Sermon on Acts 2:14-41 preached at Church of Our Savior, Jacksonville Beach, Florida, Sunday, October 2, 2022
We continue today a series on Acts and the mission of the church with the message of Peter explaining the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Christian believers. When I began my public ministry in London I learned how to preach from John Stott. He wrote a book on preaching which was entitled Between Two Worlds: referring to the task of relating the world of the Bible to the world of today. The world of first century Jerusalem is vastly different from the world of 21st century Florida. Here we have a summary of a sermon Peter preached 2,000 years ago. How is it relevant to us today?
What is its essential message for today? Christianity, our faith, is familiar to us. Too familiar! We have heard it all before. So much so that we can become numb to it. It has been repeated so many times that it can go over our heads. It does not touch us. It does not permeate our daily lives, our thoughts, our feelings. We know the Gospel intellectually, the story of Jesus, but we need to subjectively internalize it emotionally so that the Spirit can affect us. We live in an age of anxiety, loneliness, fear, conflict and distraction caused by the world, the flesh and the devil. We are called to acknowledge that we are part of the problem if we are to be part of the solution. God intervened in Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit to convict us and convince us to be renewed and empowered to find and fulfil his purpose for us in the Church. God is speaking to everyone of us, whatever our age or condition. Peter said that, “Everyone who calls on the Lord will be saved.”
What is Peter’s message? “Let me explain this to you. These men are not drunk, as you suppose.”
The crowd is interpreting what the apostles were experiencing in being filled with the Holy Spirit. They thought they were drunk with wine instead of communicating the Gospel to all the nations assembled for the festival. What is going on? The world interprets events in secular and natural ways but God is doing something radically and supernaturally different. Jesus quoted Isaiah that people “will be ever hearing but never understanding, seeing but never perceiving, they are deaf and blind, they don’t see with their eyes or hear with their ears or understand with their hearts” (Matt.13:14,15). That is why we need the interpretation of Scripture. “Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” (Rom.15:4)
What is going on today? The public news media does not know what is happening. All they can do is report what is happening but they cannot interpret it. They spin the news according to their categories and prejudices. We are called to explain to the world what God is doing in our lives. We draw encouragement from the Scriptures and the Sacraments of the Church.
Explanation #1: God is working out his purposes of salvation in a world which interprets events superficially.
God is acting in history, in politics, in pandemics, in inflation, in war, in international tension, in family and social upheaval. He is acting through the outpouring of his Spirit in the coming of Jesus. The proclamation of the apostolic Gospel explains this to us. Matthew 24: Jesus said, there will be many Christs, deceptive ideologies, wars, famines, natural disasters, plagues, persecution, apostasy, hatred, false prophets, lack of love in families, but Christ is coming to gather us to himself. We have a mission to fulfill to explain to the world the purpose of God, the power of the Spirit, the redemption of the Cross, the hope of the resurrection. God is working out his purposes of salvation in our lives as we learn obedience through the things we suffer, as we face crises, disappointments, loneliness and aging. What is God doing in your life?
Explanation #2: We all are responsible for rejecting Christ.
Humanity rejects, disregards and opposes the saving ministry and work of Jesus but God triumphs. “You, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, because it was impossible for death to keep his hold on him. We are all witnesses of the fact.” We are all culpable for the death of Christ. The world will keep crucifying Christ. The realization of our guilt brings about our consciousness of sin. “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart.” Peter warned them and pleaded with them to save themselves from their corrupt generation. Jesus is mocked, derided, blasphemed by the world. We are called to warn, to plead, to witness to our generation of the need of repentance, and conversion. The older I get the more conscious I am of my sinfulness. At one of his weekly tea-parties somebody asked Charles Simeon: “What, Sir, do you consider the principal mark of regeneration?” It was a probing question….This was Simeon’s answer: “.I want to see more of this humble, contrite, broken spirit amongst us.” Modern men and women may value “self-esteem,” but God thinks differently. “This is the one I esteem,” he says: “he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word” (Is.66:2) What does God use to cut us to the heart today? What crisis, what disappointment, what tragedy, what pain or loss or suffering do we have to endure to make us face up to our relationship with God? What Job-like experience? What brings us to the end of ourselves so that we throw ourselves upon the mercy and grace of God?
Explanation #3: God gives us forgiveness of sins and the power of the Holy Spirit.
God brings the gifts of forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit to transform lives. We need forgiveness of our sins to wipe out the past and the power of the Holy Spirit to make us new people. Together these two constitute the freedom and fulfillment for which we are searching: freedom from guilt, defilement, judgment and self-centeredness, and freedom to be the persons God made and meant us to be. This is salvation. They bring about the liberating powers of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control which the world desperately needs. Forgiveness is purchased at the cost of the sacrificial offering of God in Christ on the Cross to atone for our sins. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the application of that redemption on our hearts to reconcile us with God in a new fellowship of eternal life. We come to receive bread and wine as outward signs of the body of Christ broken and the blood of Christ shed on the Cross given for us. As I receive them I pray that the Holy Spirit would fill my heart with his grace and make me one body with him that he may dwell in me and me in him. How I need forgiveness and the power of the Spirit! I need them more than every before as I age and realize my failures and flaws and face my Maker and Savior and Judge. What about you? What is God doing in your life right now? What explanation do you need to interpret what is going on in your life, in the lives of your family, friends and the world? “Let me explain this to you.” Explain it to your friends. Be the message God wants you to be to them. The world is crying out for the truth of the Gospel. It needs the hope of the Scriptures, the power of the Cross and the Spirit. “This promise is for you – for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
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