Acts 1:1-11
August 12, 2007
ACTS 1:1-9
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
I have this glass of water, and for some people this glass is ½ full and for others it is ½ empty. I like to think of it as ½ full, but if I take a drink from this glass, it suddenly becomes ½ empty.
A tiny difference in the water level determines whether we call it ½ empty or ½ full — whether the glass is a good thing (full) or a bad thing (empty).
In fact, you could say, at times we really aren’t sure if ½ full or ½ empty is good or bad. Because now that my water is ½ empty, I can add new water, which is good. If it remains ½ empty that can be bad, but then again, it might be good, because that means I drank some of my water. In fact, sometimes, we just don’t know if it is good or bad, or what the difference really is.
But have you noticed that in our world, it is difficult to find anything that is just plain good anymore? In fact if something is considered good . . . our first thought is, why isn’t it better or superior or excellent? Isn’t that what the premise was in Jim Collin’s book Good to Great? He details how a company went from good, which isn’t bad, to great, which is great!
Have you been to a department store to purchase a mattress lately? There are so many choices.
There are firm, plush, extra plush, there are comfort zones, viscoelastic, and there are those you can place a glass of water on, then jump up and down and the glass won’t spill. That takes all the fun out of jumping in bed. My point is, we end up having to choose between good, better, best, supreme, or ultimate. In such a lineup, good isn’t good at all. It’s four steps below ultimate, so good must be significantly deficient. In order for anything to be taken seriously, to be considered worth our recognition, it must be extreme in some way or another — exceptionally wonderful, or supremely dreadful, or as FedEx puts it, extremely urgent.
Nothing mediocre, nothing in the middle will do. Singer Avril Lavigne has a song in which she exclaims she wants to be “Anything but Ordinary.”
So, what is Jesus’ call for the church? Are we supposed to be ordinary, or are we to be something more than ordinary? Is Avril Lavigne right? We should want to be anything but ordinary!
Think about the world we live in . . . we live in a world of extremes. The middle of the road seems to be the odd man out.
If you are looking for a television, you are most likely to buy a plasma or HD TV which is about 45". Or you may decide you want to watch your favorite program on your itty-bitty ipod. You see, television screens are simultaneously getting both larger and tinier. Stores are getting larger (Wal-Mart) and smaller (specialty boutique stores); people are eating healthier foods (organic) and more fast food (McDonald’s).
Find me a kid that isn’t entranced by extreme sports—extreme mountain biking, extreme skateboarding, extreme wave-boarding, extreme rock-climbing. Nobody wants to do regular anything. Go to the Internet and you will find all types of extreme web-sites, including extreme videos, extreme weather, extremecoffee.com, and TV programs like Extreme Makeover (for homes and people). Maybe you noticed that ESPN recently aired the 13th X games, X for extreme.
So, what does all this mean for us at First Baptist Church - Alexandria? Glad you asked!!!
I don’t believe Jesus called the disciples to be regular either. You see, after Jesus left the disciples and ascended to heaven . . .
regular disciples would have stayed in Jerusalem, founded a school, studied the words and works of their master, carefully screened and admitted only the most promising students that came to their center and requested admission.
But Jesus commanded his disciples to scatter. . . to go throughout their homeland and even to the ends of the earth, preaching and teaching the good news, healing the sick, casting out demons, witnessing about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
Jesus’ command insured that the disciples would go out to the people, not sit and wait for an interested few to come to them. Jesus’ command called His disciples to be witnesses, not students, not caretakers, not sages. The disciples saw with their own eyes the miracle of the resurrection, the glory of the ascension, and they knew the significance of those acts. Their witness was to continue to expand the call of Jesus for salvation of the world.
The sacrifice Jesus made, the redemption Jesus offered, was for all creation. Thus it was to all creation that the good news had to be carried. Jesus made the extreme sacrifice. He had gone to the edge of the ledge: into death and darkness. Now it was time for his disciples to follow him out to the edges of creation, announcing his gift of salvation to all.
The generations of witnesses now extends from Jesus’ twelve disciples to the 1.7 billion Christian disciples that populate the world today. And each one of us is still being called to go into the world in order to be witnesses for Jesus. Geographically our world is no longer a mystery. We can get satellite maps beamed into the dashboard of our cars as we travel down the highway. There are no more mysterious edges of the world to fall off, no un-sailed seas to explore. But there are still plenty of edges that require the willingness of Jesus witnesses to dip into the Well.
We have GPS systems which can tell us exactly where we are at any given point. We have them in our cars, combines, trucks and even in golf carts.
Jesus is calling us to be His witnesses in the world. As Jesus told the disciples to be witnesses, He was using a legal term. It would be the same word if we were called to court to be a witness. We are called to be His witnesses, to give a testimony to the world about Jesus.
SLIDE - church
And it starts right here at First Baptist Church. That is a picture of our church prior to the comlpetion of the addition. The witness and testimony of Jesus Christ must start right here. Every Sunday we come into this building with one purpose and that is to worship Jesus, period. We come and give of ourselves and thank God for the amazing abundance of blessings He has given to us. We demonstrate the love of Jesus to one another. If we can’t love one another, we can’t love the world. And frankly, we are doing a great job of loving one another.
And because we love one another, because Jesus has loved us, we have this overwhelming desire to pass on His love to others, RIGHT?!
And that is where our community comes in and that is what Jesus is talking about in verse 8 of today’s scripture. Jesus said “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. . .” I believe this is the call for us, as well. We start out locally. That is what Jesus said to the disciples who in Jerusalem. Start in your own backyard.
And this is our Jerusalem. We are in the upper room right now. God is talking to each of us, REMAIN IN ME and FOLLOW ME. REMAIN IN ME and FOLLOW ME. And we will follow Him. There will be no wavering in our mission to follow our Lord, Jesus.
Our Jerusalem, is named Alexandria (SLIDE 2 - Alex). The slide you are looking at is a satellite view of Alexandria. Since our church is located in Alexandria, we must look into our community, that is what Jesus meant when He first said to be His witnesses in Jerusalem.
We are called to be a community church, a neighborhood church. We are to become contagious, passionate within this community and change the community. We need to know when someone has a baby, and let them know that we know. When someone has a fire, we need to let them know that we know. When someone is struggling we need to know and let them know that we know.
We need to know when the police department or fire department is struggling with a situation, when they are working on Christmas and Easter, how can we serve them. What can we do for the teachers and administrators in Alexandria?
We can’t wait, that is one of my gripes about the universal church, we are always “reactive,” not proactive. That is part of the extremism I believe Jesus is calling for us to display. Reactive churches are passive and quiet about their faith. Proactive churches are active, passionate and relevant to a community that desperately needs to know and experience the love of Jesus.
But knowing isn’t good enough, we need to take action in and around our community.
We infect others with our passion, with our love for Jesus. And because we have that deep longing, that deep love for Christ, when we walk into this building worship Jesus, we are filled with so much excitement, so much passion that it spills over into the streets of Alexandria surrounding the church. And believe me, God will bless us. He will bless us for one very simple reason, He says He will! If you remain in me, you will bear much fruit.
Jesus added, 8 “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea.” (SLIDE 3- Indiana) And then as the Gospel spreads, it moves out of our backyard to the region, and we take over Northern Madison County, then we work with other churches to preach the good news of Jesus throughout the state of Indiana.
Our Samaria is our country. (SLIDE 4 - USA) Now you may think how can that happen, how are we gong to infect the USA. Maybe it happens because someone we infected with the gospel of Christ, moves to Indianapolis and makes a difference in that part of the state, or someone has something happen to them nationally. It’s the amazing way the good news travels. Think about the ministry impact Steve Green has had. We get to take some of the credit for our ministry to him and his ministry to us. He has touched lives throughout the USA. We have had people move from Alexandria to different parts of the United States and they have made a difference, and it started here, because we did not compromise the message.
Finally, we go to the ends of the earth. (SLIDE 5 - WORLD)
We have a group of youth and leaders who will talk to us next week about their amazing experience in Colorado and Mexico. We are having an impact on the world within our church and with the missionaries we support.
I believe that is the call for our church - - we start right here in our backyard, and work out from there over time in concentric circles. It does not mean we don’t support missions, but it means we put our time and our energy in our community, and we do it together. Our purpose is to make disciples . . . new disciples . . . more disciples, more spiritual disciples, healthy disciples.
Jesus was a radical, He was an extremist. He called the disciples and He still calls us to do the extreme. . . to exhibit extreme faith. He ate with the sinners, He hung out with the prostitutes and tax collectors. He brought life to the dead, physically and spiritually, He touched the lepers that nobody else would. He could have called down 1000’s of angels to take Him off the cross, but He chose the radical way to show love and grace and forgiveness.
The call is simple, but the call is to have a radical, extreme faith. The question before each one of us is . . . ‘are we willing to have an extreme faith for Jesus?’ Not for us, but for Him, so we can make a difference in the world, doing it all for Jesus.
When people are at the edge of hope: where people are dangling, at the ends of their ropes, their lives, hearts,, souls, minds and bodies wrapped in hopelessness and despair, where life is being lived on the edge at the edge — an extreme disciple must witness to the gospel’s unconditional love, unmerited grace, and unlimited hope.
Will you draw water from the well, so that people can drink the Water of Life?
Will you dip into the well so that you may grow strong in Christ?
