Dear God, we thank you so much for all that you do.
As we just heard in song, you know, when we have troubles and trials and stresses, there
is Jesus.
We thank you for this church and those that are willing to serve and take part, those
that have done it in the past, and those who are doing it into the future.
Just guide and bless us in all that we do.
In your name we pray.
Amen.
I'm pretty sure that song you sung, Dolly Parton sings that doesn't she, as well, in
a duet.
So it's an appropriate song because we've got Dolly's painting, you know, just like
three blocks from here.
But we had a very beautiful rendition of that.
So the story goes that the babies were due about January 24, and yes, I said babies,
as in plural.
So there was more than one baby that was due on January 24.
And they did not get a phone call that day, but it was New Year's Eve, which is December
31, and mama said, you know what, I think today would be a good day to go to the hospital.
This was just, you know, two weeks ago on New Year's Eve.
Her husband, the father, the mother's name was Eve, the father's name was Billy.
He was excited because his birthday is actually on New Year's Eve.
So these twins were going to be born on his birthday.
So he was really excited about that.
And so they went to the hospital.
And in the course of time, as things go, baby number one, Ezra, was born at 1148 p.m.
on New Year's Eve.
And they say that as they were in the delivery room, you know, when you're wanting the mother
to breathe a certain way, you count, you know, one, two, three.
I don't know how high they go.
I don't remember.
But as they were counting up for breathing, they could hear in the hall people counting
down 10, nine, eight to midnight to the brand new year.
And so by the time baby number two, Ezekiel, was born, it was 1220 a.m. on New Year's Day,
January 1.
So Ezra and Ezekiel were born 30 minutes apart, but it was two different days, two different
months and even two different years.
They weren't due.
They still weren't due yet.
They did not tell January 24, but those babies did not want to wait.
And so they came when the time was right.
Sometimes in life, we don't like to wait for things.
How do we respond when we've been challenged or asked to wait for something?
Sometimes the waiting makes us excited as we're looking forward to something.
Maybe we're grumpy because we're in anticipation of something that is to come.
Maybe we are, you know, nobody wants to be around us because the way that we're responding
to this unanticipated wait.
What are some things we wait for?
Maybe we counted down to Christmas or counted down to New Year's or maybe you've got a birthday
coming up.
Today's my brother's birthday.
He's older than I am.
Maybe it's a graduation that you're looking forward to in a couple months and or a vacation
or whatever it happens to be.
Oftentimes we don't like to wait.
And yet here we are in a brand new year, 2024.
And as we look ahead, there's perhaps uncertainty in the year ahead.
A lot of people looking at a lot of different factors think 2024 could be epic.
It could be earth shaking.
And it seems like every day, every week, there's some kind of news story.
Like on New Year's Day, 13 days ago, what was the story of the day?
It was actually an earth shaking year because in Japan there was a big earthquake.
And I don't know the death toll of what it is up to.
But something happened.
Then Ukraine, you know, every day almost there's bombs being dropped and cities being exploded
and tensions.
And then a week ago, a school shooting took place.
On the very first day, the kids are back to school.
There was a shooting that took place in Iowa.
And this week there's, you know, snowstorms and freezing temperatures and whatever else
the news story might be.
And to cap it all off, 2024 is an election year.
Have mercy.
In a normal year, there's a lot of tension and contention in an election year.
But in this year, it seems like it's going to be amped up so much more.
And let me just say here, in this place, we're not going to talk about politics.
We're not going to take side.
We're not going to do any of that.
We're going to talk about the Bible.
We're going to talk about Jesus.
So don't worry about that.
But just be aware that there's so much uncertainty in this world.
And what we're going to be doing here is looking at what it means to live as Christians in
this world of uncertainty.
Now we are beginning a brand new sermon series today.
For the next several weeks and months, we're going to be looking at the book of Acts.
So the sermon series is consumed because for the first several weeks, at least the first
several chapters of Acts, it talks about the people of God who were consumed by their passion
for God.
And then in a couple of weeks, we'll talk about tongues of fire, the Holy Spirit coming
down upon them that consumed them even more.
And so our title today is, is Wait For It.
But as we are studying this book of Acts, we're going to be looking at the disciples
at the early church.
In fact, the book of Acts is basically the origin story of the Christian church.
The reason we're here today, the reason there are churches scattered across the city and
the country is because of what happened in the book of Acts.
They were ordinary people living out their lives in an antagonistic society, seeking
to draw closer to Jesus and at the same time, seeking to let others know about Jesus as
well.
So turn to the book of Acts.
We're going to start here in Acts chapter one, and we're going to be flipping a little
bit back to another book as well.
So Acts chapter one, this origin story of the church, I'm going to read a couple of
verses here.
We talked about this in the kids Sabbath school that I sat in.
This is one of their little Bible questions that they had.
The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus begun both to do and teach
until the day in which he was taken up after he through the Holy Spirit had given commandments
to the apostles whom he had chosen.
What?
And it goes on in verse three, to whom he also presented himself alive after his sufferings
by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during 40 days and speaking of the things
pertaining to the kingdom of God.
That's a lot of information packed into those three verses.
So what we need to understand as we're getting into the book of Acts, that Acts is actually
a sequel.
It's part two.
Does anybody know what was the prequel?
Do you remember the book?
Okay, the book of Luke, the gospel of Luke.
So Luke, who we later find out is a doctor, he wrote the gospel of Luke, and he also wrote
the book of Acts.
And if you were to read the first four verses of the gospel of Luke, it would be much like
this.
And we would find that Luke, although he was not a disciple, he was not one who walked
with Jesus, who saw all those miracles, Luke actually kind of was like a journalist.
It seems like he went and interviewed people or talked to people, and he heard their stories,
and guided by the Holy Spirit, he was able to write down the story of Jesus.
And he wrote it to a particular person, just like here, someone named Theophilus.
And this book of Acts is part two, and he's writing again to Theophilus.
It's a common name, but it means God lover, Theo or Theos is God, and Philos, you know,
Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.
So that name means lover of God.
So hopefully, each of us here could consider ourselves a lover of God, a God lover.
And so all these words that we read here in the first three verses, you could kind of
sum it up like if you were watching a television show that was continued, it might say previously
on ER or whatever the show is.
This is previously in the life of Jesus.
You remember what I wrote to you before, Theophilus?
Here, he's summing it up in just a couple verses, previously in the life of Jesus.
Now in just a moment, we're going to see that Jesus asked his disciples to wait.
And we don't always like to wait.
Those babies, they didn't want to wait.
They came when the time was right.
It was about a week ago, a week and a half ago, Jolie and I were in the car and we were
on I-75 and we were driving north from like Udua up towards Cleveland.
So I-75 north.
And as sometimes happens, the car in front of us was going slow.
And I don't mean going the speed limit slow.
You know, we sometimes think if you're actually going the speed limit, you're going, they
were going like 10 miles an hour under the speed limit.
And it just happened to be we were in one of those places where we couldn't get by.
You know, the traffic was zipping by.
There was no brakes.
And we couldn't get around this slow driver.
And normally, you can ask Jolie, sometimes I'm a little impatient when there's, you
know, someone impeding the progress of where we were supposed to be going.
But in this case, I wasn't so impatient because on the back of the car was a little sign and
it said student driver, student driver.
And eventually we were able to get into the other lane and we went by and we looked over
and there was the instructor in the passenger seat and in the driver's seat was a tiny little
young lady with a look of terror upon her face.
And we imagined that probably she was hoping to get her driver's license soon.
And maybe this was the very first time she had ever gotten onto the interstate and was
asked to go 70 miles an hour.
And so we had a little more patience as we felt sorry for this young lady.
We were able to be patient.
We were able to wait because we knew why we were waiting.
There was a sign that said student driver.
If we know why we're waiting, sometimes it's a little bit easier to wait.
So as we read on in this story in verse four, Jesus asked that of his disciples.
It says, and being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from
Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the father, which he said you had heard from me.
For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not
many days hence.
Now Jesus didn't tell them how long they had to wait.
It says, oh, it's going to be not too long, but I'm not going to tell you exactly.
But he did tell them what they were waiting for.
They were waiting for something that I had talked about before.
And it says here the Holy Spirit.
So we could do a whole sermon series on the Holy Spirit, but let's just look at a couple
of verses.
So we're going to go to Luke.
Remember, Luke is the prequel.
So this is the same story, the same author, Luke 24, the very last chapter of the Gospel
of Luke.
And notice what Jesus said.
Perhaps it's the same conversation, just worded a little bit differently.
Luke 24 verse 49, behold, I send the promise of my father upon you, but tarry in the city
of Jerusalem.
Now what does tarry mean?
Tarry means to wait.
Wait in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.
And so Jesus asks his disciples to wait.
Let's explore this a little further.
Let's go to the Gospel of John.
Now there's lots and lots of scriptures that talk about the Holy Spirit.
But probably the most concentrated area is three chapters right in a row.
John 14, 15, and 16 talk about the Holy Spirit.
So let's look at John chapter 14 and we're going to read verses 16 and 17.
It says, Jesus says, it's written in red in my Bible, and I will pray the Father and He
will give you another helper that He may abide with you forever.
What helper?
Well, verse 17, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither
sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
Now it says, another helper.
Now the way that word looks in the original, it means another of the same kind.
You know, you could have another that's totally different, but this means another helper.
Some versions say comforter, another of the same kind.
Now if you were to go back to the first verses of John chapter 14, you probably memorized
them, at least some of you have at some point in some Sabbath school class.
It says, let not your hearts be troubled.
You believe in God, believe also in me, in my Father's house are many mansions.
If it were not so, I would have told you.
And then it says, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again.
And so Jesus had just told His disciples, I'm about to leave.
I'm going in the near future to prepare a place for you.
That could be heart wrenching for those disciples.
And here just a few verses later, He says, I'm going, but I'm going to send another,
another just like me, another helper, another comforter is going to come in my place.
And He's referred to as the Spirit of truth.
We can go, excuse me, to John chapter 16, John chapter 16.
And it says something very similar in John chapter 16, verses 15 and 16.
It says, actually let's go back to verse 14, John 16, 14.
It says, He will glorify me, for He will take of what is mine and declare it to you all
things that the Father has are mine.
Therefore I said that He will take of mine and declare it to you.
That's the role of the Holy Spirit.
As He comes to take the place of Jesus, He comes to remind us of what Jesus has said.
He comes to remind us of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.
And so Jesus says, He told His disciples, I'm leaving, but I'm going to send someone
in my place that's going to be just like me and do incredible things.
Let's turn back to Acts chapter 1, our scripture reading of the day, which Colton did an amazing
job reading.
Thank you.
Acts 1 and verse 8.
Yeah, he's raising his hand back there.
Good job.
Acts 1 and verse 8, it says, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come
upon you.
So Jesus first gave them a promise and then this promise is for power.
I'm just going to warn you right now, we preachers like things that sound similar.
So there's going to be another word that starts with P in just a moment.
So there's a promise and there's a power.
Now my Bible and many Bibles say the Acts of the Apostles, because it's about the early
church and the apostles and so forth.
But many commentators have said that Acts could legitimately be called the Acts of the
Holy Spirit.
Because if you were to read through the book of Acts and underline or circle every time
that the Holy Spirit is mentioned, either by name, Holy Spirit or spirit, or by reference
such as power or promise, every single chapter, except I think it's just one chapter in the
book of Acts, does not in some way reference the Holy Spirit.
And the book of Acts is about power.
Now there's another word there, power is the word dunamis.
And that's where we get the word dynamite.
So you can think of what kind of power that is, explosive power, kinetic power, energetic
power.
And think of the book of Acts.
It's a book full of miracles, healings take place, resurrections take place.
People suddenly speak in different languages so that 15 different nations can understand
at the same time all of these different things.
People are willing to stand up in the face of authority with the threat of death upon
them and still stand for Jesus.
There's this life changing power of the Holy Spirit, life changing, Christ copying, world
telling power of the Holy Spirit.
But how does that verse go on?
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
There's the third P, there's a promise, there's power, and then there's a purpose.
What is the purpose for this promise of the power of the Holy Spirit?
The purpose is not for you to get famous, for you to get rich, for you to be a viral
person on the internet or anything like that.
The purpose as it says, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
And you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends
of the earth.
The purpose of the Spirit is for you to be a witness.
Now what does that mean?
That doesn't mean you have to understand or memorize every single Bible verse that there
is.
To be a witness simply means to tell your story of Jesus.
What has Jesus done in your life?
What has Jesus meant to you?
What difference has Jesus made in your life?
You see in this day, the story of Jesus, it was about 40 days or so before this, depending
on when this actual verse took place.
The story of Jesus was already world saving, but the world didn't know it yet.
The world was saved, it had the opportunity to be saved, but it didn't know yet.
Let's turn back to Luke 24, because remember Luke is the prequel here.
So let's look at Luke 24 and verse 46.
What is this that we are supposed to be witnesses of?
Luke 24 verse 46, it says, Then Jesus said to them, thus it is written, and thus it was
necessary for the Christ to suffer.
That's the story of the cross.
And to rise from the dead the third day, that's the resurrection right there.
And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations
beginning at Jerusalem.
And you are witnesses of these things.
Jesus died, Jesus rose, Jesus forgives your sins and my sins.
And that's what we can be witnesses of.
What Jesus has done for us, what a difference Jesus makes in our life.
It was a story of world saving consequences, but the people didn't know it yet.
Now the last little portion of Acts 1, 8, you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem,
Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
That's actually kind of an outline, a table of contents if you will, for the rest of the
book of Acts.
Because if you were to read through the book of Acts, that's where the disciples went.
They started in Jerusalem.
Then they went out a little further to Judea.
And then in Acts 7 and 8 they're in Samaria.
And then they're going throughout the Roman Empire.
They're going to the world that they knew at that time.
And that could seem like an impossible thing.
And it would have been, except for the promise of the power of the Holy Spirit.
And there was a purpose.
Let's crunch some numbers here real quick.
By the time you get to the end of Acts 1, there was about 120 people, it says, in the
upper room.
120 followers of Jesus.
Historians tell us, I don't know how they get their numbers, but there was about 18
million people in the Roman Empire.
So 120 Christians, 18 million people in the Roman Empire.
If you do the math, it's about one Christian for every 1.4 million people.
Except for the promise of the power and the purpose of the Holy Spirit.
So let's fast forward about 2,000 years.
And let's just take our own denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
There's about 20 million, probably a little bit more than that now, 20 million Seventh-day
Adventists across the world.
And how many people are in the world?
About 8 billion people is the last number I heard.
So if you crunch those numbers, there's about one Seventh-day Adventist for every 400 people
in the world.
That's a lot closer.
It's still a big task, except for the promise and the power of the Holy Spirit.
If we're bringing it a little bit closer to home, let's just take Georgia Cumberland Conference
that we're a part of.
There's about 40, 42,000 Seventh-day Adventists in Georgia and East Tennessee.
And with the population, it's about one Seventh-day Adventist for every 314 in Georgia and East
Tennessee.
So still a big number, still challenging, but we have this promise of the Holy Spirit.
Now when we think about this list of places, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of
the earth, that sounds like exotic places to go.
But I don't think this verse is telling us to go to Samaria or wherever wars may be happening
or whatever, because for the disciples, Jerusalem was not an exotic locale.
Jerusalem was home.
They opened up their door and there was Jerusalem.
And then they spread out a little bit further.
So I think this verse for us is not telling us we have to go far, far away, but we have
to go to Georgia, to Catoosa, to Ringgold, to the street that you live on, maybe even
in your own house.
Maybe that's where the mission field is.
Maybe it's the house next door.
Maybe it's your office and the place where you work.
That's the place where you can tell people what Jesus has done for you.
There was a story about a week or two ago.
It's a sports story.
I apologize.
I enjoy sports.
There's a quarterback for the Denver Broncos.
His name is Russell Wilson.
He used to be on the Seattle Seahawks and a couple years ago he won a Super Bowl.
He was on Denver this last season and he was doing okay.
He wasn't doing great.
He wasn't doing horrible.
But a few weeks ago he got word that he was going to be benched.
He was going to sit on the bench and not play anymore.
And for an athlete, that's a huge thing, pride and all that.
And he wasn't being benched because he was playing poorly.
He was being benched because the way that his contract read that if he was injured at some
date in the future, I think it's in February, that if he wasn't able to pass a physical,
the team was going to have to pay him a huge amount of money.
And the team said, you know what?
We don't really want to pay him all this extra money.
So we want to make sure that he is not injured.
So you don't get to play anymore and risk injury.
You have to sit on the bench.
And so you could imagine that that was hurtful, that as athletes go, he had every right to
be upset about that.
And so Russell Wilson posted something on social media.
He didn't curse anybody out.
He didn't gripe at the owners or anything like that.
This is what he said.
He said, God's got me looking forward to what's next.
That was his response.
He had a reason, if you will, to be upset, to be angry.
But that's what he said.
God's got me looking forward to what's next.
I don't know what your 2023 was like.
There was probably some challenging situations that you faced, whether it was health issues
or financial issues or relationship issues.
There's probably plenty of reasons to be upset.
But can we share this testimony?
God's got me.
Now you may be able to see the number down there.
86,000 people liked this little post that he made.
Now we're probably not going to be able to tell 86,000 people that God's got us.
But could you tell eight?
Could you tell the people that you interact with every day that know the pain and the
suffering that you're going through, that no matter what's happening, God has got you?
That's what the disciples were supposed to do.
Tell what Jesus had done for them.
Let's read a couple more verses here, and then we'll be done in just a moment.
Acts 1, verse 9.
It says, Now when he had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up, and a
cloud received him out of their sight.
And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them
in white apparel.
So imagine the disciples are there, they're talking with Jesus, and suddenly, what must
that have been like?
Jesus just starts floating up into heaven.
Their jaws are probably dropped, but also their hearts are broken, because Jesus had
told them he was leaving, and now he is leaving.
We remember just 40 days before, Jesus had died on a cross, and the disciples had locked
themselves in the room, because they didn't know what was going to happen.
And now he came back to life, but now he's leaving.
But two people show up in white apparel.
Angels show up.
This is what the angels say, verse 11, who also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand
gazing up into heaven?
Why are you standing there gazing up into heaven?
This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as
you saw him go into heaven.
This verse has a lot of visual words here to remind us that one day, Jesus is coming
back, and every eye will see him, this same Jesus.
But this word that the angels said to the disciples, why are you standing here?
Didn't Jesus give you a promise?
Didn't he give you power?
Didn't he give you a purpose?
Why are you standing here?
Is it possible for us to dream about heaven and to forget about our mission here on earth?
This same Jesus is coming, and we have the privilege of telling the world.
One more verse, just a couple down, verse 14, because before they could go, Jesus had
told them to do something.
What did they have to do?
They had to wait.
They had to tarry.
They had to wait for this promise of this power of this Holy Spirit.
And this is how they waited in verse 14.
These all continued, and the verse before lists all these names, these all continued
with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus
and with his brothers.
They were waiting for the promise.
They were waiting for the Holy Spirit, and they spent that time in prayer.
And as we begin a new year, I hope that we are doing the same thing.
I know some of you were reading through the 10 days in the Bible, those 10 chapters to
start off the year.
I think some of you are taking part in the worldwide 10 days of prayer that's going on
as we are praying for the Holy Spirit, as we are praying for God to be with us, to guide
and bless us each day.
So where are you at spiritually today?
What are you waiting for this year?
We come here week by week to be inspired, to worship, to praise for a reason so that
we can go out of here with a promise and with a power and with a purpose and let people
know what Jesus has done for us.
But first, you have to open up your heart and allow Jesus to make a difference in your
life.