Get up, and Get Going

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My wife will ask me to scrub a pan or something or a few pans, and she’ll come back in there 30 minutes later, and one of them’s done, and the faucet’s taken apart. Because I saw they all, I don’t care how clean you are, those faucets grow things, and I’ll be in there scrubbing, and I’ll see it and think that needs to be dealt with, so I’ll take the faucet apart and clean it. And next thing she knows, the whole kitchen is taken apart because I’m noticing all these things to clean.

I just wanted you to do a couple of pans. I’ll get the pans too, but this all needed to be done. Yesterday, the one thing I needed to do at the house was to mow.

Because as much as I love to work outside, I love also not to be outside when it’s triple digits. And so it’s been a while, and we’re about to lose a child or a dog in the backyard. I needed to get out and mow.

But Benjamin came and said, you know, the chickens are still really making a mess with their feed, and they’re making a mess with their water and that just doesn’t smell nice. Ended up spending about six hours with him doing a total, we could have been on HGTV for chickens. We did a total remodel of their coop with stuff we scrounged from around the house.

And then about four o’clock I said, wait, I need a demo. So I got out and got started but didn’t get finished. I very easily get distracted from what I need to be doing.

And it’s not always that I get distracted by bad things or time-wasting things. They’re just not what I’m meant to be doing. And I have to fight really hard against that.

And my children have inherited that same gene, I think. This morning, we’re going to look at how the disciples did that. How the disciples had this momentary lapse of getting distracted by other things when they were not focused on the things they were meant to do.

Now we’re going to be in Acts chapter 1. That may be a surprise to you if you were expecting 1 Corinthians this morning. But if you’ll turn with me to Acts chapter 1, I’ll tell you what happened.

Wednesday night I was asked to preach at a revival service at a church out by where we live. Brother Rodney was going to fill in for me here, and that ended up not happening, as you know, because of the electricity situation here at the church. But they had electricity, so I went ahead and preached.

But as I was studying through this passage and as I was preparing the message, and even as I was preaching it, I thought, this is a timely message for me, and it’s probably one that our church needs to hear as well in light of the conversations that we’ve been having about the Great Commission, particularly on Wednesday nights and how we carry out the Great Commission, how we do the things that God’s called us to do. As I studied this passage for that message, it convicted me, and so I felt compelled to share it with you as well. So we’re just taking a detour this morning, and I plan next week on being back in 1 Corinthians.

But we’re going to look at how the disciples momentarily got distracted. So if you found Acts chapter 1, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Acts chapter 1, that’s all right, it’ll be on the screen for you up here. But we’re going to start in verse 6 and go through verse 11 this morning.

So here’s what Luke writes. So when they had come together, they were asking him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or epochs, some translations say seasons, times or seasons, which the Father has fixed by his own authority.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, And you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth. And after he had said these things, he was lifted up while they were looking on. And a cloud received him out of their sight.

And as they were gazing intently into the sky while he was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched him go into heaven.

And you may be seated. So what’s going on here? Luke has written the book of Acts as the follow-up, the sequel to his gospel, where he told the story of Jesus’ life and his death and his resurrection.

And in Acts, he goes to begin to tell how the church got started. But he starts, as so many sequels do, with a flashback to where, as previously seen on the Gospels, he tells us about the ascension of Jesus, and he gives a little more detail than was given in the Gospels. And he talks about how Jesus has spent the last 40 days since the resurrection ministering to his disciples, walking around with them, showing them incredible evidences, incredible proofs of the fact that he had risen from the dead.

It wasn’t a figment of their imagination. It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t wishful thinking.

It wasn’t just a merely spiritual, visionary thing. Jesus was literally back from the dead in the same body. So they had just witnessed the most incredible miracle that any of us could ever conceive of.

They had just witnessed the ultimate proof of who He is. When the Pharisees came to Jesus and said, we want to see a sign of who You are. They were looking for Him to do some incredible miracle.

And Jesus said, the only sign you’re going to get is the sign of Jonah. How Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, Jesus said, I’m going to be in the belly of the earth, and then I’m going to rise again like Jonah came out of the whale. So even Jesus said, this is the ultimate miracle.

This is the ultimate evidence. They had seen that, and then they had walked with him for 40 days as he taught them, and he taught them about what they were supposed to do. He gave them the great commission, Go into all the world, making disciples, teaching them, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

He had told them this commission. He had told them what they were supposed to go and do. He had given them instructions on how they were supposed to do it.

He had promised that the Holy Spirit was going to come. He had given them everything that they needed. And so where we pick up in chapter 1 of Acts here, they are at the end of this 40-day period, and they are walking out to the mountain one final time as Jesus continues to teach them, as Jesus continues to talk with them and answer their questions.

They’re going out to where Jesus is going to be raised up into heaven, to be received to the right hand of the Father. And as they’re walking out there, they could have asked any question. There are a number of things that I’m sure they would have wanted to know.

There are a number of things that if we were them, I’m sure we would have wanted to know. But the question that they asked is kind of surprising. After Jesus had spent his earthly ministry telling them, this kingdom that you’re expecting from the Messiah, this time of setting up this political kingdom, restoring David’s throne, kicking the Romans out, bringing in this golden age for Israel, that’s really not what the Messiah is about.

You’ve misunderstood. And they have this conversation over and over throughout Jesus’ ministry. And he’s repeatedly shown them through his teaching and through his miracles that he came for spiritual reasons.

And after all of that, after witnessing all of that, after hearing all of that, after being corrected time after time after time, they get over this most incredible of miracles and come to the end of it, and their question is still, are you going to restore the kingdom now? Like all of this had never happened. Like they were still back where they started three years earlier, hoping that Jesus was going to bring in an earthly kingdom and usher in a golden age because they wanted a taste of that.

They wanted to be the men behind the man. They wanted positions of influence in the kingdom. They wanted something that was not really what Jesus was about.

And so they come to him with this question, now are you going to restore the kingdom? How about now? Are you going to do it now?

It reminds me of one of my children in particular asking for the iPad. No, I’ll tell you when you can have it. Well, how about now?

No, I’ll tell you when you can have it. Now, it’s been three seconds since you asked the last time, say iPad to me one more time. Jesus is very patient with them because I would be saying, say kingdom to me one more time.

It’s been three and a half years, you still don’t get this. They’re wanting him to say, yes, now it’s time. And this points out to me that sometimes we’re just so worried about what we’re worried about that we totally forget about what Jesus is doing.

Do you ever find yourself in that place you’re so worried about what you’re worried about that what Jesus is doing is not even on your radar? Or what Jesus wants you to be doing is not even on your radar? And I don’t say that to indict you.

I may be the chiefest among sinners when it comes to that issue. Because even though I am so easily distracted, I am also incredibly able to hyper-focus on one thing. And it may not be the thing I’m supposed to be focused on.

And I can get so wrapped up in my calendar and my to-do list that when the Lord puts something right in front of me, I may not even notice. And while there’s this incredible spiritual work that Jesus is doing right in front of me, I’m focused on, are you going to restore the kingdom now? Are you going to do the thing that I want you to now?

Is this what we’re doing? To the point that sometimes it may seem like we are having a completely separate conversation from what Jesus is having. Jesus is talking to them about the spiritual things that are going to go on with the kingdom, about how they’re going to go out and be witnesses, how they’re going to go out and see lives change, how they’re going to see people’s eternities changed, and they’re going to see him do an incredible work, even in his absence, and they still think he’s sticking around to be a political leader.

So they’re asking this question that really reflects what we do. We focus on what we want, what we’re looking for, and the things that we’re looking at may be good things. Let me tell you, there’s nothing on my to-do list or my calendar, There’s nothing written on either of those documents that is a bad thing.

But they may not be the best thing because they may not be what Jesus wants me focused on at that moment. And Jesus responds in a very gentle way. Now, he does tell them, this is none of your business.

But he at least tells them in a gentle way, in a gentler way than I would if I were him. He answers instead of saying, hey, you big dummies, you still just don’t get it. Can I say the word dummy in church?

Charlie’s not here to correct me. You just still don’t get it. He doesn’t do that.

He just draws their attention back to what it is they’re supposed to be doing. He goes back to the commission he’s already given them. And we see that in verses 7 and 8, where he tells them to focus on your job.

Focus on what I’ve given you to do. He says, it is not for you to know the times or epochs which the Father has fixed by his own authority. The things that they were worried about, the kingdom, the restoration of the kingdom, those things, there will be a time for that.

There’s a future where Jesus Christ will reign over this earth. And there’s a time for that. It’s not that that’s unimportant, it’s just that’s not what they were meant to focus on then.

And he’s saying that’s the Father’s business. The Father sets that timetable, that’s in his own authority. You don’t even need to worry about it because worrying about it isn’t going to change anything.

It’s not for you to know the times or the epics that he’s fixed by his own authority. Instead, Jesus gives them a couple of things. He gives them a calling, first of all.

And he says in verse 8, You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth. He’s already told them this. Back in Matthew, he’s already told them this at an event sometime during those 40 days when he gave the Great Commission.

But here he reminds them. And he says it just a little bit different way. Sometimes we need to hear things a couple different ways before it really sinks in, or at least that’s true of me.

And he says, you don’t focus on that. Your job is to go and be my witness, means to tell people about me and tell people what I’ve done and what I intend to do, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, even to the remotest parts of the earth. So he’s telling them, here where you’re at home, or at least where they were staying, they were Galileans, they were not from Jerusalem, but at least here where you are now, you’re going to be my witnesses.

And you’re going to spread the word out to Judea. It’s going to go out to the surrounding areas. It’s also going to go up to Samaria, to the people you don’t particularly like, and to the uttermost parts of the world.

Wherever you go, you’re going to be my witness. There’s never a time when we’ve punched out and we’re off the clock. Wherever we go, we’re supposed to be His witnesses.

So He’s given them this calling, but He’s also given this calling accompanied by the promise of the Holy Spirit. He says you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. He’s not intending for them to go out and do this on their own or by their own power or in their own authority.

There’s only so much you and I can do. We can make arguments. We can make points.

When I say make arguments, I don’t mean to be argumentative. But I mean we can talk to somebody and say, have you ever considered this? Have you ever considered this evidence of Christianity?

Have you ever considered this reason? You can make an argument. We can even sometimes change people’s minds depending on how we approach things.

But you and I cannot change people’s hearts or their lives. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. We can’t conjure up repentance in their hearts.

We can’t convert and transform. We can’t bring new life. That’s all the work of the Holy Spirit.

And if we were to go out and be His witnesses and try to do all the things that that entails, And to do it without the Holy Spirit, just do it under our own power, it’ll be a drudgery. It’ll be miserable, and it’ll be unsuccessful. And so he’s given the promise that the Spirit is going to be with them.

So he reminds them of the two things that are involved in this commission, the calling and the power to fulfill it. So he’s made it very clear to them, I think, what they’re supposed to be doing. And for some of you sitting out there this morning, you may be thinking, we’ve heard this before.

We talk about this all the time. We understand what the Great Commission is. We know we’re supposed to go and make and strengthen disciples.

We get it. They were familiar with it too. He had just told them.

But they needed that reminder. They needed that encouragement. And once he’s made it very clear to them what they were supposed to do.

The Bible says that Jesus is then raised up into the clouds. He’s received up to the Father. And verses 9 and 10 tell us that they stand there gazing intently.

They hesitate. Now, I want to cut them a little bit of slack, because I think they stood there watching out of a sense of devotion. They loved Jesus.

These men loved Jesus. And any time he talked about being taken from them, they were devastated by that idea. And here they’re experiencing seeing him being taken.

But not only that, there’s just the awe of, I mean, that’s not something we see every day, right? When’s the last time you’re standing there talking to somebody and they just were received up into the heavens? I really wish we had some kind of hoist system, because that would have been really cool to illustrate right there.

We don’t see that. And so I think there’s a sense of devotion to Jesus. There’s a sense of awe.

I’m not saying that they were motivated by anything bad, but they hesitated. And that’s okay for a moment to be in awe of Jesus. But the scriptures indicate they stood there for an extended period of time.

They stood there longer than they needed to. Like to the point Jesus is already gone. Jesus is out of sight and they still just stand there staring.

And there’s a natural desire that we have to want to stay on the mountaintop instead of getting to work. We see that way back before the crucifixion, the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus has this meeting with Moses and Elijah. Peter, James, and John are standing there watching it.

And when it’s over, Jesus is ready to come down off the mountain. And Peter says, no, no, we can stay here. It’s good for us to stay here.

Peter wants to build shelters for them, for all of them, so they can stay there on that mountain and just enjoy the experience. And if you’ve ever had that mountaintop experience with God, it’s tempting to just stay there in that experience and try to hold on to it as long as possible and not go out and do anything else, but just stay there and hold close to you what God’s already done. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to experience.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to experience the mountaintop. But at some point, we have to come off the mountain and go to work. And they were just standing there on the mountaintop, staring.

And I look at this, and I don’t think the disciples were being deliberately disobedient. I don’t think it ever entered into their mind, oh, that Great Commission, not doing that. I think they were distracted by everything that they had seen, everything that they had experienced, everything that was going on inside of them.

they stood there longer than they needed to. We don’t know if they stood there for an hour. We don’t know if they stood there for 15 minutes.

We don’t know how long they were there. We just know from the response from the angels of the Lord that it was longer than they needed to be there. And I read this, and I can’t help but think about the things that distract me.

I keep coming back to that, and I’m sure I’m not alone in it, because it’s not just true of everyday life. It’s true of my spiritual life as well. It is so easy to get distracted.

It’s true for each of us. If you’re a believer here today, God has called you to do some kind of ministry in service of Him, and it’s so easy to get distracted from that. And it’s easy to get distracted even by good things, but we have to fight that temptation to become distracted.

We have to think about what things distract us, and I’d encourage you to spend some time today thinking about that yourself. What are some of the things that pull me away and distract me from doing what God’s called me to do. Because I think once we realize that there are distractions, and we realize what those distractions are, we’re more likely to notice them when they pop their head in.

We say, no, you’re a distraction. Now don’t look at your family members when they try to talk to you or somebody here at church and say, no, I’m sorry, you’re a distraction. That’s not what I’m talking about.

But we need to be aware of the things that distract us from doing what He’s called us to do. So they experience this hesitation, and once again, they’re given a reminder. And their reminder is in the form of a question, why are you just standing there?

Why are you just standing there? And I’ll ask my kids this from time to time, or I’ll say, what are you supposed to be doing right now? Not only because I know they’re supposed to be doing something, but also because I don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing.

So rather than tell them the wrong thing, my question is, what are you supposed to be doing right now? And that’s a gentle reminder. Hey, don’t get distracted.

Jesus was taken away, the angels tell them in verse 11. Jesus is taken away. And I’m sure for the disciples, as I said a moment ago, that was devastating.

That was upsetting. There’s this worry about how are we going to go on. Jesus had warned them, I’m going to send the Holy Spirit.

He’s going to take care of you. It’s good for Him to come because He will be with you wherever you go. Jesus in physical form could be at one place at a time.

The Holy Spirit could be with all of them simultaneously. And so Jesus even told them, it’s a good thing that I go away so that the Spirit can come. But still, they’re standing there wondering, how are we going to do this without Jesus?

And the angel reminds them, Jesus has been taken away, but He’s coming back. He’ll return. In the meantime, you have work to do.

So why are you just standing around? And the same thing is true of us as well. You see, we look at stories like this, and we want to be careful about applying everything that happened to the disciples to us.

We’re not them, but in some ways we are them. because they weren’t given the Great Commission merely because they were the 11 chosen guys. They were given the Great Commission because they were followers of Jesus Christ. And that Great Commission that was given to them applies to us as well.

And so I think we can take some of these principles that are applied to them and see where they apply to our lives as well. The work that they had to do is the same work that we have to do. We have a job, and it’s the Great Commission.

Now, how you do it may not look exactly like how the person next to you in the pew does it. We each have our own gifts. We each have our own specific talents and things God has given us and the way He’s wired us.

But ultimately, all of us have the same goal or should have the same goal to make and strengthen disciples. To take people who don’t know Jesus and introduce them to Jesus. And when I say introduce them to Jesus, I mean introducing them to Jesus as Savior, not just as an idea.

but introduce them to Jesus as Savior, and then take people who are followers of Jesus and help them become better followers of Jesus. We should be discipling people. We should be being discipled by others in our walk.

That’s part of why God put us together. I know that some people are puzzled by the idea of organized religion, as they call it. I think it’s an old Will Rogers line that I don’t believe in organized religion either.

I’m a Baptist. Okay, I thought it was funny. But they’re puzzled by, why do we have to come to church? Why do we come and sit here?

Why do we come do this? Why does God take attendance? The point of this, the point of the church, is that we strengthen each other.

We are discipling each other. You all are an encouragement to me, and hopefully I am to you. And not just when we’re gathered in a big group on Sunday mornings, but as we deal with each other throughout the week.

God has put us together for this purpose of discipleship so we can disciple one another, and so we can go out and disciple the community and the world. we have a job to do the same that they did to be witnesses of him in jerusalem and judea and samaria and to the uttermost part of the world but the same is also true of them that there was a limited amount of time and he was he was telling them jesus is coming back the jesus that you’ve seen taken he’ll come back the same way that’s true for us as well I had an atheist professor in in college get after me one day about the second coming he said you people have been saying that for 2 000 years you could come back any day now. I said, well, it’s even truer now.

He said, well, that’s a cute little one-liner. Well, thanks. I try to be cute, I guess.

Jesus is coming back. I don’t know when it’s going to be. People say, oh, we’re living in the end times.

It’s been the end times since the resurrection. It’s been the last age on the prophetic calendar since the resurrection. I don’t know when Jesus is coming back, and I’m not going to speculate.

It could be right now. Once again, it’d be a really good time to have that hoist contraption. But it could be right now he takes us all.

It could be 2,000 years before he comes back. We don’t know. Soon to us is not the same thing as soon to him.

But what we do know is that eventually he will come back for all of us. And in the meantime, he could come back for any one of us. You and I have a limited amount of time to do the job he’s given us to do.

So I take the angel’s question personally as a reminder we have work to do. And so we look for the application here. We look for the application here because the disciples were given the same job.

The disciples also were given a finite amount of time. And the application here for us is this, that Jesus’ disciples are not supposed to hesitate, we’re supposed to follow through. We can very easily be distracted by all the things going on around us.

We can even be distracted by good things. But we cannot afford, and the people around us cannot afford, for us to become distracted away from the Great Commission. The world that is dying without Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but by him.

The world that is dying without knowing Jesus Christ and the salvation that only he brings cannot afford for us to get distracted from this call to be his witnesses. If you belong to Jesus Christ this morning, if you’re somebody who has put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and you’ve been born again, then you’ve been given two important things that the disciples were also given that were key to this. You’ve been given a job to do, and you’ve been given the power to do it.

The job is to be a witness, making disciples. That sounds like a huge task. It sounds hard.

It can be hard, but it’s not necessarily complicated. Making disciples and strengthening disciples is, as I said earlier, helping people who are followers of Jesus become better followers of Jesus, and helping people who aren’t to become followers of Jesus. So what are some things we do to carry this out?

We tell people about Jesus as we have the opportunity. We look for opportunities. We pray for opportunities.

We seek out opportunities to share with people about the gospel of Jesus Christ. The fact that Jesus died to pay for our sins. He was buried. He rose again the third day.

And that He offers forgiveness. He offers eternal life. He offers a relationship with the Father because He’s paid for it.

Because the sin that separates us from a holy God has been paid for at the cross when Jesus took responsibility for our sins and bled and died. We tell people that. That it’s not about earning God’s favor.

It’s not about earning God’s forgiveness. It’s not about anything you can do. It’s simply about trusting in what Jesus Christ did.

We carry that message to people as we have the opportunity and we look for those opportunities and pray for those opportunities. And then discipleship also takes place. Strengthening disciples also takes place in this context.

as we have relationships with one another and we encourage one another and we challenge one another and we work together. As I said a moment ago, it can be hard, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. And then the power that we’re given to do this is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

I was way older than I should have been before I recognized the role that the Holy Spirit has in all of this. Because I spent years going through evangelism explosion and way of the master and all these other evangelism techniques All of them are good. They all have a purpose.

I’m glad to have each of them in my tackle box, but I can’t tell you any of them are the magic bullet that’s going to make everybody just drop everything and trust Christ. And I spent years putting enormous pressure on myself thinking if I could just formulate the right argument, if I could just come up with exactly the right words and the right order and the right illustrations and all this, there’s got to be some magic bullet that will make every knee bow and every tongue confess. but ultimately it’s the Holy Spirit that draws people to Jesus Christ. I was trying to do it myself. I was trying to change hearts myself.

And I think a lot of us, we might not put it in those terms, but a lot of us are in the same boat of thinking, well, it’s about, I have to have exactly the right words, or I have to have all the answers. Just tell somebody what you know. Trust the Holy Spirit to filter through it.

And if you get stumped by something, tell them you don’t know, but you’ll find out. The Holy Spirit is key to this. The Holy Spirit tells us where to go, when to speak, who to speak to.

I mean, Paul had intentions to go to a certain city and preach the gospel. That sounds like a great thing, right? To go and preach the gospel somewhere.

Only the Holy Spirit said, no, you’re not going there. Go here. So Paul said, well, what if I go here and here?

No, you’re not going there. Okay, so he goes over here. Still, there’s the thought.

No, you’re not going. I told you you’re not going there. The Holy Spirit will direct us.

The Holy Spirit will put us where we need to be. The Holy Spirit will give us the opportunities. and the words to speak.

And that’s what they needed. The only thing that should have given them pause was waiting for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And so their job was to go back to Jerusalem and wait, but that waiting was preparation to receive the Holy Spirit, to receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 2.

Their job was not to stand out there on the mountain and hesitate because they’re waiting, trying to figure out what they’re going to do. Go be obedient to what He’s told you to do. He’s going to give you the