I preached this sermon on August 21, 2016, at Patterson Park Church in Beavercreek, Ohio. This was the last sermon in our year-long series on the Book of Acts.
How many of you can tell me the date this picture was taken?
The photograph, taken by Robert F. Sargent, on
June 6, 1944, is entitled “Into the Jaws of Death.” It
shows an assault craft landing in one of the first waves at Omaha Beach.
This was not just another amphibious assault. This
was the largest seaborne assault in history. It involved eight different navies
and almost 7000 vessels, and nearly 160,000 troops. More than 4000 of those men
died on that first day.
Although no one could be sure of it at the time, that
massive military operation turned out to be a defining moment in the war. Once
the Allies had established a foothold in Normandy, the war in the European
theater had turned the corner. There would be many more battles, but the
eventual outcome of the war – the Allied victory over Nazi Germany – began to
come into focus in the months that followed that awful June morning.
There was, in other words, a “now but not yet” sense
about the landing at Normandy. In one sense, the war ended that day as the
Allies now began their long drive toward Germany. In another sense, the end of
the war was “not yet” as there were many more battles to fight before the end
of the conflict.
This week we’re concluding our series on the Book of
Acts, Luke’s account of the earliest days of the church. We’ll see that Luke both
opens and closes his narrative by highlighting an essential New Testament theme:
that the Kingdom of God had invaded human history in the person and work of
Jesus. And we’ll see that with the coming of Jesus the Kingdom of God became
both “now” and “not yet.”
The word “kingdom” appears more than 150
times in the New Testament. It is a theme that resonates from the opening
pages.
From the very beginning of his ministry Jesus
preached about the Kingdom of God. But almost everyone misunderstood what he
meant. They envisioned a popular uprising that would expel the hated Romans
from the Holy Land.
But Jesus had an altogether different kind of Kingdom in mind. And
this is what brought him into such sharp disagreement with his enemies. What especially
infuriated them was that Jesus insisted that all of God’s promises had come
true in him, that it was in him that the Kingdom of God had finally invaded
human history.
The conflict between Jesus and his enemies grew
so intense that they eventually persuaded the Roman governor to execute Jesus as
a rebel. But then, to everyone’s surprise, Jesus was crowned king –
not in an elaborate ceremony but, even better, by rising from the dead.
The Book of Acts tells the story of the first thirty years of the church. How
could a band of a few dozen followers of Jesus plant churches throughout the
Mediterranean basin and see their numbers grow from ten dozen to untold
thousands in just three decades?
As we read Luke’s account, we see a people compelled
by an unshakeable knowledge that God had changed the trajectory of history in
the coming of Jesus. The early church seemed to possess a “now but not yet” understanding
of the Kingdom.
·
They
knew that the Kingdom had come in Christ
o His rule had been inaugurated in his
Resurrection from the dead.
o They knew that Jesus had ushered in a new
age, and things would never the same again.
·
But
they also knew that the day when all things would be made right was still in
the future.
The NT writers understood that the coming of Jesus
had ushered in a new age, the Messianic Age. They knew that the Kingdom of God
had finally come on earth. Yet they also understood that the consummation of
all things, the day when all things would be made right, was still in the future.
The old order is still in place, but the Kingdom of God has broken into human
history in Christ.
This understanding of the “now but not yet” nature
of the Kingdom lies behind Luke’s account of the early days of the church. Luke
tells us that in the days following his resurrection, Jesus and his disciples spent
forty days together. Guess what Jesus and his disciples talked about during
those six weeks!
Let’s look back at Acts 1, verse 3.
[Jesus] presented himself alive to them after his
suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking
about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3, ESV)
Given what we know about the kingdom ideas floating
around in those days, it should come as no surprise that his disciples get the
wrong idea.
Look at their very reasonable question in verse six:
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord,
will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6, ESV)
Who could blame them for misunderstanding
Jesus’ kingdom-talk? Jesus has demonstrated his supreme power by not just
healing sick people, not just by exercising his power over the demonic realm,
and not even by raising people from the dead: Jesus has risen from the dead
himself. Now, they think, Jesus is ready to claim his rightful place as king of
Israel and restore Jewish independence.
Watch Jesus’ answer. First he gently rebukes
them, then he answers their question, but not in the way they expect:
Read with me beginning in verse 7:
It
is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own
authority. 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.” (Acts 1:7-8, ESV)
And in those few words Jesus outlines the story
of the first three decades of the early church as the Kingdom of God broke into
the first century Mediterranean world.
Luke tells us that ten days later the Spirit is poured out on ten dozen Jesus-followers, and the
rest of the Luke’s narrative shows us what happens when a handful of people are
motivated by a Spirit-infused Kingdom mindset.
The first half of the book focuses on the church in
Jerusalem, with Peter leading the church. Largely due to a violent outbreak of
persecution in Jerusalem, Christ-followers are scattered throughout the region.
Wherever they go they are proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom, and churches
are planted throughout Judea, Samaria, and the rest of Palestine.
Beginning with chapter 13, the focus shifts to a
Gentile congregation in Antioch. God’s Spirit leads that congregation to send
their two most mature leaders – Barnabas, who had come from Jerusalem, and the
brilliant and gifted evangelist Saul of Tarsus – on a church-planting mission. Saul
changes his Hebrew name to the Greek “Paul,” and goes on to proclaim the
Kingdom throughout the province of Asia Minor and crossing over to Greece.
And wherever the Good News about King Jesus would go, we
would find a familiar pattern:
1. People responded in faith, and the church
grew.
2. There were often spectacular miracles
accompanying the proclamation of the Kingdom, foreshadowing the “not yet” day when
all things will finally be made right.
3. There was always conflict with the kingdoms
of this world
a. Sometimes with civil and religious
authorities
b. Sometimes economic interests
c. Sometimes demonic forces
Which brings us to the last two chapters in Luke’s account, where
Paul finally realizes his life-long ambition of proclaiming the Kingdom in what
was then the capital of the world, Rome itself.
No one knows who planted the first church in Rome. It
wasn’t Paul. He wrote a famous letter to the believers there, telling them that
he wanted to visit them and that he wanted them to send him on to what was then
the edge of the known world: Spain. And at a particularly low moment after his
arrest in Jerusalem, God had come to him and promised that he would reach the
imperial city.
And now, in the final chapter of Luke’s account, after
his arrest in Jerusalem, after years of confinement in Roman custody, after a
spectacular shipwreck, Paul finally realizes his life-long dream, and he is
thrilled.
And it’s not just Paul who is thrilled that he is finally making
it to Rome. Remember that he had written a letter to the believers there. Now
they literally give Paul a royal welcome. (And, yes, I do know what “literally”
means.)
Read
with me beginning at the end of the fourteenth verse of Acts 28.
And so we came to Rome. And
the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the Forum of
Appius and Three Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took
courage. And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself, with
the soldier who guarded him. (Acts 28:14b-16, ESV)
When an emperor returned to the city, it was customary for the
citizens to go out en masse to meet
him and escort him in a hero’s welcome home. After all Paul has been through in
city after city, after his arrest in Jerusalem and the many hearings before
Jewish and Roman authorities, after his near-death experience in the shipwreck,
imagine how Paul felt when, while he and his Roman escort were still thirty
miles from Rome, Paul looks up and sees a large group of his brothers and
sisters in Christ coming out to meet him. Luke tells us that Paul thanked God
and took courage.
It was always Paul’s custom, whenever he arrived in a
new city, to first visit the Jewish synagogue. Paul had a great fondness for
his Jewish brothers and always wished that they would recognize Jesus as their
King. Now, under house arrest in Rome, Paul cannot go to the synagogue, so he
asks that the leaders of the Jewish community come to him.
Luke has recorded for us many of Paul’s
presentations to many different kinds of audiences. Now he tells us of one
more, Paul’s appeal to the Jews of Rome. Notice the two main points of Paul’s
presentation. Read with me beginning in verse 23:
When they had appointed a day for him,
they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till
evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God
and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses
and from the Prophets. (Acts 28:23, ESV)
Luke is summarizing
here,
because Paul talked to them all day, “from morning till evening.” Did you
notice what he talked about for all those hours? He was “testifying to the
kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the
Law of Moses and from the Prophets.”
Here in the heart of
the imperial city itself, Paul is declaring that the Kingdom of God has come in
Jesus. And he is using the Scriptures to help his Jewish brothers understand,
by laying out the prophecies about the long-awaited Messiah-King and showing
how Jesus fulfilled those prophecies.
As Paul has seen in
city after city, now he gets a mixed response from the Jewish leaders in
Rome. Luke tells us that Paul’s hearers disagreed among themselves.
Their reaction
prompts Paul to reach back to the writings of the prophet Isaiah. Paul tells his
hearers that they are responding the same way Isaiah’s contemporaries did. Read
with me beginning in verse 25:
“The Holy Spirit was right in saying
to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet:
“‘Go to this people, and say,
“You will indeed hear but never
understand,
and you will indeed see but never perceive.”
For this people's heart has grown
dull,
and with their ears they can barely hear,
and their eyes they have closed;
lest they should see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart
and turn, and I would heal them.’
Therefore let it be known to you that
this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.” ( Acts
28:25-28, ESV)
I heard a story once about a man who was
speaking about Jesus to a group of skeptical college students. When he got to
the end of his presentations, they went to a question and answer session. The
skeptical students shot question after question to the Christian, not giving
him a chance to answer one question before they would pelt him with another.
Finally, the
Christian stopped and asked them, “If I were to prove to you conclusively
that Jesus was who he said he was, would you believe in him then?”
His audience scoffed and told him no,
they wouldn’t believe in Jesus. The Christian responded, “Then we are finished
here. There is no point in going on.” Their inability to understand the Good
News about Jesus wasn’t rooted in ignorance or misunderstanding; their hearts
were hard.
That’s what Paul is
sensing here in some of his audience. The Scriptures Paul utters here are from the
sixth chapter of Isaiah, where we read of the vision in which Isaiah received
his commission to speak for God to His people.
God was telling
Isaiah
before he even began his ministry that His people would not listen to him. They
would hear but never perceive; they were unable to see because they were
willfully blind.
Now Paul tells the
unbelieving Jews of Rome that they were responding to a new word from God the
same way their ancestors had responded to Isaiah: their hard hearts kept them
from hearing. They had rejected their King.
From time to time in
Luke’s account, he will give a summary statement before moving on to the next section.
Here Luke gives us his final summary statement, but it is odd. It provides
the conclusion for this last episode, but there is no conclusion to the book as
a whole. Read with me in verse 30, where he tells us that Paul
…lived there two whole years at his
own expense, and welcomed all who came to
him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus
Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. (Acts
28:30-31, ESV)
Scholars don’t really
know
what to make of this abrupt ending. If Luke knew that Paul’s imprisonment ended
after two years, he must have known how it ended. But he doesn’t tell us. Was
Paul tried, found guilty by the imperial court, and executed? Or was he
released at the end of those two years? No one knows for sure.
By suspending the
narrative this way, it is almost as if Luke wanted to tell us that his story
is not complete. This proclamation of the arrival of the Kingdom that began in
Jerusalem and Judea continued in Antioch and Asia Minor, and now it has reached
the very heart of the empire. It’s as if Luke laid down his pen, intending to
come back to continue the story, but never got around to it.
We know how the story
goes on from there. The news of the Kingdom would spread throughout the
empire, throughout northern Africa, all the way to Britain in the west, and
beyond the empire to India in the east. The news of the Kingdom has, in fact,
spread all over the world, all the way to Beavercreek, Ohio, where there is an
outpost of the Kingdom known as Patterson Park Church.
Which brings us to
our familiar question: So what? We’ve seen how a Spirit-infused Kingdom mindset
prompted those early believers to turn their world upside down. What does a
Spirit-infused Kingdom mindset look like in 21st century North
America, in Beavercreek, Ohio?
I’d like to use three quotations to answer that question.
First: “The next
Billy Graham might be drunk right now.” This is from Russell Moore,
president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
He’s
right, you know. “The next Billy Graham might be drunk right now.” We should
never let stereotyping or profiling limit our understanding of what God might
be doing in the world.
Just think
how shocked and amazed those early Jerusalem Christians must
have been when they saw how things turned out. They were thrilled to understand
that the long-awaited Kingdom of God had arrived in Jesus, and at the beginning
they expected the Jews in the Holy City to respond in faith and obedience and
join them, as many thousands of them did.
But then things just didn’t turn out the way they expected.
·
They
experienced brutal persecution at the hands of a fiery young Pharisee named
Saul.
·
Then they
heard that Saul had himself become a Christ-follower.
·
Then they
heard that no less than the Apostle Peter himself had gone into the home of an
unconverted Gentile, a Roman officer, and now that officer and his family were
part of their fellowship.
·
Next thing
they know, Saul is teaching that Gentiles who join the church don’t have to
submit to the laws of Moses. Will the outrages never end?
None of
that was in the script for those early Jerusalem Christians.
A Kingdom
mindset means that we don’t dictate to God how He is to rule in His
Kingdom. The early church learned the hard way that God was going to build His
church in ways that could never have expected.
Second: "The weapons of
our warfare are not of the flesh."
Think of
Paul sitting in that rented house in Rome. From one point of
view, he was helpless. The empire had all the power and advantages. He was
chained at the wrist to a Roman soldier 24/7. The imperial court that will hear
his case has the power to condemn him to death or to set him free.
And to
make matters worse, Paul is talking about a Kingdom, here
in the heart of the empire. What power did that Kingdom possess? What
authority? From one point of view, none.
And yet,
Paul knew that the power that directed his life, the power that animated
the church, wasn’t military or economic or political or even cultural. Paul
knew that the weapons of God’s Kingdom are of a different sort, and far more
powerful.
Brothers
and sisters, as we observe our own culture
descending into madness, let’s not panic. Let’s not imagine that our loss of
cultural and political influence has somehow set back the agenda of God’s
Kingdom. Let us not fear that our bizarre political situation or our prospects
for Supreme Court nominations or the identity of the man or woman who is the
next occupant of the White House – or even that all of these developments
together – can set thwart the purposes of God and His Kingdom.
The
weapons of our warfare are not physical; they are spiritual, and
they are potent. And God’s Kingdom will prevail, regardless of who sits in the
White House or who sits on the Supreme Court or which party controls Congress.
Don’t
misunderstand. Yes, we should vote. But not out of
fear or in desperation. We should vote out of love for our neighbor and a
desire for a just and compassionate social order. But we should not cast our
vote in fear; the King is on His throne.
Third, the word that the angels almost always had to say
first: "Fear not."
Let me show you what I mean. I’m going to show you a
statement would have been obvious and self-evident to Paul and Luke and anyone
else living in the first century.
The Roman
empire is the greatest nation the world has ever known.
That was blindingly
obvious to anyone living in the Mediterranean basin in the first
century. And yet that statement is no longer true. That empire, like all
earthly kingdoms, eventually fell. But the Kingdom of God has marched on,
throughout the world.
There would
have been a time when this next statement would have
been terrifyingly and depressingly true, and surely this thought crossed the
minds of those tens of thousands of Allied troops as they stormed the beaches
of Normandy: The Nazi military is the greatest
army the world has ever known. And yet that statement also is no longer
true. But the army of God’s church continues to march through history.
And as much as we love our country, we must admit to
ourselves that this statement, as obvious and self-evident as it is now, will
not always be true: The United States of
America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth. And yet, when all of the history and
accomplishments of our great nation are in the rear-view mirror, of interest
only to historians, the Kingdom of God will just be getting started.
Don’t be
afraid. Someone said once that Christians don’t need to be afraid
because theirs is the only God who has ever fought his way out of the grave.
The King has come, and he has conquered, so we can look forward with confidence
to the day when He will finally make all things right.
As we
close our study of the Book of Acts, let’s recall our question:
What is the mission of the church? Our task is to proclaim that the Kingdom of
God has come, in Christ the King.
·
Big mall
in Philadelphia
·
Christmas
season
·
Organist
at a pipe organ performing a mini-concert while shoppers mill about
·
Then he
plays the opening measures of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”
·
People
stop, some stand, almost everyone begins to sing
·
Unknown to
them, 300 vocalists of the Opera Company of Philadelphia have infiltrated the
throng
Tears came
to my eyes as I watched this video again yesterday. Yes, it was a beautiful moment. The
music was stunning, and the look of ecstasy on the faces of those shoppers was delightful.
But I also thought of the many people who were there that day who loved the experience
of the musical moment but never gave the words a second thought.
I thought
especially of the lyrics, taken from the last book of the Bible.
They all sang, “The Kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of our Lord
and of his Christ.” Were those just musical syllables? Could it possibly be
that someone could hear and even sing those lines and still be blind and deaf
to the proclamation of Christ’s Kingdom?
I close
with a sober warning, from the pen of CS Lewis:
If you have not chosen the Kingdom
of God, it will make in the end no
difference what you have
chosen instead. Will it really make a difference whether it was women or
patriotism, cocaine or art… money or science? Well, surely no difference that
matters. We shall have missed the end for which we are formed and rejected the
only thing that satisfies. Does it matter to a man dying in a desert by which
choice of route he missed the only well?
After I pray and we sing our closing song, I’ll be here at the front if
you want to talk or pray or ask any questions.
Let’s pray.
