Acts 2: The Church Together

The last part of Acts chapter 2 provides an inside look at the early church gathered together. Many times people take this picture of the early church and try to make church like it today or judge their church because it’s not like that.

This passage is descriptive, but not necessarily prescriptive.  Meaning, that the passage describes how the early church operated immediately after Pentecost but does not command that the church operate the same way in the future.  There are important parts of this passage that we should learn from without trying to fit our round church into this square hole.

The thrust of the passage is that the church is together. This is not just a physical idea, but spreads to all facets of life. They were together in their beliefs based on learning and growing together under the apostle’s teaching. They sold goods and distributed as needed recognizing that God is provider. God provides some an abundance so that they may be a blessing for those that are without.

The church eats together. Everyone eats. It’s part of everyday life. Eating together reminds the church of many things. One is that God has provided. Another is our mortality. If we do not eat we will not continue to live. Eating together should be a worshipful experience if we do it in light of God and not our own selfish desires.

Obviously this ability to be together was supernaturally supported. Anytime you get people together you are gathering sinners. When sinners gather, even if they are believers, conflict happens. People are messy. Sin is messy. Therefore the ability to gather together is completely dependent on believers actively living out the gospel. Believers must continually walk in confession and repentance to gather as a church and walk together.

Lastly people were added. People were not added because of what the church did, but because of what God did within the church. When God transforms people it allows them to have community with one another that was not possible before.

 

Acts 2: Peter Preaches

Right in the middle of Acts 2 we get a sermon from the Apostle Peter.  The Holy Spirit falls on the church in dramatic fashion and the world notices immediately. As soon as the crowd gathers Peter opens his mouth and the Holy Spirit provides the voice.

Peter preaches the gospel. He doesn’t sugar coat. He doesn’t do a dance or dramatic interpretation.  Peter quotes from the Old Testament and then ties the events written about long ago to the very time they were experiencing. Scripture was living and active.

Then Peter tells them they killed Jesus. And Jesus was Lord. He preaches repentance, trust in Christ as a redemption of sins, and baptism. Simple message. The same message we are to preach today.

The Spirit moved. People were convicted. And with the work of the Spirit they received the words and were saved.

The crowds are gathering. Will we be obedient to open our mouths? Will we preach the gospel?

 

Is God Good?

Read this article from a counselor at CCEF.  He quickly connects the root of our anger in the simplest disappointments to our disbelief in God’s goodness.  Yet the goodness of God shines through.

 

Sorry for the delay

We will be back to regular blogging soon.  It has been a big summer so far.  Updates coming.  In the mean time I will try to post some other blogs for your reading.

 

Acts 2: Tongues of Fire

Acts chapter 2 starts with the disciples all in one place on the day of Pentecost. Pentecost is 50 days after the passover, so it has probably been about one week since Jesus ascended. The Holy Spirit appears. First they hear a mighty rushing wind. When I was younger I lived in West Texas and this time of year we always had tornado warnings. A tornado is said to sound a freight train passing by. I imagine the mighty rushing wind made a significant sound.

The Holy Spirit not only presented himself audibly, but also visually. Tongues of fire came down, split to all the people, and landed on them. As if a supernatural rushing wind inside a room was not enough, the disciples now saw an incredible phenomenon of fire coming down and touching them. The disciples were now filled with the Holy Spirit. At this filling they began to speak in other tongues as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance.

Pentecost is the celebration of Feast of Weeks or Feast of Harvest. The Jewish people would gather to offer their firstfruits to God. We find out there are Jews from all around the region and they speak many different languages. The passage reveals 15 possible different languages. The multitude of Jews heard the sound and commotion to see what was going on. The disciples under the power of the Holy Spirit then proclaimed the mighty works of God in the tongues previously unknown to them.

First the Holy Spirit presented himself powerfully in three ways that could not be explained as human exertion. There was an audible sound, visual representation, and an oral proclamation in an unlearned language. The Spirit with purpose. It was a time where many from different parts of the world were gathered together and the Spirit sought to reach them. The message was proclaimed in a way they could understand.

We will not do an in-depth study of the gift of tongues at this point. What we need to recognize is that the men spoke under the power of the Holy Spirit and as He gave them utterance. The languages they spoke were of the men that were gathered there that the gospel might be proclaimed. The gift of tongues was completely given for the glory of the Lord and the proclamation of the gospel.

The men that gathered to hear them were amazed. Some questioned whether they were drunk. The Holy Spirit unquestionably moved powerfully.

What do we take away from this passage? The Spirit is powerful. The Spirit can move in us to do that which is impossible for us. The gifts of the Spirit are for His glory and the proclamation of the gospel. We should desire and expect the Spirit to move in us in powerful ways to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

 

Acts 1: Choosing a New Disciple

In Acts 1 we encounter a scene that is not talked about much.  When they come back to the upper room they choose a disciple to replace Judas. It’s an interesting text and I want to focus on one aspect. 

Scripture says they were worshipping and praying in one accord when Peter spoke to the group. Peter quotes from the Psalms. He quotes them as speaking about Judas and what they should do now. Don’t miss this point because it shows us insight into how the disciples viewed scriptures. Somehow Peter knew that the Old Testament could speak directly into their current lives, that it could be taken as prophesy. He also quoted a part that instructed them to fulfill the role that Judas once did. 

Then the disciples prayed to the Lord and cast lots between two men who had walked with them from the beginning. The lot fell on Matthias.

What does this teach us about Scripture?  The disciples had a supernatural trust in the Word of God. They believed it spoke specifically to present situations. The greater realization may be that the way they read Scripture should teach us what they believed about the God who created it.

 

Acts 1: Ascension

Christ gathers his disciples and takes them up to a hill.  It has been about 40 days since the resurrection. The disciples want to know if Christ will now restore the kingdom to Israel. His answer is that it is not for them to know the times and seasons established by the Father, but they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

When I first read this I thought Christ was taking mercy upon their misunderstanding of who he was, why he came, and what he did by not answering their question. After reading through it and meditating on it I realized that he did answer them.  At this point they don’t have much understanding of the Holy Spirit and what will happen when the Spirit shows up. We have carried on this tradition today. We don’t know the role of the Holy Spirit and we either overemphasize the work of the Spirit or avoid speaking about the Spirit.  That may be overly harsh for some of you but I come from a Baptist background where we mainly speak of the spirit when we are baptizing someone. And we don’t mean the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

What Jesus tells the disciples is that he is going away and he is sending the Spirit. The Spirit will give them power to be witnesses of gospel. The kingdom will be restored using the church powered by the Holy Spirit to witness to the world about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christ will restore his kingdom but not like they were thinking.

We are like the disciples a lot of time when we want Christ to just take over the world and give us comfort and peace. We want the kingdom of God to be restored because of what we will get or who we will be not because He will be glorified. If His kingdom is restored we get God, He is the good news, not what we might get along with Him.

So Christ tells them the Spirit is coming, they will be powerful when they have the Spirit, and it will lead to them witnessing to the world. The story is the same for believers today. Today Christ is restoring the kingdom of God using the church. Today Christ desires to empower us with the Spirit. Today Christ desires for us to be His witnesses in Dallas, Texas, the U.S. and the ends of the earth.

At the end of the passage after Christ ascends the disciples are greeted by angels. They are told not to continue looking into heaven for Christ, but that Christ will return just as He ascended. We are not to look into the heavens for Christ, but to trust that one day He will return just as He ascended. We are to be busy about the kingdom of God. We are to ask for the Spirit to empower us so that we may boldly proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the world.

Christ left, but He did not leave us alone. He sent us the Spirit. Let that reality resonate in your soul this week.

 

Acts: Introduction

The Ichthus men started a new study 2 weeks ago on the book of Acts. I have never taught through the book of Acts, but I am really excited to take it on for the next 6 months or so. I prefer to teach through books of the Bible rather than do topical studies. We usually go back and forth with a short topical study in between books of the Bible. It’s not an original idea, I stole it from my pastor, Matt Chandler, who stole it from some other preacher in church history.

I like going through books of the Bible because it forces me to tackle texts or subjects that I don’t always choose on my own. Going through the book of Acts we will be forced to talk through issues like the work of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and race relations. We also get a good look at how God built the church using men and women of God.

Acts begins by Luke writing to Theophilus and telling him this is the follow-up to the book of Luke. The bridge between the books is the forty days Christ spent on earth after resurrection and before his ascension. Luke points out the importance of recognizing that Jesus presented himself alive after the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was a human being with a body when he was resurrected. He was not a phantom or ghost. Many people saw him, heard him, and touched him after the resurrection. Jesus fully conquered death. If Jesus does not fully conquer death then there is no victory over sin and death for us.

Jesus also did not stay around long. He was back long enough to tell us the Holy Spirit was coming. Jesus emphasizes in John 16:7 that it is better for him to send the Holy Spirit to us as a helper. It is very intriguing to me that I am better off with the Holy Spirit here than Christ in the flesh. Further Jesus says we will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. The word picture is that of immersion. It’s too early to get into a discussion about the role of the Spirit, being full of the Spirit, and baptism of the Holy Spirit. But one of the main reasons I am excited about this study is that it will cause us to think about the Holy Spirit and what it means to walk in the power of the Spirit.

Guys come join us Monday nights at 7:30pm. Everyone is invited to read and interact here on the blog. I hope God will challenge us and transform our hearts as we pursue this study.

 

Fear: Man

We wrapped up our fear series by talking about the fear of man.  The fear of man in its most simple form is a worship of man instead of a worship of God.  People become our gods and they greatly affect us. Jeremiah 17:5-10 paints a picture of the difference in the man that trusts in flesh and the one who trusts in God.

The picture of the man that fears man is one of a bush in the middle of the dessert. It is alone and dry.  But the man who trusts in God is described as a tree with roots that reach to the stream and it continually bears fruit. So how do you know if you suffer fear of man?

I would recommend that you read “When People are Big and God is Small” by Ed Welch.  The whole book unpacks fear of man and I would recommend anyone and everyone to read it.   Welch writes, “Scripture gives three basic reasons why we fear other people…1) We fear people because they can expose and humiliate us. 2) We fear people because they can reject, ridicule, or despise us. 3) We fear people because they can attack, oppress, or threaten us. These three reasons have one thing in common: they see people as ‘bigger’ (that is, more powerful and significant) than God, and, out of the fear that creates in us, we give other people the power and right to tell us what to feel, think, and do.”

I think all of us behave out of fear of people more than we want to admit. We think about things through the lens of what people will think and say more often than what does God think or say. Stop and think about your life. Its most visible in the lives of teens and college students. What they wear and what they do is constantly affected by those around them. A neat idea was invented around it called peer pressure. The problem is that we don’t grow out of it, we just learn to mask our fear of man and pretend it doesn’t exist. 

You should also think about sin patterns in your life. Do those patterns have a string of fear of man connecting them? One pattern that is consistent is if you suffer from being a people pleaser. Do you struggle to say no? Does it devastate you if you disappoint someone? People pleasing reveals a tendency in us to seek the approval and affirmation of people over and above the approval and affirmation of God.

I think almost every human struggles with fear of man in some way. I highly recommend “When People Are Big and God Is Small”.  Click the link at the bottom to go to Amazon and buy it today. It is also a great book for a small group or for couples to go through. You may not recognize how it all plays out in your life and God has graciously placed people in your life that can help you.

When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man (Resources for Changing Lives)

 

Francis Chan: The New Middle Road

Watch this video from Francis Chan. He speaks against the idea that we can love Jesus and then not do what He calls us to. There is no middle road.