When you think about the kingdom of God, what do you think about? If you are like me, the word kingdom is hard to separate from all of its earthly manifestations. When we think kingdom, my guess is that it is hard to get out of your mind the examples you know: even if you call it a nation instead of a kingdom. Or even if that word conjures up fictional kingdoms like Rohan, it’s still largely a geographic entity controlled by humans, none of whom are perfect.
I don’t know how to escape that. Talking about the kingdom of God will, I think, necessarily bring up images or ways of doing things that belong to earthly kingdoms. We’re going to have to live with that.
But I want us to be willing to push back the edges a little, if we can. Or maybe a better metaphor is to try to peek behind the curtain. The book of Acts is—at least in part—a narration of how the kingdom of God began working itself out on earth after Jesus died and rose again. Or put another way, the book of Acts is a narration of how the Holy Spirit began working in the lives of men and women to give the Jewish and Roman worlds a glimpse into the wonder and beauty of the kingdom of God.
Or put yet still another way, the book of Acts is a narration of a group of people who longed for the kingdom of God more than the kingdoms of this world. They did not do that perfectly. The Holy Spirit was working with imperfect people, but make no mistake, he was working and people were responding. I hope that we will be encouraged and challenged to allow the Spirit to draw us deeper in love with the king so that we gain a deeper longing for his kingdom.
And that journey begins this morning as we look at the first eleven verses of Acts 1. As I’ve said, we are going to interrupt our journey as we go along to talk about some specific theological topics, and hopefully before we finish Acts, cover a good portion of our doctrinal statement.
In addition, we’ll also be spending some time in the Old Testament, thinking more deeply about the passages that the characters we encounter quote from. With all that bouncing around, some chapters might take five or six weeks, but some might take just one. Regardless, I will do my best to keep us from losing the forest for the trees.
This morning we’re going to look at Acts 1:1–11, which can be broken up into two parts: In verses 1–5, Luke, who is writing the second volume of a two part narrative to his friend Theophilus, reminds him very briefly of how he ended the last volume, which we know as the gospel of Luke. So these first five verses are a quick summary of Luke 24. And then in verses 6–11, the disciples ask Jesus a question which leads to a command which the disciples seek to obey in the rest of the book.
So let’s begin and see if we can’t be a little challenged and encouraged this morning. The main idea I hope to get across is that a Spirit-empowered witness is how we live out God’s kingdom on earth, and that is what we need to be concerned with in Jesus’ absence.
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