You are loved with a love that would silence every fear, could we know it?
Would comfort every sorrow, could we know it?
Would give peace even here, could we know it?
And Jesus is saying, that love has fixed the end of your story.
So take heart.
Take heart.
The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church.
May the Spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing.
Beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
We're going to be in Acts 1 this morning.
We'll be in Acts 1 for a little while.
If you recall, last week we started a new series going through the book of Acts.
And last week specifically, we were laying foundation for this study.
And I was endeavoring to explain to you why I chose the book of Acts.
We're going to be in it for a good bit of time.
So
What's the rationale for doing this?
And there were four things that I highlighted that we're going to return to as we walk through this book, four kind of touch points that we'll see again and again.
The first is that Acts anchors our faith in history and anchors us in history.
So it shows us these things happened and you are part of a lineage.
You're part of a story that's been going on for a long time.
Secondly, Acts gives us a vision of the apostolic reading.
Of Scripture.
How did the apostles read their Bibles?
And what we see is that they read Scripture as a witness to the slain and risen Christ.
All of Scripture is throughout Acts understood to be a witness to the crucified and risen Jesus.
So it anchors our faith in history.
It shows us scripture as a witness to Christ.
Third, Acts presents over and over again the resurrection of Jesus as the event that.
changes everything.
Because this event has happened, all things now are new.
All things now have been changed.
And we'll we'll see that over and over again.
And finally, Acts over r repeatedly shows us that the Holy Spirit is necessary for every good and lasting work.
The Spirit, the presence and empowering of the Spirit is necessary for any good and lasting work of the church.
So that's what we looked at last week.
Anchoring our faith in history
Scripture is a witness to Christ, resurrection as the event that changes everything, and the spirit as necessary to the work of the church.
And that was kind of laying down the foundations for this book.
Now, this week we're going to nominally enter into the narrative of the story, but we're not going to get very far.
And I'm not going to go very super slow as we go through Acts.
It would take multiple years.
But
We do have to stop this morning and look at the idea of kingdom, because kingdom is going to be a subtext under everything that happens in Acts.
The word's not used all that much, but the concept is going to inform much of what we see in this book.
So it's worth stopping here and considering it this morning.
So let me read for you Acts chapter one, verses six through eleven, but know that we're just going to look today at verses six, seven, and eight.
So let's start at verse six.
So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
And he said to them, It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
And when they had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven?
This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven.
So that's this week and next week.
This week we're just looking at what Jesus says about the kingdom.
Let's pray.
As we get into the text together.
So, Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you for your sovereignty that is gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love.
That you lead us, that you author us, that you work in us according to a good and loving will that we see in Jesus Christ.
And so, Father, this morning I pray for your grace as I endeavor to unfold your word and as your people seek to hear it with discernment.
We pray that your Holy Spirit would be present, working, making this effective, making this a time of your presence, making this, Lord, a time where you are at work in the midst
of your body, in the midst of the church.
So we pray for your grace now.
We pray downstairs for the children in the nursery and in the children's class that you would be with them, comforting them, calming them, teaching them, and building them up
into Christ.
So we all look to you now, Lord.
For your gracious will to be worked in us, we pray.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
So Jesus is raised from the dead.
And the first thing the disciples do, the first thing we see here in Acts is they ask him a question and they say to him, right there in verse 6, Lord, will you at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel?
So they recognize that Jesus is the king.
They recognize that he's the Messiah and He's raised from the dead.
He's back to life.
And they kind of come to him eagerly.
We get the sense that this is.
Been on their mind for a while, and they say, Are you now?
Is this the time where you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel?
Now, there's a lot of information in the background here.
Like I said, it's it it sounds like this is something they've been thinking about for a while.
And in fact, they have, because when we look at the Old Testament, we find that this idea of the kingdom or the kingship of God is.
Present all over the place, not merely where we find the word kingdom, because that's mostly focused on the earthly kingdom, David's kingdom, but we find this idea of the
kingship of God and his rule over his people throughout the Old Testament.
Let me just read for you a few passages.
You don't have to turn here.
Uh I I put them in your your notes so you can look at them if you want this coming week.
But let me just read to you a few passages.
Listen.
For kingship language here, and see what kind of vision the Old Testament is creating for us.
Isaiah 52, verses 7 through 8.
How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of him who brings good news, that's the word gospel, who publishes peace, who brings gospel, the gospel of happiness, who publishes
salvation, who says, here's the content of that good news, that gospel, who says to Zion, Your
God reigns, the voice of the watchman, they lift up their voice.
Together they sing for joy, for eye to eye they see the return of the Lord to Zion.
So this proclamation of the kingship of Yahweh as he returns to Zion.
Another passage that you may be familiar with comes in Daniel chapter seven.
Here's what it says in Jan Daniel's famous vision of the Son of Man, chapter seven, verse thirteen, and following.
Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the ancient of days, speaking of the song that we sang, and was presented before him, and to
him, to this son of man, was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, and that all people, nations, and languages should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one.
That shall not be destroyed.
So this anticipation of the king who will come and establish his kingdom, and his kingdom will never be destroyed.
And then perhaps just one more for you from the book of Zechariah, chapter 14.
It says this: on that day, living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea, half of them to the western sea.
It shall continue in the summer and in the winter.
And the Lord Yahweh will be king over all the earth.
On that day, the Lord will be one, and his name will be one.
There's many more passages we could look at, but the the general idea that the Old Testament gives of this hope of the kingdom of God is that the kingdom represents, to put
it simply, the end of the story.
The kingdom is where we're going.
The kingdom is when God will finally appear, break into history, defeat his enemies, save his people, reveal his name to all the world.
That's the kingdom that they're hoping for, the prophets are hoping for.
And this vision of the kingdom really is born when the earthly kingdom is broken and sent into exile, and the prophets are wondering what's going on.
And God begins to reveal that the true kingdom is this end that's coming.
When I will reign over my people.
So there's this hope for the kingdom.
And bound up in the idea of kingdom, as the disciples knew it, as the the Israel of the Second Temple knew it, bound up in the sense of kingdom is exile and hope.
Both those ideas are working together in the idea of the kingdom, because thinking of the kingdom means I'm not there yet.
I'm still outside of it.
I'm still on my way to it.
It's still on its way to me.
I'm still in the shadow lands, but the kingdom is coming.
So as soon as you talk about the idea of kingdom, you have this sense of exile.
I'm not there.
It's the home we're going to.
But as soon as you talk about that, you also have the sense of hope because the kingdom is coming.
We are going home.
We will be home.
We're moving back to
Eden and indeed beyond Eden, further into the heart of God than Eden ever was, the kingdom means the healing of the wound that humanity was dealt at the fall.
It means the reconciliation of God to man and man to man and man to creation.
It's the reconciliation of all things.
So the idea of kingdom is this joyful end of the story that fills us with a sense both of poignant exile and longing.
Hope.
And a simple way to put the kingdom, if you're thinking, what's the kingdom?
You can think of it this way The kingdom is God's rule over God's people in God's place.
God's rule over God's people in God's place.
And so with that sense of the kingdom in mind, the disciples come to the risen Jesus and they say, Lord, will you at this time restore?
The kingdom to Israel.
Restore the kingdom to Israel.
Because they're thinking these categories: God's rule over God's people in God's place.
They've got God's rule clear.
They're like, here's the Messiah, here's the king.
God's rule is here, Jesus, the risen one.
They've got that clear.
But now they're thinking, okay, so now God's rule is here.
Now God's people, and they're thinking the ethnic Jewish people.
Are going to be ruled by this king in God's place.
And they're thinking the physical land of Israel, Jerusalem.
And in that, they are, they're they're right that those things are part of the kingdom, but they're they're they're not, they're missing the fullness of what the New Testament
says, because the New Testament transcends those bounds of what the kingship is.
They're thinking, God's king, here he is, Jesus.
God's people.
Ethnic Jews, God's place, this land of Israel.
But Luke and the whole New Testament push those boundaries and say, you need to think of this differently now that Christ has come.
I'll give you just a few examples from the book of Luke.
And remember, the reason we can read in Luke to help us understand Acts is because it's a two-volume work.
They go together.
You're meant to have Luke in your mind as you're reading Acts.
So this is gonna be a lightning round, a few quick passages about the kingdom that we see in Luke.
Um, Luke chapter 6, verse 20.
Jesus says, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is, is the kingdom of heaven.
Not will be, is.
Yours is the kingdom of heaven.
Luke chapter 10, verse 9.
Let me read you this.
Jesus sends out his disciples and says to them, Heal the sick.
And say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you.
The kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus' disciples that he sends out in his name, he says, the kingdom is coming near to you in that.
And then again, down in verse 11, I tell you, uh, no, sorry, nevertheless, know this that the kingdom of God has come near.
So the kingdom of God is something that is drawing near in the ministry of Jesus' disciples.
Or Luke 11.
Chapter 20, where Jesus says, If it is by the finger of God that I am casting out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
If I am here casting out demons by the power of God, then the kingdom of God is here, is what Jesus says.
That kingdom, that hope, that home, it's come if I'm doing what I'm doing, says Jesus.
Luke chapter 13, verses 18 and following.
He says, What is the kingdom of God like?
To what shall I compare it?
It's like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in it.
Or he says, it's like leaven that a woman took and hid in a measure of flower until it was all leavened.
It's something that happens and then grows, grows and grows and grows.
And then a final one for you to wrap it up.
Verse chapter 17, verses 20 and following, Jesus says, But he was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come.
That's like what his disciples have asked him.
And he answered them: The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, Look, here it is, or there.
For behold, the kingdom of God is, this translation says, in the midst of you, but even more provocatively, within you.
The word Jesus uses there is a word for meaning inside.
The kingdom is within you.
The kingdom is so present, so near, so here that it's it's face to face with you.
And that's the point because what Luke does and what the whole New Testament does is to say the kingdom is where Jesus is, because Jesus is the king.
And if he is here, the kingdom is here.
If he's standing in your midst,
The kingdom is in your midst.
Where the king is, there the kingdom is.
And at the very beginning of Luke's gospel, Jesus is introduced in this way.
Luke chapter 1, verse 31 says this.
Behold, to Mary, he's speaking, Mary, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David.
He will reign over the house of Jacob for forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.
So where Jesus is, where the king is, that's where the kingdom is.
Where the king plants his flag, that's now the kingdom.
The kingdom is present there.
So that's the radical transformation of perspective that the New Testament brings, which is in the person of Jesus Christ, Yahweh God has come down to dwell in our midst, the king
of
of kings and where the king is, his kingdom is.
He brings the home with him.
He brings paradise with him.
He brings the end of the story with him.
He is the king.
Now what this means, as we kind of try to think through the implications, this means that the idea of God's kingdom, while it includes physical land, places, indeed the whole
cosmos, it is no longer tethered
To the physical land of Israel, nor is it tethered to the ethnic people of the Jews.
Certainly the land of Israel can be gathered in, is part of the cosmos that belongs to Christ, and the ethnic Jews are part of those who will be gathered into Christ, as Paul
says very clearly in Romans.
But the center of gravity of the kingdom has shifted now from the people of Israel to Jesus Christ, who is in himself.
The fullness of the people of Israel, the fullness of Israel.
He is the seed of Abraham.
And so he is the inheritor of the kingdom.
And the kingdom now is wherever he is, and indeed wherever he is obeyed.
The people, so God's rule is Christ.
God's people are now all those, Jew and Gentile, united to this Christ by faith and baptism.
And the place where Christ reigns is the whole cosmos, where he is reconciling all things to himself through his blood.
And specifically, the place where he reigns is wherever he is obeyed as king.
That's the transformation.
Where Christ is obeyed as king, there is his kingdom.
So your home can be his kingdom or can be a rebellious outpost.
Opposing his kingdom.
Our homes, if Christ is king in the home and we obey him, and and and dads and heads of home, we are prayerfully laboring to lead our families into obedience to the King Jesus,
the kingdom is there.
The kingdom is there.
Here in this church, where we're hearing Christ proclaim and obeying him, the kingdom is here.
In our neighborhoods where the kingship of Jesus and the ways of Jesus are being extended through his people.
The kingdom is there.
So the kingdom comes where he is obeyed.
In our own soul, here's the one to deal with first.
Is the kingdom here?
Has the kingdom come here in me?
Is it coming in me?
So there's a shift in vision of the kingdom.
It has come with the slain and risen Christ.
It is coming now, and it will certainly come in the end.
It's like a seed planted and growing.
It's like bread leavened and rising.
That's the idea.
Now, with this understanding of the kingdom, let's look again at the disciples' question and especially Jesus' answer to them.
So they say, Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
They're still working in that older paradigm of understanding what the kingdom is.
Jesus' answer to them is this: it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power.
When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all Judea, and Samaria, that's breaking the bounds of Israel, and all the earth.
So he's expanding their vision of what the kingdom is and what it means.
Now, their question really has two parts to it: a a-a-a people part and a timing part.
Look at it.
They say, Will you?
Will you at this time, there's the timing part, restore the kingdom to Israel?
There's the people part.
When and to whom?
Now Jesus doesn't say anything about the people part.
And that's because, again, he is now the center of gravity of what the kingdom is.
And Israel, as we'll see throughout the book of Acts, is part of the kingdom only to the extent that they believe in him.
So he doesn't say anything about that.
He's basically saying, You'll learn about that.
I'll let you figure that out over these next few chapters.
He does though.
Give them some degree of answer for their timing question, though with an ambiguity that they probably would have rather had more clear.
Because what he says to them is, yes, there is a future coming.
The kingdom is coming.
So he it's clear there, there is some kind of future sense with which the kingdom is coming, but three things about it.
It is not for you to know the seasons, the timer seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.
So, three things I want us to look at with Jesus' answer regarding the timing of the kingdom.
First, it is fixed.
It's fixed by the authority of God.
Second, it's fixed by the authority, not just of God, of the Father, the Father.
And third, it's not for you to know, he says to his disciples.
So let's look at those three pieces of Jesus' answer about the kingdom.
When is it coming?
Three things.
First, he says,
It's fixed.
It is, it's not, it's not up to debate.
It's not a maybe.
He says, it's not for you to know the times or seasons the Father has fixed.
So it's not just that God knows when the end is coming.
It's that He has fixed the ending.
He has established it by His own authority.
We might even say down to the very second.
To the degree that seconds matter as time and space dissolve around the returning of Christ.
But it it is, it is ordained by God, fixed by him.
Think about a carpenter lining up, you know, putting the lines on the wall, putting the cabinet up on the wall, getting it just exactly right, and then fixing it in place.
That's a purposeful act.
And Jesus says God has measured, arranged, and fixed the end.
of all things according to his authority.
And if he's fixed the end of all things, Christian, he's fixed the end for you.
Because the end is ultimately everyone's end.
We're all going to die in different ways.
We're all going to end our story, end our story in different ways.
That's of course just the turning of the title page when you die of your story.
That's that's the very beginning.
The the end, we're coming to the same
Place, the same end.
Everyone will come to this end.
And their experience in that end will deter will be based upon their stance toward Christ.
But my point now is if God has fixed this end, then Christian, he's fixed your end, because that's where you're going.
The end of your story, the way this story concludes, wraps up, and brings you into the new creation.
That's fixed.
That is certain.
Nothing the nations do, nothing the world does, nothing Satan does, nothing ultimately you do can alter what God has fixed in place.
So that's the first thing Jesus is saying.
There's a hand on the wheel.
This isn't just wild and chaotic.
It is fixed.
Second, he says, it's not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his authority.
He doesn't say, the king, the holy one.
The Lord, or just God, he could say all those things, but he says, the Father.
And by saying Father here, Jesus is calling his disciples and us to bring in to this moment all the fatherly love of God, the love of a father, the care of the father, the
wisdom of the father, the covering of the father.
So in the midst of their uncertainty, he says.
Your father has fixed this time.
Not an impersonal king, not a far-off God, but the father's heart that loves us has fixed this ending.
And that's worth meditating upon, Christian.
The very heart.
So God's life is the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father in the Spirit.
That is the life of God.
And He
Has brought us into that.
He has said, Come be my children.
Come enter into this.
Come say with my eternally beloved son, Abba, Father, come know my love as a father.
And Jesus says, That's the heart that has fixed the end of your story.
That's the heart that has fixed the end of your story.
So, Christian, Christian, we are living out a story.
That has been written by one who loves us with a love that we can't imagine.
You've been hearing, if you've been a Christian for a while, you've been hearing, God loves me.
You say, I know he loves me, I know he loves me, I know Jesus loves me.
We don't have any idea what it means to be loved by this God.
We have no idea what it means.
The love that is open to us and given to us is something we have.
No idea about.
It's as if we're in the desert with a thimble, and our greatest imagination of being loved would be if only this thimble could be filled.
And Christ takes us by the shoulders and turns us around and says, You're on the be you're this is not a desert, this is a beach, and you're on the shores of an ocean that goes
forever.
Plunge into it.
Know that you are you are loved with a love that would silence every fear.
Could we know it?
Would comfort every sorrow?
Could we know it?
Would give peace even here?
Could we know it?
And Jesus is saying, that love has fixed the end of your story.
So take heart, take heart.
And that helps us, that helps us do the next thing, he says, because it's not just fixed.
It's not just fixed by our Father who loves us in Christ, but it is not for us to know.
It's not for us to know.
Jesus says, that's not for you.
How wonderful, how wonderful that there are things that are simply not for us to know.
You simply can't know them.
It's not that they aren't there.
In my pride, in our pride, we think, well, if I don't know it, it's not, it's not clear, it's not true, it's not, it's not there.
There are infinite things, wonderful things that are true, and it's just not allowed for us to know them.
Why did this happen?
There's a reason, but it's not for you to know.
Why is this happening?
There's a reason it's not for you to know.
There are things, take comfort in your ignorance.
I just, I don't know.
And it's not for me to know.
And if you're like me and you want to be in control, you want to hold things.
And one of the ways you're in control is by knowing.
Give me the numbers.
Tell me how it's going to work out.
Tell me the statistics.
Tell me how this goes.
I want to know.
And Jesus says, you're not going to know.
This is not for you to know.
Rest the uncertainty of your times in the certainty of the Father's heart.
That's what he says to us.
Rest your uncertainty in the certainty of who he is.
And don't know.
You just don't know.
It's okay.
And this isn't just true for the end, for the kingdom coming, though it is.
This is also true for every day.
You wake up in the morning, it's the morning of the appointment.
It's the morning of the surgery.
It's the morning of the test.
It's another morning of unrelieved pain.
And we say, Lord, is now the time when this is over?
Is now the time when this is going to happen?
Is now the time when I get relief?
And so often his answer is.
The time is fixed by one who loves you and it's not for you to know.
And we rest in that.
We rest in that because we trust his heart.
And that's what the disciples are being called to do here.
But a little more than that, too.
They're not being called merely to rest, are they?
Because Jesus doesn't just say, that's going to happen when the Father says it will happen, end of story.
He does give them something to do.
Look at what he says in verse 8.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
And so ultimately, this really is Jesus' answer to their question.
Let me try to show you how.
Remember, the kingdom has come in Christ, is coming, present tense in Christ, and will come in Christ with his return.
With this statement here, Jesus is emphasizing that middle part.
It is coming now.
Because they say to him, When is the kingdom going to come?
And he says, You are going out to be my witnesses.
That's his answer.
The kingdom is coming as you go out and are my witnesses in the world.
As you go and proclaim the king, the kingdom is coming.
You're answering your own question.
The kingdom is coming as we, you disciples,
We, as their inheritors, proclaim the king among the nations, as they are his witnesses.
You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, all the ends of the earth.
Now, as we close, having looked at Jesus' response here, as we wrap things up, I want to take our last bit of time to look at this idea of witnesses.
Because that too, I know I've said this a number of times, this too is going to be important.
All throughout the book.
The idea of kingdom, but also this idea of a witness, a witness to Christ.
First thing to see about being a witness is what?
Look at it.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.
Meaning, witnessing and the presence of the Spirit are indivisible.
You need to be empowered by the Spirit to bear witness.
He doesn't say go get started.
He says, wait till you receive the Spirit and in the power of the Spirit go.
Nothing lasting can be made by the power of the flesh.
Nothing lasting can be made by trying hard and making something.
You can make a kingdom, you can make a business, you can make billions of dollars, but nothing that will last can happen unless the spirit is in it, unless the spirit is
empowering it.
And so we wait.
For the empowering of the spirit.
The disciples wait for the empowering of the spirit.
That's the first thing to see.
But then the spirit empowers them to be witnesses.
Witnesses.
What does this word mean?
What does it mean to be his witness?
When Jesus says this, he is echoing a passage all the way back in Isaiah.
Let me go there for you.
It's quite amazing to see the passage that he is echoing here.
This is from Isaiah 43.
And this is Yahweh speaking, the God of Israel speaking.
Isaiah 43, verse 10.
You are my witnesses, declares Yahweh, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am.
It says I am he, but the text is, I am.
Before me no God was formed.
Nor shall there be any God after me.
I am Yahweh, and besides me there is no Savior.
I declared and saved and proclaimed when there is no stranger, when there is no strange God among you.
And you are my witnesses, declares Yahweh, and I am God.
Also henceforth I am He.
There is none who can deliver from my hand.
I work, who can turn back?
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer.
The Holy One of Israel, for your sake I send to Babylon and bring them all down as fugitives, even the Chaldeans and the ships in which they rejoice.
I am Yahweh, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your king.
That's the text Jesus is referencing when he says, You will be my witnesses.
So what is Jesus saying about himself?
You know, we just read that and we think Jesus is gonna say, Go tell people about me.
Jesus, when he says, You will be my witnesses,
He's referring to this, and who's talking in this?
That you, he says, You will be my witnesses in Isaiah, to know and understand that I am.
Before me there was no God.
I am God alone.
So when Jesus says this, he's not just saying, Go tell people about me.
He's saying, I am the presence of the God of Israel.
I am the fulfillment of Israel.
Of the promises to Israel in your midst, and now you are going, knowing me, to proclaim me to all the world.
Jesus is claiming an awesome thing here.
He's saying, Here is, behold your God.
Now go and be my witnesses.
Witness, therefore, from Isaiah is this to proclaim, this is who God is.
That's what we see in Isaiah.
But there's another part to witness that we have to fold in here before we wrap up.
There's another part to witness, and that is that all through, and I mentioned this last week, all through the book of Acts, witness is tied together with the idea of Jesus'
resurrection.
So let me read a few of these for you.
uh Acts chapter 2, verse 23 and 24.
This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.
You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men, God raised him up by loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by them.
This is in the very first sermon Peter gives.
This is the emphasis.
And then down in chap verse 32.
This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.
Then chapter 3.
Verses 14 through 15, but you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you.
You killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead.
To this we are witnesses, to this, to this raising up of the crucified one.
We are witnesses.
And then maybe just one more, four, chapter four, verse thirty-three.
And with great power.
The apostles were giving their testimony or their witness, same word, to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
So in Acts, to bear witness is to say the crucified one is raised.
God came and was murdered, and he's alive.
The author of life died and is living.
That message is what it means to be a witness.
Now, let's put these two together as we end.
In Isaiah, witness means declaring, this is who God is.
In Acts, witness means declaring the crucified one is raised up from the dead.
And those two are meant to be held together.
That's the point here.
That's what I want you to see.
Witness, when we talk about witness, it is these two things indivisibly being held together, such that the apostolic witness.
Is this that the joy, the joy of the resurrection, the event that transforms the death of Christ into victory, the event that takes all of our hell born in love and turned into
blessing poured out over us, the the too good to be true return of the lost beloved, the resurrection of Christ, is indivisible from the proclamation: this is who God is.
Those two are bound together in the apostolic witness.
The declaration of who God is is from now on and forevermore the declaration that God has walked through our death.
God has gone to the depths of every sorrow.
God has swallowed up the hell of condemnation that hangs as a specter before every guilty conscience.
God has borne
Every enemy of his people, everything that could keep us from peace is borne away on the cross in his death.
And he is risen.
He's alive.
He's turned this to glory.
He's taken all the horror and turned it to beauty.
He's taken all the crooked paths that led down into the valley, gathered them all up and made them all lead up to the heights of his joy.
He is risen, and guess what?
That message is who God is.
This is who God is.
He is the one who does this.
He's the one who's known by this.
There is no other God than the one known in Jesus.
We read, we saw up at this text, the one known in Jesus who dies, descends, and rises again.
The joy of Easter morning, the hope of the resurrection.
The transformation of darkness to light as the sun rises, that is indivisible from who God is.
And that's the glorious message of the apostles as they go out into the world.
So that is the witness that they're giving.
God has come.
How?
When?
Where?
Where were the hailstones?
Where was the earthquake?
Where was the breaking down of the heavens?
Where was it?
He came on the cross as this man poured out his life.
And he came.
The garden, as the tomb was opened, and this man who bore everything is raised up, anointed now with the oil of gladness, and says, My end is your end, my joy is your joy,
my life is your life.
Enter in and know me.
This is God coming.
This is the kingdom coming.
This is the hope of the gospel.
And so the apostles bear witness to this.
The Spirit empowers this message.
This is the word we'll see in Acts later on that turns the whole world upside down, because all the world's values are scattered before this God.
And this is the coming of the kingdom, because as this Christ is proclaimed and received, believed and obeyed, the kingdom comes.
The kingdom comes.
And we now are part of this same story.
There's no break.
There is no break in Acts chapter one, verse six.
August 9th, 2026.
This is there is one continuous story.
And we are also in that kingdom and seeing that kingdom progress.
And this is the table of that kingdom.
This is this is a feast, a picture of the feast of the kingdom.
It's a little piece of bread, it's a little cup of juice or of wine, but what this is is a symbolic presence of the kingdom of God.
Among us, of the feast among us, because here, here in this church, here over this table, Christ is proclaimed as King.
And to the extent that you receive that, that you believe that, that we are obeying that by grace, his kingdom is coming.
His spirit is present with us.
He, Jesus, is present with us, Christians.
When you come up front here,
And you take this, it is right to see it as though the Lord Himself were handing this to you, saying, This is my body, this is my blood.
Do this in remembrance of me.
You belong to him.
Because at this feast, our King is uniquely declared.
Here he is declared, just like our verse.
Here he is declared as the one who truly died, his body, his blood, witnessed to us.
Here he is declared as the one who was truly buried, truly died, not just.
Not just suffering, not just seemed to die, truly died.
Here he is declared as the one who is truly risen, because you can't receive the the feast from his hands unless he's risen.
He gives us the feast of himself, crucified, because he is risen.
So this proclaims him dead, this proclaims him buried, this proclaims him risen, this proclaims him reigning, and as Paul reminds us, returning as our king.
As our king.
So, Christian, the kingdom has come.
The kingdom is here.
We're partaking in it now.
The kingdom is coming as we are faithful to this king.
And all this because Christ is risen to proclaim to us this is who God is.
This is who God is.
Let's pray, and then we'll come to this table together.
Father, we thank you for such a gospel, this gospel to which we are holding, in which we are standing, by which by your grace we are being saved.
This word that Christ Jesus, the anointed King, the eternal Son, died for our sins, was buried in our death, and was raised up again in invincible joy, and is now witnessed.
Among the nations.
Father, thank you that this is the gospel by which we know your heart, by which we know your name, by which we know who you are.
There is no God like you.
There is no hope like you.
Anchor our hearts in you, Father.
Bind us to Jesus Christ as our King, and may his kingdom, your kingdom through him, come in our own hearts.
In our families and homes, in this church, in our neighborhood, in this nation and in this world, we pray.
And as we come to this table now, Father, may this be a little outpost of the kingdom proclaiming that here Christ is King and He is raised up from the dead.
We pray all these things, Father, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Thank you for listening to this message from Kingstree Church in Sabina, Ohio.
To see more of the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10 a.m.
or visit our website at kingstreech.org.