94-29 Pressing Upwards - Acts 2

Now it's so good to be here. We want to worship the Lord. Number 40, 4-0, mission praise, maybe on the overheads as well.

Ascribe greatness to the Lord our Rock. Number 40, ascribe greatness to our God the Rock. His work is perfect and all His ways are just.

We'll sing that twice and then go into 2-4-5, how great is our God, and then because we've got another baptism this morning, Tim takes over and introduces the baptismal spot for us all to appreciate, and we listen to a testimony. Number 40. Ascribe greatness to the Lord our Rock.

His work is perfect and all His ways are just. The God of faithfulness and without injustice, the Lord at our front is near. The God of faithfulness and without injustice, the Lord at our front is near.

Ascribe greatness to the Lord our Rock. His work is perfect and all His ways are just. Ascribe greatness to the Lord our Rock.

His work is perfect and all His ways are just. The God of faithfulness and without injustice, the Lord at our front is near. The God of faithfulness and without injustice, the Lord at our front is near.

2-4-5. Ascribe greatness to the Lord our Rock. His work is perfect and all His ways are just.

The God of faithfulness and without injustice, the Lord at our front is near. The God of faithfulness and without injustice, the Lord at our front is near. Ascribe greatness to the Lord our Rock.

His work is perfect and all His ways are just. The God of faithfulness and without injustice, the Lord at our front is near. Why does somebody want to be baptised and go under the water? Because they want people to know that they love Jesus.

Fine, okay. That was great, wasn't it? They want people to know that they love Jesus. So that's why Jane is going to be baptised this morning.

Jane, come over here. We'll try not to give you a premature baptism. Good.

Now Jane, when you were this age, I think you were probably brought to church. What did you make of it when you were little and when you were growing up in your teens? Not a lot of it. And when you moved away from home, did you continue going? No, I left going to church for a while and I came back to church when I came down to Worthing in 1976.

Right. What did you come to Worthing to do? Work in the Worthing Hospital in the geriatrics unit. Right, okay.

You've had one or two struggles in life which you've battled through because Jane only discovered long after she left school that she was deaf in one ear and also was dyslexic and an operation left her with tinnitus. And Jane said, about a month ago now, she wanted to be baptised but she had this complaint in her ear. So on our half-night of prayer a month ago, we have very exciting times on our half-nights of prayer.

You really ought to come along. We've prayed for Jane. And she said last week that her ear was better and she wanted to be baptised today.

But that's running ahead a little bit of ourselves. So how did you become a Christian in the end? You went to church again when you came to Worthing for friendship. But how did you actually come to know Jesus for yourself? I came to know the Lord when a certain minister came down to preach on the Second Coming in one of the churches down here locally.

And I didn't quite realise what it all meant at the first time but on the second time I realised that the Lord wanted me to be with Him. So you had to follow Him there and then and you've been following Him ever since. That's good.

Alright, we'll baptise you now. Just before we do that, we'll sing, I think it's 2-5-4 in mission praise. I am a new creation.

We'll just pray with Jane while we do that and then we'll go into the water. New creation, here in the good spirit. All that you have come to be is a likeness in my spirit.

Here in the grace of your light. And the verse for Jane Whitehouse. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

Jane Whitehouse, on confession of your faith in our Lord Jesus Christ I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Be still for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here. Come bow before Him now with reverence and fear.

In Him no sin is found, we stand on holy ground. Be still for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here. Be still for the glory of the Lord is shining all around.

He burns with holy fire, with splendour He is crowned. How awesome is the sight, our radiant King of light. Be still for the presence of the Lord is shining all around.

Be still for the power of the Lord is moving in this place. He comes to cleanse and heal, to minister His grace. No work too hard for Him, in faith receive from Him.

Be still for the power of the Lord is moving in this place. Be still for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here. Come bow before Him now with reverence and fear.

In Him no sin is found, we stand on holy ground. Be still for the presence of the Lord. In Him no sin was found, we stand on holy ground.

Be still for the presence of the Lord is moving in this place. Lord it's not just the words we want to hear, the experience we want to feel. So may our shoes be taken from off our feet, and may we realize that we are treading on holy ground.

And all the people of God feelingfully said, Amen. Psalm 42 All these scriptures have something in common which you'll see in a moment or two I think. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night. While men say to me all day long, Where is your God? Verse 5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.

Let's flip over to Psalm 121 I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Now let's go to familiar territory, Isaiah in chapter 64 Isaiah 64 O that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you, as when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil. Now let's go to the Acts of the Apostles in chapter 2 In fact, we'll take up a reading from the earlier chapter, the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.

Then, and this is verse 12, Then they returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day's walk from the city. When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas, son of James.

They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Chapter 2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.

They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Chapter 3 I think there is a sense in which you can say that the preposition, that little connecting word which we use so often in the English language, of which there are many, but I think you could say that the preposition down in the Old Testament invariably refers to the coming into human experience the person of God.

I mean, here is Moses and he is on Mount Sinai and the Lord comes down. Moses asks God if he can have an experience of Him and Moses is told that if he hides himself in the cleft of the rock, then the glory of the Lord will come down and Moses will get some experience of the grandeur and the wonder of God. You get exactly the same in the dedication of the temple, Solomon's temple.

You remember how when Solomon built this magnificent wonder, the wonder of the ancient world in honor of God the Lord, came down and filled the temple and His presence in Old Testament times called the Shekinah, the Shekinah glory of God permeated every room of that remarkable edifice. And when the Psalmist is talking about going into the presence of the Lord, he makes reference to the Lord coming down as the Psalmist enters into His holy hill. Down, the language of theophany, the language of God making His presence felt among the people.

Well, if that is the preposition of theophany, there is what I would call the preposition of encounter. And that is the converse, that is people reaching for God. The first was God coming down among the people.

Here is taking it from the other angle, people desiring for the Lord. And here is the preposition of encounter, up, going up. One of the reasons why I read to you from the Psalms, and I could have taken you to about 20 Psalms in the middle of that book, is because there are certain Psalms that are known as the Psalm of Ascent.

Now, to understand why they were called the Psalm of Ascent, you have to gather something about the geography of Palestine. You see, you've got Galilee in the north, like, shall we say, Yorkshire in England. It's a flat area, and if you're going to move to Judea, to the south, you go on a long pilgrimage, it's a fairly long journey.

And you drop down and you come to the plain, where the Jordan is. And then when you move into central and southern Judea, you start the climb. The first part of the journey was relatively easy, but the second part of the journey is not so easy.

And the Psalmist, he deliberately, or they deliberately composed Hebrew hymns, which the pilgrims coming from the north would take up and they would start to sing. The British Army, particularly in the First World War, would have its own songs, and the troops would become more spirited as they started to sing and they marched together. Well, it's the same sort of idea.

Here is this high-placed Jerusalem, and the pilgrims are going to move towards Jerusalem, and to help them to pick up fresh verve and energy on the final part of the journey, they would sing the Psalm of Ascent. And one of the Psalms makes reference to, who shall enter into your holy hill? Who shall go up there? So in the Old Testament, the preposition up, very often refers to the people of God reaching out for God. The preposition down, refers to God coming down amongst his people.

Now, when you move into the Acts of the Apostles, you are confronted with a very interesting account in the first couple of chapters of the early church. They have known the departure of the Beloved Lord, and they have been told that they are to move from the scene of the Ascension, just outside Jerusalem, and they are to return to a room. It's referred to in verse 12 or verse 13 as the upstairs room.

The upper room, I think the authorized version uses to describe it. And there they were to wait for, well, they were to wait for God coming down. You see how you're getting in this little incident, an illustration of both concepts which I've tried to trace out.

God coming down and the people coming up. The responsibility of God taking the initiative to disclose his presence, and also the responsibility of the people to seek after the Lord. Now there is a sense in which I argue that you could say of the church, that the best description of the church is the church of the upper room, because this is where the people were to gather and to enjoy the empowering of the Holy Spirit as he made his presence felt amongst them.

So the disciples were told to go to Jerusalem and to wait in the upper room. One commentator says this, the upper room still forms the distinctive feature of a Syrian or a Palestinian house. It is a guest chamber where the guest is quartered outside the part of the house.

It's a first luxury the poor engage in. It is to make an upper chamber. The Shunammite, you remember, the widow woman who gave hospitality to Elisha, she did this.

The top of her flat roofed house was turned into an upper room. And because it could be coextensive with the whole roof area, the upper room could be large, the biggest room in the house. It was connected to the entrance by an external stairway, and you could get to the upper room without necessarily going through the host's quarters of the house.

Now it seems as though this was the sort of place in which the disciples met on this occasion which heralded the day of Pentecost. The possibility is that it was the same upper room as where our Lord was when he set forth the Passover meal and lifted its significance as he introduced the concept of the Lord's Supper. There are those who daringly have even argued that the upper room was part of the upper chamber of the temple, part of one of the many rooms that there were in that great building.

I think that's unlikely. But the fact of the matter is that in an upper room, the power of the Holy Spirit descended upon disciples who had taken the precaution of ensuring that they were there, present, with an attitude of openness to what God wanted them to do. Now, last time I was privileged to preach here, the other Sunday week in the morning, I took you to Isaiah 64.

All that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down. And I placed that text within the context of the Welsh and other revivals, indicating to you that the only hope for the Church in the 20th century, the only hope for the Church in Great Britain, is that God will come down, is that the heavens might be rent, and the presence of God manifest amongst his people. Now, I say that what Isaiah was predicting or groaning for, all that thou wouldst come down, is here illustrated in all its wonder of fulfillment in the first chapter of Acts.

The Lord came down. He came down amongst the people, and he did spectacular things, equivalent to the phenomena metaphorically predicted by Isaiah in that 64th chapter. So, I want to bring to you this particular application.

There is a sense in which it is true to say of Christian people that, ideally speaking, they are people of an altitude. That is, they are people who like the spiritual heights. Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Ephesians in the first chapter and the third verse, and it's more clear in the authorized version of the Bible, says of Christian people, spiritually speaking and ideally, they are already seated in the heavenlies. Now, how can that be the case? Here you are, you're living in this world. All right, says the Apostle Paul, it may well be that you're living in this world, but at the spiritual level, you're living up there.

Here is the Apostle Peter, he puts it more precisely. You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. Oh, back to the Apostle Paul.

He has called you this great God, out of the kingdom of darkness, translated you into the kingdom of his own Son. And there is only one way in which you can describe that kingdom. It is one of a very high altitude, and people are only comfortable in that kingdom if they do not go dizzy at the thought of being elevated to spiritual heights.

Lord, lift me up and let me stand by faith on heaven's table land, where love and joy and light abound. Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. You see those disciples, that early bunch of men and women, Christian people, as they make their way down the cobbled streets of Jerusalem, having said adieu to the Savior.

And they climb that external stairway, and they go to the upper room. And I argue for the importance of altitude at the spiritual level in understanding how Christian people are to live. But then, in order to scale heights, you have to be determined to climb.

I've always had an admiration for the Sherpas. Those are that remarkable group of people in Nepal. My admiration went to untold bounds on a couple of occasions when I've been out in Nepal and had the opportunity, just in terms of the lower reaches of the Himalayas, of climbing there a little bit.

And the thought of going on and on up into the higher ranges of those beautiful mountains, the idea of going to Everest, well, it was wishful thinking. But nonetheless, it gave me a great sense of admiration for the men, and indeed the women, who have attempted those Himalayan heights. Sometimes I sleep very lightly.

At least, I don't sleep very long at night. And occasionally, I'll reach to my bunch of books, which are always by the side of my bed. And the other day, you'll not believe this, but I swear it's true.

In fact, the book is in front of me. At 4 o'clock in the morning, I lifted out a Penguin classic, The Cistercian World, Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century. I mean, there's nothing more wonderful at 4 o'clock in the morning than to turn the pages of this remarkable thin tome, which actually tells you about the spirituality of one of the greatest men that Christendom pre-Reformation ever produced.

I refer to Bernard of Clairvaux. He was a spiritual mountaineer. You know, some of these men who lived in those pre-Reformation times, they had a remarkable experience of the spirit.

I was trying to put a corrective in at Keister by saying that the members of, and I'm not saying this critically at all. In fact, some people would place me within that category. The members of the charismatic or Pentecostal movements of today need to appreciate something of the depths and the heights that the men of the 12th century attained to in an area of spiritual progression and an entry into phenomena.

And here in a record of the early life of Bernard, who went to be the founder of a great monastic settlement, it says, God's mercy was not slowing coming to his aid. A few days later, Bernard saw in a dream a boy standing by him and looking at him with love, who made him with great authority speak confidently whatever word should be put in his mouth, for it would not be he who spoke, but the spirit in him. From that time on, the spirit did indeed speak more openly in and through him, giving greater powers to his words and depth to his understanding of the scriptures increasingly, to the appreciation and respect of his hearers, and endowing Bernard with a new sympathy with the poor and needy, the repentant sinner and the seeker after grace.

Bernard of Clairvaux, you remember, was the man who gave us that great hymn on the love of our Lord Jesus. But the spirituality of Bernard was such that you could enter into his presence and he could almost understand the frame of mind and perchance the lack of spirituality that was yours. He would expose it and then deal with you.

And sometimes in a most wonderful way, he would be able to pray for the sick and release people who were possessed with demon spirits of that malevolent power which had gripped them. You see, the higher that you climb, the greater the spiritual authority that is given to you. And these men who walked back from saying adieu to our Lord Jesus into this upper room, these were men who were determined to climb.

Our Lord on one occasion sets forth a parable, you remember, of a man who throws a banquet and one person believes that he was a more prominent guest than he ought to have been, and he's demoted. And the Lord Jesus says you should always wait for the invitation to come up higher, otherwise you might blush with shame at assuming a position that really is never yours. I want to say, as far as ascending into the upper room is concerned, the invitation is given to every Christian to come up higher, to be a man, to be a woman of altitude.

I have a problem. Well, actually I've got a number of problems, but there's one specifically that shouts at me from my text, at least the immediate context. I think I can resolve it in some degree, but here's my problem for what it's worth.

There were 120 people, men and women, who were in the upper room, not so, so it must have been a very big upper room. But we read of our Lord when he appeared to the disciples. On one occasion it was a sort of mega audience that greeted him.

500 people, and our Lord manifested himself to them. Now here's my problem. Presumably these were all who were committed to him at some level.

Why were there only 120 in the upper room? Some suggestions of an answer are, well, maybe this manifestation of the Lord was in Galilee, and therefore the people were not there in the upper room. On the other hand, the disciples who'd been in Galilee, fishing, they had come back to Jerusalem. Why didn't the rest come? Maybe 120 were specially selected because, well, that was the sort of number that was recognized in those days as actually establishing a religious community.

Whether these explanations are adequate or not, I'll leave it with you to judge. But maybe there's a third one. You see, the history of the Christian church, including the Acts of the Apostles, indicates that there are varying degrees of spirituality, not so? Varying stages of commitment to Christ.

You find that in every congregation. I don't wish to speak hurtfully, I have to speak however factually, or else I'll lose my own integrity as a preacher. You see, there are those whose level of obedience to Christ, whose concerns for altitude is there, and there are those whose concerns and obedience to Christ is there.

You see, the degree of spirituality that's yours, to some extent, is up to you to determine. That doesn't apply to your salvation, but it does apply to your spirituality. You can be as spiritual as you want to be.

You can climb as high as you want to go. Could it be, I can only put it forward as a hypothesis, could it be that even in the emerging church, there would be those who would be content with the way, and there would be those who would want the highway. There are those who want the shallow ground.

There are those who want the higher ground. There is always this variation. I speak with regret, but it's a fact of history.

It's a fact of this church. There are always those who want to go higher, and there are those who will settle for the lower ground. 500 who, perchance, could have been there.

120 who made it. 500 who could be involved in our day of prayer, or our week of prayer. I speak lovingly.

I don't think you can accuse me of being a harsh preacher. If I'm harsh, then I apologize. It's not intentional.

But you see, we're a mixed bunch in the tab, aren't we? Varying degrees of spirituality. You see, in one sense, you vote with your feet, don't you? I mean, you're either present or you're not present. You're either involved or you're uninvolved.

I mean, you either vote for prayer meetings by being present at prayer meetings, or you vote for the absence of prayer meetings. My mum's in the service. She'll remember a very dear pastor of ours back in my home city in Sheffield, a man called McGee, Pastor McGee.

Wonderful, beautiful man. And he once used a little couplet in his addresses. If every member on the roll behaved as I do in my soul, the Christian church, what would it be? A blessing or a curse through me.

If you reproduce your commitment so that that is the norm for the whole church, would we have evening, Sunday night services? Would we have a bevy of prayer meetings? Would we be able to do what we're doing, not just a tab, extend this to the Christian church throughout the whole of England? You see, you do vote with your feet. This business of climbing high, I'm surely quite right in arguing that this is left to you to decide. The importance of altitude, the determination to climb.

What about the view you get from the top? I mean, the higher you go, the better it is. I would hate to live in a block of flats in the centre of London, particularly the ones put up by the corporation. I think the architects ought to be enforced to live in them themselves.

Particularly the sub-ground ones, the basement flat. I mean, if I have to live in one of those places, Lord, give me one of the top ones, so at least I can see the panorama. The higher you get, the more you see.

Not so? You see, on one occasion, our beloved Lord was taken in a completely different context to this. He's taken to a high place, and illegitimately, the devil says to the Lord, who can see the panorama of all the countries, Egypt, he can see Persia, he can see towards Turkey as he spins round, and the devil illegitimately says, all these I will give you. Bow down and worship me.

And Jesus says, get out of the way. I will worship the Lord my God. Him only will I serve.

But in the upper room, don't you see, there's a replay, but now what was illegitimate is legitimized. You see, you disciples, when you go back to the upper room, what's going to happen? Well, you're going to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. In the upper room, they get a concept of... Sorry, I thought somebody was indicating I should stop.

You get a concept of the global challenge of the gospel to go throughout the whole world. No, I'm not being romantic in my exposition of this particular chapter, because when you get towards the end of the Acts, what happens? Well, these are the men who've turned the world upside down. They've done this thing.

They look from the high vantage of the upper room. They saw Judea. They saw Samaria.

They saw Galilee. They saw the uttermost parts of the earth, and they pleaded the cause of Jesus Christ and were used to penetrate the whole of the known world with the gospel. Let me try and hasten to a conclusion.

The upper room experience is a revolutionary one, isn't it? I've got a friend in London who's really a brain on legs. Have you met that sort of person? They scare the pants out of me. They really do intimidate me.

I mean, he's the guy who's at the cutting edge of computer software. I mean, he doesn't buy the programs. He writes them.

On one occasion, I took my rather sophisticated laptop, and I got some problems with it. And I hadn't brought the book, you know, the do-it-yourself book. It's thicker than the Bible, this thing, and I can never understand it at all.

Absolutely clueless, and I left it back in Worthing. And he said, where's the book? I said, I haven't got it. Oh, he said, it doesn't matter.

Do you know what he did? He got a machine in front of him, and all along, he tapped into the satellite, which had tapped back to California, which had tapped back to Silicon Valley, and he got in front of him, opening up the very book of instructions that I'd left in Worthing. Now, his laboratory is about nine foot by three foot, so it's not exactly the biggest place in the whole world. And in that room, he tapped a world I never knew existed.

I recall reading an article on one occasion, Upper Rooms, in which new worlds are discovered. And the article went on to talk about the way Karl Marx wrote his Das Kapital in an upper room in Soho, and how the inventor of radio did his experiments in an attic in Venezian Sea. Upper Rooms, where new worlds are discovered.

And on the day of Pentecost, they tapped in to a world that they'd only just begun through the ministries of Jesus Christ to realize existed. And they became people not just of altitude, they became people of authority. And when the Spirit came in all his power, they were empowered men and women who went around.

I'm not too sure that the wind and the tongues and the prophecy were the most important things. What I think was the most important phenomenon, or the most important phenomena that occurred was that in their presence, God became awesome. And as a result, people trembled and cried out, what must I do to be saved? And as the church grew in Jerusalem, there were those who didn't join, but they were scared stiff about the authority and the power that the early disciples, men and women, had.

What was the cause of this authority? Well, you see, these were men and women of altitude. These were men and women who'd been in the upper room. Who can ascend unto your holy hill? Well, the man who has a desire to go, the man who will slog.

Worthing Hospital, I rarely, if ever, use the lift, having convinced myself that if I keep climbing up and down the steps, my heart will keep in a healthy condition. So I pass lifts and I pass escalators, I just slog it and go up step by step. You may think that's crazy, you may think it's wise.

Depending on your opinion, you'll correct, or otherwise, you're a habit. There is no escalator to the upper room. There's no lift.

But you can ascend the steps. Obedience, thirst, a lack of fear in terms of what God will do for you in your life. If I ask him for a stone, he won't, if I ask him for bread, he won't give me a stone.

If I ask him for fish, he won't give me a scorpion. Taking what he will give you, believing that as you move up, the preposition of encounter, so he will come down, the preposition of theology, of theophany. For you see, essentially, the church is the church of the upper room.

So let's prepare our hearts to come around this table. As we think of our beloved Lord coming down amongst us in the incarnation, coming down to us on the cross, coming down to us in the spirit of the Holy Ghost, making it possible for us to be powerful, authoritative people in these days. Jesus our Redeemer, can you remind me of the number, please? 673.

Let's stand and sing. Jesus our Redeemer. Jesus our Redeemer, Jesus, Lord, Son, Soul.

Precious Lamb of God, Messiah. Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your Son, and leaving your spirit to the work on earth. He's a Redeemer, Maker of all things, Precious Lamb of God, the Child of God's King.

Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your Son, and leaving your spirit to the work on earth. When I stand in glory, I will see his face, and there I'll serve my King forever, in that holy place. Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your Son, and leaving your spirit to the work on earth.