Acts 1:6-8 | The Mission: From Self Focus to Witness

Remember, Jesus Christ is the light of the world. John tells us the world is a dark place, but Christ has overcome it. Notice already: the nations come to the light. This isn’t a narrow, national hope. It has universal scope from the beginning.

24 “My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. 25 They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. 26 I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. 27 My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 28 Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”

Remember, Jesus Christ is the promised Shepherd who came to teach Israel to obey the Lord. He established a new covenant through His death, burial, and resurrection. The everlasting covenant is not cancelled, it is fulfilled in Christ!

13 “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. 14 And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, 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.

The Jews were looking for a Davidic king, a restored Israel. The nations brought under God’s rule. From these passages, the disciples were rightly expecting a coming kingdom. The problem wasn’t that they were reading their Bibles wrong, they were reading them faithfully. The issue was scope. They were expecting the fulfillment to be national, immediate, and centered on geographic Israel.

What they didn’t yet understand was that God’s plan was better than they could ever have imagined! The Kingdom would first be established spiritually through Christ’s real and present reign, then it would expand globally, and finally be fully consummated in the new creation fulfilling not just the Mosaic covenant but the Abrahamic promise of Genesis 12:3

3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Lets stand together in honor of God’s Word

6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 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 end of the earth.”

Four things I want us to see from the passage this morning:

GOD’S KINGDOM IS A MISUNDERSTOOD KINGDOM

Verse 3 tells us that after His resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples over forty days, “speaking about the kingdom of God.” Forty days of instruction from the risen Lord. And then, at the end of it, this question: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

I want to be careful here because Jesus doesn’t rebuke them. He doesn’t roll His eyes. These men weren’t foolish, they were doing exactly what good Bible students should do: reading their Bibles and expecting God to keep His promises. The word they use is “restore” which is a strong word. They’re asking about a concrete, political, national reconstitution of the Davidic kingdom.

But here’s the thing, their problem wasn’t that they were expecting too much. Their problem was that they were expecting too little. Their vision of the kingdom was too small. They had their eyes fixed on Jerusalem when Jesus was about to send them to the ends of the earth.

Imagine a commanding general with a battle map in front of him. One of his officers has zoomed so far in on a single sector of the front that he’s lost the entire war. His intelligence is accurate. His reading of that sector is correct. But he has no idea of the scale of what’s actually happening. That’s the disciples. Their map is right. Their scale is off.

And isn’t this true of us? We can love the Lord, know our Bibles, and still have a Kingdom vision that’s been shrunk down to our own corner. We look at our traditions, our preferences, our church culture, our desired timeline. We sit in the same seats, do the same things, and over time the Kingdom of God quietly becomes synonymous with our own area of comfort.

When that happens, we don’t typically ask things like, “What is God doing in the world?” We ask, “Are things going like I want them to?” When the answer is no, we get frustrated, critical, dissatisfied. Not because God has failed, but because our vision is too small.

The Davidic hope is real. The promises to Israel are real. But their fulfillment in Christ is larger and other than the disciples had imagined, not the enthronement of a political king in Jerusalem, but the enthroned Son of Man at the right hand of the Ancient of Days, building His Kingdom through the Gospel being preached in every tribe, tongue, and nation.

GOD’S TIMELINE IS A SOVEREIGN TIMELINE

Look at verse 7

7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.

Jesus doesn’t just redirect the disciples’ question, He closes it. Hard. “It is not for you to know.”

That is about as clear as language gets. And the reason He gives is significant: the Father has fixed this by His own authority. The timing of the Kingdom’s consummation is not a matter of calculation or prophecy charts. It is a matter of divine sovereignty.

Jesus said it this way in the Olivet Discourse,

36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

The Son of God, in His incarnation, did not hold this knowledge. That should permanently close the door on any system or preacher or any book or prophecy conference that claims to have the timeline mapped. If the Son of God didn’t know, you don’t know. I don’t know. And that’s not a problem. It’s actually a gift.

Now, there are sincere believers who hold different positions on how history ends, premillennialism, amillennialism, postmillennialism and those conversations are worth having with seriousness and humility. These are real theological questions with real stakes. But when eschatological systems become tests of fellowship, or when the passion for figuring out the timeline outweighs the passion for the mission, then we have drifted from what Jesus actually called us to. He didn’t say, “Get the end times right.” He said, “Be my witnesses.”

I hold my eschatological views with open hands. What I hold with closed fists is this: He will return soon. He’s coming back. It is certain. And we have a mission to accomplish until He does.

Notice what Jesus says: the Father has fixed this by His own authority. This is not meant to frustrate you, it’s meant to free you! You are not responsible for making any part of history come out right. You are not responsible for triggering the return of Christ or figuring out the date. The Father has the timeline. What He has given you is a mission.

When I leave my kids at home for the evening, I give them a list of tasks. They always ask, “When will you be back?” I say, “When I’m back. Make sure these are done before I get home.” It’s not for them to know the timing. What’s theirs to know is the task. Same principle here.

The disciples’ question about the kingdom’s timing was really anxiety about control. “Lord, if we know when, then we can plan. We can prepare. We can be ready.” Jesus graciously takes away the control question entirely so that the obedience question can take precedence.

GOD’S KINGDOM HAS A SPIRIT-EMPOWERED MISSION

8 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 end of the earth.”

Jesus takes the disciple’s question about timing and replaces it with a promise and a mission. They asked for a timeline and He gave them power. They wanted clarity about the future and He gave them responsibility in the present.

Look at what this power is not based on. It is not based on their talent. These were not gifted communicators, multilingual scholars, or polished leaders. Peter was impulsive, Thomas was a doubter, and they still got things wrong after forty days of post-resurrection instruction. It’s not based on their personality. It’s not based on their programs. They had no VBS, no small groups, no church buildings, no printed materials.

What they were given was divine power for a divine mission.

R.C. Sproul said it well: “The church does not need more clever methods. It needs more power from the Holy Spirit.”

Think about your phone for a moment. It’s an incredible device. You can call someone on the other side of the world instantly. Send a message. Watch a video. I carry over 2,500 theology books in my pocket. But all of that, all the design, all the technology, all the capability is useless without power. A dead phone is just expensive glass and metal.

That’s the church without the Holy Spirit isn’t it? You can have the right doctrine, the right structure, the right programs, the right music. But without the Spirit’s power, it’s a dead phone.

But what is the Holy Spirit’s power? This is worth pausing on, because there are different answers to that question in the Christian world. The word Jesus uses here is dunamis which is dynamic ability, effective power. Not primarily emotional experience. Not primarily ecstatic expression. The power is defined by its purpose: “you will be my witnesses.”

There are sincere Christians who emphasize the Spirit’s power primarily through extraordinary experiences like tongues, visions, healings. Acts does record many remarkable things that we will learn about, but notice what Jesus says this power is for. It is missions oriented power. It’s power to testify and endure. It’s power to speak and to see people go from death to life. The Spirit’s empowerment in Acts 1:8 is not about what happens inside you so much as what happens through you.

There are at least three things that are involved in Spirit-empowered witness:

Illumination. The Holy Spirit opens the minds of witnesses to understand and share the gospel with clarity. This is why Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 sounds so remarkably different than Peter in the Gospels. He’s the same man with completely different power. The Spirit doesn’t just change your heart, He sharpens your mind and loosens your tongue for the gospel!

Boldness. The word translated as “witness” is martys which is where we get the word “martyr.” A witness tells what they know to be true regardless of the cost. That kind of courage is not a personality trait, it is a grace. It is given by the Spirit to ordinary, fearful disciples.

Effective Ministry. This is the most important one. The Holy Spirit doesn’t just empower the witness to speak, He works through the witness to bring the dead to life. The disciples are not just megaphones. They are instruments of the Spirit’s own sovereign saving work. This means that witnessing is never ever wasted. The Spirit of the Living God goes before you, He accompanies you, and follows after the word proclaimed. You aren’t in charge of closing the deal. You are called to be faithful. It is God who changes hearts.

This is why witnessing doesn’t take place inside the church walls. The mission field is out there. It’s in your neighborhood, your workplace, your family gatherings. The primary ministry that is most severely neglected in most churches, including ours, is the work of personal witness. And it is, by Jesus’ own words, our primary mission.

A witness doesn’t speculate. A witness doesn’t perform. A witness simply says, “Here’s what I know to be true. Jesus Christ died. He rose again. He calls us to believe in Him.” That’s the testimony. The Holy Spirit does the rest.

GOD’S KINGDOM IS BIGGER THAN WE THINK

8 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 end of the earth.”

Look at the geography. Jerusalem, this is right where they are standing. Judea and Samaria, the broader area around Israel, right? The ends of the earth. Three increasingly larger rings.

Have you ever thrown a stone in the center of a pond? The ripples start there and move outward to the edge. That’s how the gospel moves. That’s how it’s always moved. And notice that it doesn’t stop until it reaches the ends of the earth.

But there’s more than geography here. There’s ethnicity. Samaria was not a comfortable destination for Jewish disciples. Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Moving from Jerusalem to Samaria wasn’t just crossing a border, it was crossing a cultural, racial, and religious boundary. The Spirit-empowered mission doesn’t stop at our comfort. It crosses every line that humans draw.

The Kingdom of God is not a Jewish national hope, it is the fulfillment of that hope in Christ for the world. It is the love of God displayed in Christ for the world for every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. John Stott was right: “The Spirit of God is a missionary Spirit. He sends the church into the world.”

Isaiah told us this was coming:

6 he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Too light a thing. Not just to Israel, the ends of the earth. The Abrahamic promise in Genesis 12 was always moving toward this moment. God’s heart for the nations has never been a plan B.

When our vision of the Kingdom shrinks, we always turn inward. We start thinking about our wants, our preferences, our traditions. We evaluate everything by what it does for us. Division, gossip, and dissatisfaction are almost always symptoms of a Kingdom vision that has collapsed to the size of our own little area of the map.

When a church turns inward, it doesn’t stay neutral. It begins to turn on itself. Inward focus always produces something. It produces gossip, because we’re talking about each other instead of reaching others. It produces division, because we’re fighting over preferences instead of uniting around mission. It produces dissatisfaction, because nothing is ever enough when the focus is on us.

But when a church is focused on Christ’s mission, those things begin to die because you don’t have time to gossip when you’re burdened for lost people. You don’t divide over preferences when you’re united around the Gospel of Christ. You don’t sit in dissatisfaction when you’re watching God save sinners.

And when the gospel does its work, when the Spirit grips a heart with the reality that Jesus Christ is King over all nations and that He has commissioned His people to carry that word to the ends of the earth there is something that deeply shifts within us. You stop being a consumer. You start being a witness.

Several years ago in a pastoral leadership class, the teacher’s aide brought up an observation, many people treat the church like a restaurant.

Think about what you do at a restaurant. You walk in. You sit down. Everything is oriented around you. Someone comes to serve you. You look over the options. You decide what you want. You consume what’s put in front of you. And when it’s all over, you evaluate the experience. Was the service good? Did I like the food? Will I come back?

And if we’re not careful, we walk into church with exactly that mindset. The sermon becomes the meal. The music becomes the atmosphere. The staff and volunteers become the servers. And we become the customer.

So we start asking things like, “Did I like it? Was I fed the way I wanted to be fed? Did it meet my expectations?”

But you know, Jesus never called His disciples to sit at a table and be served. He called them to take up a mission and be sent.

Here’s how to diagnose the consumer posture in yourself. You find yourself more concerned with what this church gives you than with who God is sending you to. So you evaluate sermons, worship, and programs by what they produce in you, rather than whether they’re equipping you for the mission. And the telltale sign? When the church doesn’t meet your expectations, you get frustrated rather than burdened.

In Acts 1, the disciples wanted clarity, comfort, and control. “Lord, is this the time? Are you going to restore the kingdom now?” Jesus doesn’t give them what they’re asking for. He doesn’t give them a timeline. Instead, He calls them to trust the Father. He doesn’t give them comfort, He promises them power. He doesn’t give them control, He gives them responsibility.

The New Testament never describes the church as a restaurant. It describes it as a body, and you are a part of it. A family, and you belong to it. An army, and you have a mission.

So the question is not, “Was I served today?” The question is, “Who am I being sent to?”

So, before you leave this building today, I want you to have a name in mind. Not a program. Not a commitment card. A name. One person who is in your neighborhood, your workplace, your family, or your circle who does not know Jesus Christ. Someone the Holy Spirit has already placed in your path.

That is your Jerusalem. The disciples were standing in Jerusalem looking for a throne. Jesus told them the Spirit was coming, the mission was real, and the ends of the earth were waiting. Two thousand years later, we are the fruit of that mission. The gospel traveled from Jerusalem, through Judea, through Samaria, across continents, across centuries, and it reached us.

Now it’s our turn.

The Spirit has been given. The mission is clear. The Kingdom is bigger than we think. So let’s get after it.

Head: God wants you to know that you are not called to figure out His plan, He has called you to participate in His mission.

Heart: God wants you to believe that His plan is wiser than yours, and His mission is better than your preferences

So you can trust Him and give yourself fully to what He has called you to do!

Hand: God wants you to participate in His mission completely.

So identify one person God has placed in your life and intentionally begin to witness to them this week.