Our Place In His Story: There Is No Plan B

Have you ever wondered why the Church exists? If I were to ask you to tell me the purpose of Christ’s Church, what would you say?   Would you say its to worship Him? Would you say it’s to love one another? Would you say it’s to make disciples? What would you say? Because how you answer that question goes along way to helping you know where you fit into God’s story. Perhaps you’ve never really been clear about that, about how you fit into what God’s story. Have you ever wondered what God had in mind for your place in His story? Your role in God’s story? If you’ve been with us since the first of the year, we have been on a journey trying to answer these questions. In fact, we began our journey in January looking at how God’s story is laid out from cover to cover in the Bible. And along the way we’ve discovered some pretty cool things. For one thing we discovered that

The Bible has One Unifying Theme: And that theme is this: The Kingdom of God

“God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing.”

So we began with God’s story of creation, where God established The Pattern for the Kingdom: He designed life as good, where man and woman could live under His loving rule and experience His blessing.

But then we saw how The Kingdom Perished: Where Adam and Eve’s choice to live independent of God’s rule had devastating consequences for us all by bringing sin and death into the world. This was not good, so God decided to start over by creating a new people for Himself.

And so we came to Genesis 12, where God revealed to us through His call to Abraham, The Promised Kingdom: God’s plan to bless the nations through one people. We learned that God called Abraham, grew his faith, and gave him the child of promise. That child was Isaac, who became the father of Jacob and Esau. We next saw how Jacob stole his father’s blessing, but then God in His grace chose to bless Jacob and promised that all the blessings promised to Abraham would also belong to him. So Jacob becomes Israel and his 12 sons become the twelve tribes of Israel. And a nation is born. Once again God has a people living in God’s place under God’s rule. But there is still one thing missing: the promised seed, the One who will bring blessing to the world: Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah.

It is at this point we are moving ahead in God’s Story to see why the Church exists and how we fit into His story. And that brings us forward to Acts, chapter 1, where Jesus, “God’s promise of blessing to the world” has come. Now the book of Acts follows The GOSPELS: the story of Jesus’ life and teachings, his words and works, his grace and truth, all revealing the good news that with the arrival of Jesus came the Presence of the Kingdom. In the gospels, Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming the good news that the Kingdom of God has come near in him. He reveals himself as the promised Messiah, the one all Israel has been waiting for. So, many embrace him as king and begin following him. But then we learn that the religious leaders are offended by Jesus: by his healings on the Sabbath and his teachings of the kingdom. They are so threatened by this new teacher that they decide to do away with him. And yet, Jesus knew this was coming. It was all part of his plan to lay down his life for us. So after three and half years of showing his followers what God is like and what life in God’s kingdom is like, Jesus goes to Jerusalem where he is arrested, falsely tried and crucified. He dies a cruel death on the cross and is buried… But then the greatest miracle of all occurs. On the morning of the third day, Jesus rose from the dead. He appears to Mary, then to Peter, then to the 12. He then appears too as many as 500 of his followers. And now at the beginning of the book of Acts, Jesus meets with His followers one final time, to reveal to them their place in God’s Story.

So if you’ve brought your Bible with you today, let me encourage you to open them to Acts chapter one. Our text is Acts 1:6-8, where we will see that in revealing to the disciples their place in God’s Story, we too find our place in His story. But first, lets pick up the story with his followers. For even though they have been with Jesus from the beginning; even though they walked with him for three and a half years, witnessed all his miracles, heard his teachings, saw him crucified, experienced his resurrection, and had his marching orders… they still had one question that’s pretty telling. And what this question tells us is this:

1. We Tend to Miss the Point of His Story      So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority;” Acts 1:6-7

They missed the point of Jesus’ coming. They thought that now that Jesus had risen from the dead, he was going to take his rightful place as King, and restore the kingdom to Israel.   They thought Jesus was going to take David’s throne, set up His reign as a physical reign, and they were going to get in on all the blessings of Jesus’ life and kingdom right now. They missed the point because they thought Jesus existed for their benefit. They had plans for Jesus. And they were clueless about Jesus’ plans for them.

Now let me ask: Do we ever do that? Sure we do. We are just like those disciples. We love Jesus. We think Jesus is great. We worship Him. Why? Because He’s already done so much for us: He’s forgiven us, He’s included us in His family. He’s given us eternal life now. He’s made us friends with God. He’s given us so much. So much so, that we begin to think Jesus created the church for our benefit. We tend to think that the Church is a place we come to receive love, get support, find healing, get fed and encouraged. And the church, when it is healthy, will do all those things for us and more, because the Church is Christ’s spiritual body. So yes, it’s easy to think that the church exists for us. So like those first followers, we tend to miss the point of His story, BUT, Jesus isn’t letting us off the hook: He has a plan for all of us in His story; and here it is: “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8

Did you hear it? The church, the new people of God who are living under the rule of Christ, you and me, and every person who calls Jesus Christ their Savior and Lord, we, each one of us now exists for the benefit of those who do not yet know Jesus. We are His witnesses, today: right here in Robson, down the road in Eloy, up the road in Tempe, all the way to San Diego and even as far as Singapore, or Nigeria, or Russia.

You see, if you’ve been a part of Rock Springs for a month or from the very beginning, the one thing you’ve heard me say again and again is that we are a Church about Jesus. It is Jesus who gave his life for the Church. It is Jesus who joins us together as a Church. It is Jesus who is alive, who dwells in the midst of His people the Church. He is the rock on which we stand. He makes us the new people of God. And He gives us our marching orders. And our marching orders are clear: We are to make disciples of every nation. We are to make Jesus known to every tongue and tribe. We are to make Jesus known by how we love. We are to make Jesus known by how we live. And we are to make Jesus known by sharing our story – and our story is His story. That’s what a witnesses are.  We are a people who share out of our personal knowledge and experience, the facts about this One who has loved us, gave his all for us, has forgiven us and adopted us into His family. He’s crazy about us. And now His plan is to leave us here to tell the world the good news that Jesus is alive and wants to give them life like they’ve never imagined – a life they’ve always dreamed of. That’s His plan, and He’s leaving it in our hands.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus didn’t stick around longer? Why did Jesus not stick around for 40 years and preach to everybody. Can you imagine with me the initial strategy meeting Jesus had in heaven? Jesus is sitting around with the Host of Heaven, and he says, ‘It is about go time. I am coming to earth. Here is the plan for my global mission to be accomplished. My plan, here it is, guys. Are you ready? I am going to go down, get born as a human; I am going to live under a teenage woman for my early years of life. Then I am going to go live in a blue-collar household with a blue-collar dad in a good-for-nothing town for 30 years of my life. Then for 3 years I am going to preach the message of the kingdom of God to less than 1% of the world’s land mass. Then I am going to entrust the message to 12 men and then I am coming back.’ Well what’s plan B? You got a backup plan Jesus? Can I tell you this? There is no backup plan.  There is no Plan B

Here is what is really cool: There does not need to be a backup plan because our God has ordained to rescue every single one of his children from every tongue, every tribe, every nation, and every people on this planet, and he will not rest until He does so. And He will do it the way He said he would when he looked at his disciples and he said, ‘Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations. You are to baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You are to teach them to obey all that I have commanded, and lo, I will be with you always even until the end of the age.’ That’s his plan.

And here’s the beauty of His plan; in case you might have missed it. He’s already given us all we need to succeed. What? Yes, you heard me right. He’s already given us what we need to be His witnesses, to make disciples of all nations. In case you missed it, let me read you Acts 1:8 again: ”But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Did you catch it? In the Great Commission, where Jesus calls us to make disciples of every nation, He promises to be with us. In Acts 1:8, He tells us HOW He will be with us: By giving us the Holy Spirit. You see, when Jesus spoke these words, the Holy Spirit had not yet been sent. The reason He had not yet been sent was that Jesus was still with them. Remember what he promised them in the upper room. This is what he said, “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for He lives with you and will be in you.” John 14:15-17

Then he tells them, “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” John 16:7

This advocate, this helper, this Spirit of Truth, is the Holy Spirit who Jesus says will come upon his disciples and give them power to be His witnesses. This is the good news in this passage. Jesus gives us what we need to be His witnesses. He gives us His Spirit, the Holy Spirit to empower us to tell the world about him.

Too often we think that to be a witness of Jesus Christ means that we must learn how to articulate the gospel, and that is true. We want to speak the truth about who Jesus is and what Jesus has done but we too often we feel totally inadequate to do this. We don’t feel like we are smart enough or bold enough. But Jesus knew that about us. Jesus knew that if He left this mission to be done in our own strength, with our own words, we would mess up, we would struggle, we would get discouraged and we would end up just not doing it. He knew we needed help. That’s why He sent us the helper, the Spirit of truth, His Spirit, because it is the Holy Spirit’s very nature to lift up Jesus. In describing the Holy Spirit to his disciples Jesus says this of Him: He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. John 16:14

That means the moment you put your trust in Jesus Christ, His Spirit takes up residency in your heart. And now, it is His Spirit in us that gives us the courage, gives us the power, gives us the words to bear witness of Jesus. Because that’s who the Spirit is. He is the one who makes Jesus known. He’s the one who exists to bring glory to Jesus. He is the one who sends us, empowers us, and frees us to be witnesses of Jesus.

He is why there is no plan B. That’s how Jesus insured that we would be His witnesses. He gave us His Spirit! Because in God’s infinite wisdom, He decided that the best way to reach the ordinary everyday people of the world, was to put His Spirit in ordinary everyday people. That’s why in the book of Acts we see ordinary fishermen speak with extraordinary power and clarity, the message of Jesus Christ. And then those who hear them say stuff like this:

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus. Acts 4:13

THAT’S THE PLAN! That’s where we fit into God’s Story. The Church, the people of God, you and me, unschooled and ordinary people who have experienced God’s grace through Jesus Christ, are now, by virtue of Christ’s Spirit living in them, witnesses of Jesus.

This is why the Church exists. This is our purpose. The Church exists to make Jesus known. The Church exists to make disciples of Jesus. This is our place in the story. We now have a story to tell, for its all about Jesus. There is NO plan B.