EARTHLY SECRETS OF HEAVENLY GLORY
#258a EARTHLY SECRETS OF HEAVENLY GLORY
Scripture Acts 1:1-11, NIV Orig. 10-15-1962
Rewr. 9-21-1979
Passage: 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 presented himself to them 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[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.”
6 Then they gathered around him and 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.
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.”
Purpose: To call my people to consider the high and glorious calling that is ours in Christ Jesus.
Introduction
An unusual change takes place in the lives of the people most closely associated with Jesus. Two different artists or interpreters of the scenes could have interpreted them in widely divergent ways.
In the upper room in Jerusalem on the night after Jesus died at Calvary, a small group of men cower behind a bolted door. Fear is the most apparent emotion and it hangs like a specter of this scene. Along with this fear, there is the desperation of beaten men whose fondest hopes and aspirations have failed to materialize. They sit in silence, stunned that they could have been so deluded. They were too heartbroken to speak, too anguished of soul to pray.
We cannot follow these men, step by step, over the next few weeks; we can only meet them again and discover the radical change that has come over them. It is unquestionably the same men. But they are men who are alive again. They are not skulking behind closed doors. They are out in the streets of the city. They have suddenly become absolutely fearless, and deliciously happy. They are no longer moping about in the circumstance of unfairly deluded men. They have become men who are totally committed to a cause.
It is not what happened in history that changed these scenes, and their interpretation. It is what happened in the lives of these men and others. John Masefield’s drama, The Trial of Jesus1, puts things in perspective for us. The Roman centurion, Longinus, who was in command of the soldiers at the cross, brings a day’s end report to Pilate. After the report, Procula, Pilate’s wife, begs the centurion to tell her how the prisoner died. He satisfies her request, and she then asks, “Do you think he is dead?”
“No, Lady,” answers Longinus, “I don’t.”
“Then where is he?” she asks.
“Let loose in the world, Lady, where neither Roman nor Jew can stop his truth.”
“Earthly Secrets of Heavenly Glory” must always begin, not with historical evidence, but with personal encounter with the living Christ.
I. Consider First the Documentation of Power. V8, “But ye shall receive power.”
It was a mistaken notion about power that had controlled this nation from the very first. They rightly fancied themselves a special people. Moses came out of the desert with a special sense of mystery about him. It was as if he had become the messenger to the elite of earth. Exodus 7:16, “The Lord God of the Hebrews hath sent me unto thee,” he said to Pharaoh.
They wrongly concluded that what made them special was in themselves, that God had looked the wide world over, and He had concluded that His best bet lay with them. This was certainly the view of the Samaritan woman who encountered the Christ. “How is it that thou, being a Jew, asketh drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?” John 4:9, Living Water. It appears that it was this very attitude with which Jesus was dealing when the Scribes and Pharisees demanded a sign. Matthew 12:39, “No sign shall be given, but the sign of the Prophet Jonas.” You wrongly follow the word of man. Your need is the word of God.
You see, what God was after was not a people with sufficient power to accomplish His design; but rather a people with sufficient commitment to allow the flow of God’s power. John 8:32, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Prisoners are “set free,” and following their own chosen path, are imprisoned again. God offers the “freedom” which sustains itself because it is in Him.
The power was promised. It was promised to those who belonged to God by virtue of the activity of Jesus. It belonged to all alike who would claim it. The subject of Jesus’ teaching during these days was “the kingdom” (V3). The Hebrews had conceived of this “kingdom” in political terms. Jesus proclaimed it to be a spiritual entity. Matthew 6:10, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” The kingdom of God on earth consists, as it does in heaven, of people yielding their will to God’s will. It is done in an act of personal submission; it is more difficult in society’s “be me”; almost impossible for the social elite.
The power is available, but only within the kingdom: Only through Jesus; only to accomplish God’s will in your life; only by waiting for the Holy Spirit.
II. Consider, Next, the Declaration of Privilege. V8, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you.”
The power of God, always in the world, is made available to the world by the Believer, who has been empowered by the Holy Spirit, who has been given by Christ. The Holy Spirit is not the end result; he is not the prime mover; he is the means chosen of God.
All of the contemporary expressions of power have always been in the world. It was the 19th century before electrical power was harnessed. Men knew of petroleum for centuries before the first barrel was pumped to the surface, refined, and awaited the invention of the automobile. We are even now struggling to know of other energy reserves always in the world, not yet sufficiently understood.
The Holy Spirit is the privilege accorded to every believer. This has always been the way that God has chosen to work with and through His people. Just before Gideon’s rout of the Midianites with 300 men, we discovered Gideon’s secret. Judges 6:34, “The spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon.” It is pictured also as a self-limiting power if we reject it. Isaiah 63:10, “They rebelled and vexed His Holy Spirit: therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them.”
It is then, within the limits of God’s will that the Holy Spirit is free to impose Himself in our lives. He is free, not to aid us in doing what we want, but what we ought. There is a 1st and 20th century parallel. The Holy Spirit was committed to God’s program of world evangelization. The early church managed to get through 12 chapters of the Book of Acts before they had resolved the matter. Acts 11:9, “What God has cleansed call not thou common.”
Make no mistake about it, God’s purpose is unchanged. Hear it ringing out in the words of Margaret Clarkson, and set to music by John W. Peterson, “So Send I You.”
So send I you to labour unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing.
So send I you to toil for Me alone.
So send I you to bind the bruised and broken,
Over wandering souls to work, to weep, to wake,
To bear the burdens of a world a-weary.
So send I you to suffer for My sake.
So send I you to loneliness and longing,
With hart a-hungering for the loved and known,
Forsaking kin and kindred, friend and dear one.
So send I you to know My love alone.
So send I you to leave your life's ambition,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labour long, and love where men revile you.
So send I you to lose your life in Mine.
So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend, though it be blood to spend and spare not.
So send I you to taste of Calvary.
As the Father hath sent me, so send I you.
III. This Brings Us Finally to Consider, the Dividend of Purpose. V8, “And ye shall be my witnesses . . . unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”
Martin Luther: “A Christian is an utterly free man, lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is an utterly dutiful man, servant of all, subject to all.”2
Conclusion
Karl Heim, in his Christian Faith and Natural Science, degrades the message of the contemporary church, and bears a negative witness to the world. He writes, “The church is like a ship on whose deck festivities are still kept up and glorious music is heard, while deep below the water-line a leak has been sprung and masses of water are pouring in, so that the vessel is settling hourly lower, though the pumps are manned day and night.”
The two men standing by at the ascension of Jesus spoke rather sharply to His disciples as they stood there that day, “Why stand you here gazing? Man the pumps! Stop the leaks! Dispose of the waters! Turn your attention to that which is your real purpose!”
It begins with faith in Christ.
Masefield: https://allpoetry.com/John-Masefield
1 Masefield, J. (1925.) The Trial of Jesus. William Heinemann, Ltd.
2 Luther, M. (1970.) Three Treatises, Fortress Press.