Promise

Recently, Christopher downloaded a series on Batman called The Dark Knight Rises. Has anybody seen The Dark Knight Rises series? And he had it going last night and I was able to get down and I watched a little bit with him. But I was thinking this week of all the series I've seen and books I've read that have series.

And I thought I'd ask you to throw out what's your favorite series? I got Dark Knight series on here for somebody. He could say it himself. But what else is your favorite series? No idea? That's not a series.

Oh, you mean like when? No, no, no. Pre-Dean Cain. He's not the first.

Christopher Reeves when he was Superman in different movies. Okay. Superman.

Well, that's a series. All the different ones he was in progressed through the life of Superman. Okay, what else? I refuse to write that one.

No. In the ones I thought of, that did not come to mind. But good for you.

Band of Brothers. What else? What do you have that's good? Oh, yeah. Those were series.

Friends, Cheers. Basically, the 80s shows were better. Friends might be more 90s.

Cheers wasn't 90s. Oh, there you go. Thank you, Officer Dana.

NCIS. Yeah, NCIS. We've watched a few NCIS.

They only have one original cast member left. CSI. Mash.

The Chosen. Who else? Chicago Fire. I've never seen that one.

Oh, okay. What else? This started with The Dark Knight for you. Night Court.

They've tried to revive that. I don't know if it's good or not. Night Court.

Oh, my goodness. Rockford Files, Dragnet. Oh, my gosh.

You guys are I forgot about the longevity of what we could bring up in this. Magnum P.I. Did you like the show or the actor? Magnum P.I., Matlock. The old Matlock or the new Matlock? Old.

Both. Yeah. Sesame Street.

Sesame Street. Coming from the one who volunteered to go back to Children's Church to be taught. All right.

I'm not going to keep going because apparently we could do this for a while. But these are decent choices. But it may only be my opinion.

But what I'm going to share with you is better than The Dark Knight better than Night Court, Band of Brothers, Superman, Friends, Cheers, M.A.S.H., Downton Abbey, CSINY, PD Blue, NCIS, Chicago Fire, Rockford Files, Dragnet, Magnum P.I., Matlock, Old or New, Sesame Street, better than any Avengers series, better than James Bond, better than Toy Story, better than Fast and Furious, Die Hard, Jurassic Park, Jason Bourne, or Mission Impossible series. Those are a bunch that I've seen. And even better than The Lord of the Rings, even better than Star Wars, and even better than The Chosen.

I call it the Luke-Axe series. We are moving from the end of Luke into the Book of Axe. And this is actually a series that is like Luke didn't end with to be continued, but it's almost like he did.

And if you were looking at it and you went home and diligently read, you would say, wait a minute, you didn't finish Luke before we're moving on to Axe. But we'll do that next week. Because in Luke, we have the mini version of the Ascension, and in Axe, we have the extended version only for DVD.

And those tell us about Jesus. Luke, I love Luke because he has not just the life of Jesus, which is awesome, but the life of the apostles. It's called the Axe of the Apostles.

We usually call it the Book of Axe, but the Axe of the Apostles tells us about how we can live life, how Christians were called to live life, how the Holy Spirit worked through the original apostles, worked through the church to form it, and will work through us today. In this series that we're calling Jesus Rising, I mean, I'm calling it Jesus Rising because of Jesus rising from the dead, and Jesus rising into heaven, but also because mixed in this, Jesus rising meant he rose in the trust of the disciples. He needed to prove to them who he was so he could teach them and prepare them as we've seen in the last couple of weeks.

This week, we turn to Axe 1, and one of the cool things about Luke, you see it in the first account, which we call the Book of Luke, and we see it in the second account, which we call the Book of Axe of the Apostles, is the Holy Spirit, and the prominence of the Holy Spirit, and Luke, how Luke specifically identifies the action of the Holy Spirit, and how that's connected with Jesus Christ. Will you stand as you are able? Axe 1, verses 1 through 5. In the first book, Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God, and while staying with them, he ordered them to depart, not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

You may be seated. Now, as Bruce introduces, these books of Luke are really cool. That's how they know, because he didn't write these like they were going to be part of a canonized Bible.

When he wrote these letters, they were named later by others as the letters were circulating, knowing that the book of Luke was written by Luke, and knowing that Axe was clearly identified as having the same author. In fact, Luke says in the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach. Now, in the Greek, the word can be first is like former, or the Greek word is prados.

Prados means former, like if there's only two, you look at the former rather than the latter, and he's saying this is the latter one I wrote, but the former one I wrote is in the book of Luke, and there are some very distinct with Luke's writing. They call Luke's books a prologue style instead of just a letter or epistle style, like a lot of them are written in. At the beginning of the Luke, it starts off very similarly.

In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seems good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught. Now, when Luke is writing this, he was saying I wanted to do an orderly account. Now, we might think that means to put it in the correct order, like get the timelines all right, but Luke was more concerned about the facts and the details, and so they would know exactly what happened.

Which means that in order for Luke to have written, now Luke lived part of the book of Acts, because as Paul went on his journeys, Luke would be going on the journeys with him. In fact, if you basically look at the second half of Luke, it reads like it was taken out of Luke's journal for the missionary journeys with Paul. So he wrote, and he investigated, and he interviewed people.

Have I told you who I think one of the main people he interviewed was? Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luke has insight on Jesus' birth that no other book has, that only, pretty much only Mary would know. So, I think he went, he was able to track down Mary and interview her, interview some of the other disciples.

He says those who were witnesses, which meaning he's relying on eyewitness accounts to write what he's writing. He's not just writing about what he heard from someone who heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else. He's writing about what the eyewitnesses themselves have said.

Now Luke was not one of the original disciples, so he came along later, and when he's writing this book to Theophilus, Theophilus means friend of God or lover of God, someone who loves God, meaning the same word means brotherly love a lot of times. That philia, like Philadelphia, brotherly love, the city of brotherly love, because it comes from the Greek, where it's the philia, and when you look at Theophilus, Theos means, who knows what and then the philias, Theophilus is the Greek philis, which Strong's dictionary says it is like Jesus' relationship with the disciples. So that's a really cool name to have.

Now some believe he was just writing to his friend Theophilus. Some believe it's like a code word for writing to the church, because the letter was definitely supposed to be circulated. So Theophilus was a way of calling the church lovers of God or friends of God, dear friends of God.

But I read another one that says Theophilus might have been somebody, it was a common Greek name, who funded Luke's writing of the book, who funded his travels back to Jerusalem and to Galilee to talk to people and find out all the accounts of Jesus in his life. So when we move to the book of Acts, it's almost like where we cut off last week, where remember Jesus had been resurrected, he showed them his hands and feet, he ate the fish, he proved to them, and once they proved, they had the proof and they understand who Jesus, this Jesus was, that he wasn't a ghost, that he wasn't an imposter, that he was the same Jesus in his resurrected form, that he started telling them that he was going to send them into the world. Now in Acts 1-2, Luke kind of goes into that.

He says, until the day when he was taken up, it had already happened, we're going to talk about it next week, but this is saying until the day he was taken up, he stayed there and after he'd given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. Now there's Luke's emphasis on the Holy Spirit, that he's not just saying Jesus gave the commands, he's saying the Holy Spirit was working through Jesus to give the commands, that this is a Trinitarian thing, that the will of the Father came from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit because he's wanting to tell them the same spirit that you are going to receive is the same one that was living and working and moving and empowering Jesus himself, that that same spirit is our connection to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Luke says in Acts 1-2 that he gave them commands and I kind of like the Greek word for this, it's entelomehe, entelomehe.

Entelomehe has the root word for that is telos and telos is one of my favorite Greek words, anytime you read in the New Testament where it says telos, it's going to be interpreted as perfect or end, meaning there's got to be an end goal, like our goal is, what's our Wesleyan goal? To go on to perfection, to go on to perfection, to become Christ-like, to become perfect in love through God in our lives. And the word command has the root word of telos, which means this is my command, this is Jesus when he makes a command, he said this is where you are, this is where your end goal is, when I command you, you need to go from point A to point B, point A is sitting here praying, preparing, waiting on the promise of God, point B is to go, that is the end goal, is to go and to share and to let the world know that Jesus is not dead, that Jesus is alive, that Jesus is real, that Jesus is our true hope in this life. Here we see that Luke has a huge emphasis on the Holy Spirit.

Now when you go and you read the entire book of Acts this week, is that a little much? When you go and you read the entire book of Acts, look for Luke's emphasis on the Holy Spirit, of course it's going to blow, blow, that's not supposed to be a pun, but on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit blew in like a flame of fire, it will blow you away on how amazing the Holy Spirit is and how God has done this for us as God's people. In verse 3 it says, He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. Is there any question about how long the resurrected Jesus was with them? Forty days, he was with them for forty days.

It wasn't a year, it wasn't two years, it wasn't a day. Now it says Luke uses the word appears. Remember how they saw him when they were in the upper room and the doors were locked? He just appeared.

He just showed up right behind them and they're going, don't do that to me. He, okay, in the resurrected body remember that Jesus could appear and he would disappear, as in he wasn't always there with them all the time, the exact same way he was during that three years that he would appear and then he would appear again and he would appear again and he would teach them and he would work with them and he would teach them some of the same stuff but after their minds had been opened to the holy scriptures about who they point to, how they point to Jesus, that when he would appear to them he would teach them about the kingdom of God. That's another emphasis throughout all the gospels is the understanding of the kingdom of God.

If you understand the kingdom of God as Jesus tried to teach them through parables and teaching and different things, if you understand the kingdom of God, you understand a lot about who God is, how we can be reconnected to God and how much God loves us. And who sits on the throne in the kingdom of God? Yes, that was right, Jesus. Jesus sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, the Son is on the throne and he has been given full authority in heaven and on earth and sitting on that throne is something that is amazing, that someone who had gone through what he went through, remember, if you can remember back before Easter, we talked about Jesus and the temptations, that he'd been through the temptations, didn't fall.

He kept fighting them by saying, it is written and then he had suffered so much and even suffered to the point where he was on the cross and they had betrayed him, they had lied about him, they had put him there falsely accused and he sat and he hung on that cross and he said, Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. And in the world today we got to remember Jesus said that because sometimes we look at people who are doing the wrong thing and we say, what an idiot. And Jesus would probably say, Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.

And it's a different outlook that we have when we share the gospel of Jesus Christ, that it's not just about telling people you're bad, you need to be good. It's about saying, hey, life is great with Jesus. It's not perfect, it's not easy, there are still hardships, there are still things we need to learn, but with Jesus, he will, he loves you just as he loved me, a sinner, someone who is imperfect, someone who survives only by the grace of God.

One thing in my mind that he might have done, remember there were a few parables that he directly interpreted for them, like the parable of the sower and the seeds. When they were able to get him off to the side and they'd say, Lord, what does that mean? And he goes, okay, the seeds that fell on the rocky ground mean this, the seeds that fell and produced weeds mean this, the seeds that produce abundance of crops means the good news was received on good soil. You know, he went through that whole thing.

It's possible during this time that he explained all of those parables to them, and what he was trying to teach them from the beginning about the kingdom of God. So in those 40 days, they were so key to the beginning of the church for the disciples to have more of an understanding and to be ready for what God had promised them, to help them with next steps. In verse 4, he said, and while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit, which you heard from me.

Now, when he says that, a direct interpretation of that is don't leave Jerusalem again. Quit going off and fishing. Quit going back and doing other stuff.

Stay here so you can receive the promise that I have, what I have promised for you, and the promise is, you guys know what that's leading to, the promise is for the Holy Spirit, which is different than all of history. In all of history, the Holy Spirit would fall on a prophet, and then there were times where they'd have one judge in Israel who was like a prophet, who had the power of the Holy Spirit, or it might fall on a king, like we see it falling on Saul, and then on David, and then on Solomon, and we might see it on different prophets throughout the post-Davidic time, when Israel was falling apart and eventually taken over by the Babylonian Empire, that Jesus is saying, you get the Holy Spirit. We all get the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is for us. It's for every one of you. The same spirit that came down like a dove upon Jesus at his baptism is the spirit that Jesus was promising them, that basically saying, this is your next series, that you had one series of life walking with me and learning from me, and you'll have another series of life where the Holy Spirit will be your teacher and your guide and your counselor and your comforter, but it's still a promise at this point.

It's still a promise. Now, they had been waiting for generations for the Messiah, for the promise of Messiah. They walked day by day with Jesus for three years, but they were still waiting.

At his death, they waited for those three days, not having a clue about what would happen. In the resurrection, they waited for 40 days. In fact, we'll see next week where Peter's getting a little anxious and impatient.

If you know Peter, you'll know that's consistent with his personality. And then here, he said, there'll soon be the ascension, and then you got to wait again. Waiting is a big part of the Christian life.

Waiting on God is what the psalmists cry out for, to wait on them. It kind of reminds me of the promise for a great Royals team, that every year it seems like they say, oh, this is the team, they are going to win the division. This is the best team we've seen since 2015.

Remember 2015? And then you have to go back to 1985. Hopefully, we don't have to wait that long. But then we come, and it's not as promised, and we're still waiting for something great to come out of it.

Maybe last night, after a huge win over the Angels, maybe something's going to develop from that. Reagan's having a better night pitching. But I think that teaches us that what we need to do is to enjoy and to count the blessings that we have today, to trust that God is there in our lives, to trust even the little things that God does, the small, tiny little things that we can see God doing, and the ways we see God moving.

And it may not be like a ball of fire, but how the Holy Spirit works in our life each and every day, that we can trust in that today. And when Jesus gives us a promise that there will be a day that He comes back, and there will be a day that He brings us all home, but for today, we wait, and we trust in that. And we know the Holy Spirit will be with us wherever we go.

The promise of the Holy Spirit is so amazing, but today, the church de-emphasizes the Holy Spirit so much. If you trust in the Holy Spirit, it could be improper, it could be messy, it could lack composure and control. There could be the fear of your reputation falling because of the Holy Spirit.

And some of that is because there's fake news out there about the Holy Spirit, just like there was fake news about Jesus. People who say, the Holy Spirit told me to do this, and