Defeating Lies With Living Truth Series

Defeating Lies With Living Truth

April 15, 2021

Pastor Dan Little

email: adfontes.djl@gmail.com

The Landmark Church

126 Court St. Binghamton, NY 13901

Scripture reading Acts 2:17-24, 32, 36-41

Peter stands to address a large crowd. He sites one of Israel’s prophets (Joel) as saying;

Acts 2:17 " …in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams;18 even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.19 And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;20 the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.21 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

22 "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. …

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32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.

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36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" 38 And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. ESV

This is the very first public declaration by an Apostles that Jesus had risen from the dead, ascended back into the heavens and was now enthroned as King of kings and Lord of lords and Savior of all.

Luke’s narrative says that Peter urged them saying; Acts 2: 40 "Save yourselves from this CROOKED generation."

In Philippians 2:15 the Apostle Paul urges the believers in the city of Philippi saying…I want you to learn to live UPRIGHT LIVES…so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God … in the midst of a CROOKED AND TWISTED generation.

In both these scriptures the Greek word they chose to use for crooked or twisted is skolios.

If that word sounds familiar it is probably because doctors use the word to describe a spinal difficulty they call SCOLIOSIS -- a condition in which the spine is crooked where it ought to be straight.

Some years back a church family had a young teenage girl with a a severe curvature of the spine, the kind that could be fixed by surgery once she stopped grown. When she reached about 16 the surgical procedure was performed and she stood nearly six inches taller than before.

Neither Peter nor Paul is referring to the physical body, but to damaged state of the heart of every generation since Adam and Eve, but (like that young girl,) they are saying that something is spiritually crooked in man, something will not allow us to stand to our full upright height of what it means to be fully human.

HERE IS THE BACKGROUND FOR THIS DIAGNOSIS

The first 3 chapters of Genesis gives us the Biblical background this condition.

In Genesis chapter one and two you have the story of the creation of the first human pair.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image , after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

27 So God created man in his own image , in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them. ESV