Acts 1:6-11
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.”
Good morning everybody. Few year here in you are watching online when a welcome you. If you’re in Collingswood and watching this, I have a story. Uh, this past week, our pastors had our pastors meeting and we got to go down to the Collingwood campus. And pastor Jerry cooked up a breakfast fit for Kings. We had pancakes, bacon, eggs, and we’re never having a staff meeting here.
Again. We’re always going to go to Collingswood and he actually offered for the Collingwood campus for you guys to have that every Sunday, if it’s something you’d like, he’s more than willing to do that on a weekly basis. All right. We are in the book of acts this morning. Go ahead and pull out your Bibles.
If you forget what book we’re in, there’s a giant sign behind me and also we’re going to be here for quite some time. So it’s the book of acts we’re in there this morning. Um, pastor mark shared a while back that a number of us pastors and some other ministry leaders are part of a, kind of a cohort that are learning to study scripture in some new ways.
And we’re doing that in some monthly, every few months gathering with other churches in Pennsylvania. And one of the things we do is kind of go through a whole system of how to study. And one of the first parts of that study is a part of this triangle here. If you pull this up, this triangle is kind of, there it is.
It’s questions that you ask and they’re not fascinating questions. You probably ask them all. But moving from these basic questions of who, what, when and where to more powerful questions of the text when you come to it, why is this set here? How is this possible what’s going on in this story, in this scene?
It’s a, it’s a great way to study. If you have one of the ax, scripture journals, maybe it’s something that you do. Just ask questions, write them down and allow for the Lord to reveal those to you. As you study and kind of come back to them at the end, you’ll find that as you study through, you’ll be able to answer some of those questions cause you’re reading with them in mind.
So we are in the book of acts. Go ahead and turn to page 8 55. If you’re in a pew Bible, that’s where it is. The morning’s message is called powerful witnesses commissioned. Okay. We’re going to be in verse six of chapter. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you, at this time restore the kingdom to Israel.
These are his disciples. They’re asking this. And he said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority, 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 ends of the earth.
When he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him, go into heaven.
Are you guys hearing a ring? Okay. A little bit of ringing Daniel. I’m hearing ringing in my head. Maybe you can fix that for me in my head. Let’s pray, father. We, we are so grateful that you have revealed to us in written word in our day. The story of your Spirit’s work, building the church. God, this is not a story about a group of men who had what it took, but a story of your spirit at work in an among and through ordinary and unschooled people.
Your spirit is powerful and God, I pray this morning. Your spirit would have its way among us as well. We pray these things in your name. Okay. So just to quickly recap, Dr. Luke is the writer. He is a physician and he has written two volumes. The first book is Luke, his own book written to a man named Theopolis.
He calls excellent. Theopolis evidently he was a high up government official. And so the first gospel of Luke was written to Theopolis. Then we have the book of acts, which is volume two of this work. And you see the two differences here. The book of Luke, the gospel is Jesus at work, through his life, death, and resurrection.
The book of acts then takes us to the spirit of Jesus at work, through his followers, axes, a selected history of the early church. It’s not expensive though. It tells a number of the details because Luke wasn’t there for that early church history. He became a Christian later in. And what happened was he joined Paul on this missionary journey and continued his travels later in his life.
And so Luke collected all of this data through personal stories and interviews with people and recorded this down that Theopolis. And in turn us would have this record of the church. The book of acts holds 33 years of this history. And so as you’re reading through, again, keep in mind a timeline of when these things happened is not just one after the other, but over 33 years, you probably have written down in your ax, scripture journal or notes, possibly you can even take them on.
Uh, church center app and then download those notes each week, but there are four objectives we will see throughout the book of acts. The holy spirit is working. I just want to review them with you. We’re going to hear some of them, even this morning that may come out the first one to carry God’s gospel.
The good news to all nations that will show up powerfully today. The second is to sustain God’s people amidst every opposition, the third to fulfill God’s sovereign purposes and the fourth to unite God’s church. Those are the themes. That’s what the spirit is doing in and among the book of. Final timeline to set this up, to know where we are today.
We looked at this last week, resurrection, resurrection, Sunday happened. He appeared to Mary and some other women to some disciples. There were 10 disciples, eight days. He spoke to his 11 disciples over the next few weeks. He was in the region of Galilee appearing to 500 followers, seven disciples by the sea of Galilee.
Even his brother, James, we get to the 40th day, which is where today takes place. The Ascension of Jesus on the Mount of olives. The question that I had was why is it super important that the book of acts records, all these numbers of people that he appeared. And something for me as I’m reading, this is how can 500 people who have seen the resurrected Jesus not become an absolute force, eye witness account in passing on that.
There is someone who has come, who is now alive, who was crucified. These eyewitness accounts. I don’t know about you, but as I read, especially a book like acts, there’s kind of a few ways you can come to it. Postures. Maybe you could come as a scholar, someone who really loves history. How many of you are like scholarly, love history dates, places, timelines.
A few. Yeah, those scholars normally just are like, we are, we don’t have to talk about it. Right. Um, possibly you’re like the casual admire or maybe a museum goer. That’s beautiful. Those are nice events. You’re really interested in like a war or something and you’ll study in that way. But I would suggest maybe we come, not as those people, not that you have to turn off who you are, but as a disciple, a follower of Jesus studying the book of acts to see the mission of Christ in and among us, the spirit that is still at work today.
Okay. So we come to the first part that we have three headings were kind of, kind of worked through lots of M’s this morning. The first is the mix-up and the mystery six and seven are the verses. So let’s read it again. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you, at this time restore the kingdom to.
He said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority. I don’t know about you, but I’m often hard on the disciples. Like, come on guys, how could you not believe and see, understand these things? And we kind of give them a bad name. And I wanted to say this probably is a pretty logical question that the disciples were asking.
Why would that be a logical question? Well, if you go back knowing the last 40 days, Jesus taught about the kingdom, the resurrected risen Christ is standing there in the flesh teaching about the kingdom. So are you setting it up now? They ask, Jesus seems like a reasonable question to ask, but also as you see there and we’ll fill in some blanks here for you, each of us are narrowly tempted to agendas, narrow agenda.
And power. Are you restoring the kingdom to here in Israel, in Jerusalem? Are you going to bring back our influence, our power Israel expecting to be a national kingdom here and immediately at this moment, we’re going to be part of that kingdom. We’ve been patient. We’ve watched your persecution, witnessed your death.
Jesus, here we are. Post-resurrection I mean, let’s get down to business, right? Come on to defeat the Romans. And he says, this is not for you to know the times and seasons of which God has appointed. Jesus taught all throughout his ministry on earth, about the kingdom of God in a lot of different ways using parables, they are still effective today.
You and I use them all the time, explaining things to kids, explaining things to people that can’t see the things that we do well, it’s kind of. This. And so Jesus throughout talks about these different parables. One of them is like the kingdom of God is like a man who’s planting a field sowing seeds, and he sows the seeds.
And in some soil, the seeds take root and they grow. But in others, the seed falls by the wayside and is not able to grow. Some will accept the message of hope in Christ. Some will not. The kingdom of heaven is like weeds, right? You sell a whole field of wheat and somebody comes along. The enemy comes along and they sew some weeds in the middle and everything grows up and it’s just a confusing mess.
But the master will come and gather the wheat to himself and burn up the weeds. The kingdom of heaven is like hidden treasure. The one who sees this and goes and sells everything. They have an order for this kingdom to be part of their. The kingdom of heaven is like having some fine pearls. He talks about this parable where he gives everything just for this one.
Pearl sells all the rest because of one that is so important. The kingdom of heaven is like a net that catches fish and you catch all sorts of fish. But in the end, there are some good fish that are kept and the ones that are not so good are tossed into the fire. So the disciples, as they’re hearing all this, probably have this come on, like separate the weeds out, get rid of the bad fish.
We’re here, set up this kingdom. Now these prophecies in Zeke you’ll and Joel are, are two that really stick out to them. Here’s what it says. I’ll pour out my spirit and deliver those that call on my name. And Joel talks about this prophetic hope of rebuilding Jerusalem. So this is not a crazy question for the disciples to ask even the mother of James and John, remember in Matthew chapter 20, she says, Hey, when you’re setting up this kingdom with my boys in the kingdom, can one of them sit on the right of you?
And the other will just, he can sit on the left and we’ll all do this together. Jesus. And he politely rebukes all three of them by there’s this draw to power, to prestige, to influence we’re all tempted, narrowly focused on the things that we see instead. Then we pray as Jesus taught us to pray your kingdom come your will be done.
And Deuteronomy 29, 29, it says the secret things belong to the. His plans will always be higher, better, more all encompassing, totally redemptive motivated by the self sacrifice of his son. Jesus. Remember Jesus prayed in the garden. If there’s any other way, I’m king for that father, but if not, not my will, but yours be done.
This is the way we ought to pray. We ought to live in this kingdom, not narrowly focusing on our agenda or our draw to power. The second is the means and the mission verse eight, 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 ends of the earth, Jesus directs their minds away from this earthly kingdom and takes their minds to what is to.
Off of an immediate timeline and foreshadows, what will happen when the spirit comes to bring power? There’s a man named Alfred Nobel. You may know him because he’s famous for the Nobel prize. He was a Swedish chemist and an engineer who lived in the 18 hundreds and Alfred Nobel. He held more than 355 patents.
He became the largest benefactor to the award. And so named after him, the Nobel prize, his greatest achievement though, was this compound that he made combining diatomaceous earth with nitroglycerin. I have no idea what either of those are, but it was an explosive type substance. His version seemed to be more safe than his competitors.
And so he came up with a really catchy name. Nobel’s safety. That explodes kind of get your name out there, make sure people know that it’s a safe way of exploding things, but it didn’t stick. It wasn’t selling it wasn’t really popular. And so he asked his friend who was a Greek scholar, what’s the word for explosive power.
And he said, well, the word is Dunamus spelled like this dynamism, as we would say it, the word is Dunamus somewhere with this Swiss pronunciation. We get the word dynamite today, which is what he created. He created more versions of that, but that’s the word here. You will receive power. You will receive this explosive dynamite power when the holy spirit comes upon you, not some sort of innate thing.
Now that we have Christ in us, we have his spirit and now we March on, in our own. This is a specifically received power. You will receive this power. You don’t have it. It’s being given to you. We know that power comes from the holy spirit. We also know that spirit filled believers are to be witnesses. As we continue on there, you will receive power to be my witness.
The holy Spirit’s work in us produces this witness. This is again, this is his power given to us, but when the life of a Christian becomes changed, because the spirit just won’t allow you to do that anymore. And the spirit directs you into things that don’t make sense to people as that life begins to change, to look more like.
We are filled with his spirit and look different as his witnesses. It’s pretty interesting in the book of Luke and acts the phrase filled with his spirit is used. It’s used about 14 times and every single time that somebody is filled with the spirit, there’s something that happens right after that.
Almost every time to 14 times, the word of God is spoken boldly. Isn’t that crazy? When the spirit fills somebody, we might think what the spirit would do, but every time they just give witness to what’s been happening, spirit filled, people testify about Jesus. They bear witness to his. Witnesses, common word.
We know what that means, but maybe you’ve heard witness before talked about, and you’re like, yeah, I don’t do witnessing. I don’t do evangelizing. Those are big Christian words. How do you do witnessing or evangelizing? Well, if anybody’s ever been in a car accident or watched a car accident or something of that nature, you’ve probably been a witness before we were driving a few weeks ago and all four of us were in the car, my wife and two kids, and we’re driving down route 55.
It’s like pitch black at night. We’re driving to see my nephew’s basketball game. And these two cars zoom around us and right in front of us, this just us in these two cars, one of them swerves, flips and lands upside down on the side of the road. We are totally stunned. I’m thinking I’m going to walk across the road and find somebody who didn’t make it miraculously.
Everybody was okay, but we became witnesses to that crazy thing that happened. My wife’s on the phone with nine 11 and they’re like, no, no, no, no. We need an eyewitness walk across route 55 in the dark and go see what you see in that car. And so that’s what we did. And again, everybody was okay, thank God.
But we had to have eyes visual on what was happening. We became a witness to what we saw, what we heard and we gave testimony to what happened right in front of us. Maybe you’ve been a witness maybe in a legal case, or you had to give a testimony about. Oftentimes when you’re raising kids, you’re looking for a solid witness to all right.
What actually happened here, who started the thing right here? And some of you were like, we have a couple of trustworthy witnesses and one, not so much of this. The Greek word here for witness is Marty Ross. You can kind of see what that word looks like. Right? It looks like martyr. That’s where we get the word martyr from.
And interestingly enough, this is just what happens. Certainly through the centuries, many people, including the early followers of Jesus were martyred killed for their faith and in their death. What happens? A powerful witness Springs forth, many came to know and love Jesus because of the way the followers faced.
And gave glory to God. Stephen, we’ll see in just a few weeks here is the one that we see early on that is martyred and gives glory to God and people. There’s this incredible explosion of people coming to know Jesus because of his death. The early church father Tertullian says the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
It’s kind of a dark quote, but it’s how it happens. People’s witness just bring forth what needs to be brought forth in someone’s life. Okay. Let us see here. God’s mission includes all believers to all people notice in the verse we’re going on to Jerusalem, Judea Samaria, and to the ends of the. If you’re a follower of Jesus.
If you have the spirit of Christ in you, if you’ve tasted forgiveness, if you know what grace looks like because of your own journey with the Lord, if you’ve been justified, you’ve, you’ve watched your sin nailed in your place on the cross God’s mission involves you. You are a witness by very nature of following Jesus.
You are a witness to what has happened. We participate in this and we have the choice to be an effective witness, or maybe just to kind of cover that up and hide that witness first, Peter three 15, but in your hearts honor, Christ the Lord as holy always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that’s in you.
And why, how are you okay. In this situation? Like there’s no way you should be joy-filled there’s no way you should have hope here. Why do you have that hope? I need that hope. What is it? Slam dunk right there. That is the conversation of witness Titus two. It says how we live is our witness that people would, as they come to bring charges against us, they really don’t know how to do that.
They can’t bring anything bad to say about us because of the way that we live and function as witnesses to Christ. We’ve been changed. We live that way. It is our witness in Jerusalem, Judea Sumeria to the ends of the. Jerusalem is right where they were located, their hometown. And then we know it kind of breaks out.
Judea is their own culture kind of in the same region, but it’s not really the hometown Symeria then breaks out. It’s a nearby culture though, different from Jerusalem culture. And then to the ends of the earth, including everyone not born of Jewish heritage, the Gentiles where Jesus is unknown, those circles keep building out, which we’ll get to here in a minute.
John Stott says this Christ’s kingdom tolerates, no narrow nationalism. He rules over an international community in which race and rank and gender are no barriers to fellowship. Giving you a second Tertullian quotes two in one sermon. This is like really church Fatheree 2 0 4, a D he’s writing in this.
Roman empire he’s in the north African region under the emperor. Severus and this is what Tertullian says we are, but of yesterday. And we have filled every place among you. Cities, islands, fortresses towns, marketplaces the very camp tribes companies, palace Senate forum. We have left nothing to you, but the temple of your gods, the pervasive nature of the witness of Christ goes forth.
We’re everywhere. We’re in every place. All you have left as a place to worship your gods. Those temples ate off Harnick is a German church historian. He says it this way. We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of Christianity was in reality, accomplished by means of informal missionaries, informal missionaries.
Does that classify you? Do you feel like you informally have this calling to be a witness where you are never met somebody that doesn’t even know that they’re a witness, but as you’re talking to them, you’re like, man, you are a bright shining light for the Lord. And someday that’s going to just explode.
People are going to know because of what’s inside of you. I met someone this week and a friend called and said, Hey, I’d love for you to connect with this guy. He’s newer in his faith, but he’s well, I’ll let him tell you his story. So he came to my office, we sat for more than two hours and he was telling me his story and something like this involved early in his life with the demonic realm, just chose to kind of go into all of those things of darkness, friends, with many people who claim to worship Satan.
And he describes this long dark and terrifying journey of seeing and visualizing these things happening all around him. He dove headlong into the things of the world, trying to satisfy whatever it is that was missing. And finally, one of the friends, interestingly enough, who introduced him to this Satan worship kind of life said, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but you’re supposed to talk to God.
And he said, this is really odd. Okay. I think I’ll just, I’ll go talk to God, God meeting in the middle of this whole. So he started praying somehow he got ahold of the gospel of John and started reading through the gospel of John. He was given some sermons and he started devouring the truth of God. And what seemed like in a miraculous turn of events with nobody around no formal setting with pews and a pastor, he gave his life to Christ, radically, this immediate release of the weights and struggles he’d been carrying the spirit of God, truly lives inside of this kid.
Someone who’d been depressed and anxious and without hope was now sitting across from me in my office and his eyes were smiling at me. I have chills even thinking about this, but I just couldn’t even imagine, like, what was dark is now been made? Totally. With tears in his eyes. He said, I’ve never known this kind of love and joy and peace before.
It was one of the most moving experiences I’ve had to date as a pastor at our church bowing and lifting his hands in worship to king Jesus. And I said, man, I got to tell you, this is crazy. God’s spirit is so in you. And he’s going to use you in some incredible way, just as a witness. And I wondered sitting there, like, why isn’t the church more like this?
Why aren’t we people more like this? It seems like oftentimes maybe it’s just pastor complex, but it’s like read your Bible more. Pray more. Love him. He’s so good. If you just spend some time with. And I had, I didn’t have to do that. This child who had come to Christ was so transformed. He just couldn’t get enough of Jesus.
And as we talked back and forth through this tension, he said, well, if the Spirit’s alive in somebody, this is what’s going to happen to them. And I’m like, do you want to preach on Sunday? Cause this is exactly what I’m talking about.
If the spirit of Jesus is alive among you, you have a story, a sinner once dead is now alive, it’s his story. And we ought to tell it, number three, the majesty and the motivation verses nine through 11 here. And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of there.
Let’s just pause there. Right? This physically happened, right? This is the nativity last scene. In real time, a cloud took him out of their sight and while they were gazing into heaven, as he went behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?
This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way. You saw him go into heaven. Okay. First year all produces joy and. Jesus departs back in a cloud, the disciples are looking the better translation is they were gazing into heaven. Think of like a child that let’s go have a balloon.
I had thought about doing that. And Tim said, yeah, then you could tie it to a string and pull it back down. And I lost it right there, but think about a child losing a balloon. And then you just kind of like, watch it go off into the distance. That’s what they were doing. They were just gazing. This cloud just took this man and he’s gone.
Like what? And we don’t have the specifics in the book of acts, but if you go back to the book of Luke, the end of Luke, Luke 24, you’ll find what happens in their amazement 24 verse 53, 53. And he led them out. As far as Bethany and lifting up his hands. He blessed the disciples. He blessed them. And while he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven and they worshiped.
And returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing. God, it’s been one of the craziest 40 day journeys they’ve ever had. He’s resurrected. He’s teaching about the kingdom crazy few years. He’ll be with them in the spirit is coming and then he’s gone. You would expect them to feel so sad and alone and abandoned.
And yet there is joy and there is worship and they race back to the temple. Yes, the places and the spaces that Jesus was just handed over into death. And here they are, the disciples blessing. God it’s confirmation of the divinity of Christ possibly motivated them in a way they hadn’t been before second here, the promised hope requires us to join.
It’s a compelling end to the message. If you think about the last part of the nativity as I was reading it, I’m like, man, pastor Jim’s narrative really made sense. A new story was promised and there was great hope, right? He’s coming back, go and live in obedience, making disciples, be my witness and wait for the spirit to come.
You will receive power. Jesus had already rebuked them with his words about the kingdom. It’s not for you to know times and seasons that God has planned. Romans 13, Paul says, stay awake. Don’t fall asleep. Don’t forget he’s coming back. The promised hope requires that we join being witness to him. He will return think of those parables that he taught about.
He will come and divide the wheat from the weeds. He will come and take back his. Go and live as his witnesses. Now it’s customary at the end of a sermon to give some applications action points. I’ve given you all the fill in the blanks. So here’s what I want to do this morning. It seems like this is an incredibly obvious application.
Maybe you’ve already had a few possibly you’ve written some down names of people, places where you need to go. So I want to give you a few myths applications, things you should not walk out and continue to do this morning. The first is this. You should not continue focusing your attention, looking for nations and dates and times as to when the kingdom of God is going to come back.
What does that do? That deters us from in real time, right now, being a witness, let God be concerned. With the appointed times for everything be awake now to what he is doing. Second, we should not hold on tight to this earth, his kingdom, his will, whatever that looks like your goals or your aspirations, hopes, and dreams does all.
You want scream. Christ is all you live for. It is all of your money. Point to everything we want is Christ third. We should not witness in our own strength. We have been given the power of the holy spirit who gives us this witness. There’s a group of us gathering. And one of the things we’re talking about is just learning how to continue to say yes when the holy spirit prompts us, maybe it’s in a conversation, maybe it’s to not do something or to do.
But what if we practiced just responding? Yes. When the spirit prompts us, maybe gives us a passage or up a piece of scripture that really convicts our hearts. What if we said, yes, I hear you, Lord. This is speaking to me and I do need to move learning to pay attention to ways he’s working and just start following him.
And as we learn to follow, we’ll see incredible power on display. As we witnessed, maybe it’s somebody, this gets brought to your mind out of nowhere. You’re driving on the road and somebody’s name comes up and you start praying for that person. What’s God doing with our witness. We should not forget the word, receive forth in all things in all of life, in all of our stories, God moves first.
He acts, he wills. He intends, he gives, he loves. The first and the best he does, we can’t lose this connection to the gratitude that we have. It’s not my spirit. That’s going and taking over and conquering things in the name of the Lord. I’ve been given this spirit. Okay. Last one with hesitation. I read these words to you.
We should stop thinking and acting and defining missions as overseas. Now I say that because we have some great missionaries who do not live in our country. Of course they are supporting and carrying the gospel to all nations, as we know they should. But many of us even support overseas, missionaries this formal calling.
And I’m not saying they are not doing the work of the Lord, but I want to speak to. The majority of Christians do not live in the United States. In fact, many countries who we have missionaries in our sending them here, what do we do with that? Missions is not an overseas project or venture. This is not offensive.
This possibly could be an exciting thing that we have just as much opportunity down the street on the sideline at the store, wherever it is to be a witness. And I’ll say this, we have missions trips. And I have been man through the years on some incredible times where God has used me. God has used our teams to bring the hope to people.
You should not go there and preach the gospel. If you can’t live here and preach the gospel because play this. How many, have you been on a missions trip before? Some of you, okay. A lot of times you get, there you go on this missions trip and surprise. What do you have to do when you go there? Tell people about Jesus.
It’s not like you all of a sudden quick switch and you do something different. That’s the mission here as it is there. Why would we have to fly across the world to start doing that? If it’s how we’re living? Yes. Then we should go in always to the ends of the earth, this little graphic at the end, just to remind you, as we pray, is that there acts one eight circles going out, okay.
Jerusalem, Judea, Sumeria, to the ends of the arthritis. They’re starting in Jerusalem. They’re moving outward to the ends of the earth, and God will do that, but he doesn’t say start by traveling a long way away and tell those people about Jesus. He says, Jerusalem.
There’s a lot here. Lots of unpack. And the book of acts is so exciting because it’s not about a great bunch of men carrying the message. It’s about the spirit at work. Let’s pray. Jesus. We give you praise this morning. I don’t know why you said it would be better if you left, but all I can see is that your spirit is so actively at work and there you are sitting at the right hand of your father and we get to live as your witnesses here and locally and further out.
Just these rings that spread out to the, to the ends of the earth. Lord protect us from sitting here and guessing about times and dates. And when you’re going to do this and that and lining up with this kingdom and making our nation most imp. Your kingdom involves the ends of the earth. And so we ask God, lead us here and there.
And wherever you might to be your witnesses in your Spirit’s power, we pray these things in your name. Amen. Amen. Thanks for being here this morning. You are dismissed.