Dan: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to episode 21 of trainingforliferedeemed. I'm your host, Dan. And I'm here as always with my dad, David Jackson. And in this episode, we are looking at Acts chapters one and two, and we are looking at Jesus raising from the dead, the eye witnesses, the importance of the Ascension, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. So then let's start with the importance of eye witnesses for the accounts of Jesus' resurrection and the fact that,, our faith is not based on, you know , visions and all that kind of stuff. It's actually based on events that happened in history that people saw.

David: 1:00

Yeah, so you've got 120 people hiding in the upper room. Everything they thought was going to happen fell to bits as Jesus has been crucified. He's risen and he's ascended, and they're scared the police are looking for them and they're huddled together and they're making decisions about what they're going to do. And one of those decisions is they had to replace Judas. That's another question altogether. They've got to have 12, but the point was that the 12th one had to be another person who had been with Jesus from the beginning of his baptism, with John the Baptist through to the present moment. So you needed a full time student who had been listening, watching, eating with... He'd been there for the whole thing. And they appointed Matthias he was one of probably scores of people who could have been candidates for that position. We know that Jesus sent 70 disciples out on a prac at one stage. So we don't just think of a 12. Later on Peter. Paul talks about Jesus had 500 people, saw the risen Jesus at the same time. So the new Testament is full of the written accounts of the experience of people who were with Jesus who studied under him, who saw what he did, who were with him for six weeks of training after he rose from the dead. So our faith is not like any other philosophy or faith or religion on the planet. It's not a collection of myths. It's not one man sitting down under a Gumtree somewhere, having deep and meaningful thoughts that he then shares with the planet. And I'm not picking on just one person there . This in our generation, everybody sits under their Gumtree and thinks that they've got, I don't know if you , heard , there was an interview on the news a little while ago. Uh , ripest was coming out of court. He'd been found guilty and was released on appeal. And of course the journalists scrum is waiting for him and there's six foot five Paul of rugby league muscle goes barging through it. And I reckon this journalist lady, must've been about four foot 10 and weighed all of about 50 pounds. She goes, scuttling up next to him and says, '"are you going to continue to speak your truth in court? And all that? That was the stupidest question I have ever heard what you've got a rapist and you've got a victim and you've got two different truths. And they're both true. We're basing our faith, not on what we want to be true, but what actually happened. And you know , people say, you know , ïf God's really there. Why didn't he come down and talk to us? Well, he did. And thousands of people saw it and we have their written testimony, lots of written testimony. So that in that upper room, they're organizing to say, when we speak to the people, when we go down and we spread this gospel, we're going down to tell them what we saw and what we heard. And like John says in his, in his sermon, 1 John, we saw, we heard, we touched, this is reality. Not some make-believe fantasy. And if they saw Jesus rise from the dead, well, that's that! Then my faith is on solid ground .

Dan: 4:35

Yeah. It definitely gives you a lot more greatest sense of surety, I guess when it comes to what you believe when you actually go back to those eyewitnesses. I remember too, I was running an alpha course recently with a lady who's kind of new to it all. And as I'm talking through the eye , the fact that there were so many eyewitnesses to things, and then the fact that they didn't actually get, you know , they didn't come famous because of their , their being witnesses. In their lifetime they were pretty much all murdered or tortured or put in prison. They weren't eye witnesses who, you know , made a living off the , who became a like today. When we think of people who make up stories and become famous. That didn't happen, t hey, if, if it was made up, b ut they were killed for it, they could have easily just gone. No , I didn't. It's a made up story and they wouldn't have been killed for it. But instead they, they stuck to it as the fact that, you know , it was a fact I saw this happen and it's actually worth dying for , which I think really gives a greater strength to what we're, what we're talking about and who Jesus is, what he's done. And you know , we're about to look at the holy spirit and how he, he comes in and helps us as well. Yeah . So Dad you have this thing that you talk about when it comes to Jesus, being a king and there being these stages to him becoming a king, this idea of him being anointed at baptism, and then going out and winning victory before he then gets ascended and enthroned as king. Can you walk us through that in a bit more detail?

David: 6:00

Yeah. I, one of the sad things is when people talk about the gospel, we tend to focus on the birth of Jesus. We focus on the resurrection of death and resurrection of Jesus, but we leave out all the other bits. So if I was to summarize the gospel, which we've put in our Qs&As4kids, question 81, if you want to go and look it up, it says, the gospel is the good news concerning the birth life, death, resurrection, Ascension, and the outpouring of the holy spirit. And the fact that salvation is offered to people of every nation, tribe and language who put their faith in him. Now we leave out the Ascension and, that that's a huge gap in our understanding of who Jesus is. There's a tiny little line in Acts 2. Peter is really nailing this crowd, this Jesus whom you crucified, God has made Lord as well as Christ. Most Bibles translate it. He made him Lord and Christ. That's backwards. He becomes Lord at the Ascension when he is enthroned next to God, the father, in glory, the , that scene where Jesus effectively jumps on a cloud and goes up into the sky is the fulfillment of Daniel's vision back in Daniel, 7:13, and 14. And I think we've got a bit of a blind spot here. I've gone through all of the, to study Bibles and cross-referenced Bibles that I've seen. And I cannot find any of them that put a cross-reference between Daniel 7:13, 14, the son of man rising on the clouds of heaven to be seated next to the ancient of days and Acts 1:9.

Dan: 7:52

When Jesus rides on a cloud and goes up into heaven to be seated on a throne next to the Ancient of Days.

David: 7:57

Yeah , there's the fulfilment. There's the prophecy and our study Bibles don't connect the dots. Yeah.

Dan: 8:02

And that's part of the whole reason why Jesus calls himself, the son of man throughout his lifetime too. He's he's that son of man, that's going to do this. I'm the go back and read what Daniel saw. I'm going to do that. The same Son of Man's coming back on the same Claire to judge the world, John, the apostle writes about that in revelation. So why do we miss this Ascension thing? And I think it's because if we go back to the old Testament, which we're not in the habit of doing well enough, there are stages in appointing a king. So God comes down and says to a prophet, I've decided to appoint a king. I want you to go and find this bloke and anoint him. So Samuel for example, goes off and he finds Saul and Saul's minding his own business. And Samuel comes up behind him and pours a horn of oil over his head and says, God made you king. And the next thing you know, the holy spirit comes on Saul .

David: 8:55

He goes off and kills a bunch of Philistines and the people go, oh wow, God has sent us a king. That's just what we need. And Saul hides in the baggage. And they go and drag him out and they make him king. And that's all very well and good, except that he was a bit of a disaster. God gave them the king they wanted. And he was a failure. Yeah . So then he comes back to Saul and he says, okay, we need to replace that fella grabbed your horn of oil. Again, go find the son of Jesse. And he goes, and he checks out all the sons of Jesse. And none of them are the right one. It's the runt of the litter he needs. It's a kid. He's in his early teens. He's out looking after sheep and Samuel comes up and tips the oil over his head. The next thing you know, there's David putting a rock through Goliath's head and leading the whole defeat of the Philistines. And eventually we find that David is the king and it's the holy spirit that empowers him to do that. When David comes up, it's the people that say, yay, this is the right king. We've seen him defeat our enemies. We've seen God work through him. He must be our king Isn't that. Wonderful. And they put him on the throne. So along comes Jesus. We've got a prophet saying, here comes your king.

Dan: 10:08

Yeah. He gets anointed. He goes out, does battle in the wilderness, donating the same temptations,

David: 10:14

You know , goes out and he doesn't just meet Goliath. If he goes out and meets Satan and he defeats Satan at the temptation, Adam lost Jesus won, Do the people receive him and put him on the throne? Nope. They killed him. And he rises from the dead. So Hey, wait a minute. He just defeated. Death. Philistines were good enough for David, but Satan and death , here he is. And then he spent six weeks explaining this to his disciples. And then he's enthroned, not on earth, but in heaven. And he is now the king who rules and the holy spirit comes down to empower his people to be his kingdom and advance that kingdom to reclaim his people and his creation.

Dan: 11:09

Okay. So the next thing here is he's sending this holy spirit down into the world because he's ascended, right? So he's no longer with us. He said, he's going to send another comforter or whatever word you want to use to send down, to be with us, to be with us forever. And this is meant to be fulfilling old Testament prophecies. You had Peter talks about it in his sermon on the steps of the temple, but what's, what's the big difference here with the gift of the holy spirit that's coming at this point, because we do see the holy spirit in the old Testament acting at various times with different people with David at certain times. You're like you mentioned David Saul and he's with some of the prophets at different times as well. How is it different now with the holy spirit compared to what it was like then?

David: 11:56

Okay. So you see three different things happening with the holy spirit. the first one which you don't see is that you've got a person is dead in their trespasses and sins. They're enemies of God. They've got a hard heart. They're blind, they're deaf, they're insensitive and they just don't get it. And it's only the work of the holy spirit that they are born again, that they get a new heart and they're able to understand the gospel and they're able to put their faith in the promised saviour. The holy spirit was doing that right back. Enoch. So being born again is something that is not new in when we come to the book of acts. Now the disciples hiding in the upper room, they're scared and everything else, but they're believers. They're all born again. They've all been committed, committed themselves to Jesus. They'd been following him for years. This is not being born again. That's already happened. We also see in the old Testament that every now and again, the whole God would come down. The holy spirit would come down and he would come on somebody and empower them for something remarkable. Samson's the classic example. It was the holy spirit enabling him to do these mighty works, but then there's a third thing that's happening. And I think this is the bit we miss. If you wanted to talk to God in the old Testament, you had to find God where he was visibly dwelling with his people. And he did that behind curtains in a quarantine set up that we know as the tabernacle or the temple. So if you, you know, here is God in the tabernacle and the temple , visibly appearing. This glory cloud comes down and fills the tabernacle. There's this terrifying sight from the top of Mount Sinai moves into the tabernacle and you go, God is now he has his residence with his people. He's not way off in heaven on dropping in occasionally and occasionally filling us with power to go and do a job. And then we're on our own Again, he's actually dwelling with his people, but you've got to go through the quarantine fence and the priests and everything else. If you want to talk to him. Now, something extraordinary has happened in 586, BC , God left the temple, the people worshiping idols and , and he doesn't come back until Jesus comes in. Yeah, it's an empty box. People are going up to an empty box to pray to a God who isn't there because they've been too busy, worshiping idols and doing other obscene things in his temple . So in walks Jesus and God is in the temple, but he hasn't taken up residence there. He is. God. So Jesus makes all these sarcastic comments really, and a tear down the temple. I'll rebuild it in three days and they all think he's about to bomb the building. He's talking about his own resurrection. He is the temple. He's the place where God dwells with man. And so when he goes to dwell in heaven, again, on his throne, it's the holy spirit who then comes down and in Acts 2, he takes on the sound and the appearance of the glory of the Lord that filled the tabernacle and the temple. So you've got your little pillar of fire and you've got your roaring winds and everything, but he isn't filling, filling the room. I imagine 120 people sitting in there with this deafening roar. Like Niagara falls. We might remember, did you get to Niagara Falls. the roar is unbelievable and you've got that noise. And then you've got like a candle flame sticking on the top of the heads of 120 people. And that's telling you, he's not moving into the building. He's moving into the people. And this is now permanent residence .

Dan: 15:57

So it's essentially God coming to live with us and in us

David: 16:01

Because Jesus has taken away our sin. We are now holy enough in Christ, not by our behavior, but we're holy enough in Christ that we are the holy of Holies and 24X7 God dwells in me, everything I say, think, and do I'm doing in the holy of Holies with God, right there with me. That's a new thing in history. And it takes a while for the apostles. We're going to see this later on. It takes a while for the apostles to the Jews and the idea that a Samaritan be holy enough,

Dan: 16:40

To let a gentle let alone a Gentile.

David: 16:44

I mean seriously. So whenever when you do those first breakthroughs in acts that people have to witness that this is really happening. And so you have these other little Pentecosts as it were where the Samaritans receive the gift of the holy spirit and the upon the Jewish apostles from Jerusalem are standing again , oh flop, I guess we have to admit they can come.

Dan: 17:11

Um, I think Cornelius, Cornelius

David: 17:13

And all these people well eat mice and unclean foods and stuff. And they haven't been circumcised, but if, if , if God just moved into dwell in them, how can we not welcome them into the church, baptize them into Jesus' name. This is all happening. And , and he does that to some people before, during or after they get dunked in the water. So it's not the water that makes it happen. It's God who makes it happen. And by the time you've finished, just introducing these new people in the beginning of acts, this is now normal. So we don't get this any delay before, during or after stuff happening. What we have now is Paul says one, when he was one Corinthians 12:13, we are now all partakers of the same holy spirit. And we together are the body of Christ. The template of the holy spirit. That's pretty powerful stuff.

Dan: 18:11

It sounds good to me. Okay. Well that brings us to the end of this episode. So this episode covered studies one and two. So if you would like to come over and grab those studies, get that PDF. So you can do this with your growth group, with your Bible study, with kids at school, whoever you want to do this with, you could do it in your own personal time. come over to trainingforliferedeemed.com/21. And you can get the show notes and the study notes as well there. And we hope that you'll come and join us next week. When we head off into acts three and beyond.