Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon March 9, 2008
One of the challenging things about studying the book of Acts is that because it is packed with so many details about the activities of the apostles and people’s responses we can easily forget who was behind it all. Another appropriate title for this book would be “The acts of the Holy Spirit.” Again and again, we need to remind myself that we cannot take the Holy Spirit out of the picture. Without him, it is utterly impossible to explain whole lot of things that were going on in the book of Acts. How do you explain verse 41 that the apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name apart from the fact that they were gripped by the Holy Spirit, they were filled with the Holy Spirit? You cannot explain this radical rejoicing thing in the midst of suffering, persecution, threats apart from what the Holy Spirit was doing in their lives. We need to constantly revisit Acts 1:8 where Jesus told his disciples, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This is what it explains it all. The stories after stories in the book of Acts explain plainly what happened when the Holy Spirit met people where they were in their sins and brokenness.
So, as we read and study the stories in this precious book, our task is to reflect our stories through the stories in Acts. When the Holy Spirit came on them, they received power. And, the power they received was not power to make much about themselves, but to make much about God. As I put it last week, the power they received when the Holy Spirit came on them turned them from being engrossed with self-conscious, self-obsessed, self-love to being Jesus conscious, Jesus-obsessed, Jesus-aware, Jesus-love. My prayer is that as we immerse ourselves in stories of the early church, we too will discover that our stories begin to explain what’s happening as we come as we are and the Holy Spirit moving us from self-consciousness to Jesus-consciousness, to live out the mind and the heart of Jesus Christ.
- To experience the power of the Holy Spirit, you need to come as you are without pretending or faking you are someone you are not.
I want you to pause for a second and ponder with me this seemingly contradicting statements between 5:13 and 14. 5:13 says, “No one else dared joined them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.” Well, this makes whole lot of sense when you remember how the couple, Ananias and Sapphira died because they pretended to be someone they were not in 5:1-12. Yes, in Ananias and Sapphira was this love of money, this self-conscious desire to preserve, maintain a certain lifestyle. Now, if they were true to themselves, they shouldn’t have cashed their property to give to anyone and they wouldn’t have lost their lives for pretending and lying about it. Where it went wrong was when they decided to pretend to be someone like Barnabas who sold his possession because he was overcome by the generous self-giving Spirit of Christ.
Now, something like this happens to us, if God were to deal with our hypocrisies immediately and severely that some of us face death in instant, if some of us while passing the offering plate were suddenly to fall off the chairs and die, and the story were to spread you can understand why some would hesitate to join our church. In fact, I should have warned us in the light of the message from last week to be careful when you pass the offering plate, offering time can be dangerous.
So, you can see why those who heard what happened to Ananias and Sapphira would not dare join the church. Before joining the church, they had to think twice about it. It was like this huge banner with these words stared at any perspective visitor who thought about joining the church: “Join at your own risk because you can get killed here if you fake it, if you pretend to be someone you are not.” Or, it might read, “Please, come as you are for fakers and pretenders can get killed here.” Well, I understand why no one dared join.
But, it says in verse 14, “Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.” Some of you might respond like I did. I thought, ‘Hey, this doesn’t make sense. Verse 13 says no one dared join, but here it says with the bold “Nevertheless” more and more people believed in the Lord and were added to their number. If no body dared join, how can it be said that more and more believed and were added?’
Here is how I understand. When Luke recorded that no one dared to join the church, he is referring to the people who could not bare the thought of being real. It was those people who felt that they had to keep a certain profile, a façade, a look about themselves; it was those who couldn’t be honest about themselves, who had to fake it, pretend it to be someone who they were not. It was those who convinced themselves that they could improve upon their own shortcomings, inadequacies, and become a better person with no help from God. It was those who had to maintain their own little kingdoms against the kingdom of God.
- Consider the high priest and all his associates, the members of the ruling party of the Sadducees. Verse 17 says that they were filled with jealousy. You see these religious leaders were faking it, they were pretending they were empowered by the Spirit of God to live with the Messiah-conscious, Messiah-aware, Messiah-obsessed mind and heart. But, how could they live with the Messiah-consciousness when they deny Jesus Christ, the true Messiah. They denied Jesus Christ and they dared not join church because they had their image, the façade to maintain. The disciples of Jesus Christ had the real, authentic spirituality backed up by the powerful demonstration of the evidence of God’s Spirit upon them and the Jewish religious leaders didn’t.
- They not only were filled with jealousy, verse 33 tells us that they were furious and wanted to put them to death. When the real shows, what is the fake to do? Either the fake needs to concede its complete pretension and deception, or get annoyed by the real but don’t do anything about it, or the fake will try to get rid of the real. As we move along in the book of Acts, you are going to see the relentless and numerous attempts by the fake to get rid of the real.
The banner over the church is this, “Come as you are to Christ and the Spirit of Christ will change you.” No reason to pretend, or fake it here because you can get killed for that. Now, going back to what it says in verse 13, it says that the believers were highly regarded by the people. What people saw was the real massed up people, who were real with who they were with their sins, brokenness, emptiness, anxiety, insecurity, greed, lust, self-conscious people coming as they were with all their ugliness to Jesus Christ and being changed by the Spirit of Christ to be self-giving Jesus’ conscious people.
To experience Jesus’ promise, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses,” we need to come as we are without pretending or faking it.
- When you come to Jesus Christ as you are, and when you learn to obey, the Spirit of Jesus Christ will empower you to be his witnesses in joy.
Someone said that until you found something worth dying for you haven’t found something worth living for.
There are kingdoms in conflicts. From their own little kingdoms the Jewish leaders and the people shouted, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” in Matthew 27:25. They thought of God’s kingdom through the death of Jesus Christ, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as weakness. How could God’s kingdom, the power of the Almighty bow to the violence in the hands of men? Their minds in their little self-obsessed kingdom created for their own good couldn’t fathom the power in laying down one’s life for others.
“Which is more powerful, to die or to kill?” This is asking, “Which is more powerful, to lay down one’s life for others in love or take someone’s life in hatred?” Or, “Which is more powerful, meaningful, and fulfilling, to love or to be loved?”
In the eyes of the people, the cross of Jesus Christ is weakness, but the real truth is the cross is the demonstration of the power of Christ’s love. What is thought of as weakness in Jesus Christ is proved the power. Apostle Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 13:4, “he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you.”
We see the real power of God working in the apostles’ lives in Acts 5. First they were condemned in Acts 4:18 not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. There they replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.” And, in Acts 5, we see the apostles carrying out their conviction that it was more important to obey God than men. So, they went ahead and did the ministry in the name of Jesus Christ. This got them into trouble with the Jewish leaders. They were jailed, but not too long after the angel of the Lord showed up and opened the doors of the jail. And they were told to go and stand in the temple courts… tell the people the full message of this new life.”
Do you see what happened? Peter came to Jesus as the cowardly person who denied Jesus three times. Jesus found Peter on the beach and spoke to him. Peter came to Jesus as he was without pretence. You see this encounter between Peter and Jesus in John 21. It is truly a beautiful picture of Jesus restoring this man who was heartbroken over his denials. When he came to Jesus who found him, he later received the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. And, there was the Spirit working in him to direct him to be Christ’s witness in boldness. In Acts 5:29-32, Peter spoke boldly, “We must obey God rather than men! The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead-whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”
Only when Peter and other apostles obeyed the Holy Spirit when he directed them to speak, did they receive his power to testify boldly.
So, the truth that we see in this account is that not only we must come as we are to Christ we also must learn that Christ means business with us. When Jesus met Peter who was disheartened by his denial of Jesus three times, Jesus was not messing around with Peter’s emotion, to try to make him feel guilty. No, Jesus was into restoring Peter, to define and to make him to what he could not become on his own. Jesus was into redefining, recreating Peter no longer as the one who denied Jesus, but as one who would be weak in him and thereby live by God’s power through the Holy Spirit and carry out the ministry of Jesus.
What we see in him and other early believers is this being captivated by the power, the beauty, the fulfillment, the great delight in laying down their lives for the cause of Jesus Christ. They finally found the cause that was worth living for when they realized Jesus was worth dying for.
That is what we see in verse 41. When they left the Sanhedrin after getting beaten up so bad they could hardly walk straight. Deep muscle tissue damages, skins swelling and bleeding, even Tylenol #3 with Codeine won’t get rid of the pain. Yet, we see them rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.” Instead of dampening their zeal and their spirit, verse 42 says, “Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.”
Conclusion
Wow, can you get you head around this? This is so powerful. Have we found Jesus to be our consuming joy, our delight, our most treasure that pales everything we have in real and perceived value?
For Peter and others, it began with coming as they were, not faking it or pretending they got it, because they really didn’t have it in them. When they came as Jesus found them, they were given the counselor, the Holy Spirit. And, it continued on with this relationship with the Holy Spirit who spoke to them, enlightened them to love of Jesus Christ, to fallen love with Jesus. And, what we see is the trust building in love, and the logical outflow of this trust and love was their obedience to the voice of the Spirit of Christ. And, this obedience led them to experience more of the Holy Spirit. The result we see is the Jesus becoming the cause worth dying for, the cause worth living for.
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