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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles He had chosen. After His suffering, He presented Himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while He was eating with them, He gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift My Father promised, which you have heard Me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

Acts 1:1-5

“I am going to send you what My Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Luke 24:49

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

The time had come.

Jesus was ready to finally leave the earth and ascend to sit at His Father’s right hand, having authority over everything in heaven and on earth. He would remain there until the time that only He knows, a time when He will return to earth and hot the reset button on creation as we know it.

But that time has not come yet. We are still waiting and watching while carrying out what Jesus commanded as we do.

Jesus had worked with His disciples for three years, preparing them to take His place and carry on His work once He was gone. I spent nearly 30 years in the United States Navy and we had a saying, “Train your reliefs.” It was a saying grounded in the truth that a leader wasn’t going to serve forever and eventually would need to turn things over to someone younger, a subordinate who could take the reins, and in doing so, adequately replace the retiring service member. This is essentially what Jesus had done, ready His disciples to carry on His work after He departed and that time had indeed come.

This is where things get started as the Book of Acts opens up. We learn right away that the author of this book is none other than Luke himself, the writer of the Gospel. You could look at Luke’s two writings as before and after accounts with the gospel being before Jesus ascended and Acts covering the aftermath of His departure as the disciples followed His orders and carried the Gospel well outside of Jerusalem and Israel as a whole.

Writing to a man by the name of Theophilus, Luke tells of how he wrote about all that Jesus had done and taught up to the very moment he penned this first chapter of Acts. This included a multitude of post-resurrection appearances after Jesus had suffered on the cross and died.

The last of these appearances is what we’ll be looking at in the opening devotions from this book that details how the Christian church got established. And of interest, although Jesus’ Great Commission was a call to actions and proactivity, we see in our scriptures today that Jesus was telling His disciples to be anything but active in the immediate aftermath of His ascension. And He did so for good reason.

For we read where Jesus instructs His hand-selected followers to “…not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift My Father promised, which you have heard Me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” As we look at the words from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus reinforces these words by ordering His disciples to “stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Jesus’ expectation was simple. The disciples were to go to Jerusalem and wait.

What were they to wait for?

The gift that God had promised to send, the gift that would stand in for the ascended Jesus and make sure the disciples were cared for and given direction.

What was the nature of this gift?

Jesus tells us just as He did the Twelve during His ministry time with them. Here’s what He said would happen:

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you.” John 14:16-17

Well before He died and rose again, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit, the holy Advocate sent from God. And this Holy Spirit wouldn’t just be with His disciples but would actually be in them. The Holy Spirit was critical if any successful gospel evangelism was going to happen. It was true then and it’s still true today.

And so Jesus sent the disciples into Jerusalem where they were to wait for the Spirit to come upon them and indeed that happened just days later during an event we know as Pentecost, just as Jesus promised it would. We’ll be looking at this in a later devotion but there was still more for Jesus to reveal during His final appearance and words of direction for His faithful, devoted followers. Tomorrow, we’ll see Jesus reveal the overall game plan they were to use to start spreading the Gospel.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com