"You Will Receive Power"

Rev. Stan Moody, Ph.D.

Psalm 36:1-4

An oracle is within my heart
concerning the sinfulness of the wicked:
There is no fear of God before his eyes.
For in his own eyes he flatters himself
too much to detect or hate his sin.
The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful;
he has ceased to be wise and to do good.
Even on his bed he plots evil;
he commits himself to a sinful course
and does not reject what is wrong (with himself).

Ezekiel 39:21-29
Acts 1:1-11

In a Peanuts comic strip, there was a conversation between Lucy and Charlie Brown. Lucy said that life is like a deck chair. Some people place it so they can see where they are going; others place it so they can see where they have been; still others place it so they can see where they are at present. Charlie Brown’s reply: “I can’t even get mine unfolded.”

According to the pollster, George Gallup, the number one need people have is “…the need to believe that life is meaningful and has a purpose.” People want their lives to count – they want to get the deck chair unfolded and pointed in the right direction. The great motivation for all of us is to leave behind something bigger than ourselves that will outlast our short time here on this earth. The bottom line for most of us is the hope that our kids will say something nice about us after we’re gone!

When Steve Jobs was trying to recruit John Sculley, the 38-year old President of Pepsi-Cola, he is said to have asked, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” Apparently it worked, albeit better initially than later. The question for us as believers in Jesus Christ, however, is whether even being the President of Apple Computer is really making a difference.

The Christian has an even greater struggle in positioning that deck chair. There is a temptation to place it facing the American Dream of prosperity and success. There is a temptation to place it facing our standing and status here on earth – to bask in the warmth of our credentials and our accomplishments. We are called by God, however, to place our deck chairs facing the eternal kingdom that becomes our destiny when this short journey has ended. From there, God calls us to get up out of our deck chairs and get moving but under His power; not ours.

Once the Apostle Paul had turned the deck chair of his life from his accomplishments and his credentials and his future as an up-and-coming Pharisee, he turned it toward the Kingdom of God and never looked back. In fact, all those credentials and accomplishments he later referred to as “dung.” How many of us would be willing to go that far?

Last week, because so many of us here are retired or about to be retired, I used the example of retirement as a test case for the Christian’s attitude toward life. I always wondered why people seemed to run faster when they got older. It may have something to do with in what direction their deck chairs are facing. Those whose deck chairs are facing their business or career accomplishments seem to work harder to make more progress – more money, more power and more legacy, even though all those things will sooner than later be left behind.

Those who have committed to Christ have the same instincts except that the conflicting demands of the Kingdom of God push us in the opposite direction. We find ourselves pressing on at the risk of our health and even our very lives to do something to the God who wants to do something through us.

We find out along the way that all those credentials – education, career, marrying the right person, raising a family and setting down roots are only incidentals to some overriding purpose in life. Singer Peggy Lee asked the mournful question, “Is that all there is?” Surely God is up to more than this!

One Christian thinker had this to say: “I am convinced that we are living in an unprecedented time of potential blessing and power and this is God’s appointed hour to liberate the Church from being a memorial society to becoming a society of movers and shakers.” That displays a focus on the power of the present rather than some fantasized clout tomorrow.

We here at the NMMH Church have struggled over the definition of what is a successful church ministry. Current wisdom has it that a successful church ministry is wall-to-wall people, programs 24/7 and a highly educated staff to run and grow the show. Instead, we have been given a bunch of veterans who, by the grace of God, have a church that is open 7 days a week and have opened their hearts to people as far away as Palestine.

This part-time pastor, instead of being a holy CEO running a big church, has been making all kinds of waves that have managed to stay clear of this little church in the woods. If this is not a testimony to the presence of the power of God in the life of His people, I don’t know what is. I look around here and can come to no other conclusion than that of the fulfillment of Acts 1: 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.”

Who would believe that out of this little church in the boonies in Maine there would literally emerge witnesses of the living Gospel of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria? Who would believe that this little ragtag group of ordinary people would be living witnesses of Jesus Christ even unto the ends of the world – the Maine State prison? Is this not a testimony to the presence of power from on high?

What opportunities we would have missed had this little church been plagued with wall-to-wall people and 24/7 programs! We would have had the trappings without experiencing the power!

That power still lives! As with the disciples, however, there are some pre-conditions to that power coming from on high.

The first precondition is Jesus statement to His disciples in v. 4: “Do not leave Jerusalem…” In order to receive the power, they must not leave where they have been appointed. In light of our tendency to think that we can be more effective somewhere else, that is a novel idea, is it not? The second precondition relates to the first – “…wait for the gift my Father promised.” We have waited some 14 years to receive the gift, haven’t we? People have come and gone – maybe just tired of staying and waiting. They wanted it right then. Perhaps they have lost out on sharing and experiencing the power from on high.

Waiting is the hardest thing for us to do, isn’t it? The clock is always running. I have noticed that in prison, there is more impatience than on the outside and have marveled that a person who has to stay there for the next 40 years is upset that he had to wait a couple of weeks for something he wanted. Unfortunately, it is often not just a couple of weeks but a couple of years, like for the fellow who asked me to bring a certain volunteer to the Protective Custody POD. He had been asking for 2 years, apparently. Just a few days after they visited him, he was unexpectedly transferred to Bucks Harbor minimum security facility. The waiting paid off, and God’s timing was perfect!

The Psalmist, even when he was in danger of being killed, said, “Wait on the Lord; be of good cheer. Wait, I say, on the Lord” (Psalm 24:17). There are those today who are tired of waiting for God and have decided to jump start the so-called Second Coming. It is not only for power from on high that Jesus wants us to stay and wait, but it is also for His appearing that He asks us to stay and wait.

What was it that the disciples were looking for just before Jesus ascended? They were asking Him the same question they had asked right after the Triumphal Entry: “Lord, will you now, at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel?” Like a lot of Christians today, their deck chairs were facing the past – Old Testament prophecies that had already been fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus.

Ezekiel 39 that we read earlier equates the restoration of Israel with the pouring out of the Spirit. Jesus had just told His disciples in Acts 1:5 that in just a few days they would be filled with the Holy Spirit. To them, this was to be the fulfillment of Ezekiel 39:29: “I will no longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my Spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Sovereign Lord.”

When Jesus tells them that His Spirit would be poured out on them in just a few days, they wanted clarification. “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” They were undoubtedly recalling His words at the Last Supper: “I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:29, 30).

Their interpretation was that Israel would be restored as a world power and that they would sit as appointed, physical judges over the Twelve Tribes within days.

What Jesus was talking about, however, was not the timing of the event so much as the nature of the event. This is not about literal Israel; it is about the expanded tent of the Twelve Tribes that would spread out from Jerusalem into the uttermost parts of the earth. The deck chairs of the disciples needed to be re-arranged. They were facing this earth rather than eternity. They saw a physical kingdom ruled by a Messiah who would come to liberate them from the oppressive iron hand of Rome. Their reverence for the past somehow was blocking their future.

Jesus patiently answers with a startling declaration in v. 7:

…It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 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.

There are a couple of remarkable gems in this short passage. The disciples are asking about a concrete, definitive date and time for something cataclysmic to happen. They want to pin it down. They are restricted to the clock and the calendar. Jesus, however, is introducing them to a new dimension, where things do not begin and end in the same instant in time. He is moving them from the concrete sequential limitations of time and space into God’s eternal clock where events begin at a certain time and end at a certain time, but the time in between may be a time for staying put and waiting, stretching for as long as it takes for His plan to be fulfilled.

Jesus is introducing them to a new concept of event that has far less to do with their temporal lives and far more to do with a God for whom a “…day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day” (2 Peter 3:8). Jesus is introducing them to the Kingdom of God – the tent under which the Twelve Tribes of Israel would be expanded to include you and me – the New Israel.

The disciples, even though they failed to understand it and would not understand it until given power from on high at the Day of Pentecost, were to be stripped of their Israeli national citizenship and clothed anew with citizenship in the international, multi-cultural, multi-racial and gender-blind spiritual Kingdom of God. When they received that power on the Day of Pentecost, Peter finally gets it:

Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It is only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people…”

We are told that that very day, 3,000 men traded in their Israeli national citizenships for a place in the Kingdom – the true Israel; the culmination of God’s redemptive history; the exponential explosion from the fulfillment of the prophecy of Ezekiel all the way through to when time shall be no more.

The second remarkable gem in vs. 7&8 is Jesus’ answer, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.” First of all, it is abundantly clear that the times and dates of redemptive history have been set in concrete by the authority of the Creator God. Any attempt to move them forward or backward was not even in the power of Jesus, His Son.

Secondly, and more important perhaps, is that Jesus answers His disciples in the plural to a question they had asked in the singular. “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” “It is not for you to know the times and dates…”

From Scriptures, it was very clear to the disciples that the Kingdom of God would arrive – albeit in its fullness – with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, however, refers to that kingdom, not as an instant event but as a bundle of “times and dates” that were to be beyond our capacity or our business to know or understand.

Here is my take on that. The Kingdom of God arrives on the Day of Pentecost, continues on to the present and will be fulfilled when the last of the elect of God has been gathered in. The kingdom, then, is both a present reality and a future hope. It is and will be the fulfillment of the exponential expansion of the Twelve Tribes of Israel from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth.

The times and dates are the periods in between as God pours out His Spirit on His people for His purposes and glory. Times and dates of the Father’s setting are probably infinite – at least as many as there are of His children who profess Jesus as Lord. Then there are those times and dates that are pivotal to every one of our lives that set the course for our witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus wants us to love our neighbor, even when there is no indication that our neighbor’s “time and date” will even come. Love is the action that derives from not knowing but trusting God.

This great explosion of witness obviously cannot happen unless we have received power from the Holy Spirit. What Jesus has done here is tie the experience of Pentecost from the disciples to you and me. The Comforter who came at Pentecost not only has infinitely expanded our horizons but has endowed us with power as individuals and as a church to witness of Jesus Christ. That, and not some future throne in Jerusalem, is the fulfillment of a Kingdom that has already come but is not yet completed.

Our witness of Jesus Christ is a construction project in a little corner of God’s Kingdom.

I fail to see room there for Spiritual Butterflies that flit from one meeting to another, one seminar to another, one Bible study to another, sipping a little nectar here but never staying and waiting anywhere. How about you? We are called “witnesses,” and as citizens of the Kingdom, we have received the power to pull it off.

Notice, however, how that witness progresses.

It can only begin if we go home, wait and pray. Those were the instructions Jesus gave to His disciples – go to Jerusalem, wait and pray. Mission begins at home. The power to witness of Christ begins at home. A church that is not doing missions at home has no business supporting missions in foreign countries because they have not received the power. The first test of receiving the power is when it begins to work at home – where you are living, waiting and praying.

In our little corner of the world here, we have seen the power at work in the amazing little ministries that have been spawned from this seed in the wilderness. We have taken the power to witness of Jesus Christ into our homes and into our neighborhoods, if nothing more than through the way we live, the way we react and the hope that is visible to others.

Together, we have witnessed within our communities to the strength and vitality of this otherwise failed enterprise we call the NMMH Church. It yet lives, even though to the casual observer it may even look dead on the surface!

You have enabled me to carry that witness into the well of the Maine House of Representatives, into the media and into my writing. You have enabled me to carry that witness into the Maine State Prison and on into Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. This summer, we will be sending 5 young adults to Palestine to share the witness of Christ with our brothers and sisters there.

That’s power, Man! Show me any fraternal organization that can boast that kind of power without vast resources!

There are those in prison who insist that God sent them there for a purpose. God doesn’t need to murder people or rob them or rape them in order to advance His Kingdom. If, on the other hand, those in prison who declare Jesus as Lord can begin to exercise that power instead of wishing they were somewhere else – post-Rapture Jerusalem or home – things might begin to happen.

That power is not for our own amusement. Soaking in somebody else’s preaching; praising through worship and song; going to Bible studies are examples of inflow into our lives. We are called to have an outflow. Otherwise, we become a stagnant swamp like the Dead Sea. A stagnant swamp just sits there and percolates, while life goes on, or teems on, around it. There are too many in prison who want private experiences of the Spirit without pouring themselves out for people or giving themselves away to touch the human suffering around them.

“Stay where you are, physically and emotionally; wait and pray, and you will be given power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Begin at home – in your POD; in your community; in your neighborhood – and be my witness. The witness that you are at home will expand out into all the earth because you have been given power.”

It is a rare Christian these days who can get beyond what God is doing for him to what God can do through him. Instead, they come like Spiritual Butterflies to one meeting after another. The closest they seem to come to witnessing is to witness that by the grace of God they are not like other men – “like that homosexual or that pedophile over there.”

A couple of weeks ago, an inmate in the chapel came to me greatly disturbed and wanting me to kick the homosexuals out of the church. “Let’s do that,” I thought. “Then let’s kick out the murderers, the sexual offenders, the thieves and the sinners. When we get to the sinners, and you see me leaving, please turn out the lights and lock the doors.”

“You shall be, not my ‘whipping boys,’ but my witnesses to the homosexuals, the sex offenders, the abortionists, the murderers, the thieves, the sinners because you have received the power to do so.”

And you will do that, not by thanking God that you are not like “those sinners over there,” but by reflecting the life-giving transformation that comes from, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”