Book of Acts

Week 2- SCRIPTURE

WAITING

4 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; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Are you impatient? 
Waiting for Food. Waiting in lines. Trains. Traffic 
Have you ever said this: “Hurry up! Hurry up!” You ever said that? 
We know patience is a virtue, and one of the fruits of the Spirit is patience, and it’s all very convicting. 
Any of you like that? There’s something on your horizon: it’s an opportunity that’s set before you—next season of life. Maybe it’s something you’re excited about, something you’ve been waiting for. Well, then, you just want to get to work, right? Are you like that? Are you a doer, like, “All right, just tell me what to do, get out of the way because I’m proceeding forward, going to get this done.” 
What we don’t like is a four-letter word called “wait,” OK? “Wait” is—ugh—and it’s a word that Jesus uses, which means we are wrong.
So, what we see in the book of Acts is that people had been waiting for Jesus for a very long time. So, here we go. We’ll do the whole Bible in a minute. 
So, God made us, we sinned against him, death came into human history, a promise was made that Jesus was coming—
Genesis 3:15 New King James Version
15 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”

 How long did they have to wait for Jesus to come? A couple thousand years. That’s a long wait, right? Long wait—way, way, way worse than, like, 2G or dial-up. This is a serious wait. And then Jesus comes, he lives without sin, he dies for sin, he rises from death. We see in the opening pages of Acts that he appeared for forty days, evidencing his resurrection, and he told them, 
“Here it is. 
8 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.”
So he says, I’ve got a global mission, something huge for you to do. You’ve been waiting thousands of years. Now go tell everyone that I’ve come, but”—what’s he say? “Wait.” What? “Wait.”
Waiting is hard, right? Remember waiting for Christmas morning? Vacation to your favorite place? Waiting to find that special someone? 
Waiting is hard. 
Jesus gives them the whole purpose of their existence. “You’re going to glorify me by being a witness to the world. But first, wait, and I’ll send you the Holy Spirit, and he will empower you with my presence to be on my mission to my glory.” So, they’ve got to wait. They’ve got to wait. And that’s the early church.
What do you do when you’re waiting?
How many of you just plow forward: “I’m not going to wait; I’m just going to go,” and you make a mess of it. You do it wrong; you have to go back and fix it. How many of you get distracted, you do something else, you waste time, you get frustrated, you get bitter, you complain?
UNITY FOLLOWS PRAYER
What are they going to do? Set before them is the biggest mission in the history of the world, the one that God’s people have been waiting for a few thousand years. “Jesus has risen from death. Go tell the world!” And they’ve get to wait. 
What are they going to do while they wait? Read with me. It is going to be convicting, at least for me, maybe for you, too.
Here’s what we read, that unity follows prayer. 
Acts 1:12–14 ESV
12Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem.” 
They’re actually right next to each other. It’s a pretty quick little walk. 
…a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot—that might indicate his political persuasion—and Judas the son of James.
14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves. –were devoting themselves to”—what? to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. 
So, Jesus says he’s God; Jesus dies for sin; Jesus rises from death; Jesus appears for forty days; Jesus proves that he’s conquered Satan, sin, death, hell, and the wrath of God; Jesus gives us the biggest mission in the history of the world; Jesus tells us to wait for the Holy Spirit’s power, and in that time, they do three things that are good patterns for us to learn from—gathering, praying, and unifying.
They’re gathering in the upper room. This is a flat-roof home, on top of which would have been built a pretty simple structure. This is where you can have guests stay with you, you could use it for meetings and events, you could also rent it out. These tended to be not very posh circumstances, conditions. This was the kind of place that the poor would rent. I mean, think about it—no air conditioning, you’re up on the roof, you’re baking, it’s hot, it’s uncomfortable. This is not a lavishly funded early ministry and church.
And they’re meeting in the upper room. We’re not sure which upper room they’re meeting in. It may have been the same upper room where Jesus convened his disciples for the Last Supper. They met also in an upper room, so they may be meeting and convening in that same place.
They give us the list of who is there, and there’s one group that is particularly noteworthy—Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers, together with the women. So there’s men and women. Jesus loves all people. The church is comprised of men and women, and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers.
HE IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS
For those of you who are not Christian—or not yet Christian—or you’re skeptical, I want you to see that we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I know some of you say, “Well, that’s unusual.” Oh, we know. We know that the resurrection of the dead is unusual. That’s why we call it a miracle. 
What I need you to see is that we don’t just believe this because we find it interesting or compelling or a curious story, but because there are reasons, evidence, historically, that are very compelling when accumulated together into a case.
And one of those is right here. Jesus’ mother Mary and his brothers are gathered together in the early church worshiping Jesus, her Son, their big Brother, as Creator, Lord, God, Savior, sinless King, and Christ. These are devout Jewish people, who know if you worship the wrong God you go to hell. So you’ve got to get this right.
How many of you are mothers with sons? How many of you mothers would not publicly worship your son as a sinless deity? OK, any of you wooden spoon-touting mothers agree with me that you would never publicly say, “Yes, my son never sinned and he is God.” Mary worships him as God. This is the last time we see Mary in the New Testament, and if that wasn’t enough, his brothers. 
There’s at least five of Jesus’ brothers mentioned in the New Testament. 
Mark 6:3 English Standard Version
3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

So he had at least two sisters and four brothers, so at least eight kids in this family. 
Big family—big, beautiful family. Jesus is the oldest; he’s the firstborn. He had no earthly father. Mary and Joseph, after Jesus was born, enjoyed normal marital relations. They had at least five boys and at least two girls, and the boys worshiped their big Brother as God, OK?
How many of you have a big brother? How many of you, if you had to choose between him being God or Satan, you would choose that he is Satan? OK, all right? How many of you publicly would not stand up and say, “My big brother is without sin,” all right? Because you have scars that indicate otherwise, right?—emotional and physical scars that explain and articulate otherwise. During his earthly life, Jesus’ family thought that he had lost his mind. Would you not? “Hey Mom, where’s Jesus?” “He’s out preaching, teaching, walking on water, declaring himself to be Creator, Lord, Savior, God, King, and Christ.” “Mom, do you think we should go pick him up?” “Yes I do. We’re going take him home, we’re going to give him pudding, and we’re going to lock the door, and we’re just going to keep him where nobody can find him. Jesus’ oars are not in the water. He is not doing well, OK?” That’s what his family thought about him.

How many of you, if your brother was saying the things that Jesus said, you would go pick him up? You’d go pick him up. “You know what? He’s not well. We need to save him from himself. We need to get him home and we need to just get rid of this crowd that’s following him. He’s not making any sense.” That’s what his family thought of him until he rose from death.
And then Mary and Jesus’ brothers decided, “Oh my goodness, he’s God. He conquered death. We saw him die. We saw him rise. He is who he says he is.” So, James and Jude, two of Jesus’ brothers, become pastors. James leads the church of Jerusalem, writes the book of James in the Bible. Jude becomes a pastor, writes the book of Jude in the Bible. Here they are, part of the early church, worshiping Jesus as God. 
Why do they do that? Why is Mary, this wonderful woman, why are these brothers, these devout men—why are they worshiping Jesus as God? Why are they worshiping him as God? He’s God. And he rose from death to prove it. So, they gathered together.
KEEP GATHERING
I want you to see that we do the same. We gather in groups on Sundays. We gather in smaller groups on Wednesday nights. God’s people are to be gathering together. 
Hebrews 10:24-25 New King James Version
24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

How many people are in the first church, early Christianity? About 120.
Here’s what’s interesting: if you go over to 
1 Corinthians 15:6 ESV
 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 
Acts 1 tells us, over the course of forty days—groups large and small. What this means is that hundreds, maybe thousands of people, saw Jesus risen from death. How many people joined the early church and gathered together as the church? 120
It struck me as I was reading it this week—that means there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who saw Jesus rise from death, and they still didn’t join the church.
See, some would say, “Well, I’m not a Christian because there’s not enough evidence.” And even those who had the evidence of the risen Jesus were unwilling to turn from sin, trust in him, and join the church. 
It’s not always that the mind is unconvinced, but often it is the heart that is unwilling.
Basically speaking, people even today say this: “There’s credible evidence that Jesus was God and rose from death, and I’m not a Christian because I want to do what I want to do.”
So Jesus rises from death. Many see him. Only a few follow him, and they gathered together. And as God’s people, we need to gather together, amen? We need to gather together on Sunday. We need to gather together on Wednesday nights. And what do they do? They pray. 
This is convicting and convincing for me. As a Pastor I’m always looking for things to do, the right songs, the right message, the right atmosphere, the right programs, etc. BUT as I have stated before and still believe, until we really turn into a church that prays, we will not meet the full potential that God has for us!  
Okay, Jesus tells 120 people who don’t have a map or an airplane to reach the nations. They have a lot to do. And they’re not wasting their time; they’re investing their time in prayer. It says it this way: “devoting themselves to prayer.” This issue of devotedness was ongoing, it was constant, it was integrated, it was their priority, it was involved in the course of their day.
PRAYER PRECEDES DOING
I want you to see that praying precedes doing. 
OK, what tends to happen in Christianity is there are people that pray and there are doers. The doers just go to work, OK? And then, when we make a mistake, we pray things like, “Sorry,” “Help,” “Fix it.” So, we do pray, but we pray after we’ve made a mess, OK? Any of you done that? You’re like, “I pray after I ruin everything.” And other people are not doers as much as they’re prayers. And they’re like, “You know what? I’ll just pray; God will do it. I’ll pray; God will take care of it.” 
Here’s the truth: God wants us to pray and do—and pray before we do—because God is calling them to bring the gospel to the nations as God is calling us to bring the gospel to the nations. So, there’s work for us to do, but it has to be preceded by praying.
Now, just praying alone isn’t enough because God wants to work through his people, so his people need to get to work. But just working—well, we could pick the wrong work, we could do it the wrong way, we could go at the wrong time, we could have the wrong leaders, we could make all kinds of mistakes. And so praying precedes doing. 
I want you to see that the time they spent praying—I think it’s going to be about ten days—is not wasted time; it’s invested time. How many of you, you don’t pray for much, and if you do, you don’t pray for an extended period? They’re praying over the course of ten days.
PRAYER IS A MIRACLE
Now, let me say this about prayer: prayer is a miracle, and I don’t want you to ever lose sight of this. Prayer is an absolutely miracle, and if we pull back and think about it—and I want you to think about it with me for a moment—there’s the physical, material world we live in of visible, physical, tangible things. And then there’s the invisible, immaterial, spiritual world behind it. It’s as if there is a veil between the two. And God, who lives in the realm of spirit, created this physical world in which we live. He rules over it, and he works in it, though he is separate from it. And what is very interesting is that we sin against God, and it separates us from God, and we have no way to pass through that veil to enter into the presence of God and back into relationship with God.
And so God, in his grace, passes through that veil. He goes from the realm of spirit into the physical world, which he’s made. That’s Jesus. He’s eternally God. He’s the Creator of heaven and earth. He did not dwell in a physical body for all eternity. God, who is Spirit, added to himself human flesh, passed through that veil, and entered into human history. We call that the Incarnation, carne meaning “flesh”—that God took upon himself a physical body, and he entered into human history.
And so now, the spirit world of God has entered into the physical world, in which men and women live, and Jesus lives without sin, and he dies for our sin, and he forgives our sin. And when he dies, there’s a veil in the temple that is literally torn from top to bottom, from God to man, showing that this veil that separates the physical and the spiritual, the world in which we live and the realm in which God rules has been removed, and now God is welcoming us into his presence.
And see, all of this is alluded to earlier in Acts 1 when Jesus ascended into heaven. It’s not that he just went into another orbit, but he literally, out of their sight, entered into another dimension. He passed through that proverbial spiritual veil, and he went back into his heavenly kingdom. And today, he is ruling and reigning and seated upon his throne.
Now, here’s what’s amazing: when we pray, we are communicating from our world into that world. It’s miraculous. Many of you would say, “I’ve never seen a miracle.” If you’ve prayed, you’ve participated in one. 
Somehow we can speak, and God can hear, and we can take requests and needs and fears and frustrations and longings, and we can communicate those to a living, loving, spiritual God, who’s made us with a soul so that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and belong to Him.
And all of this is a miracle. And it’s made possible, friends, only through Jesus. You may say, “Well, other people in other religions pray.” Yes, but their prayers do not get beyond the roof in the place that they pray, because we need a mediator, we need someone who has passed through to connect us to God, to connect this world to its Creator, to connect this fallen, physical world to that flawless, spiritual world. And that’s Jesus. He is our mediator.
Hebrews 7:25 English Standard Version
25 Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.
So, what the early church realizes here is that Jesus has gone to heaven, he’s entered into another realm. But as he promised, he’s not abandoned them as orphans. He said he would never leave them nor forsake them, so they could still talk to him through this miracle of prayer. And he’s available, and he’s willing to hear and answer their prayers. So, they are gathering, they are praying, and they are praying before they’re doing, to prepare them for their working.
PRAYER CHANGES US
Now, let me say this: they are not praying that God would do something. One of the great misnomers of prayer is that the primary purpose of prayer is to get God to do something. This is going to be controversial: I do not believe that the primary purpose of prayer is to get God to do something. I believe that the primary purpose of prayer is to allow God to do something with us. 
It’s not to move God; it’s to move us. It’s not to change God; it’s to change us. It’s not to tell God something he doesn’t know; it’s for God to tell us something that we don’t know. It’s not to change the heart of God; it’s to change our heart. 
Yes, God does hear and answer prayer, but hear me in this: Jesus already told them, “You will be my witnesses.” That’s not a question; that’s a promise. “I will send the Holy Spirit.” That’s not a possibility; that’s a certainty.
So, what they’re not praying is, “Send the Holy Spirit, and let us go on mission.” Those things Jesus has already promised and assured. 
Example: You don’t need to pray that one day the dead in Christ will rise. You know why? They will because Jesus has promised it. 
If God has promised something, we don’t need to ask him to do it. What we need to do is ask him to prepare us for His promise. 
So, the prayer here is not to get Jesus to do something, to get the Holy Spirit to do something. It’s to get God’s people in agreement and in alignment with what Jesus and the Holy Spirit want them to do. 
ONE ACCORD, ONE HEART, ONE MIND
So, they’re gathering, they’re praying, and the result is it’s unifying. It says that they were with—what’s the word? “One accord.” The Bible used the language of unity as “one accord,” “one heart,” “one mind.” 
They were together, right? There’s that word as well—“together.” This is all biblical language for unity. And Jesus prayed that we would be one. In his longest prayer in John 17:21 ESV, 
21 that they (us, Christians) may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 
And so here, you’ve got God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. One God. One God. One God. Three persons. One God. And Jesus prays that we, as God’s people, would be one—one heart, one mind, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one mission, one book, right? We’d be one. What comes first, praying or unifying? See, we don’t just pray with people who are believers that we’re unified with, we pray with believers so that we might become unified with them. 

Here’s the little equation I’d give you: 
Gathering plus praying equals unifying. 
They gather, they pray, and they become unified.
How to work toward unity? Gathering and praying. Pray for one another and pray with one another. Eventually, you’ll have unity. 
A husband and a wife not getting along? It’s not going well, it’s a hard patch, they don’t agree, they’re having conflicts. What’s the answer? Gather, pray for one another, pray with one another. 
Family’s divided, not getting along, a lot of drama. What’s the answer? Gather, pray for one another, pray with one another. 
Church is experiencing a divisive season, difficult circumstances. What’s the answer? Gathering together, praying together, because gathering plus praying equals unifying.
Most of the time, we don’t have a unity problem; we have a prayer problem that manifests itself as a unity problem. 
When we pray, we’re saying, “Jesus, what do you want? Have us think as you want us to think, have us to act as you want us to act. Our unity is not in one of us coercing the other, but both of us submitting to God.” 
So, they’re not wasting their time; they’re investing their time gathering and unifying through prayer so that when the Holy Spirit does come, they’re ready to go serve the nations together, OK?
We need to be a church that gathers and prays.