How to Finish Christ's Work
Acts 1:1-11
I told you this morning that we were going to depart from our series today in Jude because the Lord had really been speaking to me this week as I was sharing with the pastors up in Oregon. And we were talking the key factors in really seeing the church explode, and really seeing the power of God evident in the life of the believers. And so many of the pastors, as I said this morning, are frustrated in the area of seeing their people really be productive. And we thought this morning on one very important thing, and that is how the individual Christian releases power so he can become what God wants him to be.
And tonight I want to talk about another thing that's tied right into that. When we are in the position of really seeing the power of God in our lives, when we really yield to the Spirit of God, as we talked about this morning, what it is that we are called upon to do? I don't really think that all Christians understand their ministry.
I'm reminded of a story which I included at the close of the book that I wrote on the church. A London Times reporter was interviewing people who were helping to build the great cathedral in London. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren, a very famous architect. And the name of the cathedral...and it still stands, of course...is St. Paul's. And the London Times reporter was going along checking with various workmen just to keep up with the progress of the construction. And he came to one man, and he said to him, "What are you doing?" And he says, "I'm putting this rock in the slot; isn't it obvious?" He came to a second man doing the very same thing, and he said, "What are you doing, sir?" He said, "I'm earning a day's living." He came to a third man doing identically the same thing, and he said, "What are you doing, sir?" He said, "Why I'm helping Sir Christopher Wren build St. Paul's Cathedral." I guess it all depends on your perspective, doesn't it?
And I wonder sometimes if Christians really understand what they're doing. For some Christians, it's just kind of like sticking a rock in a slot...it's just kind of filling time. For other Christians, I think it's just kind of, "Well, I'm trying to earn my reward so that when I get to Heaven, you know, I get a halfway decent place." But I wonder if we really understand that the Christian life is all about helping the Lord Jesus Christ to finish the work that He began.
You know, I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. I always remember a black panther I drew in the 6th grade and got an "F" on it.
[Laughter]
You never forget those things, do you? She didn't even know what it was.
[Laughter]
I'm not an artist, but I love art.
And when I was in Rome, I had the privilege of seeing just the proliferation of art that overwhelms you. And I remember the thing, I suppose, that was the most overwhelming to me was the sculpture that I saw. And I couldn't help but wonder how it would have been...I was looking at all of Michelangelo and Bernini and all these other fantastic masters...how it would have been if Michelangelo had said to me, "Look, MacArthur"...I hadn't been around at that time, of course...and he just said, "Look, I finished everything but the face. Would you do it for me?"
[Laughter]
What do you want, a happy face?
[Laughter]
That would be about it. Or if some great master painter had said, "Look, I finished everything on this portrait but the eyes. Would you finish them?" Oh, no. I wouldn't ever want to lay my hand to a Michelangelo. I would never want to touch a painting by the masters. Now if I had started it, I wouldn't mind finishing it; nobody would expect anything. But I wouldn't want to adulterate a master.
Well, do you know what is a sobering thought to me? If you think it would be shocking to have to finish off a Michelangelo or a Rembrandt or whatever, imagine what it is for us as Christians to finish the work that Jesus began. Now that's a sobering thought.
I want you to look at verse 1 of Acts 1. You know, I think Christians talk a lot about the finished work of Christ, and we should. Because on the cross when our Lord said, "Tay tellust I," He said it is finished. And He did finish the work of redemption. And there is that finished work of Christ, and we thank God for it. When he finished the work on the cross, it meant there was nothing to be added to it. There was nothing that you or I could do to add to that, it's done. Salvation is a finished work.
But did you ever know that Jesus had an unfinished work? Look at Acts 1:1. "The former treatise"...and this is Luke recalling his Gospel, his earlier narrative..."The former treatise"...and the actual Greek terminology here seems to refer to a part one of a narrative, or a two-part narrative, so he's referring to part one, the Gospel of Luke..."Have I made oh Theophilus"...translates "friend of God"..."Of all that Jesus"...what's the next word? "Began."
Now isn't it interesting that when we talk so much about the finished work of Christ, we face here that very evident reality that Jesus only began something. Now what is it that Jesus only began? He began to do and teach. The rest of the Book of Acts tells the story in part, and the story is still being told right today, of finishing the work that Jesus began. And when it is finished, what happens? Christ returns. We are in the process right now of finishing the work which Jesus began.
All through the Book of Acts, we have evidence that the men of God understood this. In Acts chapter 20, for example, the Apostle Paul was on his way to Jerusalem. And on the trip, he was constantly being warned that when he got to Jerusalem, he was going to run into a lot of trouble, and that the trouble was going to be extremely serious. He had been told that he would be bound. He had been told that he would be put in prison, that he would suffer pain.
And in Acts 20-22 he recounts something of this: "And now behold, I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, except that the Holy Spirit witnesses in every city saying that bonds and afflictions await me. Every city I go to, the Spirit of God reminds me that if I keep going to Jerusalem, I'm going to get it." Verse 24..."But none of these things move me. Neither count I, my life, dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus." Stop there.
Paul says, "Look, I only have one thing that I'm concerned about. My life doesn't matter to me. All I want to do is finish my part of the unfinished work of Christ," you see? "That's all I want to do. I'm not protecting my hide. I'm not making great investments in my welfare. I am expendable as long as I finish my part of the unfinished work of Christ." Now that's what motivated the man.
You know, I have this sense of motivation, and I picked it up from the Apostle Paul and from my understanding of Acts 1:1...that I must finish the work that Christ has given me. Now I don't know how much time I have, but I know I have a limited amount of time.
In 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 17, it says that "If you call on the Father who, without respect of persons, judges according to every man's work"...listen..."past thee time of your sojourning here in reverence." If you know that the Lord is going to evaluate your work, then pass the time of your sojourning with reverence. Notice the definite article, "the time." There is a definite time...I believe there is a definite time of life assigned to us. And there is a definite ministry to be finished in that time.
In Job 14:14, it says, "All the days of my appointed time will I wait 'til my change come." And he's referring there to the change that's going to come after death. "All the days of my appointed time." Job knew that his time was bounded by the sovereignty of God...he knew that. He knew that he only had so much time until he would die; and I think the great men of the Bible lived with that kind of perspective.
In Psalms 89:47, it says, "Remember how short my time is." My time again...a very definite kind of concept. In Ephesians 5:16, it says that, "Because the days are evil, we are to do" what with the time? "Redeem the time." Buy it up, maximize it. We need to work on a full effort basis in order to fulfill our part of the unfinished work of Christ in the time that He has given us. I realize I only have so much time. And if I am to finish the work that Christ gave me, I've got to maximize the time that I have. That's the way Paul felt.
Now let's go back to Acts 1, and let's see what flows out of this first verse. Luke says, "I wrote earlier about all that Jesus began." Now he says, "I am writing a book, the Book of Acts, about all that Jesus continued to do through His people." That's what the whole Book of Acts is all about...finishing the unfinished work of Christ, picking up where Jesus left off, picking up the chisel and the hammer and finishing the sculpture, picking up the brush and finishing the canvas...that's what you and I are called to do.
Now in order for us to do that, we have to have some ingredients, and I want to share six of them with you tonight just briefly. These are the things that are needed for you and I to finish the unfinished work of Christ.
Number one is the proper message. It's obvious that if we're going to finish the thing that Jesus began, we're going to have to be in the continuity. Notice verse 1 and 2: "The former treatise of Imato Theophilus of all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up after He, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments unto the apostles." And at the end of verse 3, it adds this: "Speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God."
Now the thing that Jesus did continually in His work, the thing that He did repeatedly, was give out the proper information. The message had to be right. So until the day in which He ascended through the Holy Spirit, He continually gave commandments to the apostles. All through the ministry that Jesus had with those men for the three years, He'd take them away and teach them. He'd take them to a mountainside and teach them. He'd take them to the Mount of Olives and teach them. He'd take them to an upper room and teach them. He'd take them in the midst of the crowd and teach them through parables while screening out the people. He would continually be giving them the word, giving them the things pertaining to the Kingdom.
And here it refers to after His resurrection...40 days He was on the earth, and during that time, He appeared to them periodically and confirmed His word, continued to speak of His Kingdom, and continued to give them commandments. And the reason He did was so that we might have this deposit, that we might know the proper message.
You can never finish the work of Christ unless you know what the content of His message was. Wouldn't it have been a horrible thing if the Lord had said, "Finish My work," and never given us any information about it? But He's given us the Word.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, it says in verse 9, "As it is written, I hath not seen nor ear heard." In other words, this information is not available to empirical study. Neither has it entered into the heart of man. It's also not available to philosophy, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. "But God has revealed them to us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God."
And verse 13, "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing Spiritual things with Spirits." He says that we who are Christians have the truth from the Holy Spirit. We have it here, and the Holy Spirit instructs us in it.
Now our Lord Jesus Christ was faithful to teach. Right content is the foundation of any faithful ministry. You can never ever finish the work of Christ unless you have proper content. And I've said this so many times, that the one great anxiety that I have for the church is the fact that it is so ignorant.
Some years ago, I told you about a Time Magazine test in which the people who'd been in Sunday school for X number of years, and had been in church for X number of years were surveyed by Time Magazine to see how much they knew about the Bible to evaluate the Christian training. And the answers to the test were unbelievable. They answered things like this: "Sodom and Gomorrah were lovers. The gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luther, and John. Jesus was baptized by Moses. Jezebel was Ahab's jackass." That one they got right.
[Laughter]
But one of the great tragedies of the church is ignorance. And it comes to us in Josiah in these words: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." And as we've said so many times, God never puts a premium on ignorance. But that, the church suffers from. And the reason we have so much difficulty finishing the unfinished work of Christ is because we don't know what the message is. And substituting for the true message are all kinds of messages. People are propagating inconceivable messages in the name of Christianity.
The Apostle Paul knew what the message was, and he preached it and stayed with it. In Acts 17:1, "When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where it was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul, as his manner was, went into them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, dialogued with them, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead, and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is the Messiah, and some of them believed." Now that is the message...the message of the Kingdom...that Jesus is the Messiah, that He died because He had to die to pay the penalty of sin, that He rose from the dead. He reasoned with them out of the Scriptures.
In verse 10 of the same chapter, "And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea, who coming there went to the synagogue of the Jews again. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the Word with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily. Whether those things were so, therefore many of men believed." The message is Jesus Christ, dead and risen again, and the Scriptures...that's the message. And your effectiveness and my effectiveness in finishing the unfinished work of Christ is directly related to our understanding of the Word.
A friend of mine said to me one night...he said, "You know, a guy came up to me and he asked me a question about Christianity, and I couldn't answer it." And he said, "I was frustrated. I knew the answer, but I couldn't remember any of the references. And the guy wanted to know, and I stumbled around and made an idiot out of myself." And he said, "I went home, and I said to myself, 'that will never happen to me again.'"
That's what Peter said when he said that we ought to have a reason for the hope that is in us so that we can give an answer to every man that asks us, right? We need to be able to defend the faith.
Walter Martin says it's a tragedy, but the average Christian can be taken apart by a 90-day wonder out of the Jehovah's Witnesses in about 30 minutes. And this demands that we study the Word of God. Unfortunately, Christians are associated with a lack of content. Christians are often associated with a lack of information.
A few years, a guy came up to me on the patio, and he wanted to show me an ad in the Hollywood Reporter. The Hollywood Reporter is a trade paper for the movie people. And the ad talked about a Bible Land, which was sort of a sanctified Disneyland that they were building someplace. And you know, they were going to do the whole thing...I think it was a $27 million proposal. You could get thrown up by a whale, and they had all kinds of rides.
[Laughter]
And I mean it was bizarre, really bizarre. But all...everything was Bible-oriented. And they had ads for all the people they needed, and it was serious. They needed carpenters and engineers who could design and construct a Red Sea that parted. And they needed certain things to build this and that and all...they went on and on...about 30 things. But the thing that actually knocked me over was this one, and this is a direct quote. It said, "Wanted"...they wanted midgets too for certain little scenes, all kinds of things, but it said this: It said, "Wanted males, 6'3", 200 pounds, handsome, dark, to play the part of Jesus...must know four Spiritual laws." Now there's nothing wrong with the four Spiritual laws, but when the world thinks that's what Jesus knows, we're hurting. To play the part of Jesus, you have to know the four Spiritual laws...incredible!
Well, you see, this comes because Christians don't always come across with very much content. To finish the work that Jesus began, we have to know the message. And that's why all through His ministry, he poured that message out. That message is recorded in the gospels and commented on in the rest of the New Testament. And the better we know the gospels and the better we know the commentary on the gospels, which is the Epistles, the better able we are to defend the truth, right? That's why the Bible says, "Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not" what? "To be ashamed." Cutting a straight line for the Word of God.
Man, sometimes I wonder even about our evangelism. There are so many dangers. There's the danger of evangelism that is experience-centered. Do you know what that is? That's, "Well, let me give my testimony. I was this, and I was this, and I was this." And you go on and on about all of your life. "And I did this, and then it all...and why don't you do it?" You know, well, that's...a testimony is good. But there's more to coming to Christ than just that.
I picked up...we get a lot of papers in the church office. Every organization mails us their paper. And some of them...we call them the "Christian funny papers"...but some of them are really kind of funny, and they mean well, but they're just kind of funny. And one of them had an article on how to build your Sunday night service. And so I thought, "Well, I'll read that; it will be interesting." And I read it, and it said, "Here's one great way to build your Sunday night service: Have testimonies from strange and unusual people."
[Laughter]
Well, that's nothing new. Every time we have testimonies, there are a few strange and unusual people.
And it suggested one that was really great. It was a 38-inch-tall lady who would come up and sit on your pulpit and really add a zinger...38-inch-tall lady. "And over in this tent, we have the tattooed man," see?
[Laughter]
"And over here, we have the snake charmer." It's a sideshow effect.
I'm not against giving out testimony because I've done it many times. But I'm just careful in my own mind to realize that true presentations of Christianity involve much more than a testimony. They involve proper content, and the truths of the Kingdom have to be there.
It's so easy for us to approach people on experience. Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 1...he says...verse...well, let's try 2 Peter; that's where he said it.
[Laughter]
2 Peter chapter 1...I'm getting my first and seconds all mixed up tonight. He says, "I want you to remember these things." And verse 16, "We have not followed cunningly devised fables." But the end of verse 16, "We were eyewitnesses." He says, "I'm giving you my testimony, folks. I'm telling you my testimony." Nothing wrong with that, but watch this...verse 19..."We have also...not only our testimony...but we have a more sure word of prophecy." What is that? Verse 20..."That know prophecy of the Scripture." Testimony is good, but what's a more sure word than testimony? What is it? Scripture. "For the prophecy that is the Scripture came not at any time by the will of man. But Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." A more sure word than experience is the Word of the Scripture. We got to know the Word, or we can't f