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Greetings in the blessed name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The passage for our consideration this morning is taken from the book of Acts. The Acts of the Apostles 1: 1-11. Let me read to you this passage, “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.
A blessed Resurrection Sunday to everyone. Today we are remembering a crucial day, a crucial point in the Christian faith. We are commemorating the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we commemorate this, may we remember important things that we have to consider in this resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This is such an important event. In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us, as we have read a while ago, that without this resurrection, our faith is vain. This preaching this morning is in vain, and we are still in sin. And he tells us that if there is no resurrection and our hope is only on this earth concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, we are of all men most miserable. And we thank God that we have this record of the Scriptures for us as we want to meditate upon the title ‘Prepare to Meet Thy God’.
The resurrection is an undeniable fact. In fact, the Bible tells us that here we have an empty tomb, as we have heard a while ago. Not only the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ witnessed this empty tomb, but also the enemies of Christ. And this passage that we have just read also tells us that for forty days the Lord Jesus Christ was with His disciples. He was communing with them. He was teaching them. And not only that, He was seen by the twelve. There were even more than four hundred disciples who saw Him. And that was more than enough to convince us that indeed that resurrection happened in the history of mankind.
And even the secular historians could not deny this fact. But most of all for us Christians this resurrection is so comforting. It is a truth that tells us we have life after death. We have life eternal, everlasting. And this life is won because the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And as we as believers have this trust and confidence in Him who lived again, we also are people who are comforted and are not fearful of death because we have the hope of life after our sojourn here on this temporal world.
However, the fact of the resurrection should not only be a comfort to us that we will live a happy, joyous life here on earth. It is not just something to be an antidote that we will not fear death. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ must impact every Christian's life. And most of us probably are acquainted with this theological term which we have learned in our systematic theology - the resurrection life. The impact of the resurrection in our lives. It is most important, for knowledge of the resurrection, the comfort of the resurrection, and the fearlessness of death are nothing when we are not impacted by the fact that we are to live forever. And that's why we are to prepare for that final day where we shall be resurrected. And when will that be?
The apostle Paul clearly tells us that the resurrection, the first resurrection for us, the believers, Christians, is when the Lord Jesus Christ will come during the rapture. Those who are dead in Christ, those who sleep in Christ, will rise. And we who are alive then will also be taken up, will be caught up in the air, and will be with Him forever. And we shall be in the presence of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We will meet God and we shall be with him forever and ever. Are you prepared to meet your God? Are you prepared to meet your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?
We have here in this passage from verses 9 to 11, The Fact of the Lord's Ascension. Because He was resurrected, He now ascended back to Heaven. Here in verse 9, “when he had spoken these things while they beheld, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel.” So we see here how the Lord Jesus Christ ascended back to Heaven. And then these angels declared unto those believers, disciples who were gazing up into Heaven as if they were still expecting the Lord Jesus Christ to return that very moment. The same Jesus, he said, is “taken up from you”. And take note it says here the “same Jesus”, same person who ascended back to Heaven, will come back, return, and to meet us.
And as he was “taken up from you into heaven, so shall come in like manner” (v. 11) So therefore, He ascended back to Heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will return, the same person and in the same fashion, physically, personally. And he says here He will “come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven.” In the same fashion, the same person, and also in the same location.
That's why there are these false Christs of today, and that is one of the signs why we are saying the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is so near because of the many false Christs. We have one in the Philippines who claimed that he is the second coming Christ. And these verses here really tell us that he is a liar, a false prophet, a false Christ. But we may wonder why there are still many people who are following him. It is because they are not reading God's Word. They do not know the Word of God. And that is one aspect, one consideration that we have to take note of because one who has this resurrection life is one who is desiring to know who the Lord Jesus Christ is, when he is coming, how he will come, and it will impact his life, and it will guide him while he is waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ.
So we have here in these eleven verses some characters that we can reflect upon, these people who were impacted by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and they were living what we call the resurrection life. And I invite you to consider this and to meditate upon this as we remember the resurrection today. Are we living that resurrection life? Because if we are living that resurrection life, we are living out that resurrection life. We are people who are prepared to meet our God.
And here in verses 1 to 3, the example of Luke, who was the author of the Acts of the Apostles. He already wrote the first volume of his treatise as he mentioned here, "The former treatise have I made," and that is the Gospel of Luke. But being given such task and burden by God to continue writing, recording the Acts of the Apostles, the Acts of the Holy Spirit, the work of the Christians, the gospel of the resurrection in the book of Acts. He continued to write, and this we see, how willing he was to be used by God.
I. Living a Resurrected Life
And this is my first point this morning, if we are prepared to meet our God, we are living in a resurrection life. We are willing to do God's work, God's plan for us. And here we have Luke submissive to the leading of the Spirit, as we know how Peter says they are carried by the Spirit of God to write. And here Luke gave himself to the leading of the Spirit to write the second treatise, the second volume of his writing where he recorded these acts of the apostles. Well, for us, we are not asked to record other things for God. But since we have received this writing, I believe we are in our own selves willing to study what has been written, willing to know God, willing to know how he was working in the lives of the first Christians.
And we have just seen an example a while ago of how we must know God's Word. Because if we are not knowledgeable in the Word of God, we are not willing to study God's Word. We have here the example of those who are easily deceived, seduced by these false Christs, false prophets because they do not know the Word of God. And I pray as Christians, as living out the resurrection life, we are willing to do the work of the Lord. We are willing to do the work of God. We are willing to do God's bidding.
And this is also given, you know, in the example, the life of Peter, how he who was a fisherman but was moved by the Spirit of God to preach, and he boldly preached God's Word to the point that he was imprisoned and he was even risking his life under the threat of being killed, being martyred. But he continued to preach. The one who was a coward, one who denied the Lord Jesus Christ, but now impacted by the resurrection of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, empowered, indwelt, filled by the Spirit of God. Now preach God's Word with all boldness, with all faithfulness.
And may we be like these disciples living out that resurrection life. We see also in the life of Paul, as recorded in the book of Acts, how when he was saved, when the resurrected Jesus appeared before him, he asked the Lord Jesus, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" (Acts 9:6). And may that is a question that we have to ask to our God, ‘Lord, what do you want me to do?’ For many of us just want to do because things are easy, because this is what I like. This is my own way of doing it. This is how I am gifted of these things. So therefore I want to do these things. I like to sing, so I should be in the choir. I like to pray. I like to do these things. So I will serve God according to how I find myself pleasurable. I want to give the Lord what I want to give to him because it is what I like in serving him.
But not so with those saints. Here we have an example of people who risk their lives, willing to give themselves to do the work of God in spite of the death threat that they were facing. Are we willing? Are we people who are willing to do God's plan and work in his plan? The work that he has assigned for us. We must ask God what he wants us to do. Not that we present God what we like to give him, what we want to do for him. That is a person who is in the resurrection life, willing to do God's plan.
II. Willing to Submit Himself to God’s Plan
And another character feature that we can see here, not only that they were willing, not only that a resurrection life is willing to submit himself to God's plan, we have here an example also of people who were waiting, as we can see in Acts 1:4–7, “And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” They were waiting, people who know that God is in control. He is sovereign, and they were willing to submit themselves. They were obedient to God's Word. They wait. They did not ask God to do it right away. ‘Baptise us, O Lord, because we want these things to be done immediately to us.’ No, they were waiting. When God says, "Wait," they wait. They waited for the promise.
And this is also the attitude that we must have as Christians. We have today a society which is full of the desire to have instant things, and we want immediate things. And that's why we want to do things in a very rapid, immediate manner because we want to do things immediately. And here the Father is reminding them, you have to wait. And this waiting must be in our hearts because even in the time of Peter, and I will bring you to the epistle of Peter where there were those people who were already anxious and were doubting about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In 2 Peter 3, and I will read to you from verse 1, and he says here, “This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets” - you must remember what you have known, what you have read - “and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished”.
May we not be like this kind of people who were not patient to wait for the promise of God. They were waiting, and when the Lord Jesus told them that they will be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence, they submitted themselves obediently to the Word of God. And may we be like these Christians living out the resurrection life, submitting themselves to every Word of God. In fact, we have here an example of how they were waiting hopefully even for the kingdom of Israel to be restored.
They asked the Lord Jesus Christ in Acts 1:6, “When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” That was promised in the Old Testament, and even the disciples, the apostles, were looking forward to this kingdom of God. During the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, they were expecting that He will reign and He will be sitting on the throne of David. That's why during that Palm Sunday they were looking forward to Jesus Christ to establish that kingdom. And when they were so discouraged to understand, to see that He will just be crucified, that's why they cried during Friday, five days later, "Crucify him." And even the disciples left Him because they were expecting that the Lord Jesus Christ would now establish His kingdom.
But this impacted by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were waiting, still hopeful. We know that has been mentioned in the past, prophesied in the past. And therefore, because it was prophesied, it will be fulfilled. And now Jesus Christ our Lord, when will this be? And we know that will come. That will come because the Lord Jesus Christ did not rebuke them. Instead, He told them that it is the Father who knows these things, and they must wait. And for us also today, being impacted by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, hopeful, waiting for the promises of God.
And this waiting is also given in the idea of how these saints, in other passages of this book of Acts, we have the picture of these disciples who continued with one accord in prayer. They were waiting prayerfully. They were waiting as one body. They were waiting, supplicating, seeking God to encourage them, to strengthen them, to guide them in their walk with the Lord. For we know that in the last days, it is a time where the iniquity shall abound. And when iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. And instead of believers, brethren loving one another, there will come a time that people, brethren, brothers and sisters, are suspicious with one another. And there will no more be a unity. There will no more be oneness. There will no more be one accord in the body of Christ, but there will be divisions. There will be factions.
But when we continue in prayer, and I pray, and may we during our prayer meetings, though we are not gathering in one place during Fridays. I hope that we are still at the same time praying together even though we are at different places. We are still praying continually with one accord. And this is what is needful for us as Christians, that while we are waiting for the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, while we are preparing to meet our God, we are prayerful. For without communing, without coming before God, without seeking his help and his strength to guide us and to lead us in this sojourn, in this waiting, we are people who are easily victims, casualties of the attacks of the enemy. So we must pray.
A person who is impacted by the resurrection, living that resurrection life, is one who is waiting prayerfully. Not just waiting, seeking for signs, looking for things whether Jesus Christ is really coming. You know, when you get into your phones today, you will receive so many, you know, messages in WhatsApp chat groups, videos, all these giving us signs, ‘Oh, the Lord Jesus Christ is coming soon.’ And I received one the other day, or the other week, this calculation that ‘corona’ is, you know, six letters. And then if you try to put in the numbers of C to how the number in the alphabet, and then somehow they total it, it is 66. And so ‘corona’ is six, and they 66, and they said ‘corona’ is the antichrist. And this is, you know, the ignorance of God's Word.
And if you are just looking on signs, on things, or what is happening, looking at the news, looking on what is now around the world, and looking for these things as if, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ is coming,’ and you are not even reading your Word, you will be deceived. You will easily be deceived. That's why we have to be prayerful and to seek God's leading and to read God's Word. These people, they are impacted by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication. They were one.
And this is part of our preparation to meet God, waiting the Lord Jesus Christ as we come before Him, looking forward to that resurrection when we shall meet our Saviour, not as our judge, but one who will bring us up with Him as He has promised that He will come again and receive us unto Himself that where He is there will be He also.
III. Continue to Witnessing
And the last point that we have, when we are willing to do the work of the Lord and we are waiting for the promises of God, we have here this third point in Acts 1:8,"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." And here we have this preparation to meet our God. We have to be willing to do His work, waiting for His coming obediently, prayerfully, submissively unto Him, hopefully. But we must also continue to be witnessing. This is what the content of the book of Acts.
In fact, our founding pastor considered this book as a pattern of church growth and missions - witnessing. Witnessing when we receive the power of the Holy Spirit and we shall not only be witnesses in our own homes, in the nearby region, but to the uttermost part of the earth. But maybe you will ask me this time, ‘brother, how can we witness? We are locked down. We got to go out our homes. How can we witness to others? We cannot even go to our neighbours. We cannot even go to our relatives. We cannot even go to our friends' house. How can we witness?’ You know what? This is the greatest and one of the best times where we can witness not just our neighbours, our relatives, our friends, but to the uttermost part of the world.
The other week we had a gospel meeting in our Filipino Bible fellowship. I was praying and crying before the Lord. Lord, please bring even 10 new faces to our gospel meeting. Praying, crying. But then suddenly, a few days before the gospel meeting, we said we cannot gather anymore. And was so disheartened. I cried before God, ‘Lord, I ask you 10; now is zero.’ But I realise God is really working in our midst. Why? Because when we have this kind of online preaching, not only that I can preach to 10 or to few Filipinos in our congregation, but when we forwarded all those messages, it reached to the many parts in the Philippines, even to some parts in Middle East and to other parts in America. Many have heard. And I said, ‘Lord, really you are a wonderful, amazing God. I prayed 10, but there were many who viewed that gospel message.’ And we have this great opportunity. The Lord provided us.
Do you think it is by chance that we have this technology where we can easily go viral? As we may think, we know in the past we like our messages to be viral. Now we don't like to hear this word viral. But you can give your message. You can send your message. You can send the messages online, the online recordings that we have in our worship service. Don't just send it to some friends, but send it to as many as you can, and let them hear God's Word.
And in fact, this is, I believe, one of the great signs of the ecclesiastical signs in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ where there will be evangelism throughout the world, and it can be done through this technology that we have. And that's why Jesus really is coming soon, because we have this fulfilment that the gospel shall be preached even to the very far places of this world. In those days, in the past weeks, we are just preaching and telling people in our own congregations. Now people can hear messages, three, four worship services, even five or six, once in Sunday because they can hear and they can receive so many of these recording.
Even our small mission stations in Philippines, the Christ BPC, they have also the recording. Even if they have only the cell phones, but he will pass it on, and those who were not able to come in the past, they hear the Word of God, they listen God's Word, and they are evangelised. And this is what is the resurrection life that we should have. We are active in witnessing, evangelism, not only in Jerusalem, in “Judea, in Samaria, but even unto the uttermost, uttermost part of the earth”. I pray that we have this.
We can only have this resurrection life if we truly are born again believers. If we truly are children of God. For we cannot be impacted by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ if we are not indwelt by the Spirit of God. If we do not truly believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and as our Saviour who lived and died and lived again and who ascended to heaven and will be coming again for us. It's only by faith.
And for all of you who are listening and watching, you may have heard about Jesus Christ. You may know about Christ. You may have heard about the resurrection and you may have known this resurrection. But you are not impacted by this resurrection because your life does not show that you are willing to submit yourself to the will of God. You are still willful and wants to do your own thing, and you are not waiting. You are just relying on your own emotion and what you want to do. You want to do that time, and you are not even witnessing. You are hiding yourself, thinking that you are already a Christian, but nobody knows, even in your office, in your school. Are you really a Christian? Are you really a person is impacted by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ? I pray that today, as we remember the Lord Jesus Christ in his resurrection, you will come to be impacted by this truth and you will live a resurrection life, ready and prepared to meet your God when he comes. You will not be ashamed because he will tell you, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
Let us pray. Our Father in Heaven, we thank Thee, O God, for this time where we can remember the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Help us, O God, not just to remember, but may we live out the resurrection life, willing to do thy will in our lives, waiting for the promises that Thou hast for us, and witnessing, O God, for the souls who are still outside Thy kingdom. We pray, Father, that may we be truly people who are prepared to meet Thee. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.