Preached at Baldwin Presbyterian Church on April 11th 2010
It is the early days of the Church. There has been an explosion of enthusiasm, a growth in numbers. People are impressed. Well... not all people. The holders of the religious keys of power the Sanhedrin are not impressed at all. They are alarmed. They have had Peter and a number of other disciples thrown into jail. But in the night, a miraculous deliverance takes place and Peter and the disciples are back on the streets teaching, healing and preaching.
The Sanhedrin summon Peter and the disciples to come before them and advise them to stop proclaiming their message about Jesus. "We gave you strict orders (did we not?) to stop teaching in that name. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and want to bring this man's blood upon us." It is a sticky situation. How does Peter handle it? He tells them how it should have been with all of them; "We must obey God rather than man".
Around us today are many voices that seek for us to abandon our religious ways. Peter gives us a model of how to respond in the face of calls to compromise our faith: -
· We seek to be faithful to God.
· We seek to bring glory to God by proclaiming the gospel.
· We seek power to witness through God's Holy Spirit.
1. We seek to be faithful to God.
We sometimes speak of people holding strong convictions as being people of principle. The principle of Peter's obedience is his desire to be faithful to no other voice than the voice of God. He was well aware of the implications of such obedience. He had witnessed first hand the arrest, death and crucifixion of Jesus. He knew that there were those who would not stop at taking his life in order to prevent the growth of the Christian church.
In our particular age and culture the problem is not so much hostility, as it is apathy. For increasing numbers of people religion is simply not on the agenda. They would not think of belonging to a church and have decided that such a practice is not for them.
They can see no benefit or purpose in being part of a worshiping community. They have better things to do on Sundays. There are newspapers to read, cars to wash, kids to take to sporting events, golf games to be played, boats to sail, shopping malls with sales not to miss... and in any case their time is limited. Why on earth would one want to give up the little recreation time they have to spend time in some boring old church service?
Now before we point the finger at anybody else we should examine ourselves. Our beliefs are sometimes kept so private that when people discover we are part of a church they will say, “Gosh, I never thought of you as the religious type!” The faith we profess is not professed in a way that anybody seems to notice.
Our lifestyles are no different to our neighbors and we often make the same mistakes as our neighbors. We are aware that if there were a 'Good people in our Community' competition there are many folk on that list who never darken the door of a place of worship or profess any allegiance to any faith. There are some great people who never go to church, many of them amongst our own colleagues, friends and families.
So it is a double whammy sort of situation. There is an apathy out there concerning religion and then the fact that the way our religion shows itself in our lives is not particularly impressive. We don't leave church Sunday morning and go out and walk on water, raise the dead and perform great wonders backed up by powerful testimony of God's grace, in the way the likes of Peter and Paul are pictured in the Book of Acts.
So what can we do? I suggest that what we can do is stay faithful to God as best as we know how. Many will not notice. Those that do won't be impressed. We will continue to make as many as mistakes as we are different people. We are people saved by grace, not through our own efforts, and often our own efforts will obscure that fact! But, again, I suggest that the way forward in an age of apathy is remarkably similar to the way forward in an age of opposition. We say, as Joshua said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). We seek to be faithful to God.
However there is, as Christians, a particular task that should engage us that we would not expect a person outside of the church to be engaged in. This also comes out of reading from the Book of Acts.
2 We seek to bring glory to God by proclaiming the gospel.
The thing that set the early disciples apart was their sense of purpose. They were obedient to God for a reason. They believed that God had called them to witness to the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ and to grant an opportunity for others to experience repentance and salvation. When challenged as to why they were doing what they were doing Peter replied “The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, though you had Him killed by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted Him at His right hand as leader and savior to grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins. We are witnesses of these things...”
It may sound like stating the obvious but the purpose of the church is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. To witness to Christ's death, resurrection and ascension and to share with others that through what Jesus has done new life, hope and wholeness can come to people’s lives. This is something we do through our words, through our actions, through our giving, through our worshiping, through our praying, through our singing, through our private lives and through our public lives. We are called to be witnesses to Jesus Christ.
We are only a church in as much as the message of the grace of God, the love of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is the central theme of our existence. Without that we are simply a social club or civic organization. There's nothing wrong with social clubs and civic organizations, but they are not what Jesus came to build. He gave to Peter a commission to build the Church through faith in His name and through the grace He would provide. That's why Peter was in trouble before the Sanhedrin and standing before them saying; “We must obey God, not man.”
Our charter, our commission, our purpose is found only in and through Jesus Christ and the proclaiming of His love to the fallen and broken world in which we live. Lose that and we have lost our purpose. Seek to be obedient to that call and we have a purpose that unites us together with fellow believers of every denomination, geographic locality and ethnic group throughout the world.
But how... in the face of an apathetic world… and through lives that we know are less than they could or should be… and in the midst of the weekly demands of paying the bills and maintaining a building and keeping it all together… how do we recapture that focus and move forward?
3. We seek power to witness through God's Holy Spirit.
Peter and the earliest disciples found the strength to be obedient to God's call through the power of God's Holy Spirit. In the very last part of our reading Peter testifies to the work of “The Holy Spirit that God has given to those who obey Him.” (Acts 5:32).
The Churches work is a Holy Spirit guided and empowered task. Always has been, always will be. Without God's Spirit as our source of power and motivation we are simply not up to the task. All our words and actions and worship and striving are a waste of our effort unless they are indwelt and anointed by God's Spirit.
Only the Holy Spirit can bring people into a relationship with God. Only the Holy Spirit can enliven people’s minds to their need of Christ. Only the Holy Spirit can breathe life into tired structures and despairing hearts.
The next great festival of the Church after Easter is the festival of Pentecost. Until Pentecost happened and the power of the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples gathered together in an upper room they were powerless and fearful, without purpose or plan for the future other than to wait and see what happened. After Pentecost, we see the birth of the Church. We see those same disciples enlivened to serve God in new ways they had never dreamed of.
And it is not because of who they were... they were still the same people who often made mistakes, who knew their own faults as much as they knew others and who didn't always get along... their strength came from the activity of God in their midst. As they opened up to God through prayer, through receiving His Word, through seeking to be obedient to His call amongst all the other calls on their lives, the Holy Spirit came and they were empowered to serve.
Wherever people seek to be obedient to the call to proclaim the gospel, the Holy Spirit still comes. Because such is not a task we can do without God. It is God's work and we are God's people when we allow God to work though us and amongst us, with thanksgiving on our lips and joy in our hearts.
In the midst of a changing and often confusing world God calls us to be obedient. To listen for His call, to proclaim the gospel of His Son and rely on His Holy Spirit. The challenges we face in our time are not the same as those faced by the early church, but they are just as real.
- In the face of an apathetic culture we are called to stay faithful to God.
- In the midst of the many calls on our time and our resources we are called to find our meaning in proclaiming that in Jesus Christ new life and hope have dawned for all people.
- In the light of our own powerlessness and inability we are called to remember that though we are weak, the love of God is strong, and we are to find the power to witness through God's Holy Spirit.
Let us pray for one another that as we share together in the life of this small corner of God's Kingdom we will be obedient to the call of Jesus Christ and be faithful witnesses of His love to all those around us. Amen.
Adrian Pratt
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