Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" And He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."
Acts 1:6-8
The disciples had been with Jesus for three years. Jesus had been risen from the dead for forty days. He had been seen by many. Yet the disciples still failed to get that Jesus didn’t come to reestablish an earthly kingdom of Israel, like that of David and Solomon. So they asked, "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"
Jesus’ answer is two-fold: (1) The disciples were curious about the future. Jesus reminds them (and us) that the future belongs to God (v.7). (2) The disciples were eager for a Jewish kingdom. Jesus commissioned them to go everywhere in the world to tell every people group in the world the good news of the Gospel.
Note also that Jesus alluded to the fact that the disciples were incapable of fulfilling this great commission. They needed supernatural power, which they would receive “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you.”
Note that the coming Holy Spirit was to empower and embolden the Lord’s people to be witnesses—that is, to proclaim the Gospel. Without the Holy Spirit the disciples would have failed miserably. Because of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel spread miraculously throughout the Roman empire. The same is true for us. When we fail, it is because we do not rely on the Holy Spirit to empower and embolden us. The problem is not that we do not have the Holy Spirit in us—we do. Whenever a person is born again by the Holy Spirit, that person is indwelt, and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Our problem is that we do not rely on Him.
Dear saints, let us not fret about the future—God has it in His hands. Let us not be “exclusivists,” thinking the Gospel is only for people like us. Let us not to neglect to rely on the Holy Spirit to empower and embolden us to be witnesses for Christ—His is in us for precisely this purpose.