Signs of Transformissionary Life: Part I (SDSU)
- David Fairchild
- Mar 18, 2007
- Series: Acts
TEXT
Acts 2:40-47: “And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this crooked generation.’ 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
INTRODUCTION
We are in the great book of Acts looking at what the Gospel does when it comes in and explodes in the heart of the Church. As I’ve been saying, this is the only book of the Bible that gives us a history of the formation and spread of the Church.
As we read last week, Peter, having been filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, does what God intended for the church then and now: he preached the message of Jesus Christ’s life, death, resurrection, exaltation as Lord and King, and salvation which is offered to all who turn from sin and trust in Him. Those who are cut to the heart are promised two gifts: the forgiveness of sin and the promised Holy Spirit.
Now, as I said last week, Peter is not the most eloquent orator at this time, and yet 3,000 people came to Christ in faith that day and a couple of days later, another 2,000 come to faith in this Gospel message. It is a historical fact that this kind of growth continued through the first several decades until Christianity became the most powerful force, in the most powerful empire in the world. Not by political force, not by the sword, not even by economic means, but by person to person, life on life, individual persuasion by the multitude of early Christians who carried this incredible message in great courage and humility.
What could possibly account for this explosion? Peter was a good preacher, but he wasn’t that good; he wasn’t so good that he was 100 times better than any other preacher. So what could possibly be the reason for such widespread conversion to this message of good news which ran as a wildfire throughout the Roman Empire?
The answer we saw last week was that the Holy Spirit came along with the message and people were “cut to the heart” (v. 37). The Holy Spirit came in power, took the message and pushed it down into their hearts and the very core of their souls.
Look around you. The least likely person to be in church this morning in the United States makes up about 65% of our congregation. Young, college educated, 20-somethings are not supposed to be here this morning. What could account for your attendance? Is it the eloquence of the preaching? No, I’m certainly not better than Peter, and he wasn’t the most eloquent preacher. What accounts for your attendance? You’ve been “cut to the heart.” You can’t account for it by your intelligence or my preaching. You’ve simply been cut and with this incision, new life has come in and taken over your hearts.
How do you know you’ve been cut and new life has come into your heart? Life always expresses itself through signs. When a baby is born it cries, it suckles, and it produces little gifts for the parents to prove it is alive. You don’t have to tell a baby to cry, you don’t have to tell a baby to suckle; it’s alive, that’s what it does. Life always has signs. It has to have signs.
As we read this passage we see the signs of the new life. Next week we’ll look at the entire passage and break it down to show other signs and how they interrelate. But today I want to focus on one sign and think about it more deeply on its own.
As we look at these signs this week and next, we need to see how practical this is for our community. What better place to go to than the book of Acts to see how the early church began, and what better passage to go to than the results of the Holy Spirit filling the church, which immediately preached the Gospel and the result of a church that went from 120 to 3,120 in a single day. What did they do, what were they about, what was their focus?
Now, if you read this passage and listen to the preaching of these messages and say to yourself, “I’ve never seen any of these signs in my life,” you may have to ask yourself if you ever really became a Christian after all. I know that’s difficult to hear, but where else do we turn to in order to see what it looks like to be cut to the heart, filled with new life and live as the people of God? You might be put off by that comment and say, “What right do you have to say such a thing? How dare you be judgmental?” Listen, this isn’t about me, or about you, it’s about Christ and His church which He created and which is supposed to look a particular way. If you can’t go back to the founding documents which show this, where else will you go? What other authority is there? If these signs have never been in you in any way, you’re not a Christian. It’s good to know that because you now have an opportunity to repent and place your faith in Christ and His work.
I suspect, however, that many of you will fall into this next category. You remember some of these signs when you first became a Christian, but it’s been some time and they aren’t present now. You have an opportunity to pray to God and say, “Lord, by your Holy Spirit and truth, strengthen this so that I see it again.” This is why we have to look at this passage.
Also, whenever the Spirit of God is moving in power, the Church is flourishing, and the people of God are given a personal and cultural changing power, this first sign is present. Let’s look at it in verse 42.
STUDY
Verse 42a: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' didachÄ“ (doctrine)”
I know your translation probably says “teaching,” but the literal for the word is doctrine. It is much stronger than just teaching, because teaching can be life lessons which are interactive and allow class participation so that everyone can come to their own conclusions.
The translators use the word teaching because it is a bit more culturally acceptable to use and it doesn’t sound as archaic and dogmatic as the word “doctrine.”
What does this mean? The questions we want to answer this morning are fairly simple:
I- What they did
II- Why they did it
III-How they did it
I. What They Did
A. They Committed Themselves to Doctrine
Notice what they did: “they devoted themselves to the Apostles’ doctrine.” We need to use the word doctrine even if it sounds a little icky for some of you. The translators use the word “teaching” because it is a bit more culturally acceptable to use and it doesn’t sound as archaic and dogmatic as the word “doctrine.”
Our culture hates the idea of doctrine, whether conservative or liberal. Doctrine sounds so offensive and divisive. Since it sounds like dogma, and nobody wants to be dogmatic, why should we talk about doctrine? Doesn’t this rip a community apart?
When these hearers of the Gospel were cut to the heart, the first sign of their new life was this! They came together to study the Apostles’ doctrine. So, at the very least we know that the early Church didn’t have a problem with doctrine.
Conservative Christians in our day don’t like the idea of doctrine. Most of them say things like:
“We don’t divide over doctrine, we just praise the Lord and love Jesus. We don’t like disputes. Doctrine divides, Jesus unites!” Have you heard something like this? Have you said something like this? Were you saying something like this to yourself as soon I used the word doctrine?
Don’t you see what’s being said in the statement, “doctrine divides, Jesus unites?” What’s being said is that we are all in agreement to who Jesus is and what he’s done, and we agree He deserves to be worshipped. Who is Jesus? The Son of God. Fully God, fully man. What is that? That’s doctrine! How can we unite unless we believe the same things about Him?
Someone might say that the best place to turn is John 3:16 which tells us that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” That’s filled with doctrine. If it’s so wonderful that we should all believe, think through what is being said in that verse: God gave His only Son (this means He’s a personal God), so that we would not perish (this means He’s a just God), He gave His Son (this is the doctrine of Christ’s incarnation). The fall of humankind, the saving work of God is all there and it’s all doctrine.
The early movement of the early church would have never gotten off the ground unless they were in agreement on the doctrine of the Apostles which taught many, many truths about Jesus Christ and His work, the purpose of our existence, and the movement of History in a world that God made for His own glory and our joy.
This is one of the reasons we aren’t experiencing explosive revival in our own time, we’re not willing to discuss and agree upon doctrine like the early Church, so we are far less effective than the early Church.
On the liberal side, the liberals are very displeased with the idea of doctrine. They believe we need to move beyond doctrine now. We need to evolve beyond the early Church and move past doctrine. Unfortunately, you can never move beyond doctrine. The early Christians understood this and immersed themselves in it.
When someone says, “You should not be dogmatic about religion or doctrine,” what are they doing? They’re being dogmatic about you being dogmatic. They are telling you that they know something you don’t and they’re right about something you aren’t. They are dogmatically espousing a particular view about religion, which is doctrine!
When someone says, “No one can know anything for sure about religion,” they are demonstrating that they seem to know something sure about religion and that is that you can’t know anything about religion. If they’re right, they’re actually wrong because they just defeated their own statement. This person can not prove their position, so by faith they commit themselves to their position dogmatically and expect others to agree, which is now evangelizing their doctrine which they’ve come to by faith.
When someone says, “You shouldn’t try to convert people,” what are they doing? They’re trying to convert you to their doctrine of non-conversion. What are they expecting from you? They’re expecting that you’ll lay down your position of trying to convert people so that you’ll be converted to their position. To try and persuade someone that they shouldn’t convert someone assumes you think they’re wrong, you’re right, and everyone should agree. Who is narrow-minded and dogmatic now? The moment you try to persuade me you’ve just defeated your own belief. The best you can do is not say anything at all if you want to be consistent.
How about one more?
When someone tells you that they think it’s silly to argue about whether or not Jesus Christ died and rose again and forgives sins by faith in His work, that it’s not about the doctrinal beliefs of Jesus that are important but what you do with your life that matters most if you’re a good person, what are they doing? They are claming to not believe in dogma or doctrine, but what are they doing? They are holding to a doctrinal view of justification by works in a dogmatic way. That is a doctrine that teaches that God is not perfectly holy and we’re not sinful and don’t need a Savior to come into the presence of God. They say they’re not doctrinal and yet they preach a doctrine and expect converts to their religion’s dogma by faith.
There is no way out of speaking doctrinally. Everything we say shows a deeper belief in a doctrine behind our statement, even if we don’t realize we’re doing it. What we say teaches something about the nature of God, the nature of sin, the nature of man, the nature of reality, the course of history, and the nature of eternity. The only difference between modern views of doctrinal belief and the early church is that the early church knew they were holding to doctrine and our culture doesn’t.
Let’s qualify this a little more though…
B. They Committed Themselves to the Apostles’ Doctrine
Notice that it wasn’t just doctrine they were committed to, but the Apostles’ doctrine.
Who were the Apostles? At the beginning of chapter 2, we see that Peter in the middle of his sermon said, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses” (v. 32). The Apostle were people that had seen the risen Christ with their own eyes to whom Jesus came and specifically chose to be the very ones who spread the message about Him.
Jesus chose the Apostles and authorized them to take doctrine about Jesus and the whole Church recognized the authority of these men and their teaching about Jesus. The Apostles were the ones who bear the truth about Jesus, about His Gospel. They dedicated themselves to the task and it cost them their lives.
When the Apostles were martyred at the end of the first century, you did’t hear the Church cheering because they could now give their own spin and interpretation of Jesus and His doctrine; instead they collected all the writings of the Apostles or an associate of the Apostles who wrote down their teachings, and they brought it together as the canon of Apostolic teaching which made up the New Testament which we are reading today.
This is why the Apostle Paul can say in Ephesians 2:20 that the Church is built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. This means the New Testament and the Old Testament.
The foundation has to be solid
I was living in Northridge when the big Northridge earthquake hit in 1994. It was so powerful that it caused homes to move off of their foundation and 71 people were killed and another 9000 were injured.
It was so odd to drive around the neighborhood in the months after the earthquake and see abandoned million-dollar homes. These homes were utterly useless because they moved a few inches off of their foundation. The entire house had to be destroyed once it no longer sat on its foundation.
One of the construction jobs that kept many, many people employed for the first couple of years after the earthquake was retrofitters, whose job was to go under the house and see if the structure was resting on the foundation. If it was, they would ensure it didn’t move by bolting it down to the foundation with steel ties. This kept the house in place and when another quake came, the house would remain bolted to the foundation and simply roll with the quake the way it was designed. If it wasn’t bolted down, the home would slip off of the foundation and collapse on someone and possibly kill them.
In many ways, this is the job of teachers, to secure your structure to the foundation, to bolt it in place so that it never moves from the foundation. The foundation is what everything is built upon and it is the primary way in which a building will have structural integrity.
The foundation has to be unchanging, solid, even, and immovable.
Everything rests upon the foundation
Ravi Zacharias tells a story of his visit to an art center that was built specifically to show-off a postmodern view of reality. As Ravi investigated, he noticed that the building had staircases that led to nothing, a corner, and it had pillars that came down from the ceiling but didn’t reach the floor. It was supposed to reflect the architects’ view of life; that it was going nowhere and had no meaning. When he spoke to the architect and learned of his reasons for his design, he asked the man if he did the same to the foundation, to which the man laughed and said “of course not, you can’t tamper with the foundation.” The point that Ravi was making in his question was that even though you can tamper with the infrastructure, you can’t tamper with the foundation or you will see that nothing can be built.
Even with a desire to build a meaningless, purposeless, pointless building, the builders had to rely upon the plans that were carefully drawn up and everything rested upon the sure foundation which was laid true and sure so that the building wouldn’t collapse. Everything has to rest upon a foundation. Faith hanging in mid-air without any foundation for what it is believing or hoping in would never catalyze a movement like that of the early Church.
Whenever the Church wanted to deal with some teaching or problem that came up as the Church spread, Christians didn’t come up with their own opinion, they went back to that deposit of truth called the Apostles’ teaching and read and studied carefully to see what they said. They realized they couldn’t have a house without a foundation.
This is what Jude, the half brother of Jesus teaches us:
Jude 1:3: “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”
This short little letter of 25 verses is worth every word because it shows us that we are called. Jesus’ brother is appealing to us to contend for the faith delivered to the saints.
This doctrine was eaten up by the early church. They studied it, submitted to it, meditated upon it, and couldn’t get enough of it. They met everyday to dive deeper and deeper. You couldn’t keep them away and you didn’t have to talk them into to going to a Bible study. You didn’t need to lay a guilt trip on them because they were deeply devoted to the Apostles’ doctrine, the Scriptures.
The next question that naturally comes up is “why?” Why they do it?
II. Why They Did It
Unless we come to the Apostles’ doctrine for the same reason, the same motives, the same love, then we’re not going to experience the same results. Why did they come? The only way to answer this question is by looking at what happened just before this verse.
So what happened? At the end of his sermon Peter says that those listening to him had crucified Jesus who is both Lord and Christ. The next response is that these people were “cut to the heart.” The reason they devoted themselves so intensely to the Apostles’ doctrine is because they wanted to know two things:
A. They wanted to know what cut them
You can’t be cut by something that is softer than you. A doctor isn’t going to begin his surgical incision with a rubber band because the rubber band is softer than the skin and won’t cut through the skin.
A knife, however, can cut through the skin so that the infection can be removed and the healing can begin. The knife is harder and doesn’t yield, you do. These people listening to Peter’s sermon realized they were cut by something that wouldn’t yield to them. Their feelings and perceptions had to yield to it.
There are many in our culture and some in this room that may not believe in a truth that is harder than their opinion. This truth is harder than us; it’s above us, a truth that we have to yield to and isn’t dependent upon us. Whether we understand it, perceive it, agree to it, or can describe it doesn’t change the fact that it is true. It is true truth whether we believe it or not and submit to it or not.
This is a transcendent truth, a truth that is above our own view and perception. When you turn on the radio during your commute to work to see if the freeways are clear, you are seeking a sort of transcendent truth. Even when you get on the freeway by where you live and don’t see traffic, if the eye in the sky says that the 805 or 5 is bumper to bumper and isn’t moving you have to make a choice to come up with your own opinion about the matter or you can trust in the transcendent view of the one above you who has a view you are not privy to. What do you do? Do you trust in your vantage point or his? Do you yield to his transcendent view or your limited view? Of course you listen, that’s why you turned on the radio in the first place.
If someone says that they believe in some of the Bible but not all of it, what they are saying is that they have a vantage point that knows what parts are true and what parts are false. Since this is God’s word, and He was the one that inspired the writing of it, what this man is saying is that he has the right and knowledge to act as editor-in-chief of God’s truth to us. It’s a very arrogant position to make such a claim because it assumes knowledge beyond any other human being. You either believe the whole thing or you don’t believe it. There is no middle ground, there is no in-between. To take any other position is to assume you’re the editor and that is far harder to prove than just disagreeing with the whole thing.
Either the Word sits over you or your sit over it. Either it decides and you yield or you decide and it must yield to you. Either your harder material than it, or it is harder material than you. There is no in-the-middle.
The problem is that we aren’t hard or immovable. Our opinions often change and we aren’t the best mark of immovable, unchangeable opinions are we? How I feel as I get closer to 40 is much different than how I felt when I was closing in on 30. We are too soft, too inconsistent, too confused to be the standard of hard truth. So we turn to a truth harder than us that we yield to and find that we are finally given stability in an unstable life.
How did Christians know about this transcendent truth? They had been cut and were changed by what cut them. We see this over and over again at Kaleo. We see people come in who at first are very unsure about a great many things in the Bible and they get cut by the Gospel and change into a person that is soft and malleable and wanting to yield to that which cut them: the Gospel. More importantly, they wanted to know who cut them…
B. They also wanted to know who cut them
The second reason they came is because they wanted to know who cut them. In verse 36 Peter says that the one they crucified, Jesus, has become both Lord and Christ. This truth cut them and they cried out, “What shall we do?”
The real reason they devoted themselves to the Apostles’ doctrine was because the doctrine was about Jesus. This is something we have to understand: if we don’t go to the Scriptures to know Jesus and find Him, and instead we go to find a bunch of principles for living like Aesop’s fables or some list of morals, it will utterly crush us. Mark Twain said that he had a recurring dream that haunted him. He said that he would try to sleep and in his dream there was a huge bible over him, crushing him down. Of course he had that dream, that dream might be yours. When we miss the point of Scripture, the Bible is a weight we are unable to bear and it crushes us.
The point of the Bible is Jesus. This is why I bring up Luke 24 so often. The disciples had just lost their friend and teacher, Jesus, and they are walking on the Road to Emmaus. Jesus begins to walk with them and starts talking to them and they are totally confused about what’s happening. Jesus says to them, “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” Then it says that Jesus started with Moses and demonstrated from all the Scriptures that the Scriptures all spoke of Him. They are about Him!
Go to Moses and look at the Law. The Law shows us that we can’t keep it and we need someone who has kept it perfectly for us. It points to Jesus.
What about the rituals and Tabernacle? The Bible says that it is through Jesus that you can come into the presence of God. Jesus is the Tabernacle. Jesus is the High Priest, Jesus is the unleavened bread, Jesus is the light of the candlestick, and Jesus is the Sacrifice!
What about all the history in the OT? Jesus is the true prophet of the OT because He teaches us about God’s world. Jesus is the real Priest that stands before God and represents us. Jesus is the true King that rules us. Jesus is the true Israel. When the Bible speaks of not many remaining true and obeying as the true Israel, do you know how small that number really is? One, Jesus is the true Israel of God. There was only one person that came to earth that was truly Israel, and truly loved God with all of His heart, mind, soul, and strength and loved His neighbor as Himself: Jesus! Jesus is the One who truly inherited the blessings promised to Abraham. Because it was He and only He, who takes our sins upon Himself and dies in our place to forgive us, and then takes all of the promises and blessings and gives them to us so that we’re seen by our Father as the true Israel of God as He sees His own Son.
When you see the whole Bible as a testimony of Jesus, you will come to it in an entirely different way. But, if you come to it without searching for Jesus and wanting to see Him in every page, you will be utterly crushed because only He could fulfill every word written. It will be to you just as it was for Mark Twain, a crushing burden.
It’s all about Him. Every text, every story, every answer to every problem is solved by Him.
Look at how Jesus was committed to the Scriptures. When He’s facing temptation, He says, “it is written.” When He’s facing suffering, He says, “it is written.” When He faces betrayal, He says, “it is written.” When He’s facing death, He says, “it is written.” He quotes Scripture over and over again and lives and bleeds it.
Jesus realized why He came, and as He ministered to His heart by His Father’s words He gained continued strength and assurance which led to a greater devotion to your salvation. Because He was devoted to God’s word He was devoted to saving you. You and I ask, “How can we be devoted to Him?” Only in the same way: we have to be entirely devoted to the same thing He based His life on, God’s word.
If you don’t believe that the Scripture is entirely true, you don’t have a problem with me, you have a problem with Him. There is no way you can follow Christ or know Christ without devoting yourself to the Word of God which speaks of Him so clearly.
The reason the Church came to the Apostles’ doctrine was to know Him. They wanted to know about Him more intimately.
The third and final question we’re trying to answer is how they did it.
III. How they did it
Verse 40: “And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this crooked generation.’”
We’ve all been influenced by sociological factors that make up our particular generation. If you become a Christian and dedicate yourself to His divine truth, you are taken out of the mess of your generation.
The determining factor in your life will no longer be what your parents think, what your friends think, what TV thinks or the wars that happen in your generation. Everything will come under the truth.
To become a Christian doesn’t mean you just make a couple of changes; it means that everything is now seen differently through the lens of the Gospel. Whether you’re black, white, Italian, Mexican, Korean or Japanese, you no longer say, “this is the way we do things.” You are taken out of the excuse of your generation and taken up into God’s plan for history. You come out of your generation because you are a whole new person.
Everything is seen through the truth of Jesus now. You’re a whole new generation.
1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
When bad things happen in your generation you examine what you have and find you have Jesus and this gives you comfort and joy because you have a treasure far greater than anything the world can give you.
When good things happen in your generation you examine what you have and find you have Jesus and nothing you get or have is as significant as Him and His grace, and this gives you great humility and perspective.
Do you have this attitude towards the Scripture? Do you desire to see Christ in every page so that you might say the same as those on the road to Emmaus, “Did our hearts not burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32)
This can be you if you go the Scriptures for the same reason the early Church did, seek the same things the early Church did, by the same power that saved the early Church from the circumstances in their generation.
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