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November 29, 2020
Jason Meyer (Downtown Campus) | Acts 1:6
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”—Acts 1:6
Outline
Introduction
Transition: Shattered Dreams and Misplaced Hopes
Application: Our Shattered Dreams and Misplaced Hopes
Conclusion: What Is Advent?
Introduction
This is the first Sunday of Advent. We have two questions right from the start: (1) What is Advent? (2) How does this passage relate to Advent?
First, we must always pause and ask what Advent is so that we are not using insider language that is hard to understand. The word advent simply means “coming.” Advent is a time when we prepare our hearts to celebrate the coming of Christ. But it would be a mistake to think that Advent is celebrating Christmas for four weeks. It is a time of longing and waiting. We see the darkness all around us and within us and we groan and lament and cry for deliverance as we await the second coming of Christ.
Second, how does this text relate to Advent? The very structure of the passage we have been studying in Acts will help our focus for Advent.
Overall Structure of this Section of Acts:
This structure reminds us that the Gospel of Luke is the first coming of Christ (Acts 1:1–3). The last part of our passage features the ascension of Christ and the promise of his second coming. Smack dab between them is the reason we are still here: the commission of Christ (Acts 1:4–8).
We have seen we will not accomplish this commission without the Holy Spirit. Now this week we overhear a question from the disciples. Jesus had just risen from the dead. He appeared to them multiple times. He told them to wait in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit to be poured out on them. In the midst of all of this, they have a question: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
These four weeks of Advent we will look more deeply into four things:
Therefore, in our text today (v. 6), we have a question about the kingdom. Many people assume this question comes out of nowhere and is further evidence that the disciples are just woefully out of touch. It would be like me saying to you, “Hey, I am going to get some Domino's Pizza. What can I get you there?” Someone who is out of touch or not really paying attention might say, “I will take a Happy Meal” (it seems natural for Christian Hedonists to order Happy Meals). OK, you clearly did not understand what I said. You can’t get Happy Meals at Domino’s because Domino’s Pizza is not McDonald’s.
In the same way, this question catches us off guard and strikes us as out of touch because most of us know the rest of the story in Acts. We know about the spread of the gospel to all peoples after Pentecost. But let’s try to get into the minds of the disciples to see if we can make sense of their question.
The question actually makes perfect sense if we are steeped in the expectations of the Old Testament. Think about it this way. Jesus has essentially taught them two things in the previous passage: the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3) and the Spirit of God (Acts 1:4–5). It would be natural for the disciples to put those two topics together as part of the Old Testament hope that the Spirit would be poured out in the latter days, the people of God would be restored, the reign of God through the great Messianic Day of the Lord would begin, and Israel would be restored to its former glory as in the days of the monarchy of David and Solomon.
In fact, if you look at their question, it seems that every part of it needed to be corrected.
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
They have a very narrow understanding of the kingdom and it needs to be corrected, expanded, and transformed. That is the main point of this text as we look at this question.
Main Point: Jesus often has to take our misplaced hopes about the kingdom and correct, transform, expand, and purify them beyond our expectations.
Some people say there is no such thing as a bad question. That is not the case here. I love the way Calvin commented on this question: “There are as many errors in the question as words.” In fact, in our text today we can look at the parts of speech in this sentence related to the Kingdom and see three places where they require Kingdom correction: the verb “restore,” the noun “Israel,” and the adverb “at this time.”
At the heart of the question is the concept of restoration. Will the kingdom be restored? Restored to what? What it once was? When anyone thought about the kingdom and Israel, they would think back to King David and Israel’s monarchy. It seems like this was promised in Luke’s Gospel as early as the birth of 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, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.—Luke 1:32–33
In the days of David and Solomon, it was a territorial kingdom. There was a kingdom stretching from shore to shore. It could be drawn on a map with borders. This was the Messianic hope of Psalm 72:
May he have dominion from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth!
May desert tribes bow down before him,
and his enemies lick the dust!
May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands
render him tribute;
may the kings of Sheba and Seba
bring gifts!
May all kings fall down before him,
all nations serve him!—Psalm 72:8–11
Will Caesar and Herod and Pontius Pilate fall before him? Will the Romans serve him? And the kingdom certainly hinges on the King, but it also involves the people that belong to him. That is the next part of the question that needs correction.
The noun “Israel” shows that the disciples were still expecting a national kingdom. The kingdom (territorial) would be a national and political kingdom. If the Spirit has come, doesn’t that mean the reign of the Messiah has begun and thus the time has come for the nation to be restored from its ruins? They thought the restoration of Israel must mean a return to national independence in which they are slaves on no one and rulers over others. It means they will be finally free from the Romans. It would be a reversal that the Old Testament had promised: Israel would be the head of the nations and no longer the tail. They would be ruling over the Romans rather than the Romans ruling over them.
And let’s remember what these very same disciples had asked back in the Gospels. They had the expectation that they would have places of authority in this restored kingdom. If the kingdom were restored, they were going to have the top government jobs (“And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory,’” Mark 10:37). The government will be on his shoulders and we will be sitting pretty up there with him. And they believe the time is now. That is the third part of their question that needs correction.
The disciples are asking if all of that is now. Will the kingdom be immediately established in accord with their expectations? Remember that they have been on a roller coaster of emotions with shattered expectations. Nothing that happened in the previous three weeks (or three years for that matter) really fit with their expectations. They thought they were signing up for a Jewish renewal movement—a restoration, a renewal of the monarchy. They thought Jesus was the true king. Many Israelites had been suspicious of him. Many had turned against him. But now he had risen. It would be obvious to all that he was the true king.
It would be easy to see Jesus in terms similar to King David. David was a kind of king-in-waiting for a few years. Samuel anointed him as the rightful king in 1 Samuel 16. But he was opposed and on the run for his life. He has a small band of mighty men that traveled with him and waited for the time that he would be seen as the rightful king and then they would reign together. It was not until after the death of Saul and 2 Samuel 2 that David was proclaimed the king over Judah. And even then Ish-bosheth was declared to be the king over Israel. There was more fighting and bloodshed until 2 Samuel 5, when David finally began to reign over all of Israel and he ruled for forty years. Would Jesus now restore the kingdom as the king of all of Israel and rule over all the nations?
Jesus had to correct the misplaced expectations of the disciples several times in his ministry. In fact, when the disciples were arguing over who would be the greatest, Jesus did not rebuke them and say that they should not want to be great. He corrected their quest by redefining for them what true greatness was: the greatest shall be your servant, and the first shall be last. Do not seek to rule over all; seek to be a servant of all. That is what Jesus did. He did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom—a payment for many.
He told them that if they wanted to save their lives, then they would actually have to lose their lives. If they tried to call the shots and take charge and attempt to save themselves, they would lose the life they were trying to save. It would fail. But, if they gave over control to him (lose their lives), they would save their lives because he alone can save them.
They were disillusioned by the cross. As the disciples on the road to Emmaus said, “We had hoped he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” And now the Resurrection has rekindled those same hopes.
Now he is telling them something profound. If you want to see your kingdom dreams fulfilled, you first have to lose them and die to them. You must die to the dream of an ordinary earthly kingdom with normal governmental power like you have known before. He had to take their narrow hopes and correct, transform, expand, and purify them beyond their expectations.
In the same way, we must be willing to take all of our dreams and hopes and expectations to Jesus—and then be open to how he may transform all the categories of our questions.
Application: Our Shattered Dreams and Misplaced Hopes
We can all identify a gap between what we have and what we hoped for, where we are and where we thought we would be, our experience and our expectation. The distance between what we expected and we are experiencing is called disappointment. The greater the distance, the greater the disappointment and disillusionment.
I do not know what the gap is for you in particular, but I have some guesses. Some of you are single and you thought you would be married by now. Some of you are childless and you thought you would have children by now. Some of you thought you would have a better job (or have a job at all). And in some ways, Christianity makes it harder to deal with these disappointments.
Here is what I mean. Sometimes, explicitly or implicitly, we think that if we are a Christian and God is our Father and he loves to give good gifts to his children, then our lives will look different than they do. The dream of Christianity that we have does not involve a hard marriage or a failed marriage or a marriage that never happens. We do not expect that the Christian dream will involve a hard job or a failed job or no job. We do not expect that we will have children that constantly challenge us or reject us. We do not expect that the people who are supposed to love us end up hurting us most. We do not expect that loved ones will be wayward and walk away from the Lord.
We certainly do not expect that our children will die suddenly and without warning. We do not expect car accidents, pandemics, job loss, and miscarriage. And none of us can answer why these things happen with unmistakable clarity.
But here is what we can do. Three things: (1) lament, (2) look, and (3) lean.
A) Lament the Loss
First, lament the loss. We can look on the unfulfilled longings—the gap between what we expect and what we experience—and grieve the gap, lament the loss, mourn the painful moment. I invite you to do that. The Bible calls us to do it. It has been said that complaining about God is a sin, but complaining to God is a psalm. He invites us to bring our questions and doubts and complaints and lament them in his presence.
B) Look to the Suffering Savior
We can lament those things in his presence because we have the promise of his presence. This is what Advent is all about. He never promised it would be easy. He only promised we would never be alone. He is God with us.
I have said this many times, but again and again and again, in suffering, we need to start not with the abstract sovereignty of God, but with the specific suffering of God. God did not spare his Son. He suffered in excruciating ways. He was slandered, reviled, mistreated, oppressed, forsaken, and abandoned and all alone so that you will never have to be alone. He died so you can live. He paid the penalty for sins so you could be set free. The very thing that caused the disillusionment of the disciples is the decisive hope for us. Jesus was temporarily forsaken so that we would always be accepted. The Father turned his back on his only Son, so that he would never turn his back on his children.
I read this week about a pastor who lost his son in a farm accident as he fell into an auger and his body was torn apart. What are you going to say at the funeral of your only son? You have to start with how the Father saw his only Son be torn apart on the cross. He can walk with you in suffering because he not only knows about it in theory, but because he knows it in experience and can sympathize with us in our weakness.
C) Lean on the Everlasting Arms
Lament the loss, look to the Suffering Savior, and lean on the everlasting arms. The high King of heaven is exalted and reigning in heaven. But do not think that because he is high and exalted you have to climb up to reach him. He is gentle and lowly in heart. Rather than climb up to reach him, you can collapse down to him. He will catch you. He will carry you. You can lean on the everlasting arms. Do not doubt in the dark what you have seen in the light. We have to hold on to what we know in his presence, even when we have many other things that demand our attention in the dark.
What I mean by Advent can be further clarified with a word picture from Eastern Airlines Flight 401.
Conclusion: What Is Advent?
This flight took place on December 29, 1972. This flight departed from New York for Miami. At 11:32pm, the Captain attempted to lower the landing gear. There is a light on the instrument panel that was supposed to turn green to confirm that the landing gear was extended and locked. It did not turn green. The Captain decided to call the air traffic control tower and tell them they needed to circle until they could get the confirmation on the landing gear.
The plane climbed back up to 2,000 feet. The captain ordered the first officer to turn the autopilot on and they attempted to fix the problem. The cockpit crew tried to slide in a replacement bulb (a two-square-inch bulb with a green plastic lens), but it kept jamming. At some point, the captain accidentally bumped the control wheel, which disconnected the autopilot. That accidental bump caused the nose of the plane to tilt down a few degrees. The plane started to drop at a rate of 200 feet per minute.
Then there was the chime of an alarm alerting them to a 250 foot drop, but by this time the captain, the first officer and the second officer were all preoccupied with replacing the bulb. At 11:42, the first officer said, “We did something to the altitude.” The captain said, “What?” The first officer said, “We’re still at 2,000 feet right?” “Hey, what’s happening here?” the captain shouted. Those were the last recorded words.
The plane crashed into the Florida Everglades. The entire cockpit crew (the pilots and the flight engineer) died, along with two of the ten flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers on board. There were 75 survivors and 101 fatalities. The plane crashed because of preoccupation with a $12 bulb.
Advent calls our attention away from all the blinking warning lights around us and it warns us against trying to jam all of those things into place. It calls our attention back to the main thing. Do not lose sight of your Savior. I am not saying that the warning lights around us are insignificant. They may feel really big. They may be really painful things, but they are not the main thing.
There are some things that we just cannot jam into place. They just do not seem to fit. I do not know why you are still single. I do not know why you are still childless. I do not know why you lost your job. I do not know why you are divorced. I do not know why you were abused. I do not know why your loved ones have wandered away from the Lord. I do not know why your loved one died. I do not understand when they died or how they died anymore than I understand why that tractor rolled over on my beloved uncle this year. I do not know why parents ever have to bury their children.
There are things we cannot know. Deuteronomy 29:29 says that the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever.” Our focus should be on the things that God has revealed that we can know and trust. I cannot answer some questions, but this I know. I know that I do not want to become preoccupied with lesser things so that I lose the most important thing for all eternity. I know the things that gloriously cannot change. I know that Christ has come. I know that Christ has died. I know that Christ is risen. I know that Christ will come again. I know that he is working all things for good even now. I know that these hard things are producing for us a peculiar glory that we will get because of that. I know he is with us always. I know he will set all things to right and make all things new. I know the sufferings of this life cannot compare to the glory that will be revealed. I know that even though creation is groaning, one day it will be set free from its bondage to corruption and enjoy the freedom of the glory of the children of God. And I not only know what I have believed, I know whom I have believed and I’m persuaded that he is able to keep my life which I have committed to him. I know that the protection of his child and treasure is a charge that on himself he laid. I know that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor things present nor things to come, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor any flashing light in all creation could ever separate me from his love.
Advent says, “Do not be so preoccupied with the warning light; come behold the wondrous mystery of the main thing once again. Christ has come. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”
Main Point: Jesus often has to take our misplaced hopes about the Kingdom and correct, transform, expand, and purify them beyond our expectations.
Outline
We can look at the parts of speech in this question related to the kingdom and see three places where they require kingdom correction.
Discussion Questions
Application Questions
Prayer Focus
Pray for a grace to not lose sight of Jesus even as he has to correct and transform our expectations.