God's Promise to you 2,000 years ago- Acts 2:38-39

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Yesterday, the sermon was about our faith. Ed posed the question of whether we felt like our faith would be increased if we could just see some of the miracles that they saw in the first century. We get frustrated sometimes when we read the book of Acts, don't we? We long for the excitement and the wonder that seems to have pervaded the church. We sometimes wish the Spirit still fell on us the same way it fell on them. In ways that no one could deny.

Wouldn't you love to have seen the tongues of fire and heard the languages spoken at Pentecost? Wouldn't you thrill to see the lame man jumping for joy after Peter healed him? Wouldn't you live with more purpose and direction if you heard the voice of the Spirit the way it seems Paul did when Luke records Paul's travels and where he was led and not led by the Spirit?

And yet, here at the very beginning of the church...the very first invitation that was extended after Jesus ascended to heaven...is a promise that there is no mistaking whom it is for.

"The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off - for all whom the Lord our God will call."

Pay attention to that! There is no "Well if we just had what they had..." There can be no, "I would do better if only God gave me what He gave them..." God, through Peter, specifically spoke down through the centuries to make absolutely sure you would hear the message today...right now! The promise is for you!

It's incredible to me that with thousands of people who responded that day, God looked past the excitement of the day and inspired Peter to speak not just to the thronging crowd in front of him, but to their children and to all who are far off! Indeed to anyone whom God would call!

That's me! That's you if you've answered God's call!

So what is the promise?

"You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit!"

We sometimes tend to focus on the front half of this passage. The part that we are supposed to do. Once we are convicted of the truth of God's message, what do we do? Peter says, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. We drill that...and with good reason. It's the only proper response of faith. But in focusing on what we are to do, let's not lose what God promises to do in addition to the fact that He already killed His Son....in addition to receiving the forgiveness of sins. That should be enough but God doesn't stop. The real promise is the gift of Himself! He gives us the gift of the Spirit!

There are entire books that try to cover what exactly that gift is. I can't, and won't, try to cover that here...you wouldn't keep reading if I did! But for now, I want you to meditate on the fact of the truth of the gift itself. I guarantee we could spend the rest of our earthly lives figuring out new things that the gift of the Spirit entails. How fun would it be to wake up every morning knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that because God has called me down through the ages, I can go through the day in possession of the gift of the Spirit!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that would change your day. What has the gift of the Spirit done for you? How have you seen it in your life? If you have no idea what the gift of the Spirit is, then I challenge you to spend the day...and the week...and the month...and the rest of your life pondering that question and learning! And then live with the love and the excitement and the thrill and the purpose and the joy that the early Church did because we have all been given the same gift of the Spirit.

Paul's Lock-In- Acts 20:7-11

Original picture by Kumar83 and obtained from wikimedia under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

You know, I've never really liked the idea of a lock-in. Well, I should clarify that. Since I've become a youth minister I've hated the idea of a lock-in. When I was a kid, of course, I loved the idea. But something happens when you get out on your own and you don't have parents telling you to go to bed all the time. You start wanting to go to bed! Not only that, but I also realized several years ago, that nothing really good comes out of a lock-in. I've had one where a kid tried to light the carpet on fire in my parent's house. I've had lock-ins where the chaperones had to be specifically assigned to track the movements of a teen or two because we didn't trust them. The last one I had for the youth group here before I banned them ended with a bunch of grumpy teens back talking their parents when they came to pick them up in the morning because they were too tired to speak respectfully. Ever since that day, I've decided that if teens and parents want to host a lock-in, they are more than welcome to! I just probably won't be there! :)

But whatever else has happened at lock-ins under my almost ten years of youth ministry, I have never had to take a kid to the E.R. because he fell out of a window and everyone thought he had died!

So I'm kind of happy to report that I may actually have a leg up on the apostle Paul in that one specific category!

But I don't really want to focus on this pretty interesting story of the young man Eutychus (who was probably around the early teen years) falling out of the upstairs window. What I want to think about briefly is what led to him falling out in the first place. Paul preached until midnight! And then after the commotion about Eutychus got settled down, they went back upstairs and kept talking until day break!

What we have here is the original lock-in! But instead of the parents trying to hold their eyes open while the teens run wild, it was the teen who couldn't keep his eyes open while all of the adults stayed up all night talking and sharing about their faith!

The reason I'm pointing to that is because their willingness to stay all night points to a couple of things. It points to their excitement about being together! They were truly a family. They weren't there to punch a time clock because good Christians are supposed to "go to church." They weren't watching the sun-dial (or the moon!) to make sure Paul stayed within his 25 minute sermon time slot. They were absorbed in the moment and they realized that whether or not the pot roast burned, the conversation they were a part of and the praise they were giving God and the encouragement they were giving each other to spur one another on to good works was the absolute most important thing in the world that they could be doing!

Just think about the reaction in most of our congregations if the service lasts more than 15 minutes over the usual time! Can you even begin to imagine the bickering that would happen if it went a full hour over time? 2 hours? Most of us head for the doors as soon as the amen is said because we are ready to move on to the next thing. Where is the sense of community? Where is the passion to be with people who are passionate about the same thing(s) you are? Where is the desire to lift each other up and be lifted up?

I don't know what the answer is to these questions. How do we change the culture of the American congregation? How do we recapture the sense of excitement and expectation that enables a group of adults...not just teens...to willingly stay cramped in an upper room all through the night because of a shared salvation, and a shared mission?

I'd love to hear your comments below. When was the last time you were a part of a meeting like this in your church? What can we do to encourage it again? Let's pray that the fire of the Spirit will burn just as brightly today when we meet together as the oil lamps had to burn 2,000 years ago when this church met in the upper room all through the night.

I can't believe I'm gonna say this...but let's get back to the passionate type of Christianity we read about in the book of Acts where Christians of all ages rejoice instead of groan about the idea of a lock-in!

Removing the yoke- Acts 15:10-11

Original picture by Gveret Tered and obtained from Wikimedia under GNU Free Documentation License

Did you know that the Restoration movement began with the intent of rejecting man-made creeds and determining to live solely based on what was written in the Bible? If you are a descendant in the Restoration heritage, then you are undoubtedly familiar with the phrase "speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent." You may have heard another one; "In essentials, unity; in opinions, liberty; in all things, love."

I wonder if the Restoration fathers didn't think about this passage in Acts 15 when they were considering these principles and determining to teach them to others.

I want to be careful in applying Acts 15 to our context because there is one notable difference between the immediate context and today. In Acts 15, the debate was very narrowly and very clearly defined to the issue of whether or not Gentile converts to Christianity were also required to be circumcised and to keep the Old Testament Law of Moses. Of course, many of the Jewish Christians were already circumcised before faith in Christ and simply continued to keep the Old Testament laws of purity, fasting, and spiritual cleanliness. When Christianity was expanded to the rest of the non-Jewish world, i.e.- the Gentiles, all sorts of questions began to pop up. How could a Jewish Christian fellowship with a Gentile Christian if the Gentile were ceremonially unclean? How could a Gentile Christian actually be acceptable to God if they were not keeping the law that was known to be from God? That was the essence of the debate that brought Paul and Barnabas back to Jerusalem from Antioch.

And of course, the end result of the conference in Jerusalem was the truth that God's intent as expressed through OT prophecies, through His pouring out of His Spirit on Gentile converts, and through His blessing of Paul's work among the Gentiles was that it was not right to bind the Old Testament law on anyone because "we believe that it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are."

For most of us, the issue of observance of Old Testament laws- and specifically of circumcision- is no longer an issue. We understand that Jesus completed the law of Moses. As Paul says, He has "wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it our of the way, having nailed it to the cross" (Colossians 2:14). So what is the relevance of this passage today in our churches?

I think it is still incumbent upon us to be sure that we do not "put God to the test" by "putting on the necks of gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear." The yoke that Paul was talking about was the yoke of slavery to the Old Testament law. One could only be right with God under the Old Testament by following it exactly. Paul affirms that not one person throughout history had done that except Jesus. Law-keeping is simply not a feasible route to heaven. Only the grace of Jesus could secure that entrance. And grace is a free gift.

Fast forward to today and the yoke that we sometimes wear and try to put on other's necks is the yoke of having to be absolutely right in our beliefs and interpretation of scripture. Christians today do not claim that we must keep the Old Testament law in order to be saved, but we do occasionally fall in the trap of thinking that if someone honestly misinterprets a scripture then their salvation is in jeopardy! If that were the case, then Paul would have had to sever fellowship with Peter and Barnabas because of their misunderstanding of God's plans before the Jerusalem council ever happened! (See Galatians 2:11-14). He certainly never would have written Romans 14 or 1 Corinthians 8, in which he addresses differences of opinion about what constitutes righteousness and sinfulness and teaches that love should govern interactions where it is neither wrong nor right to do something unless it offends your conscience.

Is it important to follow God's word and be obedient to it? Absolutely! Jesus said very plainly, "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). The fact of the matter is that I am just being downright dishonest with myself and with God if I say that I love Him yet willfully disobey Him and His word. But what if I miss something? What if I misinterpret something? What if I was taught something incorrectly? What if I spend my entire life searching honestly and sincerely for God because I have fallen absolutely in love with the risen Christ whose death paid for my righteousness...what if I do my best through whatever time God give me on this earth to both discern His will from scripture and to obey it to the best of my ability and yet, in the end, there is still some piece of the Bible that I do not understand? Or even worse, what if I think I understand it and I apply it in the way that I think it is supposed to be understood but I have misinterpreted it? Does Jesus pronouncement of blessing on those who are pure in heart and will therefore see God not count for me (Matthew 5:8)? Does His promise that those who ask will receive and those who seek will find and those who knock will have the door opened to them knock apply to me at any point in my life if I have not yet found all the correct answers (Matthew 7:7-8)? Does James' assurance that God will draw near to those who draw near to Him (James 4:8) only count if I have already drawn near enough that I have already filtered out 2,000 years worth of false doctrine and misapplied and misinterpreted scriptures?

I pray that I will never place the yoke of "keeping the New Testament law" on someone else because it is without a doubt a yoke that I am unable to carry myself. And neither can anyone else. In fact, if at any time we come to a point that we think we have everything perfectly figured out, I think we had better heed Paul's warning to "let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall! (1 Corinthians 10:12).

Do we teach doctrine? Absolutely. Do we discuss differences of interpretation with hopes of arriving at the same belief? Without a doubt. Do we make matters that the New Testament is suspiciously quiet about a test of fellowship and condemn each other when we find a point of disagreement? I pray God that the answer is no. And I thank him that "we believe that it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are." Because as much as I will try the rest of my life to do everything in a manner that is pleasing to Him...I have to humbly admit that I am 100% confident that my human error will occasionally slip in and botch those good intentions. And I am therefore also 100% confident that someone else's human error will also slip in and botch their equally good intentions.

Let us speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent.
In essentials, unity; in opinion, liberty; in all things, love.

I say "Amen" to that.

What shall we do? It's actually fairly simple...sort of.- Acts 2:38-39

Original picture by Felipe Skroski

It seems too simple.

Just think about the question that prompted this instruction. When they were convicted and were "cut to the heart" by the message of Christ and they believed what Peter said- that they had killed Jesus, the man God made both Lord and Christ- they asked "what shall we do!?"

That question sounds very tame when I read it  in modern English today. But I don't think it was a tame and calm question at all. I think it was a panicked and desperate question. They had been cut to the heart. They had just accepted the fact that they were murderers...and not just any murderers. They were murderers of the Christ of God...the Lord, Himself! "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" could easily be interpreted to say "No! This can't be! If I am responsible for the death of the Lord, I can't live with that! I can't go on! Is there any answer? Tell me what to do and I'll do it! Anything! Is there anything I can do to right this wrong!?"

God's instructions through Peter did not involve any great feat on the part of the offending sinners. He simply told them, "repent and be baptized."

A man named Naaman was given similar instructions when he was petitioning the prophet Elisha to heal him of his leprosy. (See 2 Kings 5 for the full story) Naaman initially left angry because he was expecting the prophet of God to perform some elaborate ritual. Instead, Elisha just sent his servant to the door to tell Naaman to wash in the Jordan River 7 times. Thankfully for Naaman, one of his servants talked some sense into him before they got too far away. "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!" (2 Kings 5:13). Naaman finally obeyed the simple command to wash in the water, and his skin was made "clean like that of a young boy."

Some look at promises like that in Acts 2:38-39 and attempt to minimize the cost of being a Christian. Paul addresses those ideas in places like Romans 6 and elsewhere. Others look at the promise in Acts 2 and reject it the same way Naaman did because it is just too simple. The truth is that the command to "repent and be baptized" is both a very simple, and a very complex command.

Repentance means a change of thinking and a change of doing. It is a decision to change course completely. It is the only correct answer to Jesus' call to "deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me." Repentance means making the judgment call that to be a slave of God is infinitely more valuable than the illusion of freedom and independence in decision making. I say "illusion" because the truth is that some day- on the last day- every person who has ever lived will be convicted with the truth of the gospel message. On that day everyone will understand that refusing to become a slave of God was really just a choice to remain a slave to sin. Repentance is not easy. And it is not something that is done once and then moved on from. It is a daily decision to live for Christ instead of self. But the journey of repentance does not need to be finished before one is ready to be baptized. It needs to be begun.

And once someone has repented, has made the decision to "die to self," then the process is finalized in the same way we finalize the physical death of someone. We bury them. Baptism is a beautiful picture of burial of the old sinful self (See Romans 6). Yes, it is a simple act at least for the person being baptized. But it was anything but simple for God to put the plan of salvation into place before the foundation of the world, allowing Jesus' death to serve as a substitutionary sacrifice  for our deaths. And all He asks us to do is to repent and be baptized.

But the blessings of this promise don't stop with just the eternal forgiveness of our sins. We are also promised the gift of the Holy Spirit. I love the fact that God, through Peter, saw fit to spell out for those of us living today and anyone who comes behind us, that the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit is for all of us who are called by the Lord. Without getting into all the details of what exactly the gift of the Holy Spirit is, I think we can at least rule out a few things it is not. 

First, it is not simply the gift of the Word of God- if by that we are talking about the written Bible that we have today. How do I know that? Because the gift of the Holy Spirit was not just for people later on...God promised it to the people who were listening to Peter that very day! If that was about 33 A.D., then the last letter written that we have in the Bible- Revelation- wasn't written for another 60 years or so! I have no doubt at all that the written word collected in our Bibles is a very valuable and worthy gift from God and His Spirit. But it cannot be the only gift being referred to by Peter in this promise.

Second, it is not a promise that every believer who repents and is baptized will be able to perform miracles, speak in tongues, or prophesy. A quick reading of 1 Corinthians 12 will make it abundantly clear that not every believer will receive the same "specific" gift, or ability, from the Spirit.

But this is what I do know. Every single repentant and baptized believer from the day of Pentecost down through the ages until today has received the gift of the Holy Spirit!

May those of us who lean toward legalism remember that Peter's answer to the question "what shall we do" was not to try harder and live better. It was to repent and be baptized. It was simple. Because the gospel story is that it what we have done is insignificant compared to what God in Christ has done. Our part is to accept that promise as fact and live trusting it with the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide our days and help us in our faltering obedience.

May those of us who lean more toward what some people call "easy grace" remember that Peter did not simply say "be baptized." He said, "repent and be baptized." If Christ's love has not changed my focus, my attitude, and my Lord, then Christ's love has not changed my eternal destiny either. If there was never a death, then there was never a burial in the watery grave of baptism. There was just a dunk in a pool of water.

And may all of us heed the words of Naaman's wise servant. "if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!"

May we all learn to trust in this ancient promise more and more every day. The promise that if we obey the command to "repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus," the we will receive the forgiveness of our sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit." And may we live joyously and passionately because of it just as the early church did.