jesus Christ of Nazareth
have increased in amplitude and expanded in diameter right across the globe
in every culture and people group and nation for centuries.
That is what the book of Acts is about.
It's where we see it starting to move on.
And that is what makes Acts so relevant to us today.
The point here is that when you plug your one solitary obscure life into God's mission in Jesus Christ,
you plug yourself into eternal life and hope and value and significance and joy,
increasingly so forever.
That's the point.
So to make that point, I've got four points.
And if you've got your app in front of you, you can open it up and follow along with me.
Four points.
God's mission, power for God's mission, weakness and the advance of God's mission
and fourthly, living for God's mission.
So first of all, God's mission.
And I'll spend more time on this one than on the others.
What is God's mission?
What is his storyline?
What is his view, his worldview, if you like?
And God's worldview, his storyline has four main chapters to it.
First is creation.
In Genesis 1, right at the beginning of the Bible,
the God who stands outside of all of creation, who always existed,
created all things by speaking them into existence, such is the power of his word.
He made the first people, Adam and Eve, in his image.
And all people from Adam and Eve are bearers of the image of God,
which gives us a special dignity.
The great American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, wrote that the only reason that God would have
for creating us, humanity and all that exists,
is not in order for this God, this creator, to get cosmic love and joy and relationship with his creation,
but to impart it to his creation, that we might experience his cosmic love and joy.
And the storyline of the Bible contains the only storyline across every culture throughout all of humanity,
the history of humanity, the only storyline,
where the divine creator of all that exists creates in order to impart love and joy to his creation,
not to extract it.
That's chapter one of God's storyline.
Chapter two is the fall, Genesis three.
The first people decide to reject God's love and rule and do things their way.
And all people have followed suit in living life with no consideration with God whatsoever.
And as a result, all relationships are cosmically fractured.
Our special dignity as image bearers of God means that God holds us rightly so,
especially accountable for our rejection of him, all people.
And in his judgment in the early bits of the Bible in Genesis chapter 11,
is to scatter people from his presence across the earth,
confusing their languages and their cultures,
so that we as humanity cannot work together in order to collectively oppose God.
That's chapter two.
Chapter three is that God has got a plan to reverse all of that.
God's plan of redemption begins with a promise to Abraham in the very next chapter in Genesis chapter 12.
And the promise is that all the peoples of the earth are going to be blessed through Abraham
and through Abraham brought back to God in relationship with him.
And it's a plan that he's worked out through history.
So I'm fast forwarding a lot here.
Still read the Old Testament, fast forwarding a whole lot here.
This is how Galatians 3 in the New Testament puts it.
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.
Your trust in Jesus Christ means that you inherit all of Abraham's plans and purposes,
or God's plans and purposes to bring everything blessing through Abraham.
Jesus is the one who takes the judgment of God for our sin, for rejecting God,
the punishment that we deserve.
He dies the death that we should have died,
but he rose victorious over sin.
And everyone who puts their faith in the cosmic Lord Jesus is gathered back into relationship with God.
And what Jesus does from that moment is he forms the new people of God,
forms a new community, a new humanity that lives as it's meant to live
under the rule of the cosmic Lord Jesus.
It's called the church.
The former dividing walls of hostility between people have been broken down.
As a result of his work of reconciling people to God and to each other,
Jesus calls his church to take this good news of reconciliation to the ends of the earth
and to make disciples for the cosmic Lord Jesus from every people group and nationality and culture.
And this is what we're seeing the beginning of here in the book of Acts.
We start to see that plan being unfolded in front of us.
Chapter 4 of God's storyline is not the end of the story.
It's the beginning of a chapter that has no ending.
It's a chapter where God reigns forever.
There's no longer any carnage or evil and sin.
Revelation chapter 5, we get a glimpse of how God brings history to its ultimate goal.
It was God's design in the death of Jesus Christ to ransom from every kind of race and language and people and nation
to make a people for himself.
And these people would have one king.
That is that they would live with Jesus as their supreme treasure and Lord.
Jesus is the one who unites all people.
God's big plan for all of time and eternity and space is for people to come under the authority of Jesus
and turn to him in faith and repentance and enjoy his cosmic love.
Forever, increasingly so.
And the book of Acts is saying, conform your life to that storyline.
Live for that storyline.
Be involved in the work that God is doing in this world.
The only work that will last forever.
So as we open up the beginning of Acts, we're in chapter 3 of God's storyline.
Chapter 4 is yet to come.
We're still in chapter 3 ever since Jesus was here and until he comes back again.
And did you notice there, as Nick read it out to us, in chapter 1, verse 1, it says,
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach.
The word began there is the key word in understanding the relevance of this book for us right now, today.
What Luke stresses here is that what Jesus did on earth 2,000 years ago was the beginning of his doing and his teaching.
And the clear implication is that now, now that Jesus has ascended, as we are told here in Acts 1,
and sits at the right hand of the Father, ruling all that is, he's not done.
His work is not finished.
He's not dead.
He's not absent.
He's alive in his presence.
Jesus is continuing to build his church by drawing people into his cosmic love and joy as his family.
Wherever people come under the authority of his name and receive his forgiveness of sins,
trust in his power, they get their obscure lives plugged into his eternal spirit.
He's not a story line.
You see, the fact that Jesus is alive, the fact that he's ascended and he's seated and ruling all things,
gives purpose to our solitary lives.
He is the one changing the world one life at a time forever and he includes us in that.
He invites us to be part of it.
So I think that Luke's desire here is for the unfolding message of Acts to have a transforming impact on our lives.
He wants us to be part of what God is doing in the universe now as what he's always been doing in the universe.
You see, Acts is a two-part book, if you like.
It's part of a two-part book.
It's a second part of a two-volume work.
It's part of a two-part book, written by Luke, a first-century doctor.
The Gospel of Luke and this book of Acts go together as one work, one piece of literature,
and they are both addressed to a man named Theophilus.
Theophilus is most likely a Roman aristocrat because Luke addresses him as your excellency at the beginning of his gospel.
And so Luke could well be writing both Luke and Acts to inform an educated Gentile
of the extraordinary spread of the Christian faith across the Roman Empire
and to convince this man of its extraordinary truth
so that this man is drawn into it
and despite his aristocracy and the important part he might play in the Roman Empire
to show him there is something greater for his life to be included in,
something much more significant for him to give himself to.
something much more important.
See, Luke goes to enormous lengths in his gospel
to show us that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in bodily form.
Not just an idea, not just a concept, but physically rose from the dead.
It says in Acts 1 verse 3,
after his suffering, that is his trial and his death,
he showed himself to these men, his disciples,
and gave many convincing proves,
many convincing proves that he is alive.
He appeared to them over a period of 40 days
and spoke about the kingdom of God.
You see, we are called here in the book of Acts to be witnesses to the gospel,
the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and you cannot be an authentic instrument in the hands of the living and the reigning Jesus Christ
if you don't think he's alive.
If you just think he's a great idea,
you cannot be an effective witness.
You must know that he is alive and he is reigning right now over everything,
even the things we don't understand.
Reigning as Lord of the universe of all time and space is in his hands.
I mean, you need to be profoundly persuaded
that Jesus has broken the power of death
and that he is alive and alive with indestructible life.
He will never die again.
He hasn't been resuscitated.
He's been resurrected.
Never to be defeated.
And his kingdom is unstoppable.
His storyline will advance.
You need to be profoundly, profoundly convicted of that.
It's so important to constantly come back again and again and again
to the death and resurrection of Jesus,
to God's mission in this world
so that our lives are constantly realigned with him and his work.
Because we get so easily distracted by our own storylines
and our own missions and agendas.
The disciples are no different.
The apostles are confused.
Verse 6.
Their vision is so small.
Lord,
are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?
Like, that's it.
They're thinking of their homes and their villages and stuff.
And Jesus' mission is global.
You see, they, you know,
don't entirely blame these guys, right?
I mean, they're as narrow-minded as we are.
They knew that the Old Testament promise
of the outpouring of God's spirit
was a promise for the last days
when God would establish his kingdom on earth
and restore his people.
And so their question is,
Jesus, is this it now?
You know, is that time come?
Will Jesus bring down the final curtain of history,
beat up the Roman Empire,
re-establish the kingdom as it used to be,
take Israel to its glory days
and reign over all creation
with Israel at the top of the pile?
And Jesus corrects their thinking in verse 7
and then instructs them to basically,
guys, lift your eyes.
Lift your eyes to a much bigger storyline,
a much bigger plan.
He's saying your primary concern
is not the restoration of national Israel,
but your primary concern
is to receive the Holy Spirit,
God dwelling in you,
that you might fulfill the task
that I have given you,
my plan for all things.
Have a look at verse 8.
But you receive power
when the Holy Spirit comes on you
and you will be my witnesses.
This is the reason why you get the Holy Spirit.
You will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem,
Judea and Samaria,
the earth.
Isaiah 49 verse 6,
God promised that salvation would be
proclaimed to the ends of the earth
and Jesus confirms
that this promise here
with these disciples.
That's the promise.
Salvation must be proclaimed
to the ends of the earth
and these are his last words
to his disciples.
Jesus' last words to his disciples
are to be their primary concern,
their first concern.
There is more work to be done
in God's mission
before chapter 4 comes
and chapter 4 has not arrived yet.
That's what he's saying
to his disciples.
First for the apostles,
then for all who are called
to faith in Jesus Christ
through their witness
are tasked with advancing
God's mission to the ends of the earth
as our primary first concern.
It's a huge task.
And the encouraging thing is
what we see here
from verse 8
is that we have power
for God's mission
to accomplish his task.
See, this is not merely human work.
It is spirit-empowered witness.
Jesus is calling them
to a supernatural activity.
They will no longer be mere advocates,
not just mere advocates
who can prove,
like a good lawyer,
argue really well
that Jesus is risen from the dead.
Under the influence
of the Holy Spirit,
they will speak
with an unwavering assurance
of one who has tasted
and knows in their heart
the reality so immediately
that all doubt
about the resurrection of Jesus
is gone.
Under the power
of the Spirit of God,
you move from being
an advocate of Christianity
to being a witness
of the living Christ
in your own life.
You move from simply deducing
Christian truths
from valid premises
to proclaiming them
as boldly
as someone
who's experienced
the realities
in their own life.
This is the power
and the witness
that will take Christ
to the ends of the earth.
Not just mere facts,
but facts,
truths lived out
and shaping our lives.
And so the church
is not merely
a human institution.
In all that the church does,
it is to do it
in the power
of the Holy Spirit.
And the promise here
of the Spirit
in verse 8
is valid
until the Great Commission
is complete
and the witness of Christ
is planted
around the world.
In other words,
it is a promise
until chapter 4 comes.
We are told in verse 9
that after Jesus
said these things,
he was taken up
before their very eyes
and a cloud
hid them from their sight,
hid him from their sight.
At the end of his
earthly ministry,
Jesus is restored
to his rightful place.
And his rightful place
is the seated ruler
of all time
and eternity.
The one who has
the power of all things,
control of all things
in his hand.
He now rules,
occupying the highest place
as Lord of all,
and from there
he exercises
his universal reign
that goes forever
and ever
and guarantees
the success
of his mission.
It will not fail.
His storyline
cannot be altered.
It will not fail.
It's really important
that we grapple with that
because what you see
in the rest of Acts
from verse 10 onwards
is
weakness.
Weakness
at the very beginning
of God's mission.
Having been commissioned
to go
to the ends
of the earth,
we see
in verse 10
a rebuke.
Men of Galilee,
why do you stand here
looking into the sky?
Like you
bunch of
stargazers,
you've been given
a mission
and you
stand,
you've been told
the Spirit will come,
get on down to Jerusalem.
Why are you
standing here?
Get on
with the mission.
It seems
like this is
fundamentally
inconsistent.
And so
one has to ask,
why
does Luke
include
the second half
of chapter 1
of Acts?
You know,
he's on this
role
of,
you know,
Jesus ascended
on high,
going to get
the Holy Spirit,
going to take
this message
to the end
of the earth.
I mean,
it's like
gusto,
you know,
like,
whoa,
we've got
purpose in our lives.
Why doesn't he
just jump
straight from there
to Acts chapter 2
and the day
of Pentecost
and thousands
of people
coming to Christ?
You know,
there's a logical
connection
between those
two things.
Instead,
what we have
is the details
around Judas'
betrayal,
Matthias'
selection,
why include
the lying,
the mistrust,
the betrayal,
the death?
It's not like,
you know,
he's a great
story writer here
and he's wanting
to build up
Matthias and
let's,
you know,
this guy's going
to play a key
role,
you know,
in chapter 15
of Acts,
so we need to
introduce his
character now.
So let's get
Matthias in on
the scene now
rather than
drop him in
from,
Matthias doesn't
even get
mentioned again
in the rest
of Acts.
So why
this diversion?
Now on one
important level,
we could say
that the
appointment of
Matthias
shows us
that the
pursuit of
the Spirit's
power
is not
disconnected
from the
pursuit
towards the
teaching and
the work of
the historical
Jesus.
Let me just
simplify that.
It was
absolutely
important
that the
replacement
for Judas
was himself
an eyewitness
to the life,
the teaching
and the deeds
of Jesus
Christ.
The resurrected
Jesus,
absolutely
essential
that he
himself
was an
eyewitness
to the
resurrection
of Jesus.
It is
very clear
here that
the Holy
Spirit has
an unwavering
zeal for
the glory
of the
crucified,
risen and
ascended
Jesus Christ.
They're not
disconnected.
There's not
Bible-believing,
gospel-centered
Jesus people
Christians and
the Holy Spirit-filled
Jesus Christian
people.
They're not
separated.
God's
approach.
He does
not
idolize
it at
all as
it
pursues
God's
mission in
the world.
Luke
reveals a
church of
weakness,
of frailty
and failure,
even though it
has this
astonishing
power in
the Holy
Spirit,
even as
they
supernaturally
empowered to
pursue God's
mission in
the world of
redemption across
the globe,
through cultures
to every people
group,
we are still
weak.
The power is
not us.
He records the
apostasy of
Judas, the
casting of lots
for his
replacement,
effectively the
gambling to
see who's
going to come
out the top
dog, the
hypocrisy of
Ananias and
Sapphira in
chapter 5,
the bickering
widows in
chapter 6,
Peter's
reluctance to
heed Christ's
call in
chapter 10,
and even
Paul's dispute
with John
Mark in
chapter 15.
Luke is
at least
making the
point that
even though
we have
this astonishing
power of the
Holy Spirit,
we need to
acknowledge our
sin, our
failure, our
frailty.
We need to
deal with the
sins and the
failures and
recognise our
frailty and
recognise our
total, total
dependence upon
the Holy Spirit
for the task at
hand.
And so the
pattern of the
church is
weakness and
dependence,
prayerful dependence
upon God.
That's why I love
verse 14.
They all join
together
constantly in
prayer.
Constantly in
prayer.
That's why I
love the fact
that we're
pushing the
one plus one
plus one,
that the work
of God to
supernaturally
change someone's
storyline so
that they embrace
Jesus and get
included in God's
eternal work is
a work of God in
the heart,
nothing less than
that, nothing
less.
And Acts is
written to us
to give us
certainty that
God's plans for
his church are
always fulfilled
because of his
great power,
despite our
frailty and
our failure.
And so do you
have confidence?
Do you have
confidence in
this as we move
together from this
point as a church,
as we look in
this season of
COVID-19 and
our frailty and
our weakness is
evident amongst
us, as we look
beyond 2020 for
the next stage of
vision for us as a
church here at
St. Paul's,
where is your
confidence?
Is it in strategic
planning?
Is it in, I
don't know what it
is in, your
ability to
communicate truth
or is it in
God's spirit to
bring transformation
in people's lives?
And will that
confidence lead
you to vitally,
vitally,
radically align
yourself with
God's work in
the world?
It's an important
question.
Is your life
living for God's
storyline, his
mission in the
world?
Or is it
something that you
hold out to one
side, you dip in
and out of?
You see, what
we're going to
realize is,
there's another
story that has
arisen in the
last 100 years,
another storyline,
another grand
narrative, another
vision, worldview,
if you like.
It's become the
purpose of life for
most people in the
Western world,
particularly in the
last 60 to 70
years.
It has captivated
the Western world.
The technical term
for this particular
storyline is
philosophical
naturalism.
It's the fancy
way of describing
materialism as a
worldview.
And it's worth
comparing this
worldview, which
dominates the
West, it
dominates the
culture here at
Chatswood, to
God's storyline.
Philosophical
naturalism,
materialism, is a
three-chapter
story.
First, the big
bang.
Secondly,
evolution.
thirdly, the
end.
In the big bang,
there's no
supernatural or
spiritual power that
rules the physical
universe.
It says that
everything that can
be measured,
which is the only
thing worthy,
by the way,
it's the only valid
things, the things
that can be
measured,
is a result of
an explosion that
appeared out of
nothing billions of
years ago.
Freak
accident.
chapter 2 of
the storyline is
that on the back
of that freak
accident, against
all odds, humanity
has evolved from
prehistoric soup
to become,
today, the
dominant species
on the earth.
Today.
One day, maybe
overtaken by
something else.
And despite what
people might feel
inside them,
there is no
such thing as
absolute truth
no such thing
as absolute
right, no such
thing as absolute
wrong.
Because everything
is an accident
and random,
then life,
therefore, has
no absolute
purpose,
and so,
therefore, every
individual is
free to make
of it as they
see fit.
and the goal
of life in
philosophical
naturalism is
therefore to
consume as
much as
possible of
the material
world for
your own
experiences.
Whatever it is
that makes
this moment in
your storyline
as happy and
as agreeable as
it possibly can.
that's
philosophical
naturalism.
And you
need to
pursue your
personal
happiness
because
chapter 3
is coming
at any
time.
And chapter
3 is
the end.
Humanity
will become
extinct.
There's no
form of
afterlife.
This life
is it.
that's it.
Now, where
materialism says
everything is
random and
therefore, there's
no good, there's
no evil, nothing
to ever hope
for, the
biblical story
says that we
have a loving
creator, a
loving creator
who has triumphed
over evil at
great cost to
himself in
order to love
his creatures
dearly.
And as we
look forward to
a day where
when everything
wrong will be
made right
and we
will live
with him
in blissful
joy for
all of
eternity,
increasing
joy for
all of
eternity as
he embraces
us with
his cosmic
love and
joy.
He imparts
it to us
forever.
There's a
difference between
two storylines.
Know this,
whatever
storyline you
hold to,
philosophical
naturalism, the
Bible storyline
with Jesus as
centre or any
other storyline
that you
particularly want
to grasp hold
of, every
single storyline
requires you to
surrender for
it.
Every single
storyline requires
your time, your
talents, your
treasures.
It requires
everything from
you, your
storyline.
And what we
proclaim here as
a church again
and again and
again and again
and again and
again and we
will do so right
through the book
of Acts, the
biblical storyline
is compelling.
It is
convincing.
Not just
convincingly
truth-wise but
it's also
compelling from
the heart.
It draws you
in to God's
cosmic love and
joy.
It's also
more true and
reasonable than
all the grand
storylines of
this world.
And so right
now and
throughout the
book of Acts
as we go
through in the
coming weeks,
like Theophilus,
I invite you,
as Luke did
to Theophilus,
I invite you
to jump on
board with
God's work in
this world, in
the Lord Jesus.
Start investigating
the claims and
align your life
with Jesus and
his grand plan
for all of
humanity.
Amen.