HURRY UP AND WAIT - Acts 1:1-5

Waiting on the Lord in a Culture of Hurry

What we're doing as we gather today is waiting on the Lord, isn't it? As we later on will go to the Lord's table, part of that is as we wait upon the Lord, we wait for His return, we are reminded of His faithfulness.

But as we gather as His people, we get a taste of eternity, a taste of the body, a taste of what God has called us to into the kingdom. So go ahead and open up your copy of God's Word to Acts chapter 1 as we go into week two of our introduction to our study through this letter.

And today's sermon I have entitled, Hurry Up and Wait. Hurry up and wait. Last week we looked at how Luke, the author, wrote this letter as really kind of a part two of his gospel account, the gospel according to Luke, in which he was writing to a possibly high-ranking official by the name of Theophilus.

In his first letter, he gave us a detailed account of the life and the earthly ministry of Jesus. And then here in his second letter, he gave him an account of the life of the apostles, the early church, pointing to Jesus's heavenly ministry.

So we see Jesus's earthly ministry and Jesus's heavenly ministry. And we saw how these two letters given to us in Scripture were and are for the very purpose of evidence. These are books of evidence of what actually took place, a historical, confirmable, undeniable, detailed, eyewitness account record of actual events that are meant to, for us today, strengthen and mold our faith.

We get to go see the truth, see the evidence, and it then just confirms what we already know from a changed heart and a faith given to us by the Holy Spirit. And here as we look once again at Luke's prologue of his second letter, we see what is meant to be a bridge of sorts between these two accounts, wherein he recaps the first letter and then he alludes to the content that we will see throughout the second.

That being said, you will see things in these first five verses that we read last week and then many of you asked, you read them, but you never addressed them. It was really an introduction, so I'm sorry, but today you'll see things within those five verses once again that are extremely important.

And you're going to wonder why I don't stop and give them greater attention. However, you will see if you stick with us through this series, that later all of those details will be expounded upon in greater detail as he gets into it, because remember, this is merely a bridge telling us what he said before, what happened, and what he's about to show us.

As Luke gets into the narrative, we will most certainly be addressing them. So don't get distracted thinking that we're leaving meat on the bone. We will most certainly get to it at an appropriate time, right?

So let's look at Acts chapter one, the first five verses. Luke says in the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.

He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 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 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

This is the reading of God's perfect, holy, inspired, necessary, life-giving words, right? Let us bow, let us seek the help of the Holy Spirit to understand them. Lord, we come before you once again and we thank you.

We thank you that we have your word. We thank you that we get to gather and speak of it, that we get to glean from it, that our minds are being renewed by it, that our hearts are being refreshed by it, that our faith is being strengthened by it, that our unity is being solidified by it.

Lord, we thank you. And Holy Spirit, now we ask that you would illuminate these minds, these fleshly minds to see spiritual truth, to see spiritual reality in these words, that we would see them clearly.

Guard me, Lord, as we do an overview here, as we continue our introduction of this letter. Lord, may you be honored in it. May Christ be magnified in it. May we be changed by it. We thank you. We thank you for your goodness.

In Christ's name we pray all of this because it is his righteousness that gives us the ability to come before you at all. In his name we pray, amen. We live in a culture of hurry. We want everything now.

You even felt it. You even felt the anticipation of me saying it, didn't you? We want everything fast. We watch our videos on like time two speed. If you're Pastor Jeremiah on times eight. If you're hungry, there's no need to have planned and prepared for a meal that you're going to get all the ingredients and cook.

You simply drive through McDonald's. Or if you're a good Christian, Chick-fil-A. And if you're like me, and you have to wait more than five minutes in that lane, you begin to wonder, why must I endure such suffering?

You want to watch your favorite television show, or in our case, binge watch your favorite television show? You don't have to wait until Tuesday night at a specific time and then bear all of the commercials.

You simply stream it from your phone, wherever you are, however you want, just with a simple push of a button. All of the home appliances and tools and things that help us in our day to day life, they're making tasks so much faster and easier than ever before.

We have interstate travel. We have air travel. You can be thousands of miles away in a matter of hours. And I hate the airport, right? Because you feel like, oh, why does this take so long? We have instant communication.

Everyone is a phone call or a text message away. And then we get frustrated with that. When my wife doesn't answer her phone on the very first time it rings, I began to think, this thing has to be dealt with right now.

I have to say this thing right now or I'm just going to bust. I can't stand it. It has to be dealt with. We are impatient. If you want to know something, you simply Google it. If you want to know how to do something, you watch a YouTube video.

You see, here's the thing, all of these things and more can be, and I think at their core are wonderful gifts that God himself has blessed us with. He's blessed minds to be able to create things that make this, the torment of this world just a little bit easier.

The thorns and the thistles and eating bread by the sweat of your brow becomes a little bit easier. Oh, but it's a double-edged sword. Because like everything else, our flesh turns these good things into ugly things that ultimately.

Harm us.

And many of these advances, many of these tools have served to weaken our ability to.

Wait.

We struggle with this. And in many ways, this demeanor of impatience has made its way into our spiritual lives and then subsequently the church as a whole. We see it play out in many ways. We get impatient waiting for God to save someone that we care about.

Maybe a child, your spouse, a neighbor, a coworker that you've been praying for, and you want to see them saved. And so what do you do? You begin to use pragmatic, emotionally manipulative tactics to try and get them to make a decision.

You see that all the time. You may be giving me the holy look like, we're good reformed people, pastor. We don't do that. But I feel it. My impatience doesn't want to wait for the Lord in that sometimes.

And I begin to take things into my own hands. I think all of us struggle with this. We see it in the church. Church is trying to grow. It's not happening at the pace that they think that it should, that they want it to.

And so they begin to implement business models and projections, eventually relying on carnal means to draw the masses. And they justify it. The ends justify the means, right? We got to get people in the doors.

We got to get people saved. We got to get people hearing the gospel. We have to get this ball rolling. We have to do kingdom work, but we lose sight. And I would say one of the most catastrophic byproducts that lead into both of those other categories and tendencies is our impatience within the church is raising up young men for ministry into prominent roles of leadership before their wisdom and their character can catch up to their giftedness.

This is plaguing the American church. We see it all the time because our impatience and longing for a desired outcome, we prize a pastor's giftedness over character because character isn't exciting. Character doesn't fill the seats.

We want to hear an amazing sermon by a great orator, yet all the while that young man has not had a chance to be molded, have wisdom, character instilled in him. You see, we become so desperate to see a great movement of God, to see the kingdom of God displayed in power, excitement, and might.

And here's the thing, we should. We should desire that, but our lack of patience, our inability to wait, it often leads us to building our own kingdom. You see that all the time. Yes, you see it out there.

You see it in the American church all the time, but stop for a second and go, wait a second. I'm going to look here before I begin to throw the stones out there. We are not exempt from this. We are so busy and impatient that waiting feels like failure and laziness.

I know that resonates with some of you. I feel like sometimes if I'm not doing, if I'm not going, if I'm not producing, then I am either failing or I'm simply being lazy. So how do we combat this? I want us to see three things in Luke's prologue that I believe will help us as we lean into this idea of waiting.

Holy Spirit Empowered Truth

And the first one is seen in verse two, and it is our need for Holy Spirit empowered truth. Our need for Holy Spirit empowered truth. Let's start in verse one. So we get the flow into verse two where he says in the first book, O Theophilus, I've dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach.

Now that's important. Remember his first, his first letter, the gospel according to Luke. He is then showing us everything that Jesus did and taught.

Right.

And so that's important. Jesus is teaching us something here. And it says until, and this is speaking of the actions and teachings of Jesus's earthly ministry, right? Until the day when he was taken up.

And this is, of course, is speaking of the ascension that we're going to be discussing in greater detail next week in verses six through 11.

Right.

But look at what Luke says. After he had, meaning before his ascension, right? Given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. So what is Luke getting at here? He's referring to commands, of course, that Jesus gave to his apostles, to his apostles directly.

Things like, uh, you think of the great commission in Matthew 28, this is one of the commands, right? Go therefore guys and make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the father, son, and the Holy spirit.

And he says, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Right?

So Jesus is teaching them and he's, he's preparing them for this and he gives them commands that we see in the scriptures. Luke is pointing out a very important element that is essential to understanding this command and these commands.

And he says, it's through the Holy spirit. Now there is a lot of debate as to what this means. And the reason for that is, is because when you look at the original language, uh, this portion seems clumsy here.

Uh, most scholars look at this and go, okay, this is, this is very weirdly written. It feels like it's, it's not congruent. We're not sure how, how, what Luke's trying to get across. But however, I think that Luke's intentional precision that we talked about last week, right?

He's so intentional with everything leads me to believe that this is exactly how he meant to say it. Not to mention it is inspired by the Holy spirit. So it is exactly how he meant to say it, but how we understand it is the key.

There's Luke saying that Jesus was able to give the apostles these commands through the help of the Holy spirit, meaning that Jesus was receiving the help of the Holy spirit to give them the commands.

Or as Luke saying that the apostles were able to comprehend his commands through the help of the Holy spirit. You see the distinction is Jesus getting the help from the Holy spirit or are the apostles receiving the help from the Holy spirit?

Well, here's the thing. We know that the Holy spirit had helped Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, such as leading him into the wilderness, ministering to him in his need. And so it's his power working in the preascended Jesus, the preascended Christ.

I have no reason to say otherwise yet in the, in this context, I believe it's more referring to the power of the Holy spirit in the hearers, in the apostles. Now there's also another avenue is we could say the reason for the seemingly clumsiness is that it's both.

Jesus is giving them commands through the help of the Holy spirit in his continued earthly ministry in that moment. And the apostles are receiving the help from the Holy spirit to understand his commands, which to me is probably more likely, right?

Turn over with me actually to John 20. I want us to see an example of this. John chapter 20, the gospel, according to John chapter 20, the resurrected Jesus, he had just appeared to Mary Magdalene. He's now come to and appeared to the disciples in verse 19 of chapter 20.

And he says, he says to them, peace be with you. He, he comes to the place where they're at and he says, peace be with you. And then, and then what they do is shows him his hands and his feet like proof.

Like I am the resurrected Christ. And when we get to verse 21, there of chapter 20 of John says, Jesus said to them, peace be with you. He says it again to them as the father has sent me, even so I am sending you.

Now there's more commands, right? Verse 22. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy.

Spirit.

Now here's the thing. We know that the disciples, they did not receive the indwelling of the Holy spirit until Pentecost. And of course, Pentecost had not happened yet. Jesus hadn't even ascended yet.

But leading some to interpret this text as symbolism from Christ as to what is to come. You get that, right? Like almost like, almost like Jesus is foretelling them like a shadow of showing them that, Hey, this is coming.

You will receive the Holy spirit at some point later that will help you follow these commands. However, we see the third person of the Godhead, the Holy spirit working in and through saints, even back in the old Testament, right?

We see him coming and convicting and leading and prompting and working even.

Within.

We even see like John the Baptist, right? He's filled with the Holy spirit in his, in his mother's womb. Like the Holy spirit's already at work. He's already doing all of these things. He just doesn't happen to be sealing with the indwelling of the Holy spirit till Pentecost, right?

I think what Jesus is doing here is directing the Holy spirit to allow these disciples to receive the spiritual realities of truth. Because without that, without the spirit's help, man, how can you even begin to comprehend these things that Jesus is saying?

How can you even begin to think that you might even have any kind of, of ability to even follow these commands that Jesus is giving, even if you could understand.

Them.

So they must have the help of the Holy spirit in this. And here in Luke's account, I believe he's telling us that Jesus was giving them these commands while the Holy spirit was helping them understand and believe those.

Truths.

This is the first thing that is essential in helping us combat our impatience in our spiritual lives and in our ministry, our need for the Holy spirit empowered truth we so desperately want to do before we know you get that we in our impatience want to do before we know.

We want to do the things before we know the things. And what, what happens when we do that? We do the wrong things. Or maybe we do some of the right things and we do them the wrong way because we don't know.

We desperately, well, we always put the cart before the horse in this, in our impatience. And we always think that we know more than we actually do. That's a big problem, isn't it? And that is why we must be students.

We, and we hound on this time and time again, but I cannot say it enough. Saint, that is your bread. God's word is the sustenance for your very life, right? We must be students of his word. However, here's the thing.

We have seen many students of his word, always learning and never able to arrive at the actual knowledge of the truth because their pursuit is not powered by.

The Holy Spirit.

Now that text is of course referring to unbelievers studying the word like scholars, academics that are not professing Christians that study the ancient text, as they would say. But yes, this can also apply to a believer.

Do you know that? This is going to apply to us. When we quit pursuing the spirit's help and understanding scripture, and then we solely rely on our proper hermeneutic and our intellect, right? We begin to, to, to, to bolster ourselves up with all the right systematic and all the right things.

Our biblical theology. I read Edwards. I've got the information. You and I, though we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we are still thoroughly dependent upon that Holy Spirit, his illuminating power to understand spiritual realities.

This is why scripture reading must be paired with prayer. We inhale the scripture and we exhale our petitions and prayers. That's the Christian life. We may have been given new hearts and we have, right?

When you, when you, when you were regenerated to be brought into faith, what happened? Like your heart of stone got removed by the Holy Spirit. And what did he replace it with? You guys are quiet today.

A what?

Heart of flesh, right? We may have a new heart. Oh, but we still get the same mind. A mind that must be renewed through the combined efforts of the word and the spirit, the word and the truth, the truth and the spirit.

No matter how you say it, it's all combined. We must be dependent solely upon the power of the Holy Spirit to help us comprehend and understand truth. Otherwise you're just, you're grasping, you're, you're seeking, you're trying to understand something that your pea brain is not capable of comprehending in any fashion, no matter how much evidence is presented.

Our need for Holy Spirit empowered truth. We must lean into that as, as a church and as a people. If we become so heady and we become so theological that we quit depending upon the Holy Spirit, then we are in trouble because we will be like the disciples before God had allowed the Holy Spirit to reveal those things to them.

And we will simply be spinning our wheels. This is closely related. The second thing I want us to see in the text, that is our need to understand the purpose of the kingdom, our need to understand the purpose of the kingdom.

You know, we need to know scripture. We need to understand it clearly with the help of the Holy Spirit. Yet I know many brothers and sisters who know the scriptures, who, who love God's word, but they're a little foggy on what exactly the kingdom of God is.

Is this something future? Is this like a millennial reign in the future? Is this, is this like heaven when we finally get to heaven? You know, I've preached on this before. So many of you are familiar with that.

But, um, and we'll go into greater detail actually about the kingdom next week with the ascension. It's all tied in together, but I just want to touch on it a little bit here today. Look at verse three in our texts there in Acts one says he presented Jesus himself alive to them after his sufferings by many proofs.

Oh, we talked about that evidence last week, right? Many proofs, evidence that Jesus rose from the dead appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about, what's it say? I'm just making sure you're looking at your Bibles.

Okay.

Speaking about the kingdom of God. You see, this was a major, major element of Jesus's teaching in his earthly ministry. He constantly speaks of the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, the kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom.

And even his apostles, they couldn't fully comprehend it. They didn't understand what, what the kingdom really was. Matter of fact, look down at verse six of chapter one, look down there, you'll see they still don't understand.

So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you, at this time, you've resurrected, you are the resurrected Christ. We didn't know you were going to rise, but you did. Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

After all of Jesus's teaching, after the sermon on the mount, after they witnessed this resurrection, they hear his words again. They're still thinking national Israel. They're still thinking earthly kingdom.

But see, here's the thing. What they soon began to understand was that Jesus had never been referring to national Israel at all. Jesus had never been referring to an earthly kingdom in the slightest. True Israel, those who are offspring of Adam by faith.

Not by birth. Those who he had died for, being brought into God's everlasting kingdom that has now entered this present darkness, wherein we are, as we've pointed out many times, we are currently in this weird state, aren't we?

Are we in the millennial reign right now? We're in the already and not yet. How is this knowledge helpful for us in learning to wait on the Lord? How does this help us? Some practical ways. It guards us from being anchored into this temporary state.

It reminds us of what we are actually here to do. We become actively aware that all of the culmination and the inauguration of the already and not yet becoming the here and now, all of his purposes and plans will have been fulfilled in that moment when he returns.

We do not have to place that weight upon ourselves. That burden does not land on your shoulders. If it did, it would crush you. You are not capable of it. It doesn't land on the shoulders of the church, the bride.

We do not have to bring about that ends, but not only does it guard us from being too anchored here, I think it also guards us from the other extreme, being too so, so heavenly minded that we're of absolutely no earthly good.

You remember the old hymns? If you grew up Baptist like me, we, we sung those old, it seems like every time I remember every other hymn that we sang was about leaving this place. That's all it was about.

Like, oh, we got to get out of this joint. We're just standing here waiting. I'm going to wait on the rapture here and I'm going to sing my, my, my songs and we're just going to wait to be raptured out.

Even though there's no, no account of the rapture in scripture, we've got this idea. We're just going to be pulled out of this joint. But no, he has left us here for a purpose. His purpose that he is using us for.

You see, understanding the kingdom of God, not being something in the future, not being something that can, can be fully realized in this age, it helps us to balance out our tendency toward control and impatience.

Once the apostles finally understood this, what did they do? When they finally came to grips with this idea of what the kingdom of God actually was, they then diligently and faithfully carried out that kingdom work in the power of the spirit, knowing that this life is temporal and will come to an end.

And they did so all the way to the point of death. They didn't just wait, but they didn't put any stock in here. They didn't try and change the culture. They didn't try and fix the world. They simply said, this place is going to burn.

And we are the kingdom of God. Come into the kingdom of God by faith. And one day he will return and he will make a new heavens and new earth. The kingdom of God is here, even though it is not fully realized to us yet.

And that helps us to be patient. So we've seen our need for the Holy Spirit and empowered truth, our need to understand the purpose of the kingdom. And lastly, I want us to see our need to wait on his promises and power, our need to wait on his promises and power.

Look with me at verse four. 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 for me, right? I've been telling you, I've been teaching you.

These are commands I've told you. And then he points to what he had commanded him. He's for John. Hey, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Not many days from now, of course, pointing to Pentecost.

That is a promise. The father promised it. It's going to come about so you can wait. You see, here's a group of men. Put yourself in their shoes for a second. They have just given up their whole lives.

These fishermen gave up their boats and their fishing gear and their career and everything to then walk with Jesus for nearly three years now, walking with him, learning from him, laughing and crying with him, praying with him, suffering with him, hungry with him, abundance with him, all of the above, everything.

They've lived life with Jesus himself. They are seeing miracle after miracle happen time and time again through Jesus. They've been watching their teacher then to be brutally beaten and hung on a cross, humiliated, burying him and mourning his death only to see him now risen and alive.

And victorious.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. Think about what if I'm one of them and I see this, I experience this great miracle happening intermixed into the one that I love so dearly that I had just been mourning, that that mourning turned to excitement and glory and everything in between.

And we will experience watching him even ascend into the clouds. Like they're going to see him later on, next week we'll talk about it, but they're going to watch their savior, the risen savior, go up into the clouds as he promised and say, I'm going to return, right?

Or at least the angels told them. If anyone is itching and ready to storm the gates of hell, these guys, these men and women that just watched this are ready to go. All you have to do is give them the opportunity and they are wanting to run.

I don't know about you, but, but it would drive me crazy. I don't know if I have the patience for it. And in my, in our culture, I couldn't stand it to not be able to run through the streets of Jerusalem, screaming the one that you murdered, he's risen and he's.

Victorious. Bow the knee to the king.

Wouldn't you want to do that?

I would long to do that.

It would be driving me crazy not to do this, but instead of following that impulse, which seemed like it would have been a godly and right desire, they're.

Commanded.

Wait, wait, we've been waiting.

We waited.

We waited three days before you rose from the dead where we mourned. We've been waiting while you've been teaching us in your risen state.

All of this.

We've been waiting to wait for what? The promise of the father. And he's referring to the promise that, that he had told them about back in Luke 24, that Luke gives an account of the promise that the Holy Spirit would come and, and, and you will be clothed with power on high.

You think you're ready?

No, you're not.

You do not have the tools to accomplish what you are desiring to go and do at this moment. But there's a promise you will. The context for them and their waiting was of course the indwelling of the Holy.

Spirit.

Yet, I believe that there's a principle here for us. The apostles could have taken means into their own hands. After all, they had the information. They had the proof, but they would have gotten ahead of God's perfect timing and plan.

They would have gotten ahead of God's provision for them to prepare them for the task at hand. If you notice, if you've been a Christian for any amount of time, you can attest this. God is never in a hurry.

He's never in a hurry. His purposes are meticulous. They're perfectly timed. And, and of course they will not be thwarted. That's why he's not in a hurry. Sometimes we move, we move doing good things, doing seemingly right things in the process, forgetting about his promises and in our own power.

Not being led by the spirit. It's as I said at the beginning, it's the parent trying to get their child to make a decision so that they would be saved. Falling back to emotional and manipulative tactics.

It's the church that begins to use pragmatic carnal means, compromising the Lord's day gathering and capitulating on truth under the banner of kingdom work. Things like mass spontaneous baptisms and altar calls and weak watered down unoffensive gospel as TED talks instead of sermons saturated in Christ exalting truth.

It's like that young man who loves theology and is a gifted orator who's told you must be being called to ministry. No, maybe he's called to be a lawyer that's a Christian who loves theology because every Christian should love theology.

And be able to communicate it. But we push them in that way. Oh, he must be being used by God in this fashion and desires to be obedient to the.

Lord.

And so what does he do? He jumps feet first into ministry roles or he goes out of the mission field before the Holy Spirit does his sanctifying work through suffering and molding them in their lives. I mean, you got to talk about that a couple of weeks ago, didn't we?

We see missionaries, these young men go across in the mission field and they have the gospel. They're speaking truth, but they have no concept of what the church is to be. And so they bring a number of people into the kingdom through the gospel proclamation.

And then 10 years later, that whole society is eaten up by false teaching and gospel is watered down stuff because that young man wasn't prepared how to disciple those new converts into what church was.

So we always want to jump the gun. It's you and I falling prey to the tyranny of the urgent, wanting to see God move, desiring to be obedient to him, feeling as though we must do everything now instead of waiting on his promises.

In our case, it's the promise that he had prepared those good works before us that we should walk in them, as Paul told us in Ephesians, right? He has prepared the work, meaning he has prepared the timing of the work, which means he has prepared us for the very moment that that work is to be done and.

Carried out.

And we are to be led to and in those works by the Holy Spirit, not us leading the Holy Spirit into our works. You get that? You hear the distinction? We are to be led to and in those works by the Holy Spirit, not us leading the Holy Spirit into our works, the things that we think the kingdom needs.

Oh, the kingdom needs me.

Really?

Does it?

The risen, victorious King Jesus needs you. Yeah, no, you need you need the very power of the Holy Spirit that that helped minister to King Jesus in his earthly ministry. How do we know? Here's the question.

How do we know when it's the Holy Spirit leading us? Or our own flesh, and how do we know when we are waiting on the Holy Spirit or simply being rebellious and lazy, because both of those are a tendency, right?

You see it all the time. You see Christians that just want to go, go, go do all the things before they're.

Ready.

They want to do before they know. And then you see the other ones that they may have a bunch of head knowledge and they never do anything. They're just being lazy. How do we know? How can we be discerning in this?

Well, I'm glad you asked. I would refer us back to our first two points, our need for Holy Spirit and empowered truth and our need to understand the purpose of the kingdom. First, are you in the word?

Are you really in the word? And are you seeking the Spirit's help to understand and obey all the commands of Jesus? Are you saturated in his truth? Is it just pouring over you and in you and through you?

Do you love it?

Do you run to it? And are you kingdom minded with a firm grasp on the plan and purpose of that kingdom? You see, because if you are, you will lean into his prescribed means of following his commands and pursuing that kingdom purpose.