Stick to His plan
Text: Acts 1:1–11
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Today we’re focussing on the account of Jesus’ ascension in Acts, concentrating particularly on verses 6–8.
Our quick fixes don’t work.
Last week, I attended District Pastors Conference at Woodside in the Adelaide Hills, followed by the Convention of Synod at Lobethal. These events are always equally exhilarating and exhausting. Time together with pastors and church workers from around the District is encouraging, while sometimes the business sessions can get a bit long and, at times, tense.
In an ideal world, church meetings should be exciting and inspiring—after all, we’re meeting to discuss what God is doing through us, His Church, and determining how we can best use our resources to serve Him and each other. If that’s all every church meeting was, we’d have people lining up at the door!
Unfortunately, church meetings (whether that be a local church council or synodical convention) tend to involve high levels of stress, tension, and pressure to get things right. We all worry about the sustainability and health of our congregations and our LCA as a whole, so we put pressure on our leaders and even ourselves to get things right. This creates a very tense atmosphere.
For example, at District Convention we discussed the increasing number of pastoral vacancies around the District. Currently, there is not a single parish pastor on the entire Eyre Peninsula.
We’ve been somewhat protected from that situation here in the South East, though this congregation [St Paul’s, Millicent] has had to face the challenging reality of being unable to support a full-time pastor position for some years now. You have had to resort to agreements of different kinds just to have a pastor lead services week to week. As the pastoral needs have increased everywhere, it has become more and more difficult for us to help each other in that sense.
Wouldn’t it be great if we suddenly had an influx of 30 or even 50 graduate pastors come through to fill the gaps we have around the country? Frankly, even if you have the funds to pay a full-time pastor, finding one is even more difficult. The fact is, they’re just not there. There is no quick fix. God does not work with quick fixes.
The apostles were gathered around Jesus on the Mount of Olives. They had been with Him for three years, witnessing His ministry and learning from His teaching. They had watched Him suffer and die as he cried things like, “Father, forgive them,” and, “Why have you forsaken me?”
They had then seen the resurrected Jesus many times throughout the last month or so. Jesus had explained to them multiple times that the kingdom of God had come because He was here. He had described to them in countless parables that God’s kingdom is not the way we imagine it—it is hidden and often the opposite to what we think. It is not just for the Jews, but the Gentiles, too. It’s not just about fixing the nation of Israel, but recreating heaven and earth.
Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Acts 1:6
At this moment, at the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry, after everything they had seen and heard, the apostles still ask the question: “Lord, are you going to restore God’s kingdom to Israel now?”
After all of Jesus’ teaching about patient waiting and praying for God’s kingdom to come, they still just want the quick fix. They want their country to be free from Roman rule, or anyone else’s. They want to practice their Jewish faith without opposition. Jesus came to do far more than mere quick fixes.
On the back of District Convention and ahead of yet another “big vote” at the General Convention in October, it appears that we still haven’t learned that there is no quick fix for the LCA either. There have now been five failed attempts to introduce the ordination of women in our church over the last 30 years. The decision is really a simple “yes” or “no”, but here we still are. There is clearly no quick fix. Meanwhile, the church is facing many other critical issues which also have no quick fix.
We want quick fixes in our own lives, too. We’d all love instant solutions to our struggles, be that financially, relationally, or anything else. I’d love a quick fix for a child that just won’t go to sleep at 3:30 in the morning…
We search for quick fixes all the time—the whole point of technology is to provide quick fixes for everyday problems and tasks. And yet, we know that technology often has problems of its own.
So, whether you’re thinking about your personal situation, the local church community, the wider LCA, or Jesus saving the world, there usually isn’t a quick fix no matter how hard we try to find one.
God’s plans are beyond us.
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.”
Acts 1:7
Even when God’s plan was coming to fruition right in front of them, the apostles couldn’t see how God was at work. Can we have the same blindness?
If only our church had more young people, more money, more musicians, more pastors…
If only I had a bit more pay coming in week to week…
If only Jesus would get rid of all the world’s problems…
When we wish for or invest in mere quick fixes, we tend to miss what God is doing right in front of us and how He is calling us to a different way. The apostles were expecting Jesus to save the world their way, so they completely missed the fact that He had saved the whole world from sin and death forever. They just couldn’t understand it. Are we so different?
If you look around the Christian community in Millicent, you could focus on what it doesn’t have—big membership, multiple priests and pastors in the town, booming youth groups, lively large-scale events and activities…
Or, we could instead ask God to help us see what He has given and what new thing God might be calling us into. The occasional morning tea after church with the Presbyterians is a great example of a new thing. Simple though it is, I have no doubt that God uses those kinds of things to deepen our relationships with Him and other Christians.
Ultimately, it is not for us to know the times or dates the Father has set. We don’t need to know what the plan is, which means we also don’t need to create a plan to save the church, let alone the rest of the world. We should do our due diligence with the resources God has blessed us with, but we should avoid a “protect at all costs” mentality.
The Old Testament is one big lesson in what happens when we take matters into our own hands rather than entrusting them to God.
God promised a land for the people—the people are exiled from the land
God promised a king for the people—the kings become corrupt
God promised a priesthood and worship system—God tears the temple curtain in two
God promises to dwell in the temple—the temple is destroyed
Throughout the Old Testament, particularly the prophets, God gives His people things to help sustain a relationship with Himself. Time and time again, the people place more focus on the things and forget who the things are from and for.
Eventually, it would result in the Pharisees of Jesus’ day and their attachment to the Law, forgetting what the intent of the Law is in the first place.
At this point, we need to take a look at ourselves. Have we placed our trust in the Church—the community, the institution—instead of Christ, the head of the Church? The Christian Church around the world, including our LCA, is diminishing at an astonishing rate. The presence of the Christian faith at all in our communities is disappearing. Is God taking it away like He took away the promised land, the kings, the priesthood, and the temple from His people, so that we have no choice but to depend on His strength and His plans?
What about on a more personal level? Has God taken things out of your life that are precious to you, only to find that you’ve come closer to Him in the process? It is no coincidence that times of loss and grief also happen to be when we spend more time praying and reading the Bible.
We have power to be His witnesses.
“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
It seems as though we are powerless to fix the church, fix the world, or fix our own lives. Even though we keep trying, the quick fixes don’t work and we are ready to give up.
The good news is that Jesus did not leave us empty-handed. He gives us power, though not just the power to fix everything. The Holy Spirit gives us power to witness to Christ. The Christian Church is merely the gathering of these Spirit-filled witnesses. By baptism, we have this same Spirit and, therefore, the same power that enabled the apostles to establish the early Church.
To be true witnesses of the Gospel, we have to first be undone and unravelled by God Himself. Jesus undid the apostles and repeatedly proved their assumptions wrong.
Take Peter as an example. He was the most vocal and fiercely loyal of the Twelve, yet Jesus said he would deny knowing him not just once, but three times. You can imagine how offended Peter would have been. When the rooster crowed, Peter was completely undone, brought to his knees. He realised how fickle his faith really was. And then, on the shore of Lake Galilee over breakfast with the risen Jesus, he is absolved and forgiven three times to completely restore him. Though Jesus undid him, He then put him back together, and ultimately charged Peter with being the rock on which the Church would be built.
We, too, can only be freed by the gospel to be His witnesses after we have been dismantled and unravelled. Once that happens, we come to God in repentance and faith. He then forgives, restores, and rebuilds us. Then we can be His witnesses.
Though Christ is no longer among us in the flesh, He is with us by His Spirit. May He fill you with power to be His witnesses so that His kingdom flourishes, starting here in this congregation.
In the name of Christ. Amen.
