Acting as if the resurrection changes everything!

April 19 2020

Acts 1:1-11

         Well,Easter is over. If you had any Easter decorations put out, I’m sure that they are tucked away for another year. This year because of the pandemic we didn’t have to figure out what to do with all the leftover Easter eggs. I mean just how many days can you eat deviled eggs? Sometimes as we move on from these yearly celebrations we often forget the importance of what we just celebrated. Last week we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus. He defeated death and he lives forever more. That is something that we can not just move on from.The Easter miracle is one that we need to consider for a while and see just how the greatest miracle ever impacts our life changing the way we speak and act. This is why in the next several weeks, we are going to take a look at the book, The Acts of the Apostles. If you want to join me in going a little deeper into the Acts of the Apostles, I recommend two books which are the inspiration for this message series. The first is “True to Faith: Acts of the Apostles” by David Gooding. What he found is that Luke, the author of the book of Acts, put six clear breaks in his manuscript. The reason Luke did this is that each section of the book of Acts is answering a question. The early church were in a process of figuring out just who they were, just what set them apart from their Jewish neighbors. So, in Acts we first must figure out “Who is Jesus?”The second issue was the issue of the worship and service of God. Were they to restrict their worship to the Temple or was their something different that they were to do? Then their was the issue as to which people were righteous before God and just how were these new Christians to know who was in and who was not. Then another issue cropped up concerning just what is required for new converts to be made right with God. Other issues that the early church had to wrestle with is just how people entered the kingdom of God and the authority and understanding of scripture. Now the interesting thing was that when the church did figure out a little more just who they were, Luke writes that that there was an increase in their numbers. The better they understood who they were the more likely that others wanted to be apart of the early church. So, there are some great lessons to be learned for us today, as we, the church, can no longer meet together. The questions we need to ask ourselves is church a place we go to or is it people we are united with through the blood of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit? Like the book of Acts we need to take time to wrestle with and find answers to just who we are as followers of Christ.

         The second book this message series is based on is “The Hope of Israel: The Resurrection of Christ in the Acts of the Apostles” by Brandon Crowe.  The premise of this book is that the central message of the book of Acts is the resurrection of Jesus.It is the resurrection that is preached, it is the resurrection that is taught and lived throughout the pages of Acts. Now as I read these two books it was easy to see that they belong together because the answers to the questions that the early church were asking have their answer in the resurrection of Jesus. It doesn’t take much thought to see that the answer to who Jesus is lies solely in the resurrection. The answer to worship and service to God is found in the promise of Jesus that in three days he would raise up a new temple. The resurrected Jesus is the judge and we are justified by his resurrection. Through baptism we enter into his resurrection to live in his kingdom. And the only way to understand scripture is to let the light of the resurrection shine upon them for they all point to God’s greatest miracle and promise.

         This is is all of what is behind this ridiculously long message title “Acting as if the resurrection of Jesus changed everything”  because this is how the early church, recorded in the book of Acts, lived their lives and so should we. Easter is not something we should just pack away with the decorations but is the the experience that should ground our life and answer our questions. Today’s scripture is from the first chapter of Acts. What we need to keep in mind is that Luke is not only the author of the gospel of his name but s the author of the book of Acts. So, Acts is like Luke, the saga continues kind of thing. In fact there are several themes that run through Luke and are again found here in this first chapter of Acts. One of these is the redemption of Israel. At the beginning of Luke’s gospel in the first chapter, the sixty seventh verse, we hear John’s father, Zechariah under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit cry out, ‘Blessed be the God of Israel for he has visited and redeem his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David” Zechariah speaks the hope of his people that now would be the time when God would be faithful to his servant David and raise up a king whose reign would be everlasting. We hold onto that thought and turn to the twenty fourth chapter of Luke and Luke records one early Sunday morning a man named Cleopas and his wife are walking home to their town of Emmaus. Two days earlier they had witnessed the man they had believed in, a man named Jesus die upon a Roman cross. Their hopes were gone; their hearts were crushed. They were going home to try and forget about it all. On their way home, they were met by a stranger who asked them what they were discussing as they walked. They told him they were talking about the one named Jesus, the one from Nazareth. He was the one they had hoped would redeem Israel. There is that hope of redemption popping up again. Redemption is to be set free from slavery, to have someone pay a price necessary to procure ones freedom. In Israel’s history it conjured up images of God sending Moses down to Egypt so that the people of Israel could be set free from their bitter slavery. Redemption for them was understandably a personal issue. In the days of Jesus they found themselves under Roman occupation, to them they were slaves once again in need of redemption. Like many even today, the longing for freedom is constant drive of ones soul. People were protesting this week against what they felt were undo restrictions put on their freedom due to the quarantine to deal with the pandemic.So, this longing in for freedom is one that both universal and historical, unchanging always present in the human heart. Perhaps even today people still might say “We thought Jesus was the one to redeem us, to set us free, now we are not so sure.” 

         These thoughts arise once again in the first chapter of the book of Acts. The resurrected Jesus spent forty days after his resurrection to teach his disciples about the kingdom of God. As he is finishing up his time here on Earth, his disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?” Now when I read this I have to say that Jesus has a lot more patience in dealing with people then I will ever have. I mean Jesus has just been teaching his disciples for forty days on the kingdom of God and after he wraps up his teaching, he opens up his teaching session for a little question and answer time, and their question is, okay, Jesus tell us plain when are you going to restore thee kingdom of Israel. I mean all you have talked incessantly about for over a month is the kingdom of God and all your students want to know is when are you going to get to the kingdom of Israel.  It is the same issue found in the gospel of Luke, the redemption of Israel, the throwing off of Roman rule, the freedom of self-determination. They had read the stories of David how he was a mighty warrior, how Israel became a great nation under him now here was Jesus, resurrected from the grave, obviously anointed by God, obviously the one who was the one who is the everlasting king of the house of Israel.

         Now, Jesus does not give his disciples a yes or no answer to their question but rather focuses in on the fact that it was not for them to know the seasons or times that the Father has fixed by his authority. This, I believe, was Jesus subtlety reminding them of who they were in the big scheme of things, people who were ever at the mercy of their Heavenly Father. When Jesus tells us that his Father is the one who sets the seasons and the times by his authority, we have to realize that the Father can do this because he is outside of time. As the God who lives outside of time he is also the Creator and this is, I believe, what Jesus is pointing to because in the next breath, Jesus begins speaking about the coming Holy Spirit, the power, the promise of the Father. The Spirit is the one who, in the beginning, hovered over the primordial chaos, the nothingness and out of the nothingness a creation came forth. That same Spirit was once again going to be sent by the Father to hover over the chaos which was the lives of these followers of Jesus. This action of the Holy Spirit would create in them a new heart and God would put a new spirit within them, his spirit, the Holy Spirit. The poor spirit within them that was unable to overcome the sinful impulses of their flesh would be replaced by the very Spirit of God who would empower them to put to death their flesh and live through the power and presence of the Spirit. When these disciples asked the question concerning the kingdom of Israel, they revealed that they focused solely on themselves, on their own people concerned only for their own country. God though had a much larger vision, a global vision of a world set free from the power of sin.The people of Israel had forgotten the promise God had made to their forefather Abraham that he was chosen by God so that through him all of the families would be blessed. This blessing that was to be given to all the families of the earth is found in the thirty second Psalm, the first and second verse, where we read, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the one against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” This is the blessed message that the apostles would preach to the ends of the Earth, that God has forgiven their sin through the death of Jesus upon the cross. His blood cleansed away our sin so that we in Christ could enter the most holy presence of God. This is what the apostles would witness to, not just the cross but the resurrection as well. The life which puts to death the power of the flesh finds a new power of life, the power of the resurrection.

         This is how the kingdom of God grows and spreads around the globe as one by one people come under the kingship of Jesus and through the Holy Spirit put to death the flesh and find life through the power of the Spirit. Now so often we want to just see the kingship of Jesus as a spiritual ruler and believe somehow Jesus can rule the spiritual side of life while our earthly rulers can rule the here and now of our existence. Nothing can be further from the truth. Jesus is either ruler over all or he is ruler over none; each of us must decide which it is and our choice has eternal consequences. In the book of Acts, the seventeenth chapter, we see the real life consequences of making Jesus our king. There a mob jealous at the success of Paul and Silas brought charges against some of their new converts saying “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here and Jason has received them and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king Jesus.” While we must have some allegiance to our leaders we can never forget that there is a king even over our president, our members of Congress and our judges. If they decree that we do something that goes against the rule of Christ we must out of our ultimate allegiance defy that decree even if there are consequences. That we cannot always do what the rest of the world feels free to do points out one of the most unusual aspects of the kingship of Jesus and that is  that only as we are constrained can we be truly free. Paul speaks about this in his second letter to the Corinthians, where he writes “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the knowledge of him everywhere.” Paul uses the image of a king who has won a battle and has brought back the spoils of war, prisoners captured by a triumphant king. This is an unusual way for us to consider ourselves, no doubt, as people who long incessantly for freedom. Yet we can better understand this image if we turn to the fifth chapter of this same letter, where we read “For the love of Christ constrains us, because we have concluded this; that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” This is why Jesus, our king, deserves our ultimate allegiance because we once were dead and now we are alive all because our king died to give us life. So, now it is love which constrains us controls we might even say enslaves us. This is hard for us to fathom when this longing for freedom is such a big part of life. The truth is that in our life in the here and now is a life of slavery, doesn’t that take you back a bit? Listen to what Paul writes in the sixth chapter of Romans “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.  But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of these things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God , the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” Yes, we are slaves to righteousness but our slavery leads to our ever increasing holiness and this gives us hope of eternal life where we will be free from sin and death.

         This is the message that the apostles would witness to in Jerusalem, in Judaea, in Samaria, and to all the ends of the Earth. The whole world would receive the blessing of the knowledge that God through Jesus has forgiven their sin but in hearing of this forgiveness would come the knowledge that in their sin they were dead. Jesus died for us when we were dead and through his death and rising again we find ourselves alive. How can we not have such a love for him that he would forever rule our hearts? It is this word, this message of Christ’s love which sets us free from the death grip of sin. This is what Jesus tells us in the eighth chapter of the gospel of John where we read “”If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will no the truth and the truth will set you free” and further in that same passage Jesus continues by saying “ Truly, truly, I say to you; everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.  The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So, if the son sets you free you will be free indeed.” The freedom Jesus offers is a freedom from sin, so that we are no longer a slave of sin. This freedom comes from us allowing our love for what Jesus has done for us to constrain us, to control us to make us into slaves of righteousness. This is when Jesus is our king and when the kingdom of God comes on earth just as it is in heaven.

         Yes, it does seem strange that freedom is found through being a slave but this was the life of Jesus, the reason he is declared to be our king. Paul wonderfully sings the song in the second chapter of the letter of Philippians where we read “ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did to count equality with God a thing to be grasped or seized but he made himself nothing, taking the form of a slave being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death upon the cross. Therefore, God God has exalted him and bestowed the name that is above every name so at the name of Jesus every name shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus, the anointed one of God is king, to the glory of God.” This is the end hope found in the first chapter of Acts. God desires that every tongue confess that Jesus is indeed the risen and ascended king. He is the one we bow before in humble adoration. As Jesus first humbled himself and became a slave, we follow suit and become his slave, people constrained by love of the one who died to give us life.

         The disciples much like us had a hard time grasping the global vision that the kingship of Jesus is supposed to be. Yet if we acknowledge that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, not just the sins of America, or the sins of Europe or Asia or fill in the blank then his forgiveness is for everyone. Christ died for the sins of the world therefore he is the king of the world. He is only our king though as our love for him controls our every thought, our every word, our every action. This is is how we answer the question “Who is Jesus?” By answering he is our king because he has captured us and constrained by love to serve only him, truly slaves of righteousness. Even though we proudly state that we are slaves of righteousness we do so knowing that Christ has set us free, free from being a slave to sin whose wages are death. Now we are slaves of righteousness growing everyday more in the likeness of Christ, serving as he did. Even though he calls us his children we take the form of slaves to love as Jesus loved so that more and more people might come to know the king who became a slave to give them life.  This is how we witness to Jesus beginning where we are at and going out in ever widening circles so that the world may know and find life in Jesus. To his praise! Amen