One Day

Exeter Temple Message notes: Sunday 31^st May 2015

Bible Reading: Acts 3:1-4:4

This story of Peter and John gives us snapshot of one day in the life of the early church.  It involved responding to need, a healing miracle, preaching the gospel and getting arrested.

1. Life in the Spirit means any day can be a day for a miracle                     

 The day started out as routine as Peter and John were on the way to prayers at the Temple and the lame man was begging as usual. But when Peter and John and the lame man met, the disciples abandoned the prayer meeting and the lame man gave up begging forever!                             

What turned this routine day into a day of miracles?                                          

It was the fact that the disciples had begun living a life in the Spirit and life in the Spirit means any day can be a day of miracles.  The lame man had camped at the Temple gates and nothing changed year in year out. There seemed to be no power in the religion of the temple but it was found in Peter and in John.  

One of the recognizable results of being filled with the Spirit is inward assurance.  The assurance of the presence of Christ and the assurance of our position in Christ mean we can act with authority. 

The secret of good street charity collecting is to achieve eye contact with passers-by but in this story it is not the man who is asking for charity that is seeking eye contact.  It is Peter, the passer by who says to the man, “Look at us!”  We know that Peter had no money so his invitation for the man to turn his attention towards himself and John is either mean or this voluntary contact with the man was an act of great confidence that despite his having nothing material to give Peter was confident that he and John could help him.  “Look at us”, invites the man to hope in them for something.

Jesus had told the disciples that “All power authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:18-19)

Likewise if we are filled with the Spirit and know the presence of Jesus and our position in him then we too need to recognize that we have the authority to advance God’s Kingdom.  Jesus’ authority is available to His church to complete the mission that He sent us on!   

2. Life in the Spirit means any day can be a day we are called upon to share our faith                                                                                                           

Peter and John did not plan the evangelism they engaged in that day but when an opportunity arose to share their faith they took it. 

Once again Peter is put in the position of explaining something that was already happening to a crowd that had come to see what was going on.  The problem in the church today is that we ask a crowd to come so that something will happen, whilst if something powerful and life-changing was happening among us, we would have no trouble getting a crowd. 

What Peter needed to do was to explain a few things. 

-          Who had healed the man:  Jesus 

-          Who Jesus was

-          What the response to Jesus should be

Peter acknowledged that what happened to the man and their own actions can only be explained by referring to Jesus.

Does it take Jesus to explain the reason we are the kind of people we are? We often come across people who are insecure, or aggressive or ambitious and we try to explain their attitudes and behaviour.  We say that they are like that because of nature, because they belong to this or that family. Or we might say that they behave a certain way because of an event or a circumstance which the person is attempting to compensate for.   All this may be true but a life of holiness is explained by one thing. Jesus. 

These days however it is not enough just to mention the name of Jesus because people’s ideas of who Jesus is and what is like are all over the place.  They need to be educated, told the truth about him, just as the people in Jerusalem did.  Some of the hundreds of people there that day may not have heard of him at all, others will have only heard that Jesus was a revolutionary or a failed travelling preacher who taught blasphemy.   With many people understanding of Jesus only fleetingly grasped maybe from brief references on TV people need help to understand who he is.   They also need to know what to do with the knowledge.  They may have been attracted by the activity of Jesus, given attention to his person but that is not enough there comes a point where there needs to be an acknowledgement of his claims upon their lives.                                              

This all may happen in a day, more often it happens over time.  But we mustn’t give up too soon. 

3. Life in the Spirit means any day can be a day we meet opposition

When God moves there is always opposition. The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came and confronted Peter and John about what they were doing and by the end of the day they two disciples were in jail.

It wasn’t the miracle that disturbed these religious leaders. They were "greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead" (4:2).  It was giving Jesus the credit that rankled with the religious authorities in Jerusalem.  You can work miracles all day long, but don’t associate the miracles with life that is in Jesus. Don’t  tell people that the miracle is proof that Jesus is alive and able to forgive sins and set people free.

In the Western world, Christians rarely face persecution to the levels we see in other parts of the world.  That does not mean we haven’t been opposed.  Satan instead has used other tactics. He has attacked the western church with worldliness, selfish pride, and compromise for status and acceptance.  It is a very successful tactic. A martyr can impress unbelievers with his courage and faith; the self-centred, compromising Christian thinks he will win the world by being like the world only to find that the world despises him for his spinelessness. 

If worldliness and compromise have made us weak, we need to repent and get back to Pentecost to be restored into the fired up and passionate people we are meant to be and then whatever the world says and whatever the enemy says we will speak of Christ.   Though the Sadducees could successfully arrest the apostles, they were unable to arrest the influence of the gospel. The number of Christians kept increasing; growing to 5,000 from 3,000 at last count (Acts 2:41). Opposition did not slow the church down at all.

What a day it was; miracles, crowds, evangelistic results, and preachers in jail.  We don’t have many days like that, these days but maybe we could if we lived more in tune with the Spirit of God. 

-          When we truly live in the Spirit, any day can be a day for a miracle.

-          When we truly live in the Spirit any day can be a day to speak for Jesus.

-          When we truly live in the Spirit any day can be a day when we might have to sacrifice our own comfort for the sake of the gospel.

-          When we truly live in the Spirit any day can be a day when people accept Jesus as their Saviour.

God bless