The Agenda

Acts 1:6-8

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 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 end of the earth.”

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part One)

God’s kingdom is coming in and through the work of Jesus, not by taking people away from this world but by transforming things within this world, brining the sphere of earth into the presence, and under the rule, of heaven itself (8).

The apostles are to go out as heralds, not of someone who may become king at some point in the future, but of the one who has already been appointed and enthroned (9).

Jesus gives the apostles an agenda: Jerusalem first, then Judea (the surrounding countryside), then Samaria (the hated semi-foreigners living right next door) and to the ends of the earth. Sit back and watch, Luke says. That’s exactly the journey we’re about to take (10).