Living Purposefully Between The Ascension And Pentecost Transcript

This beginning of Luke. The best way that I can describe it is almost like a television show that's been off the air for a couple of years. The last season finished. It ended with a cliffhanger, but it had been a little while until the new season started up. First show that comes to mind is Stranger Things, but there's other shows that you're just waiting for the story to continue. The Gospel of Luke is over if we comply it to. 

The Gospel of Mark. That ended without even an appearance of the risen Christ To oh. You remember how he spent 40 days with you. He spoke about God's kingdom and he told them to wait. And all of this stuff that Luke is sharing is like a recap. These are the things that I want you to know that happened in the last season, so that you're ready for what's going to happen next. We want you to remember these storylines and that's what we get. 

It's a bit abrupt indeed to move from the gospel of Mark to Acts, but the story is the same that Jesus is alive, that Jesus is resurrected, that Jesus spent time in the disciples' midst preaching to them, teaching them and preparing them for what was to come next. And this is where we begin in the book of Acts, and the book of Acts is this transition point from the work of Jesus in bodily form prior to ascending to the work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit in the church, power of the Holy Spirit in the church. But we're in this waiting time, and if you've ever listened to any of my sermons or paid attention to them, you know that I believe that this time is like what we're living in now, this waiting time between what has already happened and what will happen. And this passage in Acts helps us understand what that waiting should look like. What that waiting should look like not only for us as we act, but also in how we approach the world. Because when we get it wrong, when we don't fully understand what waiting for the Lord looks like, waiting for the Holy Spirit to come, waiting for the Holy Spirit to come, waiting for the Holy Spirit to direct, if we don't know what that looks like, we're often going to jump the gun, we're going to make mistakes, we're going to rush in without fully understanding where God wants us to go or to keep busy. We focus on secondary and tertiary things. 

I would argue that if you have seen anything on the news or paid any attention to Christians over the last week with the earthquake on Friday. Did everybody feel that? I don't know if we were driving at the time, we didn't feel it, but you've had the eclipse that you talked about last week. You had an earthquake on Friday. You've got a solar eclipse on Monday. You've got a war in the Holy Land. You've got all of these people waiting and proclaiming the end is near. Obviously there is something that's going to happen and the end is here. And then you have other people making things worse to try to bring about the end faster. You have Christians who create foreign policy so that the temple will be rebuilt in the holy land, so that Jesus will come back faster. You've got people out there breeding cattle, trying to create red heifers so that the sacrifice can happen to bring about the end faster. 

And now, just a few weeks ago, we talked about whether or not Jesus was coming soon, and I want to reiterate what I said there here, because it's still true. I'm going to give you a definitive answer on whether Jesus is coming back on Monday. Are you ready for it? It's going to be totally shocking. We have no idea and it doesn't matter. Now, that first one you might be in agreement with Okay, we have no idea. Jesus said he didn't even know. Only the Father in heaven knew. We've got that part down, but why doesn't it matter? How could you say it doesn't matter, pastor? It doesn't matter because it should not have any effect on how we live. 

In this in-between time we, as Christians, should be living as if today would be our personal last, or today could be our universal last. We have been called to preach, to teach, to live, to serve, to love, and all of that should be happening, whether today is the end of the world or not, whether Monday is the end of the world or not. If we are waiting to know when the end of the world is coming so that we act properly, we've missed the entire point. We've missed the point of what it means to be a disciple. We've missed the point of the purpose of, of, of revelation and the talking about the end of the world and to give hope to those who are are who are in a world caught in darkness, no matter what age you live in. We've missed the point entirely, and I think it's because we found ourselves in this waiting period, this in-between period, not unlike the disciples did, between when Jesus ascends and when the Holy Spirit comes, they're told to go to Jerusalem and wait. 

Now, many of us don't like doing that. We don't like being still, we don't like not being active, we don't like not being productive. We've got to go about something. We got to do something, or we're going to go crazy. Or we're going to go crazy, or we're going to feel like we're inadequate, or we're going to feel like we're wasting time. We just don't like to wait and to not do. 

But if we listen to this story, if we approach it from the text on the page the disciples were not just waiting, they were not just simply sitting around Tells us that while they were together, they fasted and they prayed and they sought for what God was going to be doing. They didn't fill themselves with busy work. They didn't fill themselves with unimportant tasks. They didn't fill the time saying, well, we've got to go out into Jerusalem now. Surely the Holy Spirit will catch up to us once we're there. They did spend time waiting, but it wasn't in action, it wasn't the absence of doing. What they were doing was incredibly important and necessary. They were preparing their own hearts and minds in prayer and they were waiting for God to speak to them and actively listening. If they had not been, you can imagine some of the trouble they might have gotten themselves. 

In Jerusalem there was quite a few people who, following Jesus' crucifixion, also wanted to put to death anyone who said he had been risen, anyone who dared proclaim that Jesus was the Christ and risen. It would not be above them to put them in prison, to beat them or to kill them. Not universal, but there were people in the midst. If they had left before they were directed, if they were left before they were ready, if they had left before the Holy Spirit had been given to them, if they thought they were going to anticipate what Jesus wanted them to do instead of actually listening to what he wanted to do, they could have gotten themselves into quite a bit of trouble. So instead they waited, they prayed, they listened and I'm sure they talked to each other. I'm sure they argued with each other how long do we have to stay waiting here? How long do we have to sit? Maybe the Holy Spirit has already come upon us? Surely we're ready to go. It might have been all of those things all at once. 

You get a group of 12 people into a locked room together and told to pray and wait. Our human nature kicks in pretty quick, and so in these moments, in this in-between time that we find ourselves in, our task is not to sit and wait. Our task is not just to be inactive. Maybe our task now is to pray. Maybe our task now is to spend time waiting for the Holy Spirit to come upon us to guide us and direct us and to move us, and as we go about that, we do what Jesus told us to do, share all that he has taught, do what he has done and live through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our waiting is different from the disciples. They waited in a room. They waited for the Holy Spirit to come. Our waiting for that time when Christ will come again is not shaped simply by waiting in a room. We would not be doing God's will if we gathered here every day of the week and prayed together just waiting for it to happen, and it's certainly not by preparing for the to try working to bring about the end times instead of working to bring about life change in God's kingdom in our midst. We are in a difficult time. 

There are voices out there proclaiming that the end is nigh, that it's going to come on Monday, even. Some say, or something cataclysmic, and I think it's meant to drive fear. It's meant to drive, push forward into this understanding of who Jesus is and what Jesus is going to do. Maybe it might move people to action. But that's not the waiting. That's busy work, it's manipulation, it's not living as Jesus has called us to. We should be giving hope. We should be giving hope, we should be proclaiming Christ and we should be living each day as if it could be our last, proclaiming Christ, loving the lost and serving those around us who are hurting. If we do that, if we do that in prayer, then it truly does not matter when the end will come, and this should give us hope. It's certainly one less thing to worry about.