First Response
Scriptures: Eph. 6:12; Prov. 3:5-6; Acts 2:14-16; Gal. 2:11-14
Introduction:
Last week I woke up to find that our heater for our home was broken. Later that day I was told by my daughter (who was actually vacuuming) that the vacuum cleaner was broken. The first words that came out of why mouth without any hesitation was “Why is everything breaking…” and then I caught myself. You see, my first response upon hearing about the vacuum being broken was to go to that place that says “When it rains it pours!” However, I caught myself and told my daughter that I was not going to speak those words into existence. Instead I said “by faith I proclaim that everything will be taken care of!” In that minute my mind shifted from “Woe is me” to “God will fix it.” My thinking was transformed from another bill has been created to I am blessed that the funds will be there when needed because God is taking care of it. By the way, Nikki had made sure that we had a warranty so the heater did not end costing us anything.
If you have been down to the basement you know that part of the ceiling caved in because of the air/heating ductwork detached from the ceiling. My first response was “Anger at how it could happen; what would the cost be; and would this delay our plans to pay off this building.” God refocused my mind on the understanding that it could have been a lot worse had it came down while people were there. He took my mind to this is a learning opportunity for us and that although this happened He had been looking out for us. The ceiling came down on Monday morning but it could have come down the day before while we were all down there celebrating Mr. Ernest birthday. So thinking along these lines I found it easy to give God praise for what did not happen versus focusing and lamenting on what did happen.
The reason I am sharing this with you is because I want to put myself in the “hot seat.” I know that I walk by faith, but I am as guilty as anyone else of allowing my “first response” to demonstrate areas where I am okay walking in faith and in areas where I might need reminders that I am “supposed” to be walking in faith. With my heater and the ceiling coming down in the basement, I had to be “reminded. In both situations my first response was not seeing God taking care of it or how God had prevented something worse from happening; it was to look at what would be the results of what did happen. Although my mind eventually came to where it needed to be, I would have expected “me” by now to have that response be my “initial” response versus my “delayed” response. I want to make sure you know in this message and any message that follows that I am not a completed work and I am still pressing towards the mark and the finish line.
The title of my message this morning is “First Response” and if I am not able to get it all in this message, I will carry this over to the first Sunday in February as next Sunday is youth Sunday. The first response is that initial response you have to a situation; it is that response that can be described as a “knee jerk reaction.” By definition a knee jerk reaction is “an immediate unthinking emotional reaction produced by an event or statement to which the reacting person is highly sensitive; - in persons with strong feelings on a topic, it may be very predictable.” The key phrase in this definition is “unthinking emotional reaction.” This reaction is an initial, immediate reaction that comes without first thinking about how you will respond - you respond before you even think about it or may even be aware that you are responding. This is especially true if the person has very strong feelings about a particular topic. When the situation arises, the reaction is immediate. Keep this in mind as I shift for a just moment to the term “first responder.”
In an emergency situation, the first responder by definition is that person who arrives on the scene who has been trained or certified to provide medical care in an emergency until more highly trained individuals arrive. The official term is not describing the first person on the scene, but the first person who arrives who has been trained to provide immediate medical care. This could be a policeman, EMT, fireman, etc. These individuals are trained so that when they arrive on the scene of an emergency, they quickly assess the emergency; provide immediate care to stabilize the patient until others arrive. In order for them to accomplish this task, they have to be able to separate what is important from what is not important. They must triage the situation to determine what (and who) needs immediate attention and what can be handled later. In some cases these can be life or death decisions. Let me illustrate this situation to you.
Imagine there was a car wreck involving several cars. The first responder arrives and sees several people hurt. One person has a scratch on their arm that is not serious and just needs a Band-Aid. Another person has a broken arm that needs to be stabilized. Finally there is a third person who has a serious leg injury and bleeding profusely who could die if they are not treated immediately. If the first responder was trained correctly he/she would of course treat the person with the leg injury first followed by the person with the broken arm and lastly the person with the scratch, if they in fact need treating. But what if they were not trained correctly? What if they arrived on the scene and started treating the first person they saw (in this case the person with the scratch)? How would you like to be the person with the leg injury watching the first responder carefully applying Band-Aid to the person with the scratch while you’re lying there bleeding out? Would you be furious as you yelled for help and the first responder tells you ‘Hold on, I will be with you in a moment?’ Imagine you died and your family later found out that you were not treated first because the first responder did not triage the situation and thus treated the person with a scratch first? Can you see what would follow? Can you see the lawsuit? Can you see the first responder no longer responding to any future emergency because they were deemed inept? So let’s go back to where I started – our first response.
For many Christians we are trying to respond like a first responder without adequate training. We have spiritual emergency situations that arise in our lives that our first response shows that we have not been adequately trained to handle such emergencies. Our first response demonstrates that we are in need of additional training so that we can quickly assess a situation and make the right call. I do not profess to be the best speaker, pastor or anything else pertaining to ministers. But I do believe in learning and teaching and equipping the members of this Church and others that you will never meet to become first responders. God had called to me preach and teach His word to you. I cannot make you listen to me or attend Bible study to go deeper into His word, but I have to make it available to you because that is what God has called me to do in this place. I do not have a choice – but all of you do. So what is the real issue with why as Christians we are not always ready with the best first response to a spiritual situation? One point of note, every situation you face is a spiritual situation because “….our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)
I. The Issue
The issue we face with our first responses is that they often do not demonstrate our trust in the Lord – especially trusting Him with all our heart. Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”
In our men’s bible study class last week we talked about this verse as the author mentioned an example that I have shared with you previously in another message. In our lesson the author told the story of a man who announced that he would cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope pushing a wheelbarrow. A large crowd showed up to witness the feat and were impressed when he did it. As he prepared for his return trip, he asked them if they believed he could do it again and the responded enthusiastically that they believed he could. He raised his hand and quieted the crowd and asked them if they believed he could do it with a person in the wheelbarrow. With a single voice they shouted “You can do it!” Once more he quieted the crowd and asked for a volunteer. Although they had shouted that they believed he could do it, no one wanted to be the person in the wheelbarrow. While no doubted that he could do it, no one trusted him enough with their life to get in the wheelbarrow.
This is the issue that we face with God. We believe that God can and will do everything that His word says He can but yet our first responses do not convey this belief. We believe God for others but when it comes to us, there is some unbelief that becomes evident in how we respond to a situation. I am not telling you that our initial responses must make us so holy that we cannot see what’s going on around us, but more so how long do we dwell on the initial response? As I said earlier, we are sometimes like the first responder who did not triage the situation and treated the wrong person first. We speak of what we believe and know about what God can do but when it comes to us “getting into God’s wheelbarrow” and allowing Him to take us across the Niagara Falls of our lives, we hesitate. Our first response is not to jump into the wheelbarrow but to evaluate our options. Let’s consider Peter’s first responses to two different situations and then I will close and continue in two weeks. Turn to Acts 2:14-16 while remembering what was written in Proverbs 3:5-6.
II. Peter’s First Response In Two Situations
Solomon said to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” In these two situations that Peter found himself responding to, did he fulfill what Solomon said?
The first example comes fifty days after Jesus was crucified where Peter had denied knowing Christ. He has gone from being afraid to standing up before all those present and delivered such a powerful message that three thousand souls were saved. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter was in the upper room with approximately one hundred and twenty people. When the Holy spirit was given and they all spoke in tongues, some witnessing the act assumed that they were drunk. Acts 2:14-16 records the following: “But Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them: ‘Men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem let this be known to you and give heed to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel.” Peter, the man whom some fifty days earlier denied knowing Christ, stood up under power of the Holy Spirit and told the people about Christ. What is very interesting is that he took no thought for his life as he had earlier when he denied knowing Christ, and simply stood up on behalf of all those present. If you read the message that he delivered you will find that he explained what they were witnessing; but what’s even more impressive is that he told them to their face that they were responsible for killing the Christ (Vss. 22-24). This would not have been Peter’s first response fifty days earlier. What changed? Within those fifty days Peter realized that Christ was alive, he interacted with Christ, and was filled with the Holy Spirit. All of these combined changed his first response on this day. On the Day of Pentecost Peter fulfilled what Solomon had spoken. In this situation, and without thinking about it, he “trusted in the Lord with all his heart, leaning not on his own understanding but acknowledged Him.”
Now let’s jump ahead to Galatians chapter two. In this section of Scripture we find a situation where Peter’s response was not what it should have been. If you recall, the first Christians were Jews whom under the Law had practiced circumcision according to the requirement under the Law. After they became Christians, some of these Jewish Christians still believed in the Law as it pertained to circumcision and would not fully “associate” with other Christians (Gentiles) who did not practice circumcision even though this requirement under the Law had been fulfilled in Jesus death and resurrection. Paul had been sent to preach to the Gentiles and as time went on, many accepted Christ. Peter also began to minister to the Gentiles and accept them as “full” Christians. What I mean by this is that he would fellowship with the Gentiles freely even though they were not circumcised. So as it would happen, there was a situation where Peter had been eating freely with the Christian Gentiles in Antioch until certain Jewish Christians arrived in the city who did not believe that he should be doing so. Let’s begin reading at verse eleven. “But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, ‘If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians 2:11-14)
Peter, who had previously eaten side by side with the uncircumcised Gentile Christians, withdrew from doing so when the Jewish Christians arrived in the city. Other disciples watching Peter’s lead began to do the same thing. Peter apparently was either trying to save face in the presence of these Jewish leaders or he wavered on his belief about whether the Gentile Christians truly had to be circumcised. Regardless of his reasons, the results were traumatic for the Gentiles. Now Peter was treating them as if they were not equals as it related to them being Christians. So even though Christ was given to all, they could not separate some of the cultural beliefs and practices of the Law that separated the Jews from the Gentiles. When Paul witnessed what Peter was doing he literally “went off” on Peter to his face. He did not wait, he did not pull Peter aside; he addressed him openly before all. He did this so that he could correct this wrong that Peter had done which was affecting some of the other disciples who looked up to Peter.
Peter’s initial response of withdrawing himself from the Gentiles when these other Jewish Christians arrived spoke to the battle within him as it related to interacting with two groups of people at the same time. Peter understood what Christ stood for and that Christ had no problems with him interacting with the Gentiles, but he chose to give in to the pressures from these other Jewish Christians which both embarrassed and hurt the Gentile Christians whom he had previously been fellowshipping with. Paul’s first reaction was to fix this problem immediately and stand up loud and firmly for what Christ stood for. In this situation, it was Paul, not Peter who fulfilled what Solomon had said about “trusting in the Lord with all your heart and leaning not on your own understanding, but acknowledged Him in everything you do.”
I will continue this message in two week. Until that time, think about your first responses moving forward. As yourself are your first responses providing proof of the faith that you claim to walk in. Also, if you have time, reflex on some of your past responses and if those responses supported or spoke against your claim to walk in faith.
May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.
