Today we conclude this series of guest posts from Phil Moore’s excellent new series of Straight to the Heart books. They will be available at Together On a Mission which begins tomorrow. We conclude in Acts with a precious promise of power for ministry:
THE PROMISE (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.” (Acts 1:8)
When General Marshall became Chief-of-Staff to the US Army on the first day of World War Two, it consisted of only 174,000 poorly equipped soldiers. Five years later, he had turned it into the greatest army the world had ever seen, a mighty force of over eight million men which defeated the empires of Germany and Japan. Winston Churchill hailed Marshall as the “organiser of victory,” and declared that he had paved the way to triumph through his consummate brilliance as a strategist and trainer of men.
Luke wants to get one thing straight, right at the start of the book of Acts: the success of the Early Church was not down to any first-century equivalent of General Marshall. Their leader, Peter, took twelve years to realise he was even meant to take the Gospel to the Gentiles at all. When he did, he still needed to be rebuked to his face over his methods, “because he was clearly in the wrong.” Paul, who rebuked him, was himself so lacking in the skills possessed by General Marshall that his critics in the church at Corinth complained that “he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.” We are so used to viewing the early apostles as superstars on a pedestal that we can easily forget that they were pitifully inadequate for the task which they were given. Jesus told them not even to try to fulfil his Great Commission until they had first received “the promise of the Father.” Only that promise could turn this little band of zeroes into Christ’s world-conquering heroes.
Not just a promise. The promise. The Old Testament contains eight thousand promises from God – one promise for every three verses – yet three times Luke tells us that one promise so encapsulates all the others that it can simply be called “the promise of the Father.” It was the promise which Jesus said would result in believers being “clothed with power from on high.” It was the promise which was so indispensable that they must wait in Jerusalem and not try to start without it. It was the promise that God would baptise his People with his Holy Spirit – that he would come and live inside of them and carry them to victory through his own indwelling power.
The hundred and twenty disciples knew what it meant to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They knew the story of Samson, who fought an entire Philistine army on his own when “the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power.” He was an ordinary man, but when he was filled with the Holy Spirit he was more than a match for a thousand of his enemies. They also knew the prophecies of Isaiah, that when God’s New Covenant People were filled with the Holy Spirit then “the least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation.” They knew the book of Ezekiel, where the breath of the Holy Spirit turned a valley of old bones into a mighty army. They also knew the prophecy of John the Baptist that “I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me … [Jesus] will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.” The hundred and twenty had very little going for them in terms of natural gifting, but at least they had one thing in their favour: they knew the value of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and they waited and prayed until it was given.
The Holy Spirit would enable them to be Christ’s witnesses. Not just do his witnessing, but be his witnesses. He would transform their lifestyles from the inside out, so that they would bear the fruit of the Spirit. He would fill their hearts with love for one another, so that Paul could tell a church that he loved every single one of them because he was filled “with the affection of Christ Jesus.” The Christians would be so transformed by their baptism in the Spirit that their Gospel-message would become irresistibly attractive to the unsaved world.
The Holy Spirit would turn them into Christ’s fearless witnesses. This persecuted religious sect, led by a man who had denied Jesus three times in the face of hostile questioning, would bear bold and fiery witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ the Saviour. They would not be head-down, hope-they-don’t-notice Christians who practised their religion in private and kept it to themselves in public. They would be bold and unstoppable, as Michael Green comments in his excellent book, ‘Evangelism in the Early Church’: “Neither the strategy nor the tactics of the first Christians were particularly remarkable. What was remarkable was their conviction, their passion, and their determination to act as Christ’s embassy to a rebel world whatever the consequences.”
They would not simply be witnesses, but witnesses with power. Like any good witness in court, they would come armed with a wealth of supporting evidence. ‘Exhibit A’ would be their spiritual gifts, such as prophecy, tongues and words of knowledge. ‘Exhibit B’ would be their ability to heal the sick and drive out demons. ‘Exhibit C’ would be their authority to issue blessings and curses through the power of Jesus’ name. By the time these powerful witnesses had finished their testimony, they would be so feared and respected that large crowds of non-Christian onlookers would repent, be saved and join them in their mission.
Suddenly, this begins to make sense of the phenomenal success of early Christianity in the absence of any first-century General Marshall. They didn’t need one because they were baptised with God’s Holy Spirit, and their success was simply the result of him coming to dwell inside them. When God filled Samson with his Holy Spirit, he conquered a mighty army; when God filled the Early Church with his Holy Spirit, they conquered the world.
And so the hundred and twenty gathered in the upper room in Jerusalem, and they prayed and waited. They waited because Jesus told them to. They waited because they knew there was no point in starting until the Holy Spirit came. They waited because they had grasped the secret of God’s promise of indwelling power.
We, on the other hand, would rather not wait. We would rather look to a Christian celebrity or the latest Christian paperback as a catch-all solution for the problems that we face. Some churches have split over the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Others have accepted that they need it, but crowded it out under mountains of liturgy, activity, busyness and distraction. The call to be baptised in the Holy Spirit is a call to die to our own strength and wait. It’s very easy, but also very difficult.
Without the Holy Spirit, we can be busy for God but we cannot be successful. He has given us his plan, and he refuses to fulfil it any other way. The Church has only ever marched to victory through God filling her ordinary foot-soldiers with his own extraordinary Holy Spirit. She has always floundered when she neglected this call. Jesus still makes this promise – the promise – to us today: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.”
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