Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our First lesson (Acts 1: 1-11) read earlier.

Take a moment to think about all the groups, social institutions you belong to, be they clubs, societies, work, school, or government related. What do you belong to? What have you belonged to in the past? I'll name a few just to give you an idea what I mean. Do you or have you belonged to the Army or other military branch? Have you worked for the government or Sprint or Wal-Mart or one of our smaller, local businesses? Are you a student in one of our local schools, be it Eisenhower Elementary or Chapman Middle School or Junction City High School? Are you, or have you ever been in 4-H, scouts, Rotary, VFW, FFA, sports leagues, music groups, self-help groups, etc.? What social groups do you belong?

What is the most influential, powerful social group to which you have belonged? Which group has influenced you the most? Which group to which you have belonged holds the most sway, the most authority, the most influence in our country or around the world? If you've ever worked at Wal-Mart, well that's an awfully big multi-national company, the largest in the world now I'm told. Is that the most influential social institution for which you've been a member? Or perhaps those of you who are or have been military? There is no military force in the world as powerful, as well armed, as the U.S. Army and Air Force and Navy and Marines. Never has been. Is that the most influential social institution for which you've been a member? Or again, which social group to which you belong has the most influence on you?

After Jesus' resurrection he appeared to his disciples, his little social group, over a period of 40 days, telling them more about the Kingdom of God. These disciples knew something amazing had just happened, was still happening. He was opening the Scriptures to them (Luke 24). They knew that his death on the cross was for a purpose, for them as ransom for their sins. They knew that in his resurrection He had conquered death itself, for them. They knew they were at the center of an historic event. Perhaps they even knew that what was happening would change the world as they knew it. But they were still shortsighted, still not grasping the immensity of influence of the group to which they belonged. Oh, granted they thought they had the big picture in mind.

"When they met together (with Jesus), they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"

Restoration of Israel would have been big time for them, political influence and power like they had never seen before, even more power than at the time of Moses or King David. They thought, they knew that they were members of a small but very influential social group, Jesus Christ's followers. But their influence was not to be like they thought. Jesus told them "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." After Jesus' work of ransoming us from the power of sin, death and the devil, He had promised to send another Counselor, another Advocate and Advisor, the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit, this little social group of believers would receive power. Then they would be truly influential, but not like they thought. They would not be given power like the world thinks of power, at least not yet. They would be given the power to fearlessly tell others about Jesus, what He had done, about God's plan of love and salvation that He had been preplanning since the beginning of time. This little ragtag social group that Jesus had chosen would start, the next week at Pentecost, telling Jerusalem and all its worldwide visitors about this amazing, powerful story. Through this story of Jesus, they would be witnesses to the life-changing experience of 1000's, tens of 1000's of people. They would watch and be witnesses as God's Words spoken through them would sweep across the Mediterranean Sea, into Africa and Asia within a generation. Through the beginnings of this little gang of 11 men and Mary and Jesus' brothers and a few other men and women, the Holy Spirit started a life-giving brushfire that spread powerfully across the world and now has changed the lives of an estimated 2 billion people who claim to believe in Christ and God's Word revealed from the Bible.

So what is the most influential, most powerful social group to which you belong? Believe it or not, it's not Wal-Mart, or the Army, or even the United States as a citizen. The most influential, life-changing social group to which you belong is right here, God's people the church. Look around at all your fellow "power-brokers." Sure, go ahead, look at each other. You don't look all that powerful do you, do we? And on our own, we are not powerful. But the Good News is we are not on our own. That same Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to Peter and John and James and his mother Mary and his brothers, that same Holy Spirit is alive and active here among us, in us, all of us who trust in Jesus for forgiveness, who trust in Jesus as our Lord. Jesus has prayed that we be protected by the power of God's name, and we have been through our baptisms. He is empowering us through the Words of God, through the Old Testament, through the Gospels, through Acts and the Epistles and Revelation. We don't look powerful by the world's standards, and by the world's standards we are not. By the world's standards we may even suffer through painful trials, like our Lord Jesus Himself did. But yet He tells us that we have received power because the Holy Spirit has come upon us.

So what do we do with that power that He has lavished upon us? We are his witnesses, we share it. We are the ultimate peace-keeping force, peace-making force here on earth, and we here at Immanuel are one of God's strategically placed platoons for that work. But we don't have much time for our work here. God gives us only a brief opportunity to share his love and his power with others until he chooses to take us to be with him for eternity. Let me share it with you the way Rev. Tim Heiney, our missionary in West Africa has suggested.

I want you to imagine that you are going to live to be 100 years old on this earth. Imagine it, that each of us is given 100 years here. On this tape measure, that 100 years is going to be represented by one inch.

The first 25 years, when we're growing and going to school and first establishing ourselves in our careers and perhaps early parental years is the first ¼ inch. In the next 25 years, your children grow and mature, and you grow, perhaps in your career or in other ways.

That is the next ¼ inch on the tape. In the next 25 years, from 50-75, you age, and slow, and retire, hopefully in good health. That is the 3rd ¼ inch. In the last ¼ inch, 75 to 100, you get older, and slower and at the end of that inch you die, assuming our Lord hasn't already returned during your first or 2nd ¼ inch already.

Now it has been 500 years since the start of the Reformation, since Luther's rediscovery of the Gospel in God's Word sent that fire and power of the Holy Spirit spreading throughout Europe and the Americas and the rest of the world. 5 inches on the tape. And it has been only 20 inches since this message began. Most of Jesus' Apostles were only given about 30 years to spread that message before they were killed, martyred for the faith. But only 20 inches, 2000 years is all the church has been given so far to share this Gospel of Jesus.

But now think about how many inches this powerful church has to spend with her Risen and Ascended Lord in the heaven he has gone to prepare for us. Another 20 inches, 2000 years? No, that amount of time would be great, but in reality it is only a pittance. No we could pull this tape out all the way, 12 feet, equivalent to 144 inches, or 14,000 years, and that would still be a dribble, a drop in the bucket compared to eternity. We could pull out another tape measure, 25 feet, equivalent to 30,000 years (spread across the chancel area) and another, 100 feet, equivalent to 120,000 years and these would all just be a start to eternity. We could keeping wrapping tape measures around the church and around the world, each inch representing 100 years of time, and they would not begin to measure the eternity that we are blessed to spend with our Lord, starting now, when he called us in this first inch.

Because we are human, we tend to think in human terms. We tend to think that this one little inch or 100 years is our life. We think we ought to live it to the fullest or to our own advantage in some way. But this one inch isn't our whole life. Rather it is only the start to our eternal life that goes on forever and ever. But this one inch is the only time that you will be a member of the most influential social group on this earth, the group with the privilege and responsibility to share this Gospel of Jesus Christ with a dying world, with people who if they die apart from this Gospel will not live eternity with this Jesus, but in hell forever and ever. We, the most influential social group in the world, the church, have the blessed opportunity to tell others of his gracious love for them shown in his death and resurrection. How will you spend the next quarter inch or half inch or ¾ inch of your life, hoarding your powerful message to yourself, or sharing that message with others?