CATM Sermon - May 17, 2015 - Acts Chapter 2:36-47
We ended last week’s message by considering how the many people gathered responded to Peter's message of the Gospel, and to the fact that Jesus had died for them, even as they orchestrated His murder.
And one of the things that makes Peter’s bold declaration of the gospel - proclaimed, we need to remember - to an audience that included those who had been responsible for the murder of Jesus.
Something that makes it so remarkable is that Peter knew that those who crucified Jesus, as Peter says in verse 36 could have responded by killing HIM.
That would be consistent, actually. Perhaps to be expected. Helps us to see all the more clearly how Peter is a changed man.
He no longer fears death by association with Jesus, whereas less than 2 months earlier he had denied Jesus 3 times to get out of hot water when Jesus was arrested.
Anyway, clearly what the Scripture says is that they reacted not in the way that I’ve described. It says they were cut to the heart. They were convicted. They reacted in a way consistent with King David when he was confronted with his sin of adultery and murder.
David said: “...I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge”. Psalm 51:3-4
The scripture says it quite plainly, really. It simply says in verse 37: "When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
They were convicted and they asked Peter and the other apostles, they said: “Brothers, what shall we do?”
Why? Why didn’t they just haul off and stone Peter, as was pretty normal back then whenever a prophet of God said something that the people didn’t like?
The history of the people of God was littered with dead prophets, killed for speaking the truth. Really! They were buried everywhere.
Well, to understand this response of the people that day, and even to understand why it is that ANYONE ever comes to faith in Jesus, as most of these people did on this day of Pentecost, we just need to remember what was really going on the day that Peter preached this message.
The Holy Spirit came. The Holy Spirit moved among the people, leading them to repentance.
I have news for anyone here today who thinks they became a Christian because they're smarter than other people and figured out something that they didn’t figure out. That new is “Ahgn” (buzzer sound).
The truth is, you came to Christ because the Holy Spirit moved first in your life, bringing you to repentance.
That’s actually the only reason and the only way anyone ever comes to genuinely follow Jesus - it’s a response to God revealing our sin to us, revealing our desperate state to us, and then revealing His love to us:
His love proven in the fact that Jesus died for us, to deliver us from our sins and to reconcile us to God.
That’s all the work of God, the work of the Holy Spirit - and then our choice to respond or ignore it.
So...yeah. That’s what was going on that day, and that’s specifically why Peter lived to preach the gospel another day, and for the rest of his life before being martyred for doing so.
The people were cut to the heart with the bitter realization, for many of them, that they had participated in or at least consented to the savage murder of Jesus. Their hearts were broken over the matter. Deeply broken.
"I," said Jesus, "when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself" (Jn.12:32). Every man has had a hand in that crime.
Once a missionary told the story of Jesus in an Indian village. Afterwards he showed the life of Christ in projected slides thrown against the white-washed wall of a house.
When the Cross appeared on the wall, one man rose from the audience and ran forward. "Come down from that Cross, Son of God," he cried. "I, not you, should be hanging there."
The Cross, when we understand what happened there, must pierce the heart. (William Barclay - The Daily Study Bible Series - The Book of Acts)
So, the people said to Peter and the other apostles, in response to Peter’s message: “Brothers, what shall we do?”
That’s a good start. I’m sure there was a breath of relief at that. They referred to Peter and the others as ‘brothers’. You don’t do that when you’re planning to stone someone. You don’t identify with the one you plan to hurt.
The Scripture doesn’t report if there was a pause at this point. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a pregnant pause as Peter realized he and the other apostles wouldn’t be dying that day. But Peter doesn’t lose a beat, really, as he gives them his great answer.
38 Peter replied, “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 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
"Repent," said Peter. What does repentance mean? Bible Commentator William Barclay said: “The word (repent) originally meant an afterthought.
Often a second thought shows that the first thought was wrong; and so the word came to mean a Change of mind”.
The word ‘repent’ means to feel sorry, or contrite for past conduct. It means to regret or be conscience-stricken about a past action or attitude. It means to feel such sorrow for sin or fault as to seriously intend to change one's life for the better.
Barclay continues: “But, if a man is honest, a change of mind demands a change of action. Repentance involves both change of mind and change of action.
A person may change his mind and come to see that his actions were wrong but be so much in love with his old ways that he will not change them.
“A person may change their ways but his mind remains the same, changing only because of fear or prudence. True repentance involves a change of mind and a change of action”.
Thomas Keating, who has written a lot about prayer, says this about true repentance: “You can change your name and address, religion, country, and clothes.
“But as long as you don’t (...genuinely turn to God and away from your sin, you...) simply adjust to the new environment.
“For example, instead of drinking your friends under the table as a significant sign of self-worth and esteem, if you enter a monastery, as I did”, Keating writes”, fasting the other monks under the table could become your new path to glory. In that case, what would have changed? Nothing”.
So repentance is not a shallow thing. Not at all. It’s not reciting words that someone has told you to recite. There are no words that have any effect, if our hearts are not truly sorry for our actions, for our sins, for our offenses against the living God.
When we truly turn from our sins, when we repent, something happens to our pasts. Everything we’ve ever done is forgiven by God. What lies behind us no longer stands judging us.
It no longer has the power to cripple us going forward in terms of our walk with God. But we need to be clear, if it isn’t obvious, that the consequences of our sins are not wiped out.
When we sin we may well do something to ourselves and to others which cannot be undone. Let us look at it this way.
When we were young and had done something bad there was an invisible barrier between us and our mother. But when we went and said we were sorry, the old relationship was restored and we were right with her again.
Forgiveness does not abolish the consequences of what we have done but it puts us right with God.
And when repentance comes, with faith in Jesus Christ, something happens for the future. We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and in that power we can win battles we never thought to win and resist things which by ourselves we would have been powerless to resist.
This is what happened to those who were gathered on the day of Pentecost, listening and responding to Peter’s message of the gospel. Even those guilty of the murder of the Son of God were forgiven. Think about that.
They were forgiven because they trusted. And Peter’s direct response to their plea: “Brothers, what shall we do?” was to tell them to repent and be baptised.
Being baptised is simply to follow in the steps of Jesus, who also was baptised by John the Baptist in the desert.
Repentance and baptism are the first and most foundational acts of obedience a Christian can do. We’ve talked about what repentance means.
To go through the process of being baptised initiates us into a life of following the footsteps of our Saviour.
We then begin a lifetime of seriously seeking to honour God with our hearts, our minds and our bodies.
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
So, Peter’s audience, largely, believed the gospel that day. 3000 of them. Really!
And because they believed, from that day forward, their future was changed, and the Scripture now talks about what the change looked like in this early history of the Church.
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
There were 4 key changes in the lifestyle of the new believers from that point onward. And they are changes which need to be a big part of every believer’s life, whether they are brand new in the faith, or if they are seasoned Christ-followers.
And these things weren’t just add-ons to their lives. They were devoted to these things, they were committed and disciplined and they did them together.
The first is that they devoted themselves to the Apostle’s teaching. What is the Apostle’s teaching? Well, for us it’s found in the New Testament.
We don’t have the original apostles with us...except that we kinda sorta do in that their writings are still with us and they are a key part of what makes up the Word of God.
So again, for us, it means learning and growing in our understanding of the Bible.
That means we do all that we can to get together in order to get-the-Scriptures-in-us. One way we do that is we come to Sunday service.
All of the people who we have preach in this church are strong Bible-teachers. They have a very high view of the Bible. They understand that it is the Word of God, and they submit their thinking and their lives to it.
So, by way of applying this today...I truly hope you take every advantage to grow in your knowledge of the Bible and, very importantly, that you bring in all the teachings of the New Testament into your lifestyle.
That’s how to truly honour God as a disciple of Jesus. As you’ve heard, starting TODAY, after the service, we’re running the 8-week course, Discipleship Explored. I really hope you participate in that course, and/or in other opportunities you find to grow, in community.
And that’s very important. The first followers of Jesus, those who came to Christ on Pentecost and afterward - they did it together, where they could talk about and process and therefore more deeply digest the Word of God. They...we grow...TOGETHER in our knowledge of God.
So in their learning and growing, they were committed to fellowship - to being together. They found ways that made sense in their time to have meaningful connections between each other.
They encouraged one another, they spent time to know one another. And so the church was strengthened, even as it was persecuted from outside.
And leadership grew up organically – because they were close, because they knew each other. They knew each other well enough to discern the spiritual gifts that these early brothers and sisters in Christ had been given by the Holy Spirit.
They broke bread together. That means they ate together, and in the Christian context that also suggests they celebrated Holy Communion together.
Did you know that we break bread together once a week as a church? Every Tuesday night, 30+ weeks in the year, we get together at the Tuesday Feast.
We eat together, we sing together, we learn from the Word of God together...and then we do a bunch of different activities that, again, have us BEING together.
How often do you break break with other Christians? which I think should always include an element of outreach to people who do not yet believe, as we have every Tuesday.
These are meant to be strong and healthy rhythms in our lives. These are core practices that make for a healthy church that’s made up of people who are becoming healthier and healthier all the time.
The 4th thing that they did was they were devoted to prayer. Together. They would pray for one another.
Do you pray for each other at church? Of course we pray during the service, and some of us pray before the service as well.
But did you know that we meet every Wednesday at noon (except for the 1st Wednesday of the month) at the CCC to pray?
Did you know that we meet on the 3rd Wednesday night of each month at 6:30 here in this place? And off and on we have organized prayer times together. But it doesn’t need to be organized by me or Pastor Lee or Pastor Jan.
When we’re together, in any situation, we can pray together. We can pray for one another.
We can pray for this community. We’re part of The Yonge Street Mission, so we can pray for the ministries of the mission. The world out there globally is a tragic mess. We can pray for the world.
44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
It also says that they practiced a radical generosity. They were together and had everything in common, and sold stuff to share with those among them in need.
What does it mean for us, in our context, in 2015, in Toronto, Canada, to practice generosity....radical generosity, first with the household of faith - that’s all other Christians among us, and then with the community at large?
Well, that’s a big question, and it’s important that we wrestle with this, because it’s in the DNa of the church.
At the most basic level, which is where every good thing starts, we ask God: How can I be more generous to my brothers and sisters in Christ? How can I give of myself more? There’s a caveat here.
I know a lot of us practice this already in our lives. Those who practice it sometimes don’t think about the fact that they are already practicing it, and of course they find the thought of giving more of themselves an oppressive thing.
That’s because they are already living as a very giving person.
Let me say: if you are doing this, it’s not about doing more. If you’re not giving generously of yourself to others, that means you’re mostly taking.
Taking does not build us up, does not strengthen us, does not make us more like Jesus. Only giving does that.
So we need to accurately evaluate our OWN lives (not anyone else) and seek the Lord on this issue in prayer. As Jesus said, “it is more blessed to give than to receive”.
46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Joy was a defining feature of these earliest followers of Jesus.
When they were together, they were glad. They got together in their homes, and they ate with glad and sincere hearts.
There was a genuineness and a joy that they shared. That gladness was not BECAUSE they were together.
It was because they lived as the redeemed people of God, sincerely trusting in Jesus, grateful for life, grateful for all that Jesus has done for them as individuals and as a community.
Actually, they were a community BECAUSE Jesus had called them together, through His death and resurrection.
Through the giving of the Holy Spirit.
They lived as people who praised the living God, who lived lives of open generosity, and as a result they enjoyed the favour of all the people.
AND Jesus kept adding, DAILY to their number those who were coming to Him, who were being saved. This was a community in constant flux, with new people coming in all the time, new people who were learning, along with all the others, the way of Jesus.
These were the early days of the church. This is the DNA of the church. This is what it’s meant to be, at its heart.
Not necessarily in the details, but at its heart. Now the reality is, as we’ll discover as we continue to walk through the Book of Acts...the reality is that their lives got an awful lot more complicated.
As time went on, they had massive struggles, faced terrible oppression and difficulty. But they did it together.
They did it knowing that they belonged to Jesus and to each other. They did it, as history tells, happy to suffer for Christ.
Happy to be named among the redeemed, even if that meant being fed to the lions for the entertainment of the debauched and degraded citizens of Rome.
Belonging to Christ, and being a part of the body of Christ, gave them incredible strength and courage.
Strength and courage that it may be required of us one day to exhibit.
Our society may not stay tolerant of Christian faith, genuinely believed and practiced. It may happen that only government-sanctioned ideas are allowed to be taught in church. Think I’m exaggerating? I hope so, but a lot of folks think the writing is on the wall.
So may we be encouraged and challenged in this historical record of the early church, the ones among whom Jesus started it all.
May we see ourselves, as they saw themselves, as a people belonging to God, as a people filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit to accomplish the will of God, which is the spreading of the good news of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. And in our prayers, may we pray knowing that God will do exceedingly above and beyond what we could ask or imagine, as we are faithful and devoted, as were the earliest disciples.
