Welcome to the Sunday after Easter…. I wanted to start by asking this question – “Now what?” What do we do now that Easter’s over.
If you look at our “church year” you will see a cycle that begins with Advent… preparing for the birth of Jesus. Then we head into Christmas… the birth of Jesus. Then we hang out in some “ordinary time” for a while as we study the life of Jesus…. Then comes Lent… which is the preparation for Jesus’ death and resurrection… then Easter… the celebration of Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection… majorly important… and next comes Pentecost – which is Sunday, May 19 – the indwelling of the Holy Spirit into the followers of Christ… and the traditional “birth” of the church.
So we see that Easter is only a step in the process… NOT the end result…. It is important to understand this concept… we don’t want to just sit back and take it easy now that Easter is over… do we? I mean… it sounds like the end of the process… we’ve gone from birth to death to resurrection… but there’s still another important step yet to come.
Here’s the deal… Jesus’ death upon the cross and resurrection… does not save the human race…. What it does do is provide the MEANS by which the human race can be saved. When Jesus is hanging on the cross and He shouts out, “It is finished,” WHAT is finished. Everything that needs to be done so that all might be saved… basically a “Plan of Salvation.” The job of taking that plan to the world is the job of the church – of you and I.
Take a look at John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that…” What does it say… “everyone who believes in Him… may not perish but have everlasting life.” “Whoever believes…” Jesus offers us the Plan… but we must accept…. Jesus offers those outside these doors the Plan… but they must accept. And the tool by which that happens is… US… the church.
So… today is the day that we all run out the door and put the plan into action… YES…? NO… or at least “not exactly.”
If you would like to go ahead and turn to Acts 1 in your Bibles or if your primary scriptural reference device is your phone then feel free to fire it up…. Lets just kind of walk through Acts Chapter 1 and you will see what I mean. Beginning at verse 3, “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.” OK… first… what is this “gift” that Jesus is talking about? The Holy Spirit… He’s talking about Pentecost.
This does not mean that the Holy Spirit was not already active in the lives of God’s people…. The Spirit was with us… but not WITHIN us. I don’t want to dwell on this too long… that’s a sermon for another day… but in Psalm 51 King David writes, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.”
So the Spirit was active in the world, but not indwelling God’s people…. Today… for believers in Christ… the Holy Spirit dwells WITHIN us… the Spirit is always with us and can not be taken away. And that indwelling of the Holy Spirit happens at Pentecost. Lets look back at Acts.
As I read this I LOVE the fact that Jesus first and foremost gave His disciples “CONVINCING proofs” that He is alive. He is getting ready to leave them… He is about to put the plan of salvation into THEIR hands… and He wants to make sure that they are up to and ready for the task.
And Jesus still does the same for us today. He knows that the task of sharing His plan of salvation has been placed in our hands… and He is not going to send us out there without making sure we are up to the task.
BUT we have to LOOK for these convincing proofs… and we have to be ready to accept them. Like David said last week… many don’t want to accept the resurrection because if it is true (and it is) then your life CAN’T ever be the same. So today WE encounter Christ in a different way than the first disciples did…. Today instead of meeting Jesus… the Son…, we encounter the Holy Spirit… who now lives within us.
But make no mistake… if you want to encounter Christ in ways that will provide you with “convincing proofs,” you can. At the Sunrise service last week one of the youth told about looking for signs from God at a time when she was looking for guidance and God honored that request with some fairly amazing signs… but she didn’t see them at first because she didn’t want to see them. I don’t have time to tell you my tithing story… but I have seen Christ show me some AMAZING “convincing proofs” that I can walk by faith and trust in the promises God give us.
So Jesus shows Himself to His disciples with many convincing proofs. Now you would think that after all these “proofs” Jesus would want them to just run out and get to work… but that’s not what happens…. Look at the end of verse 4. Jesus tells them to what? WAIT…. “Do not leave Jerusalem… but WAIT until the Holy Spirit arrives.” WHY???
They needed a little time… they needed guidance of the Holy Spirit…. They weren’t quite ready to get going…. They needed a little time to just stop and let it all sink in. They had been traveling for 3 years with Jesus… observing His miracles… running from danger… learning how to be servant leaders…. And they had just witnessed the greatest miracle ever… His death and resurrection. They needed some time to get their fingers around it all.
They needed the Holy Spirit to take over guiding them. And then needed to learn HOW to let the Spirit lead them. That’s probably one of the most asked questions I get today, “How do I know if it is God leading me in this or that direction?” That is probably one of the greatest reasons why Christians don’t get out there and do the task that God has created them to do… being unsure about how to follow the Holy Spirit’s lead. We need to get tuned in to the Holy Spirit’s presence… and voice….
It is the same for us today. We live in such a “Hurry up society…” We are moving so fast that we lose the detail…. Like trying to look at the wildflowers while driving 75 mph as opposed to a nice quiet walk in a field of flowers. We loose the significance of so many things in our lives today. I mean… Halloween isn’t even over before we are talking Thanksgiving… and the Christmas decorations are going up even before the Thanksgiving turkey is put in the oven….
The day our kids are born we are researching what kindergarten to send them to and when they enter first grade we are looking for ways for them to graduate from high school a year or two early… we are moving too fast… and we are missing the good that God has placed for us to experience along the way. We don’t want to miss the golden nuggets that Easter provides us.
The disciples didn’t get it… we hear it in their own words. Look at verse 6. “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” “GUYS… Get over it!!! That’s not what this is about!!!” Jesus was a patient man and I’m thankful He is, because I’m sure I have a tendency to try His patience just as those early disciples did. For 3 years He had been teaching them about the Kingdom of Heaven… showing them how to serve… teaching about loving your enemy… and they are still stuck on their idea of what the Kingdom is supposed to be?
But aren’t we the same? Don’t we get so wrapped up with what we want God to do… how we want His kingdom to work… what we want “church” to do for us… that we miss what HE wants to do… how HE wants things to be.
“Jesus, we want you to restore the kingdom of David… overthrow these Romans and give the kingdom back to Israel so WE can have stuff… we can be in charge….” Fast forward 2000 years…. “Jesus, we want a church that offers this kind of service, with Sunday school at this time, a pastor who never steps on our toes, with convenient parking, and Starbucks coffee waiting in the foyer when we get there.” We’re ALL guilty… and I am probably the guiltiest of all. And all the while Jesus is saying, “Doesn’t anyone notice what I just did for you?”
Lets pick back up at verse 7, “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." Jesus is telling them… “You have a chore to do… and it’s NOT sitting around worrying about when YOU are going to heaven… YOU will be the instrument that I use to save my people – Same for us today… WE are the instrument today by which those around us also find the gift Christ has made available – But take some time… WAIT… Focus on Easter for a bit.
The disciples still needed a little more time to focus… they still needed a little more time to discern what God is wanting them to do… they still weren’t totally onboard with what Jesus was wanting them to do. Jesus says, “Your not quite ready… You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you… THEN you will get it… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
BUT for now… WAIT… reflect… listen. Go to your room… don’t do anything… don’t work on the brochure… don’t work on the logo… don’t take off half-cocked in a direction that is not of my choosing. Just wait! And then He is taken up into the sky before their very eyes! And I LOVE this next part….
“9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. 10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
I can just see them now… the disciples standing there… looking into the sky…. And they just stand there… and stand there… and stand there… and stand there. Until FINALLY God has to send two angels to tell them to get moving. They were just standing when they were supposed to be doing… They were looking at the sky when they were supposed to be praying… discerning… listening to what God wanted them to do… waiting for God to act in their lives.
So they returned to Jerusalem… to wait. And if we look at verse 14… maybe we see our answer to “Now what.” “They all joined constantly in prayer.” And for us… As much as I would LOVE to stand up here and say, “What are you waiting on… get out there and share Christ with the people in your life,” But I am learning that this period after Easter is a time for us to do the same… to think about what we have just experienced at Easter… what does it mean… reflect… pray… discern.
Another youth at the Sunrise Service said something I thought was AMAZINGLY insightful… He said, “Have you let Easter change your life… or did Easter only change your day?” What did Easter do for you? Are you the same today as you were several weeks ago… or do you have a new excitement about Christ… a new feeling about who you are… a better understanding about who you would be if Jesus didn’t travel to the cross?
Billy Graham once said, “The cross shows the seriousness of our sin – but it also shows us the immeasurable love of God.” Part of the communion liturgy that John Wesley would have said reads this way, “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.”
Why did Jesus have to die on a cross…? Because we were so covered in sin that we were not even worthy of the CRUMBS beneath the Lord’s table…. But God is a God of mercy… of love… of forgiveness. No matter how bad you think you are… no matter what you have done… no matter what is in your past…. The cross is even bigger… and God’s love and forgiveness still covers us. We can’t just KNOW this… we need to OWN this… we need to CLAIM this… and be changed by it.
