Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon February 3, 2008
“No Blueprint to Beat the Patriots: Giants face uphill battle against perfection in Super Bowl” reads the headline in the MSN website, referring to an article by Fox Sports.
Double-cover Randy Moss.
Blitz Tom Brady.
Attack the perimeter defensively with tosses and stretch plays designed to exploit New England’s aged linebacker corps.
Try taking advantage of Patriots safeties with seam and crossing routes in the middle of the field.
Blah, blah, blah.
For 18 games, NFL analysts have espoused different theories about how New England can be defeated. None of them have worked well enough to topple the Patriots entering Sunday's Super Bowl XLII matchup against the New York Giants.[1]
I am sure you out there New York Giants fan have thought this through. It is hard to believe there should be any New York fans in Chicago area… well we know who you are. J
Sometimes our headline seems to read similarly. “No blueprint to beat the perpetual sins of laziness, procrastination, ego-centric pride disguised in self-pity, anger, yelling,” “No blueprint to make faithful out of faithless coward,” “No blueprint to beat the apathetic, passionless spirit,” “No blueprint to change prayerlessness to prayerfulness,” “No blueprint to stop the bickering and fighting,” “No blue print to beat the sexual temptations,” “No blueprint to change the closed mind, hardened heart to accept Jesus as Christ and Lord,” “No blueprint to beat the fear of men to be Jesus’ witness.”
I am afraid we are like the New York Giants in this sense scratching our head not knowing how to beat the demons in our lives.
Today’s scripture passage clearly marks it for us that God is never helpless; God is never without the clear blueprint to carry out his sovereign, eternal plan; he has executed his blueprint to help us, to save us. The question is will you and I accept God’s blueprint of salvation?
When the people heard the disciples of Jesus Christ the sound the Spirit blowing like a violent wind and followed with them speaking unlearned languages declaring the praises of God, although many were amazed, some, however, made fun of them and said, “They had too much wine.”
Was there a blueprint to beat the skeptical crowd? Of course, the answer is the resounding yes. God has the winning blueprint.
- God’s winning blueprint involves the downpour of the Holy Spirit.
Standing along with other eleven apostles, Peter simply and firmly dismissed the false assumption of the crowd who thought the disciples were drunk. Do you remember from the last week how some made of fun of the disciples for what happened to them when the Holy Spirit rested, filled them?
Peter reminded them it was only 9 in the morning and was absurd to think they were all drunk at this hour. Then he set out to explain to them God’s winning strategy, the blueprint of his salvation.
To talk about God’s winning blueprint, Peter talked to them about the ancient prophecy of more than 800 years old. It comes from Joel 2:28-32.
It was a prophecy that foretold the time when God would pour out his Spirit on all people, sons, daughters, young men, old men, servants, men, women without discrimination. “In the last days” is the time between Jesus’ first coming and his second coming. In these last days, the time between Jesus’ two comings, is the days of the Spirit. Another word, since the first coming of our Lord Jesus two thousand years ago until now is the age of the Holy Spirit and will continue to be so until Jesus returns again. Now is the time when all who believe in Jesus Christ can experience the outpouring of the Spirit.
But, there will be a time when the outpouring of the Spirit will cease; instead of the downpour of the Spirit, it will be the day of judgment of God to separate the goats from the sheep, the righteous from the unrighteous, the saved from the unsaved, the believers from the mockers, the followers from the ones who reject Jesus Christ.
God’s winning strategy against the ugliness of sins, killing with words, thoughts and actions, chaos, crisis, apathy, deadness, laziness, and aimlessness, dark emptiness and aching loneliness involves sending his Holy Spirit to rest upon his people, to fill them, to baptize them.
You see prior to Jesus’ coming, for over five hundred years, there was no prophetic voice heard in Israel. The prophetic voice of the prophets was the clear sign that the Spirit of God was with them. But for five hundred years leading up to the time of Jesus, there was no sign of the Spirit moving among them.
The Pentecost broke this silence. The Pentecost ushered again the wind of the Spirit to blow on people, to perform the impossible miracles, signs and wonders, to beat the impossible in people’s lives. This Pentecost was in the making since Joel spoke in the 8th century B.C. In this age of the Holy Spirit, God works directly at our heart level where our convictions, emotions, wills, the very core of who we are.
But lest we forget that the age of the Spirit came at a high price, Peter reminds us as he did with the crowd the necessity of the cross of Jesus Christ.
- God’s winning blueprint involved the costly price of his Son at our hands.
When you trace back in the gospels of what Jesus said about this era of the outpouring of the Spirit, what you find is the necessity that Jesus be killed, die on the cross, to be buried and to be raised on the third day. Here is an important statement about God’s winning blueprint from Peter in Acts 2:23 about Jesus’ crucifixion, “This man was handed over you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”
Ronald Goetz wrote in the Christian Century an article with this thought provoking title, “God’s Plan to Kill Jesus.” It speaks to this verse, Acts 2:23:
Here is a text to try our modern Christian souls. It appears to be on a collision course with the best of our liberal values. God is up to his eyes in the blood of Jesus! God in league with “lawless men”! How can any Christian argue with much conviction against capital punishment if God effects his purpose in such an unwaveringly bloody way? On what basic can we work for world peace if God required such a violent resolution of the conflict between creatures and himself? … Yet the soteriological necessity of Christ’s cross remains pivotal to the whole New Testament. The New Testament preserves nothing of any earlier understanding. We can’t attribute any serious authority at all to the New Testament unless we are willing to come to terms with the centrality of this text.[2]
The idea is that the cross, the death of Jesus was not accident. It was not something haphazardly conceived by God who ran out of options in dealing with humanity. No, God decided long ago, the Messiah, the Son of God, the sinless God-man, to undergo substitutionary death that is to be killed, to be crucified in our place along side of the two criminals with the help of the wicked men, the Roman soldiers and the Jewish authorities who handed over to Romans.
When the Son of God, Jesus was crucified on the cross, the Romans, the Jewish religious authorities thought it was their plan, their complete execution that killed Jesus. But, the whole thing was planned out by God. It was God’s plan, God’s initiative to hand his Son to be crucified with the help of the wicked men. Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all…” It was God’s will, his plan, his thinking, to have his son be killed in the cruel crucifixion that pales the modern humane method of execution by lethal injection.
Jesus often talked about God’s blueprint to his disciples. He said in Luke 9:44, “Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men.” Mark 10:33-34, “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” He said in John 16:5-7, “Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
To have God’s winning strategy to have his Spirit rest upon us, fill us, baptize us, to will and to act according to God’s will, Jesus had to die. God’s winning strategy meant God’s plan to have his Son be rejected, be killed in the hands of the wicked men.
- God’s winning blueprint involves cutting to the heart.
Going to back to Acts 2:23, yes it was God’s purpose, his foreknowledge, his blueprint that his Son be killed, but it was the hands of the wicked men who put him to death by nailing him to the cross. What does the nailing the Son of God, Jesus Christ on the cross mean? It meant rejection by the wicked men.
Do you find yourself rejecting the Son of God, Jesus Christ in your life? Is Jesus Christ your Savior, your Lord? If you reject him, if you had rejected him in the past, and I am afraid, we all have rejected Jesus one degree to another, and we are and we were that wicked men who put him to death by nailing him to the cross.
Verse 37 writes, “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”” What cut their heart? Majority of them didn’t physically nailed Jesus to the cross? Yet, by their rejection of Jesus Christ as their Savior, their Lord, they realized that it was they who crucified the Savior, the Lord on the cross. They realized that it was because of them Jesus was killed on the cross.
Have you been cut to the heart? The pain gets so intense that it feels like your heart is being cut through a sharpest knife? Do you know what that is like? Have you pound your chest, have you pound the ground, have you felt like tearing your clothes because pain is unbearable?
Have you come to the realization that it is you who crucified Jesus Christ by rejecting him as the one who saves us, the one who rules over us? That it is I who crucified Jesus Christ with rejection!
God’s blueprint to Salvation is for you to personally experience this pain of the cutting to the heart.
- God’s winning blueprint involves Jesus sending gift to his murderers.
The cutting to the heart is really the work of the Spirit through the truth of God’s word. When you take the word of God seriously, then the Spirit convicts you in regard to sin.
But, he also opens your eyes to the reality of God’s amazing forgiveness. Verse 33 says, “Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.”
What it says here is that it is Jesus who received the Holy Spirit and it is him who has poured out the Holy Spirit. By our rejection, it is you and I who crucified Jesus Christ to the cross; it is we who must take the responsibility of killing the Son of God by our rejection.
Yet, the amazing thing is this Christ whom we crucified with our rejection has not set out to vindicate his death, his unjust killing. He is not after us to destroy us. Instead what he did upon his exaltation was to send the Holy Spirit to us that we may truly know him. Instead paying evil with evil, Jesus pays evil with goodness. We crucify him with evil rejection and he sends us his precious gift.
Have you known anyone who sends the murder a precious gift? Well, that is exactly what our risen Jesus Christ does. He sent to us his precious gift of the Holy Spirit to us who crucified him with our rejection.
Having cut to the heart, the people asked Peter, “What shall we do?”
Peter replied in verse 38-39, “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. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off- for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
Repentance is preceded by the experience of being cut to the heart. Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus was cut to the heart when he realized that by persecuting the believers he was persecuting Jesus Christ. With being cut to the heart for rejecting God’s rule, to repent is to turn to God to ask for forgiveness and to come under his rule.
The next practical step to be part of God’s winning blueprint is to be baptized. This is physical baptism when a person confesses in the public Jesus as Lord and Savior and be baptized with water. If you have never been baptized either as an adult or as an infant, but you profess to be Christian, then take this to the heart and you need to be baptized.
If you were baptized when you were an infant, then you need to be confirmed by making that profession in front of the people that Jesus is Christ, Savior and Lord to you.
These are important external rituals that testify to the inward experience of the Holy Spirit.
Easter is coming and it will be perfect time to obey the scripture. So, you are Christian but have not yet been baptized ever or been confirmed, you need to talk to me. When you obey, the blessing follows.
[1] http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/7747796?MSNHPHCP>1=10937
[2] http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=719
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