Today, all over the country, in fact, all over the world, religious people are attempting to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. There are all kinds of religious rituals and ceremonies being conducted by millions and millions of people in celebration of Easter. But the question I would raise today, is what is the significance of the resurrection for us today, besides the obvious historical nature of it? What is the effect of this day of remembrance? I’m afraid that the resurrection represents just a holiday to most people, a holiday that has no power beyond simply remembering an event that happened 2000 years ago in the life of Christ. To merely recount the familiar historical story of the empty tomb is to miss the significance of the power of the resurrection. It is to miss the present day application of the power of the resurrection. And if we are not careful to consider the present significance of the resurrection rather than just revisit the account of Jesus’ resurrection then we are in danger of possibly missing the whole point of the resurrection. To simply retell the same story year after year, Easter service after Easter service, without applying the truth of it, the purpose of it, is to only add condemnation to ourselves for hearing the truth, but in effect rejecting the purpose of the resurrection, which is to give new resurrection life to those who believe in Christ.

In other words, the power of the resurrection is not just limited to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. The power of the resurrection is the promise of new life for all that believe in Christ and die to their sins. Jesus promised us abundant life. Eternal life. The resurrection is the power over the fear of death. It provides the certainty that the sting of death is taken away. It provides the certain hope that because He lives, we will live. That because He was raised from the dead, we will be raised from the dead. But the resurrection is not just hope for after we die, but it also produces hope for new life now. As we die to sin, we are raised to new life. Rom. 8:11 “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” And in “Rom. 6:4 we read, “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

Now that is the message that Peter and John were preaching in chapter 3. They were proclaiming the startling news that Jesus Christ, whom the Jews had put to death just a few weeks earlier, was actually alive, and the power through His name was available to all who believed to save them from their sins. It was the power of that resurrected Savior that was present at that time to bring about the healing of the lame man who sat in his suffering at the gate Beautiful for 40 years. This is the message of Peter and John. Look at vs. 2, “they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” That was their message. That the Jews had put Jesus to death, but God had raised Him from the dead. He was alive, and in His power this man was made well. And that same miracle power was available for new life for everyone that repented and believed in Him. And it was available for all who believed in a risen, living, saving Christ who was seated in heaven at the right hand of the Father.

Now that message should have been welcome news to the world, especially to the Jews. And it was good news to some. That is what the word “gospel” means, the good news. On the day of Pentecost 3000 repented and were saved by faith in Christ, by believing that He was risen and living and seated at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us.   But not everyone believed. And as we begin this chapter, we see the first stirrings of animosity towards the new church by the established religious leaders of the day, the priests, and the Sadducees; the religious ruling party of the Jews.

So in this chapter we are going to look at five proofs of the resurrection. Five ways in which the power of the resurrection is illustrated. First, we see that the power of the resurrection provoked animosity towards the church. Jesus said don’t be surprised if they hate you, because they hated Me first. So that is the first point presented in this chapter; the power of the resurrection provokes animosity. It is amazing that the gospel is frowned upon by modern society, isn’t it? It’s amazing that something that delivers people from death, delivers people from addictions, from strife, from sin, that teaches it’s converts to do good instead of evil, is considered by many people in our society today to be something to be suppressed and shut down. And the first church experienced this to an even greater degree than we see happening today, though we are fast approaching the time when Christians will be considered public enemy number one. Already in many other parts of the world, Christians are losing their lives because of their faith in Christ. And we see this reported almost every day in the news.

Peter and John were arrested by the temple guard, directly after healing this lame man. A crowd had gathered when they witnessed this man that was once lame now jump and leap around the temple praising God for being healed. And Peter used that opportunity to tell the multitude that it was not due to some power that he or John had that made him well, but it was the power of the resurrected, living Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, who had made him well.

And as they were speaking, the temple officials arrested them and put them in jail. I sometimes wonder how long I will have the freedom to preach the gospel from the beach as we have done for 8 years now. The cultural climate towards the gospel is getting more and more antagonistic all the time. One day, I fully expect the town officials to come out there and shut me down, perhaps even put me in jail. Though I hope it won’t come to that. More than likely they will tell me I have to cease and desist and threaten to fine me if I do not stop.

The world doesn’t care if you worship a dead prophet. The world doesn’t care if you worship a good man, a good teacher. But the world hates a person who proclaims Jesus was raised from the dead, because that speaks of a living God, a powerful God, a God that reigns and demands out obeisance. And man doesn’t want to be ruled, but to maintain the right of self determination over his destiny, over his will, and rebels at bowing his knee. So therefore there is animosity towards the power of the resurrection. Ironically though, the church is refined and strengthened by persecution. We grow more under duress than we do in times of ease. Pruning, whether in the church body or in our individual lives, produces more fruit, not less.

Secondly, the power of the resurrection produces boldness. The power of the resurrection emboldened Peter and John to preach the gospel, to confront the Sanhedrin and condemn them, even though just a few weeks before Peter had denied and abandoned Christ at His trial. How did it embolden them? It wasn’t because they had found some sort of comfort in performing elaborate rituals signifying the resurrection. It wasn’t because they had established a holiday commemorating the resurrection. It was because of the confidence of having seen Christ’s once crucified, dead body raised up in newness of life, in a glorified body that was not subject to death, and they had seen the same body of Christ ascend into heaven. That reality had changed their lives. It had changed their perception of what harm could come to them. Whereas once they had run away at the thought of persecution, now they had boldness to proclaim Christ because they knew that same resurrection power of Christ was in them.

Ironically, it was the same court, the same high priests that had tried Jesus and condemned Him to death that was now the very court that they stood in front of. The same court that caused Peter to deny Jesus three times in order to avoid being caught up in His crucifixion, the same court that John had ran from, was now the very same court they found themselves examined in. But now they are filled with boldness where they once were filled with fear. They knew that as Christ had overcome suffering and death, so that same promise was for them as well. They need not fear what man can do.   As Jesus said in Luke 12:4-5 “I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!”

So even as the resurrection gave boldness to the apostles, so those of us that have faith in the risen Savior can also claim that same boldness, knowing that we need not fear those that can kill the body, because God has given us eternal life.

Thirdly, the power of the resurrection provides the filling of the Holy Spirit. Peter and John were now bold where once they were timid, because now they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit because of the resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven, that He might send to us the Comforter, the Helper, which is the Spirit of God indwelling human flesh. Jesus said in John 16:7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”

And that is exactly what we see happening here. Peter and John are filled with the Holy Spirit as the text says in vs. 8, so that they are able to answer the high priests and the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish equivalent of the Supreme Court. This is the direct fulfillment of the promise Jesus made to His apostles in Luke 12:11-12 “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you are to speak in your defense, or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

This begs the question, by the way, “what is the filling of the Holy Spirit?” The answer to that question is demonstrated right here in this passage. It is the power to proclaim the gospel, it is the word of God which is given to you to minister the gospel, it is the boldness to act as God directs you to act, it is the power to do what God wants you to do. That is what it means to be filled. It is illustrated by the wind which fills the sails of a ship, empowering it to move under the direction of the captain.

Please understand something. The Holy Spirit is a person. He is the Spirit of Christ. He dwells in the hearts of those who have been saved. At salvation, you receive all of Him. He cannot be divided, He is a person. He indwells the saints with His presence. So there is no way to get more of the Holy Spirit. So how are we then filled with the Holy Spirit? There is only one way, and that is for there to be less of the flesh. The flesh is in competition with the Spirit. So we put to death the flesh to be filled with the Spirit. You abandon all trust in yourself. You humble yourself, let go of the steering wheel, and call upon God to direct you and help you. It’s about letting go of your wisdom, of your desires, of your passions, of your ambitions, and leaning full on the wisdom and guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit to sustain you and empower you. The Spirit will give you the power to do what God commands you to do. That is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Peter being filled with the Holy Spirit takes this examination, this trial, and considers it an opportunity to preach the gospel to the very tribunal that put to death His Savior just weeks before. And He presents the gospel without equivocation. In answer to their question of in what power or name have they done this miracle of healing the lame man, Peter answers them in such a way as to delegitimize their interrogation by reminding them that what they had done was a benefit to a sick man. The Council might not have liked the message, but they could not deny the good result of the miracle. A lame man had been made well. Now that was a statement of genius. Peter’s asking, are we on trial for making a sick man well? In other words, is it a crime to do good? Peter is establishing that they have no guilt in this matter. They have done good to a sick man, which is what the law required, by the way.

So then Peter, in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, turns the tables on the Council. Though we are on trial for doing good to a sick man, you on the other hand, put on trial a good man and committed a terrible crime. He said, you crucified Jesus Christ the Nazarene an innocent man. Pilate said three times during the trial of Jesus that he found no fault in this man. The charges they brought against Jesus had been trumped up. But this righteous man, this good man, they had crucified because they did not want Him to rule over them. They were the rulers of the religion of the Jews and they were willing to commit murder in order to preserve their power. All the family of the high priest were there that day. All of the governing council known as the Sanhedrin was there at this trial just as they had been at Jesus’ trial. And Peter accuses them of murdering an innocent man. But Peter proclaims Him even more than a man, he declares Him the Messiah, the Christ. Christ is the Greek word for Messiah. So when Peter calls Him Jesus Christ of Nazareth, he is nailing down the fact that Jesus was the Messiah, and that it was confirmed by God through the resurrection.   See, that is another proof of the resurrection, that God would not allow His Holy One to see decay in the grave, because He was holy. He was righteous, and He had no guilt.

The Council though Peter rightly condemns as guilty. This is a pattern of Peter and the Apostle’s preaching. They preach guilt first, then grace. And the unbelievable thing is that Peter offers grace to these guilty murderers of Christ. I think if I were Peter that day I would have seen if the power of the Holy Spirit was present for me to call down fire from heaven. But as Peter would eventually write in his second epistle, chapter 3:9 “The Lord…. is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” Even towards these hard hearted, self righteous murderers of the Son of God Himself, there is the opportunity for repentance. God offers grace even to the most vile sinner, even to these murderers of Christ.

And that leads us to the fourth power of the resurrection, which is it provides salvation. Peter says in vs. 12, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved.” Salvation is only possible by faith in the living Christ whom God raised from the dead, as a testament to the efficacy of His atonement. Only Jesus satisfied God’s requirement. Listen, the offer of salvation is as wide as whosoever will may come. (Rev. 22:17) But also the offer of salvation is so narrow that entrance is only by one name. Only by Jesus Christ is salvation possible.

That is what Jesus died on the cross for, to save sinners. To seek and to save those that are lost. The problem was that the Council and the High Priest did not consider themselves sinners. They considered themselves as belonging to the kingdom of God by right of their birth. They considered themselves as righteous by virtue of their good deeds, by keeping the law. They considered themselves worthy of the kingdom by their positions as priests. And as such they were truly lost, because they failed to see the need of their salvation.

I wonder how many here today are outside of the kingdom of heaven because they have never confessed that they were sinners, that they were lost? The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the kingdom of God. That there is none righteous, no not one. That all of our righteousness is as filthy rags before God. Coming to church can’t save you. Being born into a so called Christian home cannot save you. Being sprinkled or baptized will not save you. Trying to turn over a new leaf will not save you. There is only one way that you can be saved. And that is realizing you are a sinner, repenting of it, and trusting in the salvation offered through Jesus Christ, the Holy and Righteous Son of God who gave His life as a substitute on the cross for our sins. There is salvation in nothing else, in no one else.

And listen, don’t miss that emphasis there in Peter’s statement. “By which you must be saved…” You must be saved. Or you will die in your sins and face eternal death. The wages of sin is death. You cannot escape hell but by one means, that is through Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, there is a great illustration of salvation that is presented in the plague of poisonous vipers that came upon the children of Israel who had rebelled against God so they were bitten and about to die. And God instructed Moses to raise a brass serpent upon a pole and said that if any would look upon that serpent they would be saved from death. All of the people that were bitten were under the penalty of death, they were in the process of dying. But for those that looked up at the serpent on the pole, God forgave them and healed them so that they lived.

That’s a picture of salvation. Jesus was lifted up on a pole, a cross, and everyone that has been bitten with the sting of death need only to look upon that cross and be saved. We all are under the condemnation of death, because we all are sinners. But Jesus has died for us, so that we might be made alive in Him, if we will just turn from our sins and have faith in Christ.

Those hard hearted high priests and council members as far as we know never accepted Jesus as the cornerstone of their salvation. They rejected Him. And so we can only imagine that the prophecy of Jesus was fulfilled to them, for rejecting the Son of God. Jesus had prophesied in Matt. 21:42-44 “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’ Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”

But there was one man there that day who was changed by the power of the resurrection. And that was the lame man. He was leaping, jumping, praising God for the miracle He had done in his life. And this man illustrates the final power of the resurrection, that the resurrection produces transformation. Because Jesus is alive, we can have life and have it more abundantly. That was the point of this lame man’s healing, to illustrate the living power of Christ to transform the lame to one that could walk. To give life to the dead. To transfer righteousness to those that were sinners. That lame man welcomed the news that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, that we might have life in His name. That we that were sick unto death might be made well.

The Sanhedrin did not want to recognize that they were sick. That they were dying in their sins just as surely as their forefathers had died from the snake bites in the wilderness. But this poor lame man knew well his dreadful condition, which he had from his mother’s womb. We too are sick from our mother’s womb. David said in Psalm 51:5 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.” But as the power of the risen Christ was able to make the lame man whole, to transform him from lame to walking, from dead in his sins, to new life in Christ, so that same resurrection power is available for anyone today, that recognizes that they are lame, unable to walk in righteousness. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And then transformed, we are able to be a testimony to others. This man that was lame and made whole was the catalyst that caused 5000 men to be saved at the preaching of Peter which followed his healing.  A whole multitude saw the transformation of this lame man and gave God the glory, and turned to Him by faith in Christ. Folks, that is the power of a transformed life. I don’t want to take anything away from witnessing in foreign mission fields or outreaches, there is a place for that. But I would submit to you that there is no testimony like the testimony that you can have to your own neighbors, your own family, those that see you every day on the street or at work. That was the nature of this man’s effectiveness. He had been begging by that gate for 40 years. Thousands of people had seen him sitting there day after day with misshapen, shriveled legs, having to be carried to the gate and picked up in the evenings. He was an object of pity, perhaps even loathing by some. And now by the power of Christ he was well, he was leaping, running, walking, praising God.

Listen, the power of the resurrection is not just about celebrating the resurrection of Jesus at Easter, the power of the resurrection is lived out as a testimony every day by those that have been saved. I would ask you today, have you been saved? Has your life been transformed by the saving power of Jesus Christ to give you new life? Have you died to your sins, to be raised in the newness of life in Christ? Is that your testimony? Can your neighbors, your family, your coworkers attest to the miracle of your transformation? Does that witness cause others to want what you have? If not, then I would suggest you consider your salvation. As Paul said in 2Cor. 13:5 “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you–unless indeed you fail the test?”

I trust that you do not fail the test. I hope that no one leaves here today rejecting the Savior who gave His life so that you might know the power of His resurrection. So that you might have life and have it more abundantly. So that you might walk in newness of life. So that you might have the power over sin. So that you might be made well. So that we might be bold to proclaim the gospel. So that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit. So that we might overcome adversity. So that we might live transformed lives in our homes and communities in order to spread the good news of the gospel.

Last week I spoke of the Great Awakening which transformed thousands of lives across this country when America was in it’s infancy, around the mid 1700’s. And a man came up to me after the service last week and told me of a poem that was written by one of the men who was touched by that great revival – a contemporary of the great preacher George Whitfield. This man named Lawrence Trimble wrote a poem called Awaken which describes the power of a transformed life.

One man awake, Awakens another. The second awakens His next-door brother.  The three awake can rouse a town By turning The whole place Upside down.

The many awake Can make such a fuss  It finally awakens  The rest of us.  One man up, With dawn in his eyes, Surely then Multiplies.

Because of the power of the resurrection, Peter and John were accused of turning the world upside down. Let us go and do the same.

Today I want to talk to you in a different manner than in the way I normally preach. As you know, I usually exegete a passage, going verse by verse. But today I want to share some things that have been on my mind lately, ideas which are promoted by this passage, but not necessarily found through the exposition of each verse.

This week I have found my soul distressed by several different circumstances that I have heard about, that I might term “failures of the faith.” Not that the true faith of God can fail. God cannot fail, and the purposes of God cannot fail. He is Sovereign, He is over all, and all things exist through and for Him. He existed before the world began, and will endure forever. His truth endures forever. God cannot fail.

But human beings do fail. Just this week I have been reminded or in some cases confronted with several people who were once part of our fellowship who have fallen, or are in the process of falling away. It is disheartening, even heartbreaking to see these people fall away. I heard lately that one mainstream denomination which has about 11,000 churches recently published a report that claimed over 294,000 professions of faith in one year. But in another report some time later, they could only account for 14,000 of them in fellowship. According to research done by an evangelist named Ray Comfort who reported on the previous statistics of that denomination, 80 to 90 percent of new conversions end up falling away from Christ.

As a pastor, I am particularly broken hearted over people who once professed a living faith in God, who we invested so much in, and who now have turned away from the Lord. Some of them may not see themselves that way, but their lifestyle reveals that they are no longer following Christ. Whether they are truly saved or not is not my purview to know for certain, but it is a dangerous thing to turn away from God and follow after the lusts of your heart, and trust in your own wisdom, contrary to the Word of God.

I feel I am constantly in this battle for the hearts and minds of the people who come under my preaching. I rightly feel a certain degree of responsibility for the outcome of their souls. So I preach my heart out in an effort to win them to the Lord. But for the most part, it seems that far too many people are either unmoved by the preaching of the Word, or at least once they leave the church service there seems to be little thought as to the application of the doctrines which they have been taught.

And so as I struggle to understand this inclination to fall away from the truth, and eventually from the faith, I have searched the scriptures to try to find the answer to the callousness and hardness of people’s hearts. Additionally I have researched and studied pastors and preachers from past generations to see if there is something missing from church doctrine today which is accelerating this decline into apostasy.

And what I have found is that the need of the current church culture today is highlighted in this message we are looking at by Peter in Acts 3. It is revealed in studying the messages of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ Himself. And research shows that it is the hallmark of every notable Bible preacher of history, as well as the keynote of all true revivals in history. That is, in order to make their salvation sure, there is a fundamental need to bring people face to face with a Holy God, convicted of the vileness of their sin, and condemned by the judgment that The Righteous Judge will justly bring upon all unrighteousness. They need to understand that God hates sin, and that the wrath of God will be poured out on all sin. Then based on that reality, to preach repentance of their sins that they might be saved.

Unfortunately, that is rarely the message of the church today. The problem with modern Christianity is that there is an effort on the part of the church to make the gospel appealing by removing things from the message which people might find offensive, like God’s law, His righteousness and the judgment to come. And in it’s place another message is substituted; that God loves you, and if you choose Christianity it will produce joy, happiness, peace, contentment, and blessing in your life. The only thing you have to do to receive those things, according to the new gospel message, is believe in God. If you believe, then you receive grace – the gift of God which produces joy, happiness, peace, contentment and blessings. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

The problem is that is not the gospel. That’s not the gospel message that Peter preached in either his first message in chapter 2, nor his second message in chapter 3. But the result of Peter’s first message was that 3000 people were saved. That’s the Holy Spirit’s count, by the way. Those are real conversions. Then at the conclusion of Peter’s message in chapter 3 there is an additional 5000 people that are saved. Again by the Holy Spirit’s count 5000 real conversions, not just professions of faith that seem to fade away after a year or so.

So what is the difference between Peter’s messages in Acts 2&3 and the message being preached in many churches today? The difference is Peter preached guilt before he preached grace. Peter preached that the judgment of God was coming. He impressed upon them their guilt for crucifying the Son of God. He impressed upon them the vileness of their sin, their hopeless condition, and the judgment that they rightly deserved.   Peter preached virtually the same message twice in chap. 2 and 3.

And then Peter preached repentance. Once their sinful condition was well established, once they knew that such sinfulness rightly demanded the punishment of death, then he preached the need for repentance. And after they had repented they received grace which brought about transformed lives. In Acts 2:38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And in the next sermon, in Acts 3:19 Peter says, “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”

So I suggest to you that true repentance is the ingredient that is missing in many of today’s professions of faith. Far too often today the supplicant is attracted to the message of “life enhancement” on the basis of merely believing in God, and when they afterwards in due time experience some of the hardships and trials that Jesus said is part of this life and to be expected in this life, then they fall away because their reality does not match what they were led to expect.

But although repentance is necessary for salvation, true repentance is contingent on a couple of essential things. For one, true repentance is contingent upon a true theology of God. These people that were saved under the preaching of Peter had more than just a superficial belief in God. We use the word “believers” today to describe converts and yet unfortunately, many don’t really believe in the God of the Bible. They believe in a god of their own imaginations. They believe in a god that is only slightly bigger than they are. And so consequently they have a faulty theology.

By the way, speaking of believing in God. I understand that this Wednesday is National Atheist’s Day. Wednesday is April 1^st, April Fools Day. Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” So be sure to wish all your atheist’s friends happy April Fool’s Day this Wednesday.

But as we examine our text, we see that these men that heard Peter speak were devout men and women. In other words, they believed in the true God. They worshipped the God of the Bible. And yet they were unsaved. Everyone (with the exception of the aforementioned fools) believes in God to some extent or another. The Bible says that even the devils believe in God and tremble. So merely believing in God doesn’t save you. Worship does not save you. The Muslim’s believe in God, yet they are not saved. Because saving faith in God means that we believe that Jesus is the very representation of God in human flesh. Hebrews. 1:3 says, “[Jesus] is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

John 1 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made which was made.” Jesus Himself told Philip in John 14, “that if you have seen Me you have seen the Father.” And Col. 1:15 says “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

The fact of who is Jesus is the cornerstone of salvation. The Jews Peter was preaching to believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as Peter proclaimed in 3:13. This crowd even believed in the historical Jesus. They knew He had lived in Palestine until His crucifixion just a couple of months earlier. They had no doubt He was a real human being. Yet they were not saved because they failed to recognize that He was the Son of God. They did not recognize Him as the Messiah, and so they crucified the very God of Heaven.

Listen, it is critical to your salvation that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, otherwise you cannot be saved. You cannot merely believe in a historical Jesus. You cannot simply believe in some sort of greater force in the universe. You must believe that Jesus was a man who lived 2000 years ago, who was born of the Spirit of God, who was fully God and fully man in one being.

Look at the degree to which Peter describes Jesus in order to teach this essential principle. First of all Peter calls Him the Servant in vs. 13. That is a direct reference to Isaiah 53, the famous prophetic chapter concerning the Messiah that would have been well known to any God fearing Jew. It is the quintessential teaching of the Messiah that foretells His suffering and atonement for the sake of the world. Then in vs. 14 he calls Jesus the Holy and Righteous One. They knew only God was holy. And Jesus Himself said that no one is good except God alone. So therefore, Jesus is God. And then in vs. 15 Peter calls Him the Prince of Life. It could also be translated the Author of life. John 1: 3-4 again, “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” So Peter essentially calls Jesus the Creator. Then in vs. 16 Peter states His name as Jesus, which means Jehovah is salvation. Peter says it is by faith in that name that this man was healed and is in perfect health.

So the first contingency is the proper theology that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. The second contingency is a proper recognition of man’s sinfulness. You cannot have true repentance unless you first have a proper understanding of your standing in the eyes of God as a sinner. This is born out by the Scriptures starting in Genesis. In response to Adam and Eve’s sin, God said they would surely die, and He cast them out of the Garden of Eden, and furthermore, He removed them from His presence. God cannot tolerate sin. He cannot have fellowship with sin. God’s judgment against sin was revealed again in the flood when He destroyed all flesh, men and animals except those on the ark, by a world wide flood. He revealed His judgment against sin again in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their extreme sinfulness by raining down fire and brimstone from heaven, destroying every living thing in those cities. All of these examples illustrate God’s wrath against sin.

Then in Exodus God gave the Law to establish His standard of righteousness, and detail what constitutes sin and it’s punishment. In Rom. 3:19 Paul says, “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.” In other words, under the Law every one is guilty, and the penalty for that sin is death. Gal. 3:24 says, “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” The Law teaches us that we are sinners, guilty before God, without hope. We cannot keep it, we cannot achieve righteousness through it because we fail to keep it all perfectly.

“But wait a minute Roy! We are not under the Old Covenant! We’re under grace.” I would just ask you a question, are we under Christ? Is not the gospel the gospel of Christ? I would suggest that the gospel of Christ is founded upon the Law of Moses, even as Peter says that Moses is a type of Christ in vs. 22. “Moses said, ‘THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you. And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.”

To illustrate that principle, look if you will to Matthew 5. Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees (who prided themselves on keeping the law) you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Then in vs. 21 Jesus begins to explain the Law. But He doesn’t explain it away, He expands it. He starts with “you shall not murder.” And Jesus says in vs. 22 “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” So Jesus is saying that for just calling someone a fool you deserve to be thrown into hell.

Then Jesus expounds the law regarding the sin of adultery. In vs. 28 he says, “but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Therefore Jesus said in vs. 29, ““If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” So Jesus says, just looking at a woman in lust is deserving of hell fire.

Then Jesus deals with the law concerning divorce. And He says in vs. 32, “that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of chastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Now Jesus is really upsetting everyone; He says that divorce is equal to adultery, which is worthy of hell. Jesus pretty much sentences 99.9% of the church to hell and He has only covered 3 laws. There are still 610 more to go.

Then Jesus talks about swearing falsely and making false statements. And He says in vs. 37, “let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil.” By extension, that which is evil deserves hell. And in vs. 38 Jesus explains the law of an eye for an eye, so He says in vs. 39, “But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.”

Then starting in vs. 43 Jesus wraps up His discourse on our obligation to the Law: “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Turns out Jesus’ interpretation of the Law condemns us even more than the Law of Moses does.

Listen, the purpose of the Law is to show us God’s standard of righteousness, and our level of sinfulness. That there is a great chasm between the righteousness of God and us that no one can leap over. That we are hopeless before the law, condemned by our sin, and under the penalty of death. That as Romans 3:10 says, “there is none righteous, no not one.” That every mouth may be stopped. That it would render us all without a defense. That we might see our helpless, hopeless situation without the grace of Christ. That we might know that we need a Savior, and be willing to give everything to gain Christ.

The great evangelist D. L. Moody said, “Ask Paul why [the Law] was given. Here is his answer, ‘That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God’ The Law stops every man’s mouth. I can always tell a man who is near the kingdom of God; his mouth is stopped. This, then, is why God gives us the Law—to show us ourselves in our true colors.”

The Prince of Preachers Charles Spurgeon said, “Lower the Law and you dim the light by which man perceives his guilt; this is a very serious loss to the sinner rather than a gain; for it lessens the likelihood of his conviction and conversion. I say you have deprived the gospel of its ablest auxiliary [its most powerful weapon] when you have set aside the Law. You have taken away from it the schoolmaster that is to bring men to Christ . . . They will never accept grace till they tremble before a just and holy Law. Therefore the Law serves a most necessary purpose, and it must not be removed from its place.”

And the late theologian Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones is quoted as saying; “A gospel which merely says, ‘Come to Jesus,’ and offers Him as a friend, and offers a marvelous new life, without convincing of sin, is not New Testament evangelism. (The essence of evangelism is to start by preaching the Law; and it is because the Law has not been preached that we have had so much superficial evangelism.) True evangelism… must always start by preaching the law.” He goes on to say, “The trouble with people who are not seeking for a Savior, and for salvation, is that they do not understand the nature of sin. It is the peculiar function of the Law to bring such an understanding to a man’s mind and conscience. That is why great evangelical preachers 300 years ago in the time of the puritans, and 200 years ago in the time of Whitefield and others, always engaged in what they called a preliminary law work.”

Peter presented the law to those Jews that day. They were guilty of failing to honor the Lord their God. They had crucified the Lord of Creation. They were guilty of murder. They were guilty of false witness. So Peter’s sermon condemns them even as the Holy Spirit was convicting them of their sin. And yet in the grace of God Peter offers to them the gospel. It is called the gospel because it is good news. Just as it is good news to a condemned man waiting for the morning gas chamber to hear the officer of the prison say that the Governor has commuted his sentence. He has been pardoned. He has been freed not only from the condemnation of death but given a new life. That is the gospel. We that are vile sinners, without hope, lost, rightly condemned to hell have been offered pardon, our penalty paid by the death of Jesus Christ.

What is Peter’s remedy that he offers these poor hopeless sinners that crucified the King of Kings? Vs.19-21 “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.”

What does it mean to repent? Well, it doesn’t just mean you are sorry for the mess you find yourself in. It doesn’t just mean that you are sorry that you got caught. It means looking at the perfect law of God and mourning over your sinful condition. It means understanding that you are without hope, and without excuse. It is seeing yourself in the light of God’s righteousness and holiness and knowing that you are a sinner and only by the grace of God are you given a chance to repent. It means to forsake your sins, to turn from your sins, to mourn over your sin, and to turn instead to righteousness.

Oh, folks, the reason that men and women fall away from the gospel with such ease and peace of mind today is that they have no idea of the Biblical standard of God’s righteousness. They have no idea of how heinous their sin is in the sight of God. One of the greatest revivals that this country has ever seen was in the early 1700’s, in a time called the Great Awakening. Jonathan Edwards was a preacher of a small church in Massachusetts who was one of the principle participants in this revival along with George Whitfield. And perhaps Edward’s best known sermon was one that he titled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Just the title alone is enough to send the modern church congregation running for the doors with their hands covering their ears. They want to hear nothing of an angry God. To hear nothing of the fear of the Lord. To hear nothing of the judgment to come. And yet this is the message, not unlike that of Peter’s message, which God used to bring about a great awakening, a great number of true conversions.

I’m afraid one of the lost arts of modern society is the ability of critical listening. To listen to the sermons of old is a test of one’s ability to listen attentively and critically, which seems to be lost to the church as well in our modern era of sound byte sermons. But nevertheless, I would like to read a small portion of Edward’s sermon so that you can get a glimpse of what type of preaching against sin prompted true repentance and spawned one of the greatest revivals in this country. He read his sermons also by the way. If you think that you have trouble with my sermons, then perhaps hearing some of his will make me seem so much more kindly and considerate. We’ll pick up somewhere in the middle on his second point.

2.[All sinners] deserve to be cast into Hell; so that divine Justice never stands in the Way, it makes no Objection against God’s using his Power at any Moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, Justice calls aloud for an infinite Punishment of their Sins. Divine Justice says of the Tree that brings forth such Grapes of Sodom, Cut it down, why cumbreth it the Ground, Luke. 13. 7. The Sword of divine Justice is every Moment brandished over their Heads, and ’tis nothing but the Hand of arbitrary Mercy, and God’s meer Will, that holds it back.

3.They are already under a Sentence of Condemnation to Hell. They don’t only justly deserve to be cast down thither; but the Sentence of the Law of God, that eternal and immutable Rule of Righteousness that God has fixed between him and Mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to Hell. John. 3. 18. He that believeth not is condemned already. So that every unconverted Man properly belongs to Hell; that is his Place; from thence he is. John. 8. 23. Ye are from beneath. And thither he is bound; ’tis the Place that Justice, and God’s Word, and the Sentence of his unchangeable Law assigns to him.

4.They are now the Objects of that very same Anger & Wrath of God that is expressed in the Torments of Hell: and the Reason why they don’t go down to Hell at each Moment, is not because God, in whose Power they are, is not then very angry with them; as angry as he is with many of those miserable Creatures that he is now tormenting in Hell, and do there feel and bear the fierceness of his Wrath. Yea God is a great deal more angry with great Numbers that are now on Earth, yea doubtless with many that are now in this Congregation, that it may be are at Ease and Quiet, than he is with many of those that are now in the Flames of Hell.

So that it is not because God is unmindful of their Wickedness, and don’t resent it, that he don’t let loose his Hand and cut them off. God is not altogether such an one as themselves, tho’ they may imagine him to be so. The Wrath of God burns against them, their Damnation don’t slumber, the Pit is prepared, the Fire is made ready, the Furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the Flames do now rage and glow. The glittering Sword is whet, and held over them, and the Pit hath opened her Mouth under them.

5.The Devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his own, at what Moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their Souls in his Possession, and under his Dominion. The Scripture represents them as his Goods, Luke. 11. 21. The Devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their right Hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry Lions that see their Prey, and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back; if God should withdraw his Hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one Moment fly upon their poor Souls. The old Serpent is gaping for them; Hell opens his Mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be hastily swallowed up and lost.

6. There are in the Souls of wicked Men those hellish Principles reigning, that would presently kindle and flame out into Hell Fire, if it were not for God’s Restraints.” (Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God)

Like the congregation of Edward’s church, these men and women that heard Peter preach his message in chapter 3 knew that they deserved the punishment of Hell. They were well familiar with the condemnation and penalty of the Law. The now saw the true nature of their predicament, and the punishment that was due them. And so they eagerly took the offer of grace that was procured through Jesus blood, that they might be saved from the wrath to come.

Well, you might say, that sounds very dramatic Roy. But you don’t really scare me, for I believe we are under grace and not the law, and I believe God loves me unconditionally, and if God loves me, He could never send me to hell. And for that person I would point out Hebrews 10:26-31 which says “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY.” And again, “THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

I will just close this morning by urging you to examine yourselves in the light of today’s message and see if you are of the faith. As Paul said in 2Cor. 13:5 “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you–unless indeed you fail the test?” Are you merely believing in a God of your own design? Have you understood the true nature of your condemnation as a sinner before a Holy and Just God? Have you ever repented of the sins that you have committed? Do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt where you will be at the moment you pass from this life? Today is the day of salvation. God is graciously extending time for you to repent. 2Pet. 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”

I will close with one last statement from Edward’s sermon. “And let every one that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the Pit of Hell, whether they be old Men and Women, or middle Aged, or young People, or little Children, now hearken to the loud Calls of God’s Word and Providence. This acceptable Year of the Lord, that is a Day of such great Favor to some, will doubtless be a Day of as remarkable Vengeance to others….Therefore let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the Wrath to come.” (Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God)

“Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling, naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace, foul I to the fountain fly, wash me, Savior, or I die.” (Rock of Ages)

Someone once said that every miracle in the New Testament is a parable, designed to illustrate physically what God can do spiritually. Today we are looking at such a miracle in this passage in Acts. It certainly wasn’t the only miracle that was done in those days. And yet Luke singles out this particular miracle to illustrate an important spiritual principle.

We know that it wasn’t the only miracle because in the previous chapter, Acts 2:43 it says that “many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.” And looking ahead, we see in chapter 5 vs. 12 it says again that “At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people;” to the extent, according to vs. 15, “that they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and pallets, so that when Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on any one of them.”

So many miracles were being done at that time by the apostles. The question is why is this one highlighted and described by Luke and not the others. And we will attempt to answer that question today. But as I have said before, to use a fishing analogy, it is a lot easier to put a fresh hook on a new line than to unsnarl an old one. And unfortunately, the subject of healing and miracles have become so snarled in bad doctrine that we need to spend some time unraveling this whole subject of healings and miracles before we can make the correct spiritual application of it from this passage. We need to first understand the nature of the miracles that were occurring at the hands of the apostles. How are we to understand these miracles? Are they something that we should be expecting to see today? Do we also have the power to perform miracles? Certainly there are a number of people around, especially on television, that are claiming to be performing miracles.

Well, first of all, let’s consider the purpose of miracles. As I said at the beginning, when miracles are presented in scripture, they usually are given to illustrate a spiritual principle. That is the extended benefit of historic miracles to us today. But what was the immediate benefit of the miracles that happened then, besides the obvious alleviation of suffering? The answer is that miracles, the ability to do signs and wonders, was the means by which God authenticated the message of the apostles. Lots of people over the ages have professed to be speaking from God. But the apostles were specifically commissioned to speak the words of Christ, to declare His gospel to the world. And to do that, Jesus gave them the power to perform miracles to confirm that that were speaking from God.

Jesus commissioned the apostles after His resurrection in Mark 16:15 “And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

Now this passage has caused a lot of people to think that signs and wonders are the prerogative of every believer. But what needs to be understood is that this statement is a highly condensed summary of Jesus’ last message given specifically to the eleven apostles. Notice that there is a change from the singular pronoun in “he who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved,” to the plural pronoun in “these signs will accompany those who have believed; (Jesus is now speaking of the apostles) in my name they will cast out demons, etc. The plural pronoun sets this statement apart from the preceding one concerning all believers. In the first statement Christ is declaring a principle of salvation. In the second statement He is declaring the authority given to the apostles.

So then a few verses later in Mark 16:20 we see that commission by Christ fulfilled: “And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed.” That is the key to understanding the purpose that the apostles did these signs, to “confirm the word by the signs that followed.” They were given the power of signs to authenticate their message as being from God.

Unfortunately, as I have stated for the last couple of weeks, there is so much misunderstanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit today, and a lot of it originates in these first few chapters of Acts. Because Jesus said “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you…” And immediately after that we see the apostles speaking in other languages and performing miracles. And there are a lot of preachers and teachers out there that want to make the assumption that the power that Jesus is speaking of is the power to speak in tongues and heal.

That’s not it at all. That is not the power that the Holy Spirit is promised to give to all believers. The reason that the apostles did these signs was to authenticate that their message was from God. But the real purpose of the Holy Spirit was to give them the words to speak, the word of God, and then as it says in Mark 16:20 to confirm that word by the signs which followed.

This is so important to understand, especially in our day. Because false teachers and false prophets are going around today and especially on television speaking lies and using false signs to confirm their word. See the devil knows how to authenticate his false prophets as well. We see something similar when Moses went to Pharaoh. Moses did signs to confirm that his word was the word of the Lord. And what did the Pharaoh’s magicians do? They did similar signs as well. Satan is using many of these so called charismatic signs and wonders that we hear about today to confirm the word of his false prophets. He uses false signs and wonders to get people to accept a false teaching. So the church’s focus always needs to be on the word of God. That is why we have written down for us a more sure word, that today we can use to validate everything and examine everything by the word of the Lord. Today we don’t follow signs and wonders, but the word of God.

But nonetheless, the fact that it is counterfeited by the devil does not invalidate the legitimate use of signs by God to confirm His word. However we need to recognize that God gave this ability for a limited time to a limited number of persons. Namely, the apostles and one or two disciples that were closely associated with them. The New Testament doesn’t mention miracles by anyone other than an apostle or one or two people closely associated with them, namely Philip and Stephen who both were deacons appointed by the apostles in the church in Jerusalem. No one else is identified as doing miracles in the church. It was an apostolic gift, given to authenticate their message as being from God.

These are then what Paul calls “the signs of an apostle”. In 2Corinthians 12:12 he refers to himself as having done the “signs of a true apostle” which, he says, are “signs and wonders and mighty works…” This is confirmed by Hebrews 2:3 , where the writer says that the Lord first preached the gospel, “and it was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.”

Now I say all of that in order to establish the context for the miracle that we are looking at today. To unravel the snarled fishing line, if you will. So that we will realize that the apostles weren’t just going around healing everyone that they saw sick or infirmed. Jesus, by the way, did not heal everyone that was sick either. There were many dead people in the cemetery on the day that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, but He only raised Lazarus. And there were so many sick people gathered around the Pool of Bethesda that the sick man could not get into the pool before someone else, and yet Jesus healed only him. In fact, there is a very good likelihood that Jesus had passed by this very lame man outside of the Beautiful Gate mentioned here in Acts 3 many times in the course of His ministry at the temple, and yet He had not healed him. This man was healed by Peter to validate his message as having been from God and afterwards when he preached his message to the crowd gathered around, it says 5000 people were saved.

Now there are a number of things that are noteworthy in the telling of this story that we should consider. First of all, vs. 1 says that Peter and John were going to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer. Prayers were said in the temple at 9 in the morning, at noon, and at 3pm, or the 9^th hour. Whether or not the disciples were going there to pray at that time is a matter of debate. Some think that there was a slow transition on the part of the Christians out of Judaism. But I happen to think that they went there because they knew that a lot of people would be gathered there at that time, and they wanted to preach the gospel to them. I think if they learned any thing from Jesus, it was to find little merit in the traditions of Judaism. But as Jesus practiced, the apostles would use synagogues and the temple to preach the gospel. And once the gospel is carried to the Gentiles, there is still going to be this pattern of going to the Jewish synagogue to preach and present the gospel, even in Gentile territories. And also, according to chapter 2, there was a great number of their church that were staying in the temple in Solomon’s portico. They didn’t have a home to go to. They had been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feasts, and when they were saved on the day of Pentecost they stayed there in the temple daily receiving the apostle’s teaching. So Peter and John had multiple reasons to go there at that time.

So as Peter and John are going to the temple, they pass through the gate called Beautiful. This gate was so called because it was 75 feet tall and made of pure bronze and overlaid with plates of gold. It would have gleamed in the sunlight. And when the crowds would come to pray at the temple they would pass through this gate which they probably preferred above others because it seemed to promise prosperity. So it was an opportune place to be if you were a beggar. The Jews were taught that the way to achieve righteousness was to give alms to the poor or to the temple. And so as these people are streaming in, this lame man positions himself there at the gate to take advantage of the possibly stricken consciences of the people who are coming in for prayers and the evening sacrifices.

When Peter and John pass by, the man began to ask them to give him alms. Alms are an offering, a gift. And Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze on him and said, “Look at us!” That reminds me of how my mother used to speak to me when she was trying to tell me something important. She would say, “Look at me while I’m talking to you!” She knew that if I wasn’t looking at her, I probably wasn’t really listening to her. I may have heard her, but I wasn’t paying attention.

I think people do that in church a lot of the time. I know, I used to be really good at it. I’ve probably attended thousands of church services in my time, most of them as a preacher’s kid growing up in the church. So especially when I was a kid, I was adept at flipping some sort of mental switch that tuned out the preacher while I went into some kind of dream mode. The only time I would come back to reality was when the preacher would start to tell a joke or a story. Then I would listen. Maybe some of you have that ability as well. I think it’s pretty common, actually. I think it is important to listen attentively. It’s something that takes some discipline, perhaps, but it is important to pay attention.

So Peter gets the man’s attention. He thinks that Peter wants to give him some money. But Peter says, “I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!” This is really the key to understanding the point of this miracle. If we take this to be illustrative, like a parable, then we can see a key principle here in this miracle. And that principle that Luke is presenting here is that the power of the Holy Spirit that was promised to the church is the power to walk in the Spirit and not according to the flesh. That is what this miracle is teaching. The power of the Holy Spirit was not given to enable everyone to be able to speak in a unknown tongue. It was not given so that we can all have perfect health and be healed of every disease. It was not given so that we might be able to move mountains or walk on water or call fire down from heaven. The power of the Holy Spirit is given that we might be able to be the children of God, and then act like children of God. He indwells us, giving us the power to live the life of Christ through these carnal bodies. To be able to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh. That is what this miracle is illustrating. That is why Luke picks this miracle above all others that are done around this same time. That is why Luke places this event immediately after the filling of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost; to illustrate the purpose of the Holy Spirit.

Now let’s look more in detail so that we might show how this miracle illustrates that purpose. First of all, Luke says the man is lame from his mother’s womb. Lameness could have been caused by a lot of things, but it basically means the guy couldn’t walk due to some sort of illness. His legs might have been crippled or deformed. And that is a perfect picture of our plight before salvation. God set forth His laws, His requirements, His standards of righteousness, and yet no one is able to keep them. It is like telling a lame man that he has to walk. He may know that he needs to walk, but he is unable to do so. That is the case with the law. We know that the this is the standard for righteousness, but we cannot do it, anymore than a lame man can walk. In our natural state we cannot please God because we cannot keep His commandments. Rom. 3:10-12 says “as it is written, ‘THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.’”

This is the plight of every person born on the earth. And furthermore, we were born that way. We’ve been this way from our mother’s womb. Romans 5:12 says that we received the sin nature from our father, who received it from his father, and so forth all the way back to Adam. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So this poor lame man, who was lame from his mother’s womb is a picture of sinful mankind.

And there is a second picture that is illustrated in this miracle. This lame man has positioned himself outside the temple. He sits by the Beautiful Gate, the gate that seems to promise financial blessing. And so he sits there his whole life, seeking silver and gold, seeking the financial benefit that he thinks that the temple promises. How many people today are attracted to the external blessings of the church and yet in reality are outside of the kingdom of God? How many people look to some form of the prosperity gospel as an inducement to claim Christianity? I used to think that way. I once was a very successful antiques dealer. And I remember telling people that my success was due to my Christianity. I thought that my health and my beautiful family, my financial success, my Mercedes, and my nice house were testimony to the blessing of God upon my life. I measured my relationship with God based on how “blessed” I was. I thought that I could be a witness to others, that I could tell them they too could have a life like mine if they would just come to Christ. You can only imagine how my faith was shattered when I one day I lost all those material things. Then I had to decide if I would still serve a Lord who allowed me to lose all that I had thought were His blessings.

You have heard the song, “Looking for love in all the wrong places…” Well, this man is looking for the wrong things in the right place. He is looking for material rewards. Really, he is looking for carnal things in a spiritual place. The temple is an illustration of the kingdom of God which is the church. As the church, we are the temple of Christ, the physical manifestation of the invisible Christ. The church is the kingdom of God, the spiritual reign of Christ on the earth. And so if it is spiritual, it means things not seen. No one can see a spirit. The spiritual reign of Christ in our hearts is what it means to be in the kingdom of God. That’s what it means to be the temple of God. The body of Christ. It means that Christ is using my body to live out spiritually the purpose and will of Christ.

Yet today many Christians are being taught that Christianity means that you can live your best life now. They think Christianity means that God is going to love you whatever you do – however you want to live, you can live. We are taught that because God loves you, He wants to fulfill your dreams and ambitions. He wants to give you all that you desire, all the desires of your heart. And so we find ourselves like this lame man, seeking the benefits of the flesh, in the place of the spiritual. Seeking the carnal instead of the spiritual.

But Peter and John get the man’s attention and then they say, “Silver and gold have I none, but what I do have I give to you.” Peter and John say that they don’t have silver or gold. I guess they wouldn’t make good role models for Joel Olsteen or Joyce Meyers, would they? The apostles aren’t going to try to win the world with a soup kitchen mentality. Listen, I don’t mean to say that we are to neglect doing good and sharing with those that are in need. That is a godly principle that we see illustrated by the early church in the last chapter as they sold houses and possessions in order to feed those that were in need in the church. But the point that needs to be emphasized is the church is not tasked with a social gospel, but with the gospel of salvation. The purpose of the miracle was to authenticate the message, the preaching of the gospel, so that 5000 people are saved. Far too often today the church finds that the social gospel is culturally acceptable. So the church finds it easier to practice a social gospel than it does to preach a gospel that requires repentance from your sins. But that is not the purpose of the church.

So Peter grabs this man’s hand and pulls him up, saying, “In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!” Now that is an illustration of salvation. In the name of Jesus Christ we that were lame can now walk. In the name of Jesus Christ, we that were sinners have now been made righteous. In the name of Jesus Christ, we that were cut off have now been drawn close. In the name of Jesus Christ, we that were helpless have now received help. In the name of Jesus Christ, we that were born in our sins, have now been born again. In the name of Jesus Christ, we that were hopeless have now received hope.

What does it mean, “in the name of Jesus Christ?” Is the name of Jesus some sort of incantation that we can say that magically produces miracles on command? Is it some sort of mystical ending to our prayers which guarantees that God will grant us our wishes? What does it mean? Well, imagine the early explorers of a country traveling to a foreign land, and when they come ashore they might say something like, “We have come in the name of King George.” It means that they are acting on the authority of their king. In the same way the apostles were the ambassadors, the representatives of King Jesus. They spoke with the delegated authority of His commission. And they have authority because of the power of the King’s position. They had power in the name of Jesus because of who Jesus is. He is the Creator, according to Hebrews 1. He is the Mighty God, according to Isaiah 9. He is the Savior of the World, according to 1 John 4. He is the Word which was in the beginning with God and was God, according to John 1. It was this very God that became flesh and dwelt among us, that He might offer Himself as a substitute for sinners, that we might be saved from death and transferred into the kingdom of light.

Listen, so often we think of salvation as being saved from something; saved from death, saved from condemnation, saved from a bad situation. And to some extent that is true. But did you ever think that you are also saved for something? Eph. 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” So we are saved for good works, that we should walk in them.

Now that is exactly what this miracle illustrates. Peter says, in the name or in other words, by the power of Christ, walk! Walk in newness of life. Walk in faith. Walk in the Spirit. I cannot count how many times it says in the Bible that we are commanded to walk in the ways of God. That is what the law required, and what we could not do. Over and over again in the Old Testament scriptures it says to keep His commandments and walk in His ways. That was the intent of the law, and yet we were lame from our mother’s womb and could not do it.

But something wonderful happens in the New Testament. In the power of the name of Jesus Christ, who bore our sins on the cross, we received by faith and repentance the transference of His righteousness, so that we might walk in righteousness by the indwelling power of the Spirit. In Ezekiel God declares that He will make a new covenant in the last days. And in that new covenant according to Ezekiel 36: 25 He says, “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

Do you hear that folks? “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” That is the miracle of salvation and the power of the Holy Spirit. God takes this sinful body, and these weak, lame legs that cannot walk, and puts new life in them, puts His Spirit in me, that I might be able to walk in His statues and keep His ordinances. This is why God sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said you will receive power. The power to walk in His statues by faith in Jesus Christ.

The writer of the Hebrews quotes a similar statement from Jeremiah, in Heb 10:14-17 “For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying, “THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,” He then says, “AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE.” What that passage is saying is that salvation and sanctification go hand in hand. Jesus has perfected those who are being sanctified and He does so in this new covenant through the testimony of the Holy Spirit writing His laws upon our hearts and upon our minds, so that our desire is to walk in His ways.

Oh, ladies and gentlemen. This is such an important message for the carnal church today that claims salvation and yet scorns righteous living. That cannot be. We are saved and we receive the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit that we might walk in the same way Christ walked. Romans 6:4 says that we are to walk in newness of life. Romans 8:4 says that we are not to walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 1 Cor. 7:17 says we are to walk in our calling in the church. 2 Cor. 5:7 says we are to walk by faith and not by sight. Gal 5:16 says, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. Gal 5:25 says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” In Eph. 4:1 Paul begs us to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. Eph. 5:8 says walk as children of the light. Col. 1:10 says, walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; Col. 2:6 says, “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 1Jo 2:6 says the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.” I could go on and on. But I hope you understand what the Spirit is saying through this miracle. We were given the power through the Holy Spirit to walk as Jesus walked, holy and righteous and pleasing and glorifying God in all that we do. We have the power indwelling us, if we have been saved, to do all that God has designed us to do, if we will just be obedient to His leading.

So folks, in closing, let me say that is how God has designed the church to be His witnesses to the world. By the power of our walk. When the crowds had gathered around Peter and John because they saw this formerly lame man leaping and jumping for joy on his new legs, they then received the word of the apostles and 5000 of them were saved in one day. The success of our church is not going to be the result of some program or some outreach, or even by our soul winning efforts, but it will be the result of people witnessing the power of God to change sinful men to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. When your coworkers, when your families and neighbors witness the transformation in your life, when they witness your new walk in righteousness, then they will be compelled to follow your walk and accept your Christ. That’s what it means to make disciples. Let us walk out of here today in the power of the Holy Spirit, walking in the ways of God as a testimony to the world. We then can fulfill Christ’s commission to the church, to make disciples. We can tell people, walk like I walk, because I walk like Christ walked. That’s what it means to make disciples. To walk like we walk, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is much misinformation in Christian circles today as to the nature and purpose of the church. Many books and articles have been written on the subject of church growth. Many different strategies have been proposed for the building up of the church. And as a result I think that in the last generation the church has changed more than at any other time in history. However, I’m afraid that it has not always been for the better. I’m sure that many of the great ecclesiastical leaders of history would not approve or even recognize what is happening in many churches today. In fact, I think that when we lose sight of God’s blueprint for the church and try to figure out according to our own wisdom how we might improve upon His plan, we often do great harm to the church and to the name of Christ.

Our passage today sets forth the first example of the church that we find in the New Testament. We have spent the last couple of weeks or so describing how the Holy Spirit coronated this church with a great display of His power in order to validate and authenticate it as being from God. Peter said in his message that it was obviously a mighty work of the Holy Spirit which had come from God to establish His spiritual kingdom on earth in the last days. And so as this church is set forth in scripture as the premiere illustration of God’s church on earth, it would behoove us to faithfully follow it’s pattern in our practice as well. Because I believe that this scripture definitely reveals that this is God’s church. And since God is the designer, then we should seek to follow the pattern of His design as we see it laid out for us here in this passage.

Now there are a five fundamental marks of a true church as set forth in this passage that I would like to point out for our instruction here today. It is not a comprehensive list, perhaps, but it is an essential list. There are things that can be added, but we cannot take any of these away and still have a faithful and true church according to the pattern set before us.

Let’s consider then these five fundamental characteristics of the church. Number one is almost too obvious to mention, but unfortunately it’s importance is often overlooked. It is essential that the church is saved. I think that principle’s importance is reflected in the fact that under divine inspiration Luke bookends the passage with a reference to the fact that the church was saved. The first reference is in vs. 40 “And with many other words [Peter] solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls.” And then at the close of the passage is the other bookend: vs. 47, “And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

The church is the congregation of the saved. “Ekklesia” is the Greek word from which the word church is translated, and it means the called out ones. Called out to an assembly, a congregation. And I think it’s important to understand that church membership is only possible when the Lord adds them to the church that are saved. (vs.47) It isn’t something conferred by vote, or applied to, or that baptism procures. It is something you are born into, and you must be born again by the Holy Spirit. The word saved indicates that you are delivered from something. We are saved from wrath, from the judgment to come against sin, and from the wages of sin which is death. That’s what it means to be saved. To be changed from death to life, from darkness to light, from sons of the devil to sons of God. It is a supernatural conversion that is accomplished by repentance from your sins and faith in the work of Jesus Christ, resulting in new life and indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

So the church is made up of called out, saved, converted men and women. That is fundamental to understanding then the purpose of the church, especially today when we are witnessing a church movement that is deliberately trying to appeal to what they call the “unchurched.” Basically what that means is that they are trying to redesign church to accommodate the unsaved. But that is not what the church is designed by God to be. The church is designed as the body of Christ. And as Paul said what communion can light have with darkness? When we understand that the church is the calling out to assembly of those that are saved, and that Christ has placed them into His body, then it should change our perception of what the church is supposed to be. It doesn’t need, nor should it desire to become relevant or acceptable or attractive to the world. It needs to be attractive to Christ. It needs to be acceptable to God, holy and blameless as the virgin bride of Christ.

So that’s of first priority in the church; it is the body of the redeemed. Secondly, the church’s next essential characteristic is that they are devoting themselves to the word. Vs. 42, “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching…” Some versions may say the apostle’s doctrine. They both mean the same thing. What is the apostle’s doctrine? It is simply the gospel of Jesus Christ. Peter’s message is a great example of it. He starts with scripture and explains the gospel of salvation based on the Old Testament text in Joel. Then he expounds upon that doctrine with other supportive biblical texts. It’s expositional teaching. It’s exhortation. It’s admonition. Paul broke it down for us in 2Tim. 4:2 “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.”

The apostle’s doctrine is simply this; the congregation of the saved is strengthened, exhorted, equipped, taught and led by the teaching and preaching of the word of God through the ministers of God. Nothing less will do. John Calvin said, “Those who think that the authority of the doctrine is impaired by the insignificance of the men who are called to teach, betray their ingratitude; for among the many noble endowments with which God has adorned the human race, one of the most remarkable is, that he deigns to consecrate the mouths and tongues of men to his service, making his own voice to be heard in them.”

In the great commission that was given to the apostles, the Lord told them to “go and make disciples of all nations, and teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” Sound doctrine is the heart of the life of the church. Not ritualistically observing the sacraments, not children’s programs, not music, not so called modern worship. If the church is not teaching the doctrines of the word, then they are failing in their primary responsibility. And a Christian should not stay in a church that doesn’t make that a priority. The church is not designed to be a Christian country club. But it’s designed to teach the truth and apply it to our lives so that we might be obedient to what Christ has commanded us to do.

Thirdly, the church is not only to be devoted to the apostle’s doctrine, but to fellowship. (vs.42) We are the Beach Fellowship. Sometimes I’ve had someone say, “why don’t you add the word church to your name?” Well, my answer is that would be somewhat redundant. Fellowship is church. Now to be accurate, they are two different words. But you cannot have one without another. The Greek word for fellowship is “koinōnia”, which means fellowship, communion, participation and intimacy. It is really a unique word as used in the New Testament. It sometimes is used to describe fellowship, other times it is used to describe sharing as in taking up an offering, other times it is used to talk about participating in the Lord’s Supper, that is why we refer to the Lord’s Supper as Communion.

Paul said that of first importance we are called into fellowship with the triune God. 1Cor. 1:9 “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” And 2Cor. 13:14 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” As the church, as the body of Christ, we have fellowship with Christ who is the Head of the church, with the Holy Spirit who is the life of the church, and with God who is the creator of the church.

And then fellowship is communion of the Lord’s Supper, which is a picture of the fellowship we have with one another in the body of Christ. Paul said in 1Cor. 10:16 “Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?” We become one with Christ and one with the body of Christ, each other, symbolized in the eating of the bread and drinking of the cup.

And last but not least, fellowship is participation in the unity of the apostle’s doctrine. 1John 1:6-7 “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

So fellowship then is not determined by finding a congregation that is similar to our economic standing. It is not finding a church where there are a lot of young people because we happen to be young, or finding a church with a lot of older people because we are older people. But church is the body of Christ which is made up of various members, different kinds of parts, but all of them unified by a common doctrine, and working together for a common purpose, to be the visible manifestation of Christ to the world individually and corporately.

The fourth characteristic of the true church is the breaking of bread. This is my wife’s favorite. If we were making up committees, this is the one she would want to be on. She loves baking. Her hobby is to bake something everyday. No wonder I have such a hard time keeping my weight down. My wife thinks that the meal that she cooks on Wednesday nights for our Bible study is a major part of our ministry. And in a way she is be right. It certainly seems like this was a characteristic of the first church.

Now most commentators are going to say that this breaking of bread refers to the taking of the Lord’s Supper. They say that there was a love feast that was like a communal meal, and then at the end of it there was an observance of the Lord’s Supper. Maybe they are right. I don’t know. I can’t seem to prove it one way or another by scripture. However, I do know that both Jude and Paul speak rebuke to those in the churches that were abusing the Lord’s Supper. But what I will argue is that there are familiar expressions that the apostles used in referencing the Lord’s Supper or the Lord’s Table, but this phrase “breaking of bread” is not one of them. It is used in scripture only once before, and that is the meal that Jesus took with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. So while I wouldn’t discount that it could include the Lord’s Supper, I do not think that is necessarily what it’s talking about. I think it is merely talking about good old fashioned hospitality. Sharing a meal together is a hallmark of hospitality.

Let me try to explain the context here for a moment. On the day of Pentecost, you had thousands of pilgrims that had come to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. And that day, 3000 of these men and women were saved. And so the first church comprised a large number of people who did not live in Jerusalem, but stayed there after they were saved and lived in the portico of the temple where they were having services. And so there was this unique situation that occurred there. There were a large number of people that were essentially homeless. How long they lived there we don’t know. But every indication is that for quite a while at least, they did not go back to their homes in foreign countries, but stayed to receive the apostle’s instruction and lived in fellowship with the rest of the church.

Now that should give us a better understanding of what was going on. Because vs.43-47 are not a continuation of the list of essential characteristics of the church, they are an explanation of the original five. Look at vs. 44, 45, “And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.” See what I mean? I’m not going to read into vs. 44 and 45 and say that the scripture says that the church needs to have a communist life style. That we all have to sell everything and give it to the church to parcel out. That is not what is going on. If that were the case, then vs.46 wouldn’t make sense, which says they were breaking bread from house to house. They wouldn’t have had any houses to break bread in if they all had sold their houses.

No, like I said, I think the verses 43-47a are an explanation of the 5 primary characteristics listed prior to these. For instance, vs. 43 says “Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.” This is obviously an explanation or addendum to the statement that they were devoting themselves to the apostle’s doctrine. There was a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, a sense of godly fear at the authority that the apostle’s spoke with. Peter’s message was one having authority. He had the authority of the power of the Holy Spirit. And that was accompanied with signs and wonders. The apostles were given the power of signs and wonders so as to authenticate their message as specifically appointed spokesmen from the Lord. Paul declares that fact in 2Cor. 12:12 “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.” Signs and wonders was the means by which God authenticated the apostles as speaking for Him, speaking His words. He gave them authority and power and the words to speak, which became the words that were written down for us, which make up the Holy Scriptures. It was specifically for that time and place as a sign gift to the apostles.

So in like manner, vs. 44 and 45 illustrate for us what was the nature of that fellowship which was so essential to the foundation of the church. The key word there is sharing. That is communion, fellowship. They shared what they had with one another. Those people that were living there, unwilling or unable to go home, were supplied in their needs by the surplus of those who had the means. They sold things that were considered surplus in order to give it to the church for the provision of the needs of the others. This was true sacrificial giving as Jesus described in Luke 3:11 by commanding “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.”

This church illustrated what Paul would later describe in 1 Cor. 12:24, “But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”

Then in vs. 46 we read they were “Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart.” Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple refers to the unity of doctrine that was being taught to them by the apostles. This is so important in the church, to have unity of doctrine. The Bible says, “how can two walk together unless they be agreed?” You may never have a church where there is absolute agreement over every interpretation of scripture, but there needs to be a unity of major doctrine, and most importantly a submission to the authority of the leaders as they speak the word of God.

Peter said in 2Pet. 1:20-21”But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” Now that verse has a lot of implications, but one is that there isn’t really any room for private interpretations of scripture. “Well, I think it means..” or “what does this mean to you?” It is important that we have men in the pulpit who are committed to preaching the truth of God’s word and nothing but the truth, and then we need to check the scriptures to see if those things are so, as the Bereans did to Paul’s teaching, but then they need to submit to the authority of faithful preaching. As I said a couple of weeks ago, the problem in a lot of churches is that the congregation picked a pastor, not God, and they chose a pastor like they were judging a talent contest; based on his looks and his personality and his entertainment factor. They did not pick a man that was known to be a student and a preacher of the word.

And then back to our fourth point of breaking bread, vs. 46 is an extrapolation or explanation of that principle. It says, “Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart.” So they were together being taught in the temple, and then they invited those home with them to have a meal who didn’t have the means to a meal. This then is not speaking of the Lord’s Supper necessarily, but good old fashioned hospitality. It’s taking koininea to the next logical level, sharing a meal. Sharing your home. Sharing your resources with those who have a need.

One of the most telling examples that I see in our church that we are experiencing church as God would have us do, is when I see our people enjoy fellowshipping together after service, or at a restaurant, or at a get together like we did at the Valentine’s Dinner. This is how we get to know one another. This is how we get to the point of sharing one another’s burdens. It doesn’t do true fellowship any good whatsoever when we ask each other politely, “how are you this morning?” And the automatic response is “Fine thanks. How are you doing?” “Oh, I’m doing great, thanks!” And that’s it. That’s as far as we get in getting to know one another. No, our goal is to be able to say as I quoted from 1Cor.12:24 while ago, when one person suffers, we all suffer, when one person is honored, we all rejoice.” And one of the best ways to incorporate all the various members together into one body is to eat together, to share together, to help one another in the day to day trials of life.

The fifth element in vs. 42 of a true church was they were devoting themselves to prayer. Prayer is one of the two offensive weapons that we have been given in the spiritual warfare described in Ephesians 6. All the other armor listed there is defensive. But prayer is not only defensive, it’s offensive. You’ve heard it said that the best defense is a good offense. Eph 6:18-19 “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.” I suppose that most of you are a lot like me – we just don’t pray like we should. We don’t pray nearly as much as we would like to. Jesus was a man of prayer. He prayed many times all night on a mountaintop. And when He came down from the mountain He was refreshed and empowered and filled with the Holy Spirit.

I believe that much of our success on the beach is due to the Jericho March we do each year before the season starts. It’s a time of sustained, strategic prayer for six nights and culminates on Sunday morning with the walls of opposition to the gospel coming down in this community. But folks, we need to pray that way a lot more often than once a year. I think it is the key to everything. I don’t understand it, but I know it works. The problem is that we don’t work at it.

Hey, I got suggestion for those of you that don’t like my preaching all that much. Did you ever think that by praying you could make me a better preacher? Isn’t that what Paul is asking them to do for him in Ephesians 6? “And pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.” I would really appreciate it if you guys would pray for me. It doesn’t get any easier to preach the gospel. And believe it or not, I have difficulty with speaking with boldness. I may be loud, but that doesn’t necessarily make me bold. Pray for boldness, but more importantly, pray that God would give me utterance, that He would give me the message that He would have me preach.

Well, those are the five marks of the true church, the indispensables, if you will of an effective church of God. There is just one more point that is made here that needs to be pointed out. We looked at 5 characteristics, and they all result in one consequence. That is found in vs. 47, “And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.” The consequence of a congregation of saved, born again, transformed men and women, who were taught the doctrine of the apostles, and who lived out their lives in fellowship, unselfishly sharing wealth and food and resources with each other, and devoted to prayer, and were sincere and joyful in their faith, the consequence of that kind of transformed lives resulted in God using their public testimony to be a means to bring others to the Lord. That’s the kind of church that is attractive to the lost. It’s not a place that looks like a nightclub or tries to look attractive to sinners. The gospel’s attractiveness is that it offers hope from the despair of sin. The power of a transformed life is the testimony that God can use to attract sinners to the gospel. They come to church not because they can relate to it, but because they are attracted to the hope and peace and joy that we have in Christ because He has overcome the captivity of our sin. That’s why Peter’s first response to those that heard his message and that asked what they needed to do was that they needed to repent. And the need for repentance will be the apostle’s message on through the book of Acts.

Listen, all of us that are saved have been placed in the body of Christ, to perform an essential function for the health and purpose of that body. Christ has given to each of us a part in His body and placed us in the church as He sees fit. Let us then be faithful and diligent to be about the business of the church, because that is what Jesus tasked us with in the great commission; “to go and make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.”

Paul breaks down that commission for us in Ephesians 4:11-16 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” Amen.

To misunderstand this passage we are looking at today is to put in jeopardy the entire purpose of the Holy Spirit and His ministry to the church. Understanding this text correctly is crucial to understanding not only the purpose of the church, and the function of the church, but the empowerment of the church.

One of the main reasons that the church is not functioning effectively in our society today is that many people are completely clueless about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Lack of understanding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of the main reasons why the average Christian feels powerless to live a godly life. The church has never in it’s history been as superficial and anemic in regards to true spirituality and godliness than it is today and that is largely due to an incorrect, unbiblical understanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

And that is ironic, isn’t it? It’s ironic because there is more emphasis today on what is claimed to be the power of the Holy Spirit than at almost any other time in church history. There is more emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit today than at any other time in recent history and yet this age is characterized by superficial, worldly, carnal churches that are more consumed with prosperity and physical “blessings” than they are with godliness.

Well, I don’t want to build a church like that. And I’m confident that if you’re here today you do not want a church like that either. There are a lot of other churches out there you could be a part of that would fill the bill if you were looking for superficial Christianity. But I believe, and I hope you believe, that God has a blueprint for His true church. I don’t believe that God has given us the church so that we might have 52 different flavors and you get to pick the one you like the most.   I believe that He gave us the blueprint of His church that we are to pattern ours after right here in the first few chapters of Acts. So I want to carefully examine this text so that we can be sure that we follow that example faithfully. And also so that we might have the kind of fruitfulness that God expects us to have – the kind of fruitfulness that we see characterized in this first church which is given for our example and encouragement.

The key to understanding the context of this momentous event in church history is found in the eighth verse of the chapter one. In Jesus’ last instructions to the disciples before His ascension He told them to wait for the promise of what He called the baptism of the Holy Spirit in just a few days. Then Jesus said in Acts 1:8 “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

So what were they to wait for? The power of the Holy Spirit. The power to do what? Be His witnesses. To be His witnesses in word and deed. And right there we should understand the nature of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit provides the power to carry out the ministry of Jesus Christ. It’s not necessarily the power to speak in tongues. To limit it to that would be to shortchange the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is the power to be the ministers of Jesus Christ to the world, by empowering His body, the believers in Christ, to be able to reveal Jesus Christ to the world in word and deed.

The first church we have as the premier example before us today had none of the usual things that we think are so essential for church success today. They didn’t have a building, they didn’t have any youth or children’s programs, they didn’t have a worship team, they didn’t have social status in the community, and yet this church won thousands to Christ and sent out people who would start other churches throughout the world. Why? Because the church had the power of the Holy Spirit empowering it’s ministry. Their people were empowered by the Holy Spirit to become shining witnesses, testimonies to the transforming power of salvation.

So it behooves us to examine this passage carefully so that we might faithfully follow their example and fulfill Christ’s purpose for our church. First of all, note that the Apostles and the rest of the church were waiting for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit as Jesus had told them. And on the tenth day after the ascension came the day of Pentecost, the day that Christ had promised. It is important to understand what that day signified for the Jew. Now please bear with me, this is important.

Pentecost means 50^th, which means this feast happened 50 days after the feast of the First Fruits as indicated in Leviticus 23. There are three feasts there which illustrate the work of Jesus Christ. The Passover pictured the death of Jesus as the Passover Lamb. Then came the feast of the First Fruits which pictured Christ’s resurrection from the dead. And then 50 days later was the feast of Pentecost which pictured the formation of His church.

The feast of First Fruits was observed the day after the Sabbath following Passover, which meant that it was Sunday, the first day of the week. Christ was crucified on the Passover, was resurrected on the day of First Fruits, Sunday, and then Fifty days after that would fall on a Sunday as well. So the day of Pentecost, the day the church was inaugurated by the Holy Spirit was on a Sunday.

During the feast of First Fruits, the priest would offer a wave offering of a sheaf of grain. But during the feast of Pentecost they would offer two loaves of bread. And contrary to the feast of Passover, the bread loaves of Pentecost had yeast in them, so they would rise. Now what this signifies is that grains which are the fruits are baptized by the Holy Spirit into one body, represented by the loaves of bread. And there are two loaves which represent the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jewish believers received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and the Gentile believers are baptized in the Spirit at the house of Cornelius which is found in Acts 10.   And the fact that the loaves are baked with leaven indicates that the presence of sin will be in the church. The church will not be perfect until it is one day glorified in the presence of God.

So the believers and apostles are all together on the day of Pentecost. We don’t know if they were in the upper room or not at that time. It would have to be a very large room if they were, because there were 120 people gathered together. Some think that they would have been in the temple worshipping God together when this happened. The word house there can also be translated as temple. So that would explain the reaction from the multitude to what would have been a very public phenomenon.

As they were gathered together, a sound like a violent rushing wind fills the place where they were. It doesn’t say it was a rushing wind, but a sound like a violent rushing wind. I imagine it might have sounded like a siren. If you’ve ever been in a hurricane you know that sometimes the wind blows so hard it starts to whine like some sort of siren. So there is this loud, wailing kind of sound that fills the place and alerts everyone that something is happening.

Then it says that tongues like fire, or as of fire, appeared and were distributed over the heads of each one of those in the church. And then the third part of the phenomena, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages of the mighty works of God as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Now all three of these things make up what Jesus described as the baptism of the Holy Spirit in chapter 1 vs. 5.

I find it interesting that those people that claim a baptism of the Holy Spirit today only seem concerned with the third aspect of the phenomenon, that of speaking in tongues. I haven’t heard any sound like a siren coming from those churches, or seen any tongues of fire distributing themselves on anyone’s head. Furthermore, in the first experience everyone could understand what was being said in their own language, which is in direct contrast with what happens today when no one can understand anything that is being said. Quite a different experience, I would say between what happened in Acts 2 and what is happening today.

So what exactly happened there in this baptism of the Holy Spirit? What did it signify and what purpose did it achieve? Well the Greek word for baptize is “baptizo” which has two meanings, one literal and one figurative. Literally, it means to be immersed, but the figurative meaning is to identified with. So first of all the baptism of the Spirit means to be identified with Christ, the head of the church, and secondly to be formed as the spiritual body of Christ on earth, that is the church.

1Cor. 12:12-13 says, “For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

Now try to understand how this works with me for a moment. If we are to become Christ’s body on earth, then how is that possible? How does my physical body become the spiritual body of Christ? Well, it becomes the spiritual body of Christ when Christ’s Spirit indwells my body. When does that happen? It happens at salvation. We are born again by the Spirit of God, made holy and righteous through the transference of the righteousness of Christ to us, and then indwelled by the Spirit of Christ, that we might have the mind of Christ controlling our body.

And that indwelling produces the third aspect of that baptism, we are filled with the Spirit. That means we are controlled by the Spirit. The energy, the power to energize this body the way Christ would have it operate is by being filled with the Spirit. That power of the Spirit which fills us is like the wind that fills the sails of a ship. It fills the sails and the ship is mobilized, it is under power.

Now let’s break all that down a little more in hopes of getting this settled in our minds. Because it’s difficult enough to understand on it’s own, but when you add all the disinformation that has accumulated in many of us from years of bad teaching, or lack of teaching on this subject, then it becomes even more difficult.

The three aspects of the baptism of the Holy Spirit are first of all, identification. We are identified with Christ. We are born again by the Spirit of Christ and are now in the family of God. Secondly, we are baptized into one body. All believers are joined together and related because we all are one in Christ, and we all are indwelled with the Spirit of Christ.   And then thirdly we are all filled with the Spirit, that means given the power of the Spirit who enables us to do the works of Christ.

It’s important to note that historically the baptism of the Holy Spirit took place in two stages. The Jewish believers were baptized at Pentecost and the Gentiles were baptized later at the home of Cornelius. Today the baptism of the Spirit happens when a sinner is converted and born again by the Spirit of Christ. You are instantly spiritually reborn into the family of God, you are instantly baptized into the body of Christ, the church, joined to every believer, and you are instantly filled with the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All of that happened by the way with the 3000 souls that were saved as Peter preached. There was not a subsequent baptism for those 3000. They were saved, baptized in water and immediately added to the church.

Let me point out another reference which I think pictures this very well. As you know, the children of Israel are an OT picture of the church. And Paul relates the baptism of the Israelites to the church in 1Cor. 10:1-4 “For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ.” Moses is a type of Christ. In Acts 3:22 it says, “Moses said, ‘THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you.” So the Israelites which are a type of the church are baptized into Moses in two ways: in the cloud, that is the Shekinah glory of God which went before them to guide them by day and dwelt in the temple in the middle of their camp, a constant presence with them, and they were also baptized into the sea, that is the Red Sea. That represented identification with Moses, separation from the world, Egypt, and salvation from death. And then you see the unity in the same spiritual food, the same spiritual drink, all coming from the rock who is Christ.

So in like manner, as the church of Christ, we are identified with Him, become one with His body, and are filled with His Spirit who leads us and guides us as He indwells us. He is constantly with us because He is within us. We are not told to seek a baptism of the Holy Spirit, because that is done once for all when we are born again, but we are told to be continually filled with the power of the Holy Spirit because we need His power if we are going to serve God effectively. On the day of Pentecost, they were baptized with the Holy Spirit and filled with the Spirit simultaneously. But afterwards, though there were more fillings of the Spirit to do a particular work, they did not experience any more baptisms. There is a distinction between baptism and filling.

For instance, baptism means I belong to His body, being filled means that my body belongs to Him. Baptism is non-repeatable, but the filling is repeated over and over again as we trust God for the power to do what He asks us to do. Baptism involves all believers being united into one body, but filling is individually done as we yield to Him.

Now let’s consider the languages and the purpose and meaning of that part of this phenomenon. Luke tells us that there were God fearing, devout Jews from 15 different nations present, and they each heard the gospel proclaimed in their own language. Verse 4 the word used for language or tongues is glossa, which refers to language, but in vs.6 the word used is dialektos and means dialect. There is no question that means that each person understood what the disciples were saying in their own native language or dialect.

The question is why did this happen? What is the significance of this sign? Well, I gave away the answer in my question. The speaking of various foreign languages happened as a sign to the unbelieving Jews. We are going to examine Peter’s message in more detail next time, but note for now that Peter says this baptism of the Holy Spirit happened according to the prophecy of Joel 2:28-32.   First and foremost then, tongues were for a sign. They happened as a sign to the Jews that a particular prophecy was being fulfilled. And Paul confirms this by quoting Isaiah in 1Cor. 14:21, “In the Law it is written, ‘BY MEN OF STRANGE TONGUES AND BY THE LIPS OF STRANGERS I WILL SPEAK TO THIS PEOPLE, AND EVEN SO THEY WILL NOT LISTEN TO ME,’ says the Lord. So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers.”

Now that is exactly what Peter is talking about when he stands up and rebukes those in the crowd who had suggested that they might have been drunk with wine. Peter says no, it’s only 9 o’clock in the morning, no one here has been drinking at 9 in the morning. But he says in vs. 17 “’AND IT SHALL BE IN THE LAST DAYS,’ God says, ‘THAT I WILL POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL MANKIND; AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY, AND YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS, AND YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS; EVEN ON MY BONDSLAVES, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, I WILL IN THOSE DAYS POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT And they shall prophesy.”

This phenomenon was a sign of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to those unbelieving Jews, the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples to be a witness to them, that the last days had come upon Israel, just as Joel and the prophets had warned it would. And a sign of these last days would be that by the languages of foreigners they would hear of the gospel of Christ and yet still they would not believe. Israel as a nation would reject Christ. Thankfully, 3000 of them did repent that day in response to that sign, and they were saved and God added them to the church. But the nation of Israel as a whole did not repent, they continued to persecute and put to death the witnesses of the gospel (that’s what the Greek word witness came to mean, martyrs). And so it would not be only about 35 more years ( this generation) before the judgment of God would fall upon Israel and the temple was destroyed and hundreds of thousands of them were killed and the rest dispersed. This phenomenon was a sign that the end of the age of the nation of Israel had come.

The phenomenon also correlated with the Tower of Babel which we read about in Genesis 11. At that time the men of the world spoke the same language and thought that they would build a temple reaching to heaven as a testament to their great civilization. But God came down from heaven and confused their language and dispersed them throughout the world. So God’s judgment at Babel dispersed one people into many nations, but the Spirit at Pentecost united many nations into God’s people, bringing both the Jews and the Gentiles into one body, the church. At the Tower of Babel one language was confused into many, but at Pentecost people of many languages understood the gospel in their own dialect.

The bottom line is this; the baptism of the Holy Spirit is given so that we might be saved, identified with Christ, so that we might be unified with all other believers into the body of Christ, and so that we might have the power to be witnesses for Christ. But though baptism of the Spirit happens once at salvation, there is a daily need to be filled with the Spirit.

Did you know that Plato and the ancient Greek philosophers, long before the time of Christ, taught that the highest religious expression was found in a phenomenon of speaking in strange syllables which was induced by drunkenness? This was practiced by the Greeks in their drunken, religious orgies. So it’s interesting that some people observing what was happening would automatically assume the disciples were drunk. But Peter is quick to show that they were not drunk. And furthermore, this wasn’t some nonsensical gibberish, but it was men speaking of the mighty works of God.

So in reference to what Peter said in rebuttal to the charge of drunkenness, let’s look at how Paul contrasts drunkenness and being filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18. “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” Paul goes on to talk about wives being subject to husbands, husbands sacrificing themselves for their wives, parents, children, slaves, workers, etc, being subject to one another as unto the Lord.

So what Paul is showing in verse 18 is the contrast between drunkenness and being filled with the Holy Spirit. When a person is filled with alcohol, he loses control of himself and dishonors himself and God. But when a man is filled with the Spirit, he exhibits self control and honors God. That is the contrast and it is given to illustrate what being filled with the Spirit is and is not. Being filled with the Spirit then is to exhibit self control, self discipline. Unfortunately, that is not what we see most often when we witness the charismatic outbursts on CBN. They revel in spiritual drunkenness which they claim is of the Holy Spirit. They babble incoherently. They exhibit a lack of control, a lack of discipline, and dishonor God. Paul makes it clear that they know not what sort of spirit they are of.

If you are being filled with the Spirit, that is under the control of the Spirit, then you will walk in the Spirit and bring honor to God by the way that you live. We have the power of the Holy Spirit available to us, indwelling in us, if we are saved. The dilemma is whether or not we will trust in the Spirit and walk in the Spirit and be obedient to the Spirit. When we do, we will be filled with the power to do so, and in so doing, we will be witnesses to the transforming power of Christ.

Let me close by reading Galatians 5:19 which shows us that contrast between the life lived as evidence of the flesh and the life evidenced as of the Spirit. “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” Amen.

A few days ago I watched the video released by the terrorist group ISIS, in which they set afire a captured Jordanian pilot. It was a gruesome video, and I don’t recommend that you watch it. It’s one of those things that you won’t be able to get out of your mind.

But I had my reasons for watching it. Not the least of which was that many Christians have been burned at the stake over the centuries. For instance, William Tyndale who was the first to translate the Bible into English was burned at the stake in 1536. And while it is one thing to know that from a historical perspective, it is another thing entirely to witness something like that in our lifetime, and to imagine what we might do if faced with such a fate.

As I was talking to someone about this tragic event later, they asked what seems to me to be a very pertinent question. They said, “What is it that causes people to do such horrible things? What is the root of this kind of evil?” My answer was that the Bible says that sin is the root of all evil. Sin is the root cause of all the problems of the world.

And true Christianity is the only religion in the world to really effectively deal with sin. Most religions of the world try to tell people how they are supposed to live, to establish some sort of ideal life style. They purport to tell people how they might aspire to be a better person. Some may even offer hope of a future after death. But most religions at best only offer a type of ascetic, monastic or meditative state whereby one through sheer willpower may hope to isolate himself somewhat from sin. But all these false religions fail to really deal effectively with sin.

But God’s plan to deal with sin meant that He would not just tell us what we must do, but He Himself would deal with the problem of sin. Theologians tell us that there are three characteristics of sin. The first characteristic of sin as delineated in the Bible is sin’s penalty. God told Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden at creation that if they sinned by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die. Likewise, Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death. So the penalty of sin is death, eternal death, as defined by God. Death is not just God’s punishment for sin, but death is the inevitable outcome of sin. All sin leads to death. Inherent in sin is the penalty of death.

The second characteristic of sin is the power of sin. Romans 5:12 tells us, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” So the power of sin is found in the nature of sin. It is like a genetically transmitted cancer that spread to all men from one generation to the next, traceable back to their father Adam. It is man’s sinful nature that causes him to sin. In John 8:34 Jesus says that “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” And as such they are held captive by Satan to do his will. This is the power of sin that all men are held captive under. Sin is relentless, overpowering, corrupting, and spread from generation to generation. Sin has power and dominion over it’s victims.

And then the third characteristic of sin is the presence of sin. Eastern religions tell their adherents that the only hope to escape this present state of sin is to withdraw oneself from society. Perhaps join a monastery where there is little temptation to sin. Or perhaps attempt to achieve nirvana through meditation whereby they can escape the presence of temptations. But that does not eradicate the presence of sin, that just gives one some temporary escape and even then only in a limited fashion. Even if it were possible by some strength of will for a person to limit sin in his body to some degree he still cannot escape the presence of sin in the world and the suffering that must be experienced due to it’s presence. The Bible tells us that the presence of sin entered the human race in the Garden of Eden, and it only grows worse with each succeeding generation.

In spite of all kinds of technological, scientific, educational, cultural and social advancements in society, things are not getting better and better, things are going from bad to worse. Wars and rumors of wars are increasing. People are killing and being killed in greater numbers than at any other time in history. Sex crimes and even sexual trafficking are reaching epidemic proportions. Abortions in the United States average one million babies killed a year. Divorce rates are at 50%. Drug abuse has reached pandemic status. Hundreds of thousands of people die of drug, alcohol and suicide related causes each year in the United States alone. Sixteen thousand murders are committed a year in the United States. All of this is the effect of sin. This is the presence of sin. It invades all of our lives. Even if you manage to live in a monastery in Tibet sin will still invade your life. Sin’s presence is inescapable.

From man’s perspective the situation is hopeless. But man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. In the midst of man’s hopelessness is where God intervenes. God’s strategy for dealing with sin doesn’t rely on the strength of man, or on the efforts of man or the will of man. God knew that man being inherently sinful could not escape sin’s penalty, nor overcome sin’s power, nor be delivered from sin’s presence. And so God stretched forth His own arm to save man by sending His Son, Jesus Christ to deal with sin. As Isaiah 59:1 tells us, “Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short that it cannot save.” God Himself provided the antidote to sin. Continuing in vs. 15, “Now the LORD saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede;then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him.”

This is the gospel. This is what Christianity is all about. Christianity is not another religion that only tells you how you are supposed to live but it provides life by dealing with sin. Not only did Jesus illustrate by example how we are to live, but by His death He paid the penalty for our sin. Only God could pay the penalty for another’s sin, and Jesus did that on the cross for those that will accept Him as their Lord and Savior.

And then God raised Jesus bodily from the tomb to prove that Jesus had been able to pay the penalty for sin. If Jesus had not been holy, if He had not be deity, if He had not been utterly sinless, then God would have left Him in Hades. But because Christ was sinless, He was raised from the dead and over 500 people witnessed His resurrected body over the course of 40 days.

So God dealt with our penalty of sin by applying the punishment to Jesus at the cross. And because Christ was raised from the dead we can know that His sacrifice was acceptable to God. But that still leaves the power of sin and the presence of sin. What does the gospel of Christ offer to deal with that?

Well the answer is found in our passage today. After His resurrection, Jesus said to the disciples in vs. 49 “And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” What is He talking about? Well, John provides a little more detail in his gospel. Look at John 16:7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Who is the Helper? This is none other than the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit comes, Jesus said, to give you power. He said you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you. Now some people have mistakenly taken this to mean that some sort of mystical force emanates from God to us at some point after our conversion so that we might experience God. They attribute weird feelings, or unknown tongues or some other ecstatic experiences to this power of the Holy Spirit.

But folks, that is not the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We are going to go into this in detail in a couple of weeks or so when we get into the book of Acts. But for now, just understand this; the Holy Spirit is not given to give you the goose bumps so you can feel saved. The Holy Spirit is given first so that you can be saved and secondly so you can act saved. So you can have power over sin. Listen again to John 16, starting in vs. 8-11, 13-15, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. … 13 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”

So then, the Holy Spirit’s ministry is to convict the world of sin, to lead us into righteousness, and to convict the world of the coming judgment. And John adds, the Holy Spirit will lead us into the truth through the Word of God. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak of His own initiative, but speaks the Word of Christ. So as God is, so is Christ, and as Christ is, so is the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit will not do anything that Christ did not do. But He is not limited to a physical body as Jesus was on earth. He is able to indwell the entire church and give them power over sin by leading them into the truth, and the truth will set them free.

God, in describing the new covenant that He would bring about in Christ said in Ezekiel 36:27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” Hebrews 10:16 says the same thing, “THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM.” The power we have over sin is because God has given us the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts so that we are no longer controlled by sin as we once were. We are no longer captive to sin. But now we have a new heart and new desires because we are born of the Spirit, so we walk according to the Spirit.

Listen, if you are here today and you are convicted of sin, don’t quench the Holy Spirit. Don’t harden your hearts against the conviction of the Holy Spirit. His job is to use the Word of God to convict you, to lead you to recognize your need for righteousness. 1John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” As I said last week, repentance is the key to the gospel. It is the key to salvation. It is the key to justification and the key to sanctification. James 5:16 says “confess your sins one to another so that you may be healed.” He is not talking about physical healing, ladies and gentlemen, he’s talking about spiritual healing.

See, just as there are three categories or characterizations of sin, so are there three categories or stages of salvation. Salvation is justification, producing sanctification, resulting in glorification. Justification delivers us from the penalty of sin. Jesus was our substitute, paying our penalty by dying for us on the cross. Sanctification delivers us from the power of sin by yielding to the leading and conviction of the Holy Spirit on a day to day basis. And glorification is the last stage; the removal from the presence of sin.

That brings us back to our text. Jesus was received up into glory in the sight of His disciples. As He was talking to them, He led them out to the area near Bethany which was on the other side of the Mount of Olives, and He was taken up into heaven in their sight.

Why is that important? He was received into heaven. It is important because it foreshadows our glorification, when we will be delivered from the presence of sin. Christ’s ascension was witnessed by the apostles and the disciples gathered there. If Jesus had just suddenly stopped appearing during the 40 days without a bodily ascension with witnesses, then how would we know that He lives and is seated at the right hand of God as the gospel writers tell us? We know He lives and is seated in the heavenlies because He was seen taken up into heaven in bodily form. So His ascension validates the gospel and validates the promise of final deliverance from sin and all it’s effects.

Paul tells us He was received up into glory far above all rule and authority. Ephesians 1: 18-23 Paul says “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

This is speaking of the glorification of Christ. That is what the ascension reveals. Christ is above all things. Above the power of sin. Above the power of angels, above the power of Satan, above the power of kings and rulers. Above all things. Above every name that is named, not only in this age, but the age to come. Now that is Christ’s glorification. And we know that it is so because of the ascension of Christ.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there. Christ is the forerunner of the church. Because He is there, we will one day be there with Him. One day Jesus will return for us. And He will take us to be with Him forever. We who are saved are destined to be heirs with Christ. And when He comes again to receive us, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. That means that this body of sin will be done away with. This mortal will put on immortality. That means that this world and all it’s evil will be burned up and a new heaven and a new earth will come down out of Heaven and we will be forever with the Lord in a sinless, perfect environment. Sin’s presence will be dealt with forever. The devil and his angels will be dealt with forever. Evil men will be dealt with. Despots and megalomaniac rulers will be dealt with. All will be cast into the Lake of Fire which burns forever and ever. And righteousness will reign in this new heaven and new earth for eternity.

Oh folks, listen up! Christ’s ascension was the exclamation point on the gospel. It is the source of hope for the saints, the source of joy for the saints. Because we know that as He is, so are we to be. As the grave could not hold Him, neither can the grave hold us. As death had no power over Him, neither do we need to fear death. As He had power over sin, so can we have power over sin. As He was raised to glory, so we are going to be raised in glory. As sin cannot be in His presence, so we shall be delivered from sin’s presence. Jesus promised in John 14:3 “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

No wonder Luke tells us that the disciples “after worshiping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising God.” So should we be praising God and worshipping Him for all that He has accomplished for us that we so undeserving.

I want to close by continuing to read from Ephesians which we read while ago. We stopped at the end of chapter one. But let’s continue with chapter 2 which serves as a complete summary of the gospel: Eph. 2:1-10 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

And let me just point out a couple of things there which I want to leave you with today. The first one is that Paul says that God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly places… I want you to see that is not speaking of a future event, but a present event. Those of us that have been made alive in Christ have already been made alive, and have already been seated with Christ in heaven. That simply means that we have been delivered from the penalty of sin. As far as God is concerned, we are secure in Christ. We have already been seated in heaven with Christ spiritually speaking.

And then he says, all this has happened so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us. We have been positioned with Christ in heaven so that in eternity to come, God might shower us with the riches of His grace. This is our inheritance that is reserved for us. God has already set a table there for us with our name plaque on our chair next to Christ. And God does not change His mind. God will keep us and bring us into glory with Christ.

And then lastly, note that by grace we have been saved through faith, not as a result of works. It’s nothing we do to earn salvation. But then notice the last verse, for we are His workmanship, we are crafted and created and designed by God, for what? For good works. Not saved by good works, but saved for good works… which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

If you are here today and you are still in your sins, then I hope you understood the message of the gospel. Jesus has paid the penalty and suffered the punishment for your sins. If you will confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And if you are here today and are saved, born again by the Spirit of God, then I hope you realize that He has given you the Spirit so that you might have the power over sin. You were born of the blood of Jesus not so you can continue in sin so that grace may abound, but you were created in Christ Jesus for good works, to walk in them and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. And then for all of us that are dying daily to the sinful nature in order to walk in the Spirit, know that there is going to come a day when we will be delivered forever from the presence of sin. Rom. 8:18 says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Let us continue without wavering to look forward to His appearing.

Jesus’ death dealt with the penalty of sin; our justification. His resurrection provided the power over sin; our sanctification. And His ascension promises deliverance from the presence of sin; our future glorification. The only question left is what will you do with Jesus? Will you accept Him as your Savior, or deny Him as your Lord? I trust that you will accept His free offer of salvation and find freedom from sin.

Last week we looked at the lessons learned on the road to Emmaus by two of Jesus’ disciples. And the lessons that these two men learned was basically a completion of their theology. They had an incomplete theology concerning the Messiah, and so Jesus helped them to see how the Old Testament scriptures spoke of His suffering. That was what they had not understood. They thought that Christ’s death eliminated Him from being the Messiah. Jesus showed them from scripture how His suffering and death were in fact predicted and consequently proved that He was the Messiah.

And then if you remember when He broke bread with them their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and immediately He vanished from their sight. The point I made was that now that they saw Him in scripture they did not need to see Him in the flesh. From this point on the gospel of Jesus Christ would be based on faith in the Christ they could not see, but who is revealed in scripture. Now today we are picking up where that story left off.

So our text tells us that immediately these two men got up from the table and headed back to Jerusalem, all seven miles by foot, in order to share with the apostles that they had just seen Jesus. But when they arrived, the apostles spoke to them of Jesus appearing to Simon Peter. Now to be frank with you, the way the story reads does not lend itself to that interpretation. The first impression when you read vs. 33 and 34 would seem to indicate it was the disciples from Emmaus that make the announcement in vs. 34. But Greek scholars tell us that the accusative form of the verb indicates that the ones speaking here are the apostles and not the two from Emmaus. So the best way to understand this verse is to realize that as the disciples from Emmaus enter the room, the apostles great them excitedly with the news that Jesus had indeed risen and appeared to Peter.

Now there is no real record of this event. But the apostle Paul writing later does confirm that Jesus appeared to Peter at this time. In 1Cor. 15:4-5 Paul says, “He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” Cephas of course being Simon Peter. So though Luke doesn’t fill us in on all the details here, he is giving us a condensed version of these events, the best interpretation is that at some point after His resurrection, before this event, Jesus sought out Peter and revealed Himself to him. And that is very significant because as we know Peter was devastated after his denial of Christ the night before the crucifixion. And so it is encouraging not only for us to know this, but obviously encouraging for Peter as well that after His resurrection Jesus seeks out Peter for a private time of reconciliation.

But the main thrust of Luke’s account here has to do with the rest of the apostles. So as the disciples from Emmaus were recounting what happened with them, Jesus suddenly appears in their midst and says “Peace be to you.” Now the next verse says that the apostles were startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost. I guess that would not be an unusual response of most people if someone whom we knew was dead suddenly appeared in the middle of the room without opening a door. Sounds reasonable to me.

But Jesus says, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them.

Now what are we to make from all of that? Well, one obvious point that is made clear here is that in spite of being able to walk through walls and appear in various places at various times seemingly at will, Jesus has physically risen from the dead. That is an important theological point. We don’t hear much discussion about that today, but in previous generations, especially in the first century or two after Christ’s resurrection, there was a lot of false doctrine which put forth the idea that Jesus was only a Spirit. And that His resurrection wasn’t a bodily resurrection but a spiritual one.

The main point though to be taken from this is that the physical, literal resurrection of Jesus is fundamental to the gospel. Rom. 10:9 says “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Why is the physical resurrection of Christ essential to salvation? Because it proves that Christ’s death was efficacious. It proved that God was satisfied with Christ’s sacrifice. It matters that His body came out of that grave because how else would we know that God was satisfied with His offering? We couldn’t see His Spirit. If it was just a spiritual resurrection then we would not have known for sure that God had in fact raised Him, that God had in fact been satisfied with His sacrifice. And without that assurance, we could not be sure that we are saved from our sins.   So the verification of Christ’s literal, physical resurrection is essential for the gospel. As Paul said in 1Cor. 15:14, “and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.”

So the fact of the gospel must be that it is literal, physical and historical. Paul goes on to say that Jesus appeared to 500 people at one time after His resurrection. That makes it historical. Five hundred witnesses makes it provable in a court of law. Luke goes on to say in Acts chapter 1 that Jesus appeared numerous times to various people over the space of 40 days. So the point is that the resurrection of Jesus was historical, literal and physical which is essential to the gospel. There is no doubt that Jesus was literally a historical figure that walked the earth 2000 years ago. And when you add to that the fact that He was raised from the dead then that establishes that He was in fact God in the flesh. That is the basis for our gospel.

Then starting in vs. 44 we read that Jesus began to do for the apostles what He had earlier done for the disciples from Emmaus. And that is, He opened their mind to understand the scriptures. Folks, this is so important. This is the reason that so many are deceived by false doctrines today. They haven’t had their minds opened to understand the scriptures. False doctrines always claim to be founded on scripture. But it’s possible to know scripture and yet not understand scripture. And so they build a doctrine or a theology based on a partial understanding of the gospel. This is exactly what had happened with the disciples.

So Jesus is using this opportunity to correct that here with the apostles. First as I mentioned earlier, He showed them the error of their theology that did not allow for a suffering Savior, that did not allow for the crucifixion of the Messiah. And to do that He showed them the scriptures. And so He is doing the same thing here with the eleven. He starts with the Law and then moves to the Psalms and then on through the prophets, teaching them how all these OT scriptures spoke of Him.

So Jesus is reiterating for the benefit of the apostles what we discovered last week, that the scriptures are fundamental to the gospel. The scriptures reveal God. That sounds like such a superfluous statement. And yet it had to be understood then and it desperately needs to be understood today. Extra biblical words of knowledge or dreams or visions or experiences cannot be relied upon. But the word of the Lord endures forever. It is the foundation of the gospel. Paul writes in Eph. 2:20 that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, that means the writings of the apostles and the prophets, the holy scriptures.

These are the scriptures which Paul told Timothy in 2Tim. 3:15 “that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” These scriptures that Paul refers to are the Old Testament scriptures. Jesus opens the mind of the apostles to understand the Old Testament scriptures. These are the scriptures that give you the wisdom that leads to salvation.

Listen folks, the gospel starts in Genesis, not Matthew. The wisdom that leads to salvation comes from understanding how God is revealed in all of scripture, how His plan for salvation was enacted before creation. If you do not understand the God which destroyed the world in the flood, and the God of the fire and smoke of Mt. Sinai, then you cannot understand the God of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Heb 13:8 says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is unchanging, He is the everlasting God.

So the second point then is that the gospel is Biblical. It is founded on the scriptures and dependent understanding the full scope of the scriptures and how it all works together. It is not something completely new. It is not an interruption. But the gospel is a continuous thread that runs through all of the Bible which has to be understood as a whole.

Next in vs. 46 Jesus gives them a concise synopsis of the gospel. Luke 24:46-47 “and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’” Incorporated in that simple statement is the plan, the purpose and the presentation of the gospel. The plan of God was the salvation of sinners through the death and resurrection of Christ which accomplishes our reconciliation with God, and then our mission to proclaim the gospel to the world. That is the gospel in a nutshell.

And the third major characteristic of the gospel as presented in this synopsis by Jesus is that the gospel is confessional. Now what do I mean by that? Well, I already showed in Rom. 10:9 the confessional nature of salvation. It reads “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

But to confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord is much more than simply accepting the historical reality of Jesus. The Bible says that the devils believe and tremble. Believing in the literal, historical reality of Jesus but not accepting Him as Lord and Savior only serves to condemn you, not save you.

To confess Jesus as Lord is really understood more clearly in this statement here in Luke by Jesus. His statement affirms that Jesus is the Christ, that is the Messiah, which means that He is the Son of God, that He was raised from the dead, which we just finished showing meant that God was satisfied by His sacrifice, that He was in fact God in the flesh, and that repentance for sins would be proclaimed or preached.

Now that is where I would like to camp out for a moment. Because I’m afraid that repentance is the aspect of salvation that is not being preached today. And yet I believe it is the key to salvation because it is the key to transformation. It is the key to conversion. Without it, there may be a head knowledge, but no change, no transformation, no conversion from death to life, from captivity to freedom.

Repentance is the act that turns the heart from self sufficiency to salvation. It is necessary to be saved, for one to turn from sin’s presence, sin’s power, sin’s dominance, and even sin’s consequence to that of hungering and thirsting for righteousness. It’s a 180 degree turn in the opposite direction. Jesus said in Matt. 5 that salvation involved mourning for sin. That means having a desire to leave sin behind and pursue righteousness. This is true repentance. It’s not simply feeling bad about your circumstances, or feeling bad about your condition, it is not even feeling bad about the consequences that came from your sins, it is feeling bad about the reality of sin. It’s understanding that sin is an affront to a holy God.

The other day the President of the United States gave the annual State of the Union address. I did not watch it. I do not have to watch it to know that the state of our Union is deplorable. But I am much more concerned about the state of the church today than I am about the state of the Union. And I am here to tell you that the state of the church is in disarray. And I believe the reason for that disarray is because the church has abandoned the foundational truths of the gospel. Oh, most churches haven’t changed their official statement of faith printed somewhere in their literature. They still claim to hold to the foundational doctrines. But the truth is that many of the essential doctrines of the gospel are never emphasized anymore for fear of alienating someone. For fear of appearing condemning. And one of the first victims of this new apostasy has been to throw overboard the doctrine of repentance. And what is frightening is how this doctrinal error has infiltrated even many mainstream churches today at all levels to the point of completely undermining the gospel.

I was reading a booklet the other day by a mainstream evangelical church that purported to be teaching the way of salvation. And the author recounted a story about a homosexual man that had contracted AIDS, who called his office and said that he was dying and wanted to repent. This pastor told him, “The only thing I am interested in is this, that you let God love you.” He said in the booklet that even though the man had done wrong, that all that this man needed to do was to let God love him and to come to the point of loving himself.

There was no talk of the need for repentance. In fact, this dying man’s desire to repent was repulsed by this pastor. Even though Jesus said in our text in Luke 24 that repentance is necessary for the forgiveness of sins. Even though 1John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Folks, do not be deceived. To reject the doctrine of repentance is to reject the gospel. And not only do you reject the gospel, you reject the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said in John 16:8, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”   And if you reject the conviction of the Holy Spirit, then you cannot be saved because it is the Spirit that gives life.

Repentance is not only confessing your sins, but confessing the need to know the truth about God and that we are inadequate to do so on our own. Repentance is the key to the truth. 2Tim. 2:25 tells us that we are to preach the gospel “with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”

See, this is why Jesus needed to open their minds to understand the scriptures. Repentance leads to the knowledge of the truth. And the truth is what makes possible salvation. The truth will set you free. When we know the truth, we come to our senses, we see things clearly, and that enables us to escape from the trap of the devil, where we have been held captive to do his will.

The devil’s lie is to say that there is no need for repentance, that God is love and if God is love then that overrules all other characteristics about God. God’s love as it is defined today is nothing short of permissiveness. We do what we want, live the way we want without any consequences to our sin. They fail to take into consideration that Hebrews 12 says that if God loves us, then He will discipline us, chastise us for our sins, so that we might share in His holiness.

But the problem is that this unwillingness to repent has caused a hardening of our hearts so that we cannot understand the truth, and therefore we have a perverted perspective of God. Going back to that booklet I was reading from a while ago, the author goes on to explain that this man did not need to repent to be saved, but to just let God love him. And he went on to explain what he believed biblical love looked like. He said “there is an order to God’s love. I am not to love other’s first. I cannot love even God unless I love myself. I must let God love me. That’s the way it goes. First I let God love me. Second I love myself. Third I love God, and finally I am free to love everyone else.”

I found it interesting that he did not provide any Biblical references for that theological statement. He just said, “that’s the way it goes.” Ok. Right…

Well, I have a couple of references that clearly declare the opposite. Jesus said in Luke 10:27 that the foremost commandment was this: “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” Notice how God’s statement puts ourselves at the end of the line, not at the beginning. You simply cannot square his comment with scripture. Love the Lord your God first, completely, with every fiber of your being. That hardly leaves room for you to love yourself first.

If you listened to this guy then you just made yourself an idol. You have put another god (yourself) above the Lord. Consider God’s definition of love in 1Cor. 13:4-7 “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Did you notice the phrase concerning love, it “does not seek it’s own?” How can you obey that verse and love yourself first? It’s incompatible.

And yet I’m afraid that this perversion of love has become the foremost doctrine of the church today. This isn’t some lunatic fringe that I’m talking about. This is main stream so called evangelical churches that have emasculated the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many churches today never preach the very message that Jesus came to preach. “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” This was the message of John the Baptist, the message of Jesus, the message of the Apostles and the message of Paul. And it is still the message of the gospel today. Because the gospel hasn’t changed.

Listen, when we understand the doctrine of repentance, when we come to God in brokenness and humbleness, confessing our sins, asking Him to make us new, asking Him to lead us in the truth, then we are transformed by the power of the gospel. This is what is missing today in modern Christianity. We have been told to come as we are. And so we allow God to love us, allow Christ to die for us, and then we continue just as we are in our sins. We are never changed. We are never converted. We may be a bit more religious from time to time. We may even be sincere. We may even believe in Jesus. But we have never been converted.   We have never been transformed from death to life, from walking according to the course of this world to walking in the Spirit, from being dead in our sins to being made alive in Christ.

Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost says in Acts 3:19 in the KJV, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.” Oh folks, we need a time of refreshing in the church today. And that conversion comes from a broken and contrite heart. David said “a broken and contrite heart O Lord you will not despise.”

How about you, do you need a time of refreshing in your life? Are you harboring sin that you have not given up to the Lord? If so, then Satan has you in his snare, to do his will. I got another email from a lady the other day. She occasionally sends me messages by Joseph Prince who is the foremost false teacher of this false doctrine which has eliminated repentance from the gospel. He teaches that as a Christian you don’t need to repent of your sins anymore. He is like the false teacher spoken of by Paul in 2Tim. 3:6-7 which says, “For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

Ladies and gentlemen, do not be deceived. Repentance is the key to the gospel. Repent and the truth of God will be manifest to you, that you may be given forgiveness for your sins, that your heart may be renewed again with Christ, and that you might know the truth that will set you free.

This is the gospel. And when we understand that, then we are able to be what Jesus has purposed us to be; witnesses to a lost and dying world. This is our mission, the reason that He has saved us and left us here while He has gone away to prepare a place for us. That until He comes back we might tell the world His gospel. His gospel is powerful to save, to transform, when it is complete, when it is Biblical and when it is confessional.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I remember as a boy, I had a voracious appetite to read books. I grew up without a television and so reading was for me the primary source of entertainment. Everything I became interested in, I first of all went to the library and checked out every book I could find on the subject. And that was all fine and dandy until one day I decided I wanted to learn Karate. There were no Karate schools around, and if there were I would not have been allowed to attend them anyway. So I found a couple of books on the subject and started trying to learn it on my own. I put on a bathrobe which kind of looked like a Karate outfit and talked my little brother into joining me and began trying to do the things I saw them do in the books. But it wasn’t long before we found out that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. We seriously hurt one another trying to do stuff that we had not been fully trained to do. Eventually, we decided we better quit before we killed each other.

That same principle is true in Christianity. It’s possible to come to a certain understanding of the gospel, to make a certain amount of progress in your faith, to set sail so to speak in your journey, but because there is not sufficient knowledge of scripture or doctrine to go off course and encounter shipwreck. In Hosea 4:6 God says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

But as we live in what is sometimes called the information age, the age of the internet, we must make a distinction between information and true knowledge. There is a lot of false information being bandied about out there. In fact, I would suggest that there has never been a time in history when so much information has been available.

We have yet to see what the result will be of what unmitigated access to information in this computer age will have on society. To some extent, we are conducting a massive social experiment. The general public’s access to the internet has only been going on about 20 years now. And this generation is being shaped by the internet in ways that have yet to be fully realized. In times past, a person had to have some sort of credentials in order to be published. Today, however, anyone with a computer can become an instant expert and throw his opinion out there on the internet. Truth has become practically indistinguishable from folly in the internet age.

So there is a lot of information out there, but I am here to tell you today that there is only one source of truth. Jesus told us in John 8:31, ““If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” God’s word is truth. Jesus was the manifestation of that eternal truth, which existed in the heavens before the world began, and became flesh and dwelt among us. So that Jesus might say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father except by Me.”

So the truth of God is contained in scripture. And as Paul told Timothy, knowledge of the scriptures is necessary to lead you to salvation. 2Tim. 3:15, “from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” But as we see in this account of the encounter on the Emmaus road by two of Jesus’ disciples, it is possible to know the God of the scriptures, to know some scripture, but to have a limited understanding of scripture. To lack the wisdom of applying scripture. And that is a dangerous thing.

There was obviously a limited view of theology that had been taught to most Jews at the time of Christ. And this viewpoint, especially as it pertained to the Messiah was flawed enough to keep people from recognizing Jesus as the manifestation of the Messiah. The whole nation had a limited, flawed theology of the Messiah because they camped out on some doctrines and dismissed others that did not mesh with their chosen theology.

Listen, we face the same dilemma today in modern Christianity. There is no lack of teaching, of books, of Bibles, available in every language, there is no lack of churches, of Bible schools, of preaching on the radio or on television and even on the internet. And yet our people are perishing for lack of knowledge. We have failed to do as Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15, “study to show yourself approved unto God as a workman that does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”

Instead, the vast majority of people today that call themselves Christians have developed and bought into a limited version of theology. Many people today have a one dimensional view of God, they have denied the Lordship of Jesus Christ, they have denied the essential doctrine of sanctification without which the Hebrews 12:4 says no one will see the Lord, they have even gone so far as to deny that they have any sin, even though 1John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

It’s important for you to understand something in this day and age of instant experts and slick television evangelists and proliferating false doctrines, the Bible is God’s word from cover to cover. From Genesis to Revelation. Jesus is the Word of God in Genesis that spoke the word and created the universe, and Jesus is the Word of God in Revelation that will destroy His enemies by the two edged sword of His mouth. Heb. 13:8 affirms that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” A correct theology must incorporate all of what the Bible teaches into a comprehensive theology, without ignoring parts that don’t seem to meet with your template, but comparing scripture with scripture, the whole counsel of the word of God.

Having a scripturally centered theology is illustrated in this passage we are looking at today. There are some lessons presented here on the road to Emmaus that will help us to understand the principle of “sola scriptura,” the sufficiency of scripture which serves as the foundation for our sound doctrine.

Now there were two men, one of which was named Cleopas, who had been followers of Jesus. Yet in spite of following Him, in spite of hoping in Him, they now found themselves in spiritual shipwreck. They were like a ship without an anchor. They had just witnessed the crucifixion and it completely destroyed their theology. They had hoped that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah. But when He was crucified it destroyed that hope, because they had been taught that the Messiah would bring about a political, social and spiritual change that would result in Him overturning Roman rule and taking the throne of David in Jerusalem. This was what they had been taught in the synagogues and by the priests, and they had plenty of scriptures to back up their theology. The only problem was that they did not consider the whole counsel of God’s word.

So Jesus suddenly appears to these two men as they are walking to Emmaus from Jerusalem. They are sad. They are down hearted over what has happened. And their faith is seriously in jeopardy. But as they are walking, Jesus comes up behind them and appears to them to be just another person on the road leaving Jerusalem after the Passover. Vs. 16 says that their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.

Now I can’t read that without wondering why? Why couldn’t they recognize Jesus? I don’t believe that it was because His form was changed. Notice it says THEIR eyes were prevented from recognizing Him. I believe that Jesus veiled their eyes so that they could not recognize Him. They saw Him, they saw a normal person, but they didn’t recognize Him as Christ.

But why would Jesus do that? Was He just being mischievous? Was He playing a trick on them or trying to deceive them? No, I think He was making a point, illustrating an important principle which would be in operation now that the resurrection had taken place. His disciples would be entering a new phase of His ministry, which is where we walk by faith and not by sight. As Jesus would say to Thomas later in John 20:29, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

Jesus is illustrating an important principle; that the person of Jesus Christ is revealed in scripture. Truth is revealed in scripture, and Jesus is the manifestation of that truth, the word of God. So when they saw the truth of scripture, they would see God. There eyes were closed until they believed in the word of God. This is why we put such an emphasis on the authority of scripture. This is why we preach the scriptures word by word, verse by verse. This is why it is so important. This is why we say that the scriptures are the inerrant, God breathed words of God. Heb. 4:12 says that “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword…” It’s alive, it’s active, it’s the Spirit of God contained in the word of God.

But I want you to notice something here. Jesus is walking along within earshot, incognito, listening to the disciples converse. I wonder how long Jesus walked near them, listening to their conversation? I wonder how often Christ is in our midst, even today, incognito, sitting in the back seat listening to us talk as we drive home from church in the car. Listening to us at work. Listening to our conversations with our friends. I think if we realized that He is always nearby then we would have a different way of talking.

So Jesus eventually comes alongside these guys and says, “what are you guys talking about? Why are you so sad?” And they stopped dead in their tracks and looked at Him in despair, “Are you the only person visiting Jerusalem who hasn’t heard of what has happened?” And Jesus said, “What things?”

Now understand something, Jesus asks these leading questions, not to be duplicitous, but to get them to declare their theology, and then having heard it, he will use that as a means to teach them.

So they answer Him saying; “The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened. But also some women among us amazed us. When they were at the tomb early in the morning, and did not find His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said; but Him they did not see.”

So the key to their bad theology is this; they knew Jesus was a great prophet, but they had hoped He was the Messiah. However, the crucifixion of Christ had destroyed that hope, because their theology called for a living, physical king to take the throne and overturn their enemies. They were good on the glory part of their theology. But they had no understanding of the suffering part of the Messiah. They hadn’t been taught that in synagogue.

I find that analogous with a lot of Christian theology today. The television evangelists are really good on the glory part. They are all about having your best life now. They are really good on the parts about freedom in Christ, and blessings in Christ. But they have failed to comprehend the suffering parts. The forsaking of the world. The crucifixion of the flesh. The denial of the lusts and passions of the flesh so that we might live a God pleasing life. That part is not being preached today. They fail to understand the same thing these two on the road to Emmaus failed to understand; that the path to glory is on the road to suffering. The Messiah’s suffering was to come before His glorification. And Jesus said the disciple is not above His master, ladies and gentlemen. We must join the fellowship of His suffering in the present world if we expect to be glorified with Him in the next. Paul said in Rom. 8:17 that we are the children of God and fellow heirs with Christ “if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”

So Jesus uses their bad theology as a jumping off place to preach a sermon. I love it. I also like what it says about how He preached a sermon. I like how the KJV says He expounded the scriptures to them. I do expository preaching here not because I can’t think of a good topical message. But because I think the power is in the word of God, and so we expound it, explain it to bring out the truth that is inherent in the word. You know, I can prove almost anything by finding a verse somewhere that seems to say something confirming what I am trying to assert. But expositional preaching is taking in consideration the full counsel of the word, from Genesis to Revelation as you explain a passage of scripture in context. The parameters of the context both in the immediate passage and then to all of scripture helps us to stay centered on the truth.

Jesus says in vs. 24, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

What scriptures is Jesus referring to? Well, the NT scriptures have not been written yet. So Jesus is preaching NT theology from OT scriptures. I want to be sure you get that today. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. The OT is still the inspired, eternal word of God. Jesus said He didn’t come to annul the law, but to fulfill it. So Jesus started with Moses, that means He started with Genesis and worked through the Pentateuch, which was called the Law, then through the Psalms, and through the minor prophets, showing them how they taught that the Messiah must suffer before He enters His glory.

Now we don’t have His message recorded for us here, but we do have His source material. We have the OT scriptures and we know what they say about Christ’s suffering. So we might surmise that the scriptures that the Lord taught from may have been such as these; He may have started with the promise to Eve in Genesis 3:15 that He would be the bruised seed which would crush the head of the serpent; He might have reminded them of the promise to Abraham in Genesis 22 that God would provide the lamb for the offering; I’m sure He pointed out that He was the Passover Lamb that was prescribed to deliver them from death in Exodus 12; that He was the scapegoat of Leviticus 16 that was offered for the atonement of the people; that He was the brazen serpent that was lifted up on a standard in Numbers 21; that He was the smitten rock in the wilderness from which came forth living waters according to Numbers 20; He was the suffering servant in Isaiah 50 that gave His back to those who strike Him and His beard to those who would pluck it; He was the One who bore our griefs in Isaiah 53, who was crushed for our iniquities, and the chastisement for our sins was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed; He was the Soul not abandoned to Sheol in Psalms 16; that He was the reproach of men in Psalm 22 whose bones are all pulled out of joint; that He was the One betrayed by His friend in Psalm 55; He was the weeping prophet of Jeremiah; He was the pierced son of David in Zechariah 12; and He was the smitten Shepherd in Zechariah 13. All of these and perhaps so many more would have been the subject of His message concerning His suffering.

Well, I don’t know how long of a message that was, but it probably took a while. Long enough that they were at the village where they were staying. And Jesus acted as if He was going to go on further. But they implored Him to stay with them. Once again, Jesus isn’t trying to deceive them. If they had not asked Him to stay with them then He would have gone on further. And that is instructive for us as well. Jesus is not going to force Himself on you. His desire is that you desire Him. The reason He created us was not to produce a bunch of robots who have to choose only one way or respond in only one way. He designed us for love, for a relationship, for communion, for fellowship. That is what He desires; a people who will choose to obey Him because they love Him and not because they have no choice.

When they listened to His words they said that their hearts burned with them. That is the way love feels. I ask you folks here today; does your heart burn at the reading of God’s word? Is that what the preaching of God’s word produces in you? It should if you are a true child of God. If you love God you will love His word. If you were separated from your wife or husband or girlfriend or boyfriend, would you find yourself bored with the reading of their letters? Or would your heart burn within you as you read their words? If you love them, you will love to read their words. It won’t be a chore. It’s an act of love.

And so that brings us to the last lesson to be learned on the road to Emmaus. The word of God brings us into communion with God. Jesus turned aside to go in with them and have dinner with them. And Luke says that “when He had reclined at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began giving it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight.”

What is the significance of all of that? Why did Jesus vanish as soon as they recognized Him? I think it was because He was continuing to teach them the principle of the sufficiency of scripture. By the word of Christ their souls were fed. By the word of God their hearts were warmed. By the word of God their doubts were erased. By the word of God their doctrine was established. By the word of God their faith was strengthened. By the word of God they were given hope. By the word of God they saw God.

I hear people today say that if only they could see God then they would believe in Him. But that is not how God has designed it. He says the just shall live by faith. Heb. 11:1 says “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” But it’s not as though God has asked us for blind faith. He has revealed Himself in His word. I believe that was what Jesus was teaching that day. He expounded the scriptures to teach them about Himself. And when they saw Him as the Word of God, in the word of God, then they truly saw God.

Listen, the picture presented here is Christ breaking the bread and blessing it and passing it to His disciples. It’s a picture of communion, which means fellowship. We can have fellowship with God through His word. We don’t need to seek extra biblical visions or experiences to have fellowship and communion with God. We find fellowship with God in communion with His word. And when these men saw Jesus in the word, then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him as sitting across from them. And when their eyes were opened, He vanished from their sight. They didn’t need to see Him anymore. Like Jesus told Thomas, “how much more blessed are those who don’t see Me and yet believe in Me.”

Listen, these men took advantage of the opportunity presented by the visitation of the Word. They begged Jesus to stay with them so that they could hear more of what He was teaching them. They had a hunger for truth. But they could have let Him leave when He made as if He was going to go further. There are times when we may come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and though we recognize it, we may not always act upon it. We may allow the moment to pass, and in so doing, we have let go an important opportunity to know Christ more fully. These men seized the opportunity of Christ’s availability, and they received a blessing. Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.” If the Lord is speaking to you today, don’t let the opportunity pass to respond to Him. You may not get that chance again. Today is the acceptable day of salvation.   The word of the Lord has been preached. The truth of the gospel has been revealed through the word of God. How will you respond?

Jesus said in Rev. 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” You want to have communion with God, fellowship with the Son? Then open the door and invite Him in. He will not force His way in. But know this, that He loves you so much that He gave His only begotten Son that if you believe in Him, you will not perish but have eternal life. He came so that you might know the truth and that the truth shall make you free. The choice is yours. The Lord has come near to you today. I hope you will invite Him to stay with you.

As we look at this familiar passage today which deals with the crucifixion of Jesus, there is a temptation for a preacher to try to present something which is very familiar in a fresh way. And so often the way that is done is to dramatize the story by adding all sorts of details concerning the method of crucifixion, or the torture of crucifixion, or other details that might make the story more interesting.

But the gospel writers do not expend much effort attempting to dramatize the physical act of the crucifixion. Luke just states it as simply as possible in vs.33, saying “there they crucified Him.” No gory details of how that was accomplished, or how painful or horrific crucifixion was. And so I think it’s appropriate for us today to be mindful of the way the writer presents this event, so as not to unnecessarily dramatize it. Not that we want to minimize the pain and suffering of the cross, but to see first and foremost the purpose of the cross. To focus too much on the mechanics of the torture of the cross is to possibly miss the doctrine of the cross and that would be the greater tragedy.

So our goal today is not to give a dramatic description of the crucifixion, but the doctrine of the crucifixion. 1 Peter 3:18 states simply the doctrine of the crucifixion, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God.”

Now in this passage today we will just consider a portion of the crucifixion, and in so doing we will discover first what qualifies Jesus to bring men to God, then man’s rejection of that qualification, and finally the salvation of one man who accepted Christ. And the key component of this salvation is the principle that Christ is King. Christ is King. I think that is what Luke is presenting here. The whole chapter up to this point has been predicated on the charge his accusers made about Him before Pilate. Their charge in vs. 2 was that He claimed to be a king, and that was deserving of death.

Notice that the chief priests accuse Him of being Christ, a King. They state it in such a way as to make the two synonymous. Christ is the Greek word which was translated from the title Messiah. Christos means Anointed One, the Messiah, the Son of God. He was anointed to be the Ruler who would sit on the throne of David, who would rule the world with a rod of iron. The chief priests and scribes would have been very familiar with the Messianic prophecy found in Isaiah 9:6, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.” So there was a correct understanding on the part of the Jews concerning the Messiah that He would also be a King, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

So that is the primary charge which the Jews made concerning Jesus, which they used to have Him put to death. And since that is the charge, Pilate tries Jesus on those grounds. In vs. 3, Pilate asked Him, saying, “Are You the King of the Jews?” And He answered him and said, “It is as you say.” And yet Pilate finds no guilt in Him. He sees no evidence for His kingdom. He is looking at the physical evidence of a kingdom or a kingship and he doesn’t see it. And even Jesus Himself tells Pilate in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”

So the central issue then is the kingship, or lordship of Jesus. Was He the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, the anointed One who would set up His kingdom on earth? That is the central issue of that day, and it is the central issue of the ages. There is no disputing the fact that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died 2000 years ago. But there is much dispute as to the nature of this man. Was He in fact God incarnate, God in the flesh, or was He just a man? Was He just a kind man, perhaps a bit deluded, but a good teacher, a Gandhi like figure that taught peace through passivity? Or was He the Messiah, the anointed King of God in human form? And if He was indeed the King of Kings, as He claimed, then what should be our response to Him?

There can be but two possible responses; either reject Him as King, or worship Him as King. And in this passage we see those two responses depicted. First let’s look at several examples which Luke presents of the King rejected. We have already seen how Pilate acquiesced to the voices calling for Jesus to be crucified. We heard him ask if Jesus was indeed a King, and we heard Jesus tell him that it was so. And yet, ultimately Pilate rejects Jesus as King. He probably knew nothing of Jesus as Messiah, he cared nothing for Jewish religion. But he understood what it meant to be a king. It was what he desired for himself, it was his aspiration. And there was no way that he would bow to a Jewish prophet who claimed to be a king. That would mean he would have to relinquish his throne and bow to Jesus, to serve Him. And there was no way that Pilate would do that. So he agreed to crucify Jesus as the chief priests and the people demanded. He did what so many politicians do, he acquiesced to popular demand in order to preserve his position of power.

And in vs. 38 we read Pilate’s proclamation which he had written for the soldiers to place upon the head of the cross. “Now there was also an inscription above Him, ‘THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’” The chief priests had argued with Pilate, saying don’t write that this is the King of the Jews, but write that he said he was the King of the Jews. But Pilate refused to change it, saying, what I have written, I have written. And so by his own words he will be judged. He proclaimed that Jesus was the King of the Jews, and yet he rejected Him and had Him crucified.

So he consented to crucify Jesus. He handed him over to the Roman soldiers who led Him away to Golgotha, which means the Place of the Skull. And there they crucified Him, along with two criminals, one on either side. Little could they know that this fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53:12, which says that He was numbered with the transgressors.

The second group then that we see who reject Jesus was the soldiers. As they throw Jesus’ lacerated body onto the cross and pound the nails in His hands and feet, Jesus prays aloud, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Oh, the soldiers knew what they were doing all right. They had undoubtedly done this sort of work many times before. But what they could not understand was that they were pounding nails into the very Son of God. They thought it was some sort of joke. Pilate had written this sign to put on His cross announcing that Jesus was King of the Jews, and they began to make fun of Jesus because of it.

Vs. 36 “The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up to Him, offering Him sour wine, and saying, ‘If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!’” But obviously, this demand for Jesus to save Himself as evidence of His Kingship, or His Messiahship, shows that even these soldiers understood that there was something more implied in His Kingship than mere political power. They understood that it implied a supernatural power. Kings didn’t have power of immortality, but gods did. So if you were really God, they said, then save yourself from death. That is what they demanded. Even these pagan soldiers understood the connection between God and King that was implicit in His title. In fact, this theme is common to all those that reject Christ that day, in their minds the criteria for the Messiah was that He had to save Himself. And that is what they could not understand. That is why Jesus said that they did not know what they were doing. None of them understood that Christ came to die on the cross. It was His mission. Not to save Himself, but to die for them so that they might be saved.

This prayer for their forgiveness exemplified a love for His enemies that we are also told to show for those that hate us. To forgive those that hurt us, even as Christ forgave those that were crucifying Him. He recognized that they were lost, and they were the ones that He had come to save. As Jesus said in Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” These soldiers for the most part rejected Him as King, the reviled Him and mocked Him, though there is one that is identified in vs. 47, the centurion, whom we will look at next time who did eventually respond to that prayer and praised God after witnessing Jesus on the cross. We should learn from Jesus’ example that how we respond to people’s attacks on us can bring glory to God in spite of how painful it may seem to us in the meantime.

Luke says that these soldiers cast lots for His clothing. They saw the death of Christ as a means of gaining material things, and yet they missed completely the inestimable value of what Christ was accomplishing in His death. They gambled for His clothes, while He purchased for them a robe of righteousness with His blood. That act was prophesied in Psalm 22, by the way, as were many of the events of the crucifixion.

The other category of Christ rejecters that day was the crowd mentioned in vs. 35, “And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.’ Once again you see the demand for Christ to validate His kingship by saving Himself. They could not understand the cross. It didn’t fit into their idea of what the Messiah/King was supposed to do. And the world today doesn’t appreciate the need for the cross either. 1Cor. 1:18 says, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

The world isn’t really interested in a cross centered gospel. They don’t want to hear that they are sinners and God has poured out His wrath against sin by putting His Son on the cross. But they do want a gospel of deliverance. The world’s response to the offer of a Messiah is to say,   “get me out of this mess and then I will believe in You.” Christ is only beneficial to those in a dilemma. Those in a crisis. Don’t preach the message of the cross, instead preach the message of the crisis. That will sell. But don’t preach take up your cross and follow Me. That isn’t a popular message.

There was one other category of those that rejected Christ that day, and that was the two thieves on the cross on either side of Jesus. Even they were hurling abuse at Him. The other gospels tell us that initially they both began to pick up on the crowd and soldier’s rejection and mock Jesus. But Luke is the only gospel writer to show that there begins to be a distinction between the two criminals behavior. And so Luke describes one criminal as saying in vs. 39, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!”  He too shows a certain understanding of theology. He knows Jesus claimed to be the Christ. He knows that involves some sort of salvation. But he is obviously only interested in physical salvation from his suffering. He is mocking Jesus. And yet by his own words he too condemns himself. He admits Jesus is the Christ and that Jesus came to save, and yet he is only interested in physical salvation.

I’m afraid that a lot of people fall into this category. They are not sorry for their sins. They have no interest in repentance. They refuse to bow to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But they think that they have a certain understanding of theology. I’m often amazed at how unsaved people are quick to point out what errors there are in the Bible or in the church. They dismiss the need for their salvation by what they perceive to be the hypocrisy of others. And yet they are guilty of the very thing that they accuse Christians of. They do not do what they believe is the right thing to do. But in finding fault in another they somehow think that they can excuse themselves. But the Bible tells us that every man will give an account to God for the things that he did himself. And as James tells us in James 4:17 “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” We are all guilty of sin. Romans 3:10 says, “There is none righteous, no not one.” None of us have an excuse.

And that leads us to the last character that we will look at this morning, and the only one of this group for whom the crucifixion was efficacious. That would be the other thief that was hanging on a cross on the opposite side of Jesus. Though this man was a guilty criminal, though his sins so serious that he was punished with crucifixion, and though he too initially mocked Jesus, yet something has happened in his time on the cross to change his heart. And that change is apparent in his response to the other criminal’s mocking challenge to Jesus.

Starting in vs. 40 we read, “But the other answered, and rebuking him said, ‘Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he was saying, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!’”   And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” This dying criminal was saved in the last hour by faith in Christ Jesus. Everyone else said Jesus if you are the Christ save yourself. This man called out for Jesus to save him, and Jesus said that today he would be with Him in Paradise. Jesus doesn’t answer all the taunts of the crowd and the priests and the soldiers, but he answers the call of the penitent sinner.

And so I would like to look at this sinner and his response to Jesus as an illustration of what encompasses saving faith. At first glance we might look at the brief response of this man and wonder how it qualifies this man for salvation. But in spite of his economy of words Luke provides us with a full description of the doctrine of salvation if we look closely.

First of all, as he hangs on the cross, a witness to the crucifixion of the Messiah, he becomes very aware of God and the fear of God. He said to the other thief, “Do you not even fear God?” Listen, the first evidence that God is doing the work of conversion in a person’s life is a realization of the fear of God. I’m afraid the gospel of God is done a great disservice and possibly many well intentioned people are not saved because we substitute teaching the fear of God with the love of God. We are afraid that teaching the fear of God will scare people away and hope that teaching the love of God will seduce them to salvation. But I believe the Bible teaches both the fear of God and the love of God. However, 3 times, in Psalm 111:10, in Prov. 9:10 and in Prov. 1:7, the scriptures say that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

In Romans 3 which I quoted from while ago in vs. 10 it states that there is no one righteous, not even one, and then that section ends in vs. 18 with a culminating statement; “there is no fear of God before their eyes.” We sin because it is our nature to sin, but we continue in our sin, and progress in our sin, and harden our hearts toward God because we don’t fear God. We don’t fear judgment. We don’t fear the righteousness and holiness of God. We don’t care that our sin is an affront to a holy, righteous God and that He cannot abide sin.

But this thief on the cross, how exactly he came about it I don’t know, feared God. Maybe as the reality of his impending death sank in, he began to remember the scriptures his mother read to him as a boy. Maybe he remembered lessons he had been taught about hell and the judgment to come. But the beginning of wisdom for this man is the fear of God. He may not have thought much about God when he was embarking on a life of crime. He thought he could push such thoughts out of his mind. But now he is dying, and he realizes that he is going to have to face God at the judgment. And it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. So he comes to fear God.

The second essential element of his salvation came in the realization of his sinfulness. A proper fear of God usually results in a proper sense of one’s guilt. Verse 41 “And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” He says I know I’m a lawbreaker. It’s a true assessment of his condition. He’s guilty, he’s aware of his sinfulness, he’s in a sense saying I am a sinner. I deserve to die. I am receiving what I deserve for my deeds. This is the attitude of true repentance.

You know, only when you agree with the law of God that you deserve to die for your sins are you willing to die TO your sins. Repentance is simply dying to your sins. Crucifying the flesh and it’s sinful passions. Gal. 5:24 “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Those who continue in their sins show a disregard for the fear of God and they prove they have not truly repented of their sins.

The third essential element of his salvation that is evidenced in his confession that he believed in the righteousness of Christ.   Jesus was the spotless lamb of God that came to take away the sins of the earth. He was tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin. His sinlessness was evidence that He was the anointed Son of God. If He wasn’t without sin, then He could not atone for sin. Jesus said in John 8:46 “Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me?” His sinlessness was a greater witness to His divinity than His miracles. 2Cor. 5:11 says, “God made Jesus who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Salvation is only possible because Jesus was righteous, and because He was righteous, therefore Jesus was God.

When we talk about salvation we talk about the necessity for repentance and faith. And we see in this dying thief both of these attributes; repentance under the fear of divine wrath and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is one final expression of that saving faith that I am so glad that Luke incorporates for us here in this passage.   And that is the thief shows saving submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This principle is what ties all this passage together. As I have been saying, every skeptic, every scoffer, from Pilate, to the priests, to the soldiers and even the other thief on the cross all scoff and reject the Kingship of Christ. It’s been the constant theme of their mocking of Him. But this dying thief on the cross understands that Jesus is King. He understands that if Jesus is the Christ, then He must be King.

Look at what he says in vs. 42, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” You can’t have a kingdom unless you are a king. And so this dying thief sees what all these others could not see; that Jesus was the Christ, the King. The only way that happened was Jesus gave him eyes to see and a heart to understand.

I’m afraid that far too often the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a message that is lost in today’s modern version of Christianity; where Jesus died on the cross to deliver us from some sort of personal mediocrity, or some sort of crisis, so that we can have a more successful, happy life here on earth. I believe Luke includes this conversion to show us that the doctrine of Lordship is not an ancillary doctrine that can be added or ignored after conversion, but it is a necessary and vital part of salvation. We must be willing to acknowledge who Jesus is and then be willing to surrender our lives and will to Him to be used for His glory and for His kingdom.

If the other principles such as a proper fear of God, and true repentance, and a right understanding of the righteousness and holiness of Christ are in full effect, then the doctrine of the Lordship of Christ is a non issue. It naturally follows those things. It is a product of repentance and faith. And this man showed that he had the right kind of theology, producing saving faith.

Hey, and get this. He even has an understanding of the resurrection as well. Now that’s really incredible, isn’t it. You say, how do you know that? Well, he would have known that no one survived crucifixion, so he had to have believed that Jesus would die and then rise again and bring about his kingdom. Furthermore, I think you could even argue that he had an understanding that it was a spiritual kingdom.

And Jesus responds to this man’s faith with an affirmation and encouragement which is the hope that he would be with Christ in Paradise. Vs. 43, “And [Jesus] said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Now I would love to run down a rabbit trail with this statement and give you my version of eschatology, but I will leave that for another day. However, understand this; Paradise is wherever Jesus is. He says you will be with Me….in Paradise. Wherever Paradise is, Jesus is. It literally means the Garden of the Lord. It doesn’t mean the Garden of Eden, I think it will be better than that. But it does mean that there is no sin there. And as in the Garden of Eden man walked with God and talked with God so we that are saved as this man was saved will be with God in Paradise, in the presence of God, communing with God.

And finally, one last thing. Jesus said, “Today.” There is no separation from the love of God. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Rom. 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul said in 2 Cor. 5:8 that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. It’s instantaneous. Listen, Jesus and the thief that day both died in the flesh, their bodies were placed in the ground, but they were alive in the Spirit. 1Pet. 3:18 “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.”

Listen, for those who repent and have faith as this thief on the cross did, Jesus promised in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this? Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Do you repent and turn from your sins and in faith in Christ confess Him as your Lord and King? If you do this, you will live. You will never die. Christ came to die for you so that you might be saved. I pray that you won’t reject Him, but confess Him as your Lord and Savior.

The old hymn writer puts it well; “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day; and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.”

At the beginning of the hippie movement in 1965, a rock and roll band by the name of the Who wrote a song called, “My Generation” that helped define the age. If you were part of that generation, then you knew at the time who the band was talking about. It meant anyone younger than the age of thirty. One of the most famous lines of the song was, “I hope I die before I get old.” I guess thirty was considered old at that time. But I doubt the band members feel the same way today.

But even though they had a sense of who comprised their generation, the lines became blurred as the hippies grew up and the movement expanded. Today that generation is still around, having lived twice as long as they said they wanted to live. The point being, that the idea of a generation is kind of an indeterminate designation. Though it is widely accepted that a generation is about 40 years, no one can say for sure when a generation begins and when it ends. There are still people living today, for instance, who were part of the generation that lived through WW2.

The point that I’m trying to make is that when Jesus uses the phrase “this generation” in vs. 32, we’re not really sure exactly what He means. Because generation can mean people living during a general time period or it can mean people who are closely related in age. My view, and one that I think is widely shared among Biblical scholars is that generation in this passage refers not to people closely related in age, but related by an age. People living in a certain age, or an epoch, a time.

And that principle is born out by the question of the disciples which prompted this whole discourse. It’s found in Matthew’s version, chapter 24, vs.3, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” As I pointed out last week when we looked at this, I think the key to understanding this passage is that there are three ages presented in the Bible. There is the ancient age, from creation to the flood. That age lasted 2000 years and came to an end with a world wide flood which destroyed all life on earth except for those saved on the ark. And then there was a second age, which was the Jewish age, from Abraham to the Apostles. That age lasted for 2000 years as well and came to an end with the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem and Israel. Millions of Jews were massacred and the remainder dispersed, chased from one country to another, living without a homeland. And the third age mentioned in chapter 21vs. 24 is the age of the Gentiles. We are living in the age of the Gentiles. This age has lasted 2000 years as well. It began with the trampling underfoot of Jerusalem by the Gentiles in 70AD and I believe it’s nearing the end as signaled by the Jews retaking Jerusalem in 1967 and living once again in the nation of Israel. I believe that 6000 years of human history is fast approaching it’s climax, which is going to end with the destruction of the earth. 2Pet. 3:7 “But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

Now with that understanding it is possible to interpret this passage in a sort of sytematic way. But let me say as a caveat, that the phrase “this generation” is the source of a great deal of debate in theological circles. It has put at war various groups from differing camps within the eschatological debate that has been going on for almost a hundred years. And I don’t intend to get involved in that war this morning. I think it is impossible to be that dogmatic about a passage which obviously was intended to be somewhat obscure. So rather than focus on different viewpoints of end time theology, I would like to focus our attention on the point of it all. What was Jesus trying to say? What message was He trying to convey during these last hours with His disciples?   I think that is what is important, and not trying to figure out the day or the hour of our Lord’s return, which Jesus says is not our privilege to know. In the parallel account in Mark 13:32 Jesus adds, “But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”

So what is the main point that Jesus is trying to make? I believe that the context of this message, known as the Olivet Discourse, is a message concerning the end of the ages. I believe that it is clear that Jesus is trying to warn His disciples about the impending judgment of Israel, and how they are to live in the last days. They were living in the last days before the destruction of the temple, the last days of Israel as a nation, and the last days before there would be a great massacre and persecution of the Jews. It happened within their generation. It happened just as Jesus predicted within the next 40 years.

And I believe Jesus message was intended as a warning for future generations as well. We are living in the last days of the age of the Gentiles. We are living in the last hours before the great tribulation, and in the last days before the judgment of God is poured out upon the earth. So I believe that the message that Jesus gives here is a message which I have titled, “How to live in the last days.”

The way that I have decided to present this last section is to identify some key phrases or thoughts that are strung through these verses to give us something to hang onto as we consider how we are to live in the last days. And here is what I have extracted from this passage as to how we are to live in the last days; we need to straighten up, lift up, look up, keep our guard up, sober up, lighten up, wise up, pray up, and listen up.

Now let’s look briefly at each of these. The first is straighten up. Jesus said in vs. 28, “But when these things begin to take place, straighten up…” What things is Jesus talking about? Well, it’s obvious that He’s talking about the persecution, the distressing signs in the heavens, the fear from natural catastrophes that will take place and so forth. It stands to reason that in order to straighten up you must first have been bent over or knocked down.

So although in these last days we may get knocked down, we don’t stay down. I like how Paul talks about it in 2Cor. 4:7-11 “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” We can straighten up in the midst of tribulations or persecutions or hardships because we know that we have a higher calling, that there is a greater purpose to our suffering, so that even in the midst of all of these trials we are manifesting Jesus Christ to the world. That knowledge should make you straighten up. Paul said in Phil. 3:10-11 “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” So straighten up.

Secondly, Jesus says when these things begin to take place, lift up your heads. Listen, when the world starts getting you down, you have to take your eyes off of the world. Take your eyes off your circumstances and lift up your eyes to heaven. Psalm 121 says, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.”

And I’m going to stretch that phrase to include lifting up one another. Gal. 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” Listen, that is the purpose of the church, to bear one another’s burdens. To help hold each other up. To come to the aid of those that are hurting, or wounded. Lift up one another. Encourage the weak, the faint hearted.

Thirdly, look up. Vs. 31 says, “So you also, when you see these things happening, recognize that the kingdom of God is near.” Jesus gave an illustration to help the disciples understand what He meant. He said when you see a fig tree starting to bud then you know that summer is near. I don’t know about you, but I love summer. Especially when I was a kid, but I feel like the older I get the more I like it as well. I just can’t stand winters anymore. So every year, I used to eagerly watch for the trees to start to bud. Because once I saw that happen, I knew that summer was near.

That’s what Jesus is talking about. There is no mystical message about fig trees here. It’s just when you see these things happening, be joyful. Look up! Jesus is coming back soon! It’s almost time for the consummation of the Kingdom of God. You know what He’s talking about? He said in vs. 27 that the Son of Man will come in the clouds with power and great glory. What He is saying is “Look up!” “I’m coming back soon.” Looking up means to live life with the expectancy of Jesus’ imminent return.

Jesus could come back today. Folks, how differently would we live if we had a real expectation that Jesus could come back today? Maybe early tomorrow morning. What would you do differently if you really believed that? I think one of the most poignant things that I have read was some transcripts of telephone calls from victims of the Twin Towers bombing. As the buildings were going up in flames, as people were dying all around them and they knew death for them was imminent, those people made phone calls to their loved ones. They wanted to take those last minutes to reach out to their families. I think if we lived with the expectation of Christ returning in the clouds in judgment and power and glory with all His angels, I think we would get serious about reaching some of our loved ones with the gospel. I think we would make some phone calls. I think we would visit some people. I hope so. I hope that when He comes He would find us about the business of the Kingdom of God.

Fourthly, how do you live in the last days? Straighten up, lift up, look up, and fourthly, keep your guard up. Jesus says in vs. 34, “Be on your guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth.” We need to live in these last days on guard against the schemes of the devil. We need to guard our hearts and minds against temptation. Peter said in 1Pet. 5:8 “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Listen, make no mistake. You are living in enemy territory. The devil is your mortal enemy. He wants to distract you, capture you, trap you in some sin, and ultimately to destroy you. So be on guard. Be vigilant. Keep close watch over your souls.

Fifthly, sober up. “Be on your guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness…” Listen, I’m not going to try to tell you that you can’t have a beer or a drink and be a Christian. But I am going to tell you this: the Bible makes it clear that we are to be sober. We are living in the last days. We are living in a critical time. Our enemy is fighting harder than ever, knowing that his days are short. And so God tells us 8 times in the NT to be sober. That means circumspect, calm, collected, using sound judgment at all times. We already saw that we are to be on guard. Do you think soldiers on guard should drink? Obviously not.

Peter said in 1Pet. 4:3 “For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries.” Dissipation, by the way, means wasting your resources, squandering money, talents or resources by living for pleasure. Dissipation is wasting the grace of God by living for pleasure. That is not why Jesus bought us with His blood. Our freedom is not for licentiousness. We need to sober up.

Sixthly, we need to lighten up. “Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life…” The worries of life. I’ve said it before many times, some things aren’t necessarily sins in and of themselves, but they are weights which hinder us and slow us down. Heb. 12:1 says, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”   What weights are keeping you from running the race to the fullest? What weight is holding you back from really living fully for the Lord in these last days? It may not be a sin in and of itself, but if it’s keeping you from living out God’s purpose in your life then you need to get rid of it. Lay it aside. You’re running a race. You’re almost at the finish line, and some of you are trying to run with a lot of baggage that is slowing you down.

Jesus gave the familiar parable of the soils in Luke 8:14. He said, “The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity.” Lighten up, let go of the worries, riches and pleasures of the world so that you might bring forth fruit.

Seventh, we need to wise up. “Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth.” Did you ever set a trap? I trapped once or twice when I was a boy. My dad always warned me to be careful because I could lose a finger setting the trap. The spring was so powerful and the jaws of the trap slammed shut so fast that it was very dangerous.

Jesus likens the last day, the day of judgment coming like the jaws of a steel trap, slamming shut the door before you can react. Jesus said that His coming will be like the lightning flashing in the evening sky, lighting up the sky from one end to the other in an instant, in a blinding flash. Jesus said in Matthew 24 that He is coming at an hour that you do not expect. Peter said He is coming like a thief. It won’t be announced. Jesus talked about the sudden destruction that is coming. The trap is that those people who have succumbed to the allure of this world, to dissipation and drunkenness and drugs and debauchery will suddenly find themselves mourning at the sudden appearance of Christ in glory. Wise up. Don’t be caught outside the door.

Eighth, how do you live in the last days? Pray up. Vs. 36, “But keep on the alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Listen, you won’t be able to stand in that day if you are not leaning on the strength that God supplies. We need to be prayed up if we expect to be able to stand up in the last days. Ephesians 6 is the chapter which describes the armor of God. And in all the armor we have only two pieces of equipment that are offensive, that are weapons. One is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And the second is prayer.

Eph. 6:18 says, “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.” To live in these last days we need to pray all the times in the Spirit. We need to be praying for one another all the time. We need to pray for our children all the time. We need to pray for our wives or husbands all the time. Paul said in the next verse to especially pray for him that he would be given the words to say. We need to pray for our pastor all the time.

Listen, I don’t dare think that I am holier or more righteous than any of you simply because I am a pastor. I’m just like you are. I bleed, I get sick, I get disappointed, I get tired, I even get backslidden sometimes. But one thing I think I do have that perhaps you don’t have. And that is I am the subject to a special strategy of Satan due to my position to destroy me, to destroy my family, to destroy my testimony, to tempt me to be unfaithful to the gospel. I know my weaknesses, and I know how hard Satan is trying to defeat me. Because if he can cut off the head, he can kill the body. I covet your prayers. We need to pray up.

Finally, number 9, we need to listen up. Listen up. Vs. 37 “Now during the day He was teaching in the temple, but at evening He would go out and spend the night on the mount that is called Olivet. And all the people would get up early in the morning to come to Him in the temple to listen to Him.” You want to stand firm in the last days? Then attend to the teaching of God’s word. Don’t neglect coming to church. Don’t neglect coming to Bible study. The word of God is truth. The word of God is life. The word of God is eternal. Jesus said in vs. 33, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” The word of God is our strength. The word of God is our comfort. The word of God is sufficient for every need. 2Tim. 3:16-17 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” You could translate it better, “so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Listen, I am all for private devotions. I think everyone should have a quiet time and study the word of God on their own. But I want to impress on you the necessity of corporate worship. But it’s not just a time to get together and listen to a speech and maybe hear some songs. But God has called preachers to teach the word, to rebuke, to convict, to encourage in ways that don’t always come out of your personal Bible study. When we study our Bibles we tend to gloss over some areas and dwell on others that happen to appeal to our interests at the moment. But a God called preacher is going to preach the word of God in such a way that will exhort you to action, that will convict you of sin, and build up the weaker elements of the body.

Paul exhorted a young preacher by the name of Timothy to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” I’m afraid that time has come. It is the last days, and such a great deception has occurred that if possible even the very elect would be deceived. False prophets have risen. Church’s lamps have gone out. Christian’s love has grown cold. And people have turned away from the truth and turned aside to teachers that tickle their ears with stories and jokes and nice sounding platitudes.

If you are going to live in these last days for the Lord, then you need to come together with the body of Christ and strengthen one another, fellowship with one another, and submit to the preaching of the truth of God’s word from a pastor who has been appointed and annointed to preach the gospel.

Well, there you have it. We are living in the last days. Christ is coming back soon. It could be today. Maybe tomorrow morning. Let’s live like it’s our last day on earth. Let’s be ready when Jesus appears like lightning in the clouds, with all the angels of God with Him. On that day, the whole earth will be shaken, and every eye will see Him, and all who have not trusted in Him will mourn. Let us be ready. Let’s pray.