Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2330
“When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, willyou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And He said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own power. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you: andyou shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Acts 1:6-8.
THESE are among the last words of our Lord. We greatly prize the last words of good men. Let us set high store by these words of our ascending Lord. It is very curious to my mind that Jesus should make mention of John the Baptist and of John’s Baptism in these last words. Read the fifth verse—“John truly baptized with water; but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence.” It is very usual for good men’s memories, in their last hours, to go back to their first hours. I trust that some of us will think of our Baptism even when we are dying—
High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily hear— Till in life’s latest hour I bow, And bless in death a bond so dear.”
Our Lord began in such a way that He could afford to look back on His beginning. Some do not commence so— their beginning is so undecided, so imperfect, so hesitating, that they may well wish to have it forgotten. But our Lord, at the close of His sojourn on earth, thinks of John the Baptist and pays him a dying word of respect just before He is taken up into Glory. I like to notice that interesting fact.
But, now, to come more to the text, a question was put to our Lord. Many questions were asked of Him by His disciples, some of them not very wise ones. We are very glad that they asked them, for they have extracted from the Savior a great amount of instruction and, although this question about restoring the Kingdom to Israel may have been a mistaken one, and they may have meant a more material and carnal kingdom than our Savior intended to establish (of that I am not sure), yet the question brought to us a reply which we may well store up in our memories and hearts—“It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own power. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you: and you shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
We have three things to talk about, tonight. First, some things which are not for us. Secondly, some things for us to receive. And thirdly, something for us to be.
I. First, then, let us consider SOME THINGS WHICH ARE NOT FOR US. It is not for us to know the times and the seasons, or to be able to make a map of the future. There are some great events of the future very clearly revealed. The Prophecy is not at all indistinct about the facts that will occur, but as to when they will occur, we have no data. Some think that they have, but our Lord, here, seems to say that we do not know the times and the seasons—and that it is not for us to know them. I pass no censure upon brethren who think that, by elaborate calculations, they find out what is to be in the future. I say that I pass no censure, but time has passed censure of the strongest kind upon all their predecessors! I forget how many miles of books interpreting prophecy there are in the British Museum, but I believe it amounts to miles, all of which have been disproved by the lapse of time. Some of the writers were wonderfully definite—they knew within half-an-hour when the Lord would come! Some of them were very distinct about all the events—they had mapped
them all within a few years. The men who wrote the books, happily for themselves, had mostly died before the appointed time came. It is always wise to pitch on a long period of prophecy, that you may be out of the way if the thing does not come off—and they mostly did so. There were very few of them who lived to suffer the disappointment which would certainly have come to them through having fixed the wrong date. I let time censure their mistake. God forgave it, for they did it with a desire for His Glory. The bulk of them were most sincere students of the Word of God and, herein, are a lesson to us, even though they were mistaken in their calculations. But, Beloved, it is not for you to know the times and the seasons.
First, it is not proper for you. It is not your work. You are not sent into the world to be prophets—you are sent into the world to be witnesses. You do not come here to be prognosticators of the events of tomorrow about yourself, or about your children, or about your friends, or about the nations of the earth. A veil hangs between you and the future. Your prayer is to be, “Your Kingdom come. Your will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven.” You are told to look for the coming of your Lord and to stand in perpetual expectation of His return, but to know the time when He will come is no part of your office. You are servants who are to look for your Lord, who may come at cock-crowing, or at midday, or at midnight. Always stay on your tiptoes of expectation. It would be wrong for you to profess that you need not watch until such-and-such a time, for you know that He will not come until that date arrived.