In an interview in October 2011 (Guardian) the musician, Jarvis Crocker said, “I think basically becoming famous has taken the place of going to heaven in modern society, hasn’t it? That’s the place where your dreams will come true. It’s an act of faith now; they think that’s going to sort things out.”
It is very easy for us to despair about our world with its indifference to the faith that has had such a great impact on western culture. In many ways our world has come full circle back to the Graeco-Roman world of the New Testament. Apart from dramatic technological changes, there is little that has not already been.
The 1st century Roman world was marked by narcissism and political correctness. Sexually decadent, it was preoccupied with entertainment and plagued by alcoholism and gambling. What we often forget is that the gospel of Jesus Christ triumphed in that world.
Over these next weeks I plan to identify themes in 1 Peter that touch on Peter’s response to the challenges God’s people faced in the 1st century. He begins by focusing on the theme of ‘hope’.
The good news of Christianity had brought a dramatic change in the lives of Peter’s readers. They and he (he says ‘us’) had been ‘born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…’ They had a confident expectation that life here was not the totality of their existence. This hope is living in that it grows in strength as the years go by. Psalm 92 says that in old age the righteous will still yield fruit: They shall be full of sap and very green.
Godly, chronologically-enriched people often reveal this hope in their eyes, their demeanor and in their attitude to life. They are not on the way out: they are en route to a far better place.
You may have friends who say, ‘that’s all very nice, but how can you be sure that there really is an after-life? How do you know that it won’t just be one big party?’
Indeed, a recent article in The Telegraph noted that AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ was regularly heard at funerals: Hey momma, look at me, I’m on my way to the promised land, I’m on the highway to hell (don’t stop me); And I’m going down, all the way down, I’m on the highway to hell. Within months of the release of this song in 1979 the lead singer was dead after a drinking binge.
The Apostle Peter anticipated the kinds of questions people ask about Christianity when he anchored his words in Jesus’ resurrection. ‘The living hope,’ he says, ‘has been brought about by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ The fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty on that first Easter Sunday assures us that Peter’s words are not make-believe. Believing that Jesus was raised from the dead is a center-piece of the gospel the Apostles preached. Every sermon in The Acts of the Apostles references Jesus’ resurrection. We have every reason to have a fearless hope.
This is so encouraging. Peter tells us this living hope is an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.It will not decay. It will be the opposite of our experience now where, despite the best efforts of the cosmetic and fitness industries, our bodies age and decay. It will not be stained by sin. There will be no evil, no suffering nor pain. Furthermore, it is an inheritance that will not lose its value, its beauty or its glory. Nor will it disappear.
What is more, for the present we are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:5). ‘Protected’ means ‘guarded’ or ‘shielded’. God’s power continually sustains and energizes our faith at every twist of life.
Peter wants us to know that God’s people are born anew to an inheritance that is far superior to anything we can ever possess here on earth. Because our hope is not something vague or uncertain we can face life now without fear. God’s promise is rock-solid.
Last Thursday(May 28) The Wall Street Journal reviewed The Soul of the Marionette by John Gray, an emeritus professor at the London School of Economics. The reviewer, Thomas Meaney, comments that Mr. Gray ‘has been at odds with the easy assumptions and smug remedies of what might be called a “progressivist” worldview… Gray believes that something went wrong in the long development of modern society and that the germ of the problem may well be our idea of progress itself.’
The reviewer notes that in The Soul of the Marionette, John Gray says ‘we all today believe that we possess a mastery over the natural world that sets us apart from our benighted ancestors. “The Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess, … has become the predominant religion”’.
Gray’s response to his proposal that there is no such thing as ‘progress’, Meaney notes, is ‘a variation of the great holding pattern known as stoicism – the acceptance of all that is out of one’s control and a realization that knowledge in itself is never redemptive.’
As I read this review I reflected on how the world of academia claims to canvas and consider carefully all aspects of knowledge, yet constantly dismisses the historical evidences as well as philosophical arguments that support the Christian faith. Assuming Meaney’s review is a fair treatment of Gray’s work, where did our sense of a creator ‘god’ originate? Why do we have a conscience and an awareness of justice? How should we respond? Reasoning will play a part, but we need something much more. We need God’s promised Spirit to be at work.
In his conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:1-15), Jesus pointed out that we need the Spirit of God to give us a birth ‘from above’ if we are to enter God’s kingdom. In John 16:8-11, Jesus developed this when he said:
When the Spirit (he) comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.
It is the Spirit who awakensa sense of moral shame and spiritual reality. Notice, the sin the Spirit convicts us of is not our breaking of the Ten Commandments, but our failure to turn to Jesus as our rightful ruler. God will one day ask us all: ‘What did you do with my Son?’
Furthermore, the Spirit alerts us to a new certainty of the vindication of righteousness. We hear of the atrocities in Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Libya, and in Yemen and our hearts cry out for justice. Jesus’ death, resurrection and exaltation guarantee the ultimate triumph of goodness.
The Spirit also brings us a new urgencyabout the reality of the end of the world. When Jesus died Satan’s attempt to usurp the throne of the universe was confounded. With the exaltation of God’s Messiah, God’s kingdom arrived. Before Jesus ‘went away’, humanity ignored God’s claim. However, on the day of Pentecost, because the Holy Spirit had come convicting the world, three thousand were cut to the heart by the words of the Apostle Peter.
Like the wind the Spirit comes silently and unexpectedly, going where he wills, and changing lives. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:3: No-one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.
What should be our responseto the opposing voices around us? Pray! When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he went on to say:
“Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you” (Luke 11:9f). “How much more will your Father in heaven give you the Spirit,” he concluded (Luke 11:13).
Impossible?No. Not if we ask God to send his Spirit to do his works of mercy, opening the eyes of the blind, unstopping deaf ears, and softening hard hearts. With Jesus’ departure, the Holy Spirit has been poured out on to the world.
The author, Roald Dahl in, My Uncle Oswald, once wrote,
I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.
GOD IS PASSIONATE
In this season of Pentecost it is good to ask, What, if anything, is God passionate about?
We find a real clue in the events that developed on the Day of Pentecost following the first Easter, when, Dr. Luke tells us, the Spirit of God was poured out on the disciples. Despite the danger to their lives they went out on the streets of Jerusalem preaching. Men of Israel, Peter declared, Listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. …And you, …put him to death …but God raised him from the dead, … (Acts 2:22ff).
In his sermon that day, Peter was not introducing a religion or a set of rules, but a person. He did this by focusing on Jesus’ life and themiracles he performed – healing the sick, casting out evil spirits, stilling a storm, even raising the dead. While many today mock the idea of Jesus’ miracles, first century historians such as the Jewish historian, Josephus, wrote of Jesus as a ‘wonder worker’. Peter’s words reflect Jesus’ own words when he said: If I by the finger of God cast out demons, then the kingdom of God is come upon you.
Peter, logically and clearly, developed his major theme: Jesus, through his death and resurrection is, as King David had prophesied, uniquely both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). Peter’s words that day about the cross and the reality of the resurrection lie at the heart of his message. Men had judged Jesus guilty and nailed him to a cross. God however, as the ultimate Supreme Court Judge, overturned that judgement and raised Jesus to life. And notice the response, which we read in Acts 2:37f: Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven;…’
CUT TO THE HEART
It was as though the eyes of Peter’s hearers had been closed as to who Jesus really was. Now, at a word they saw. Whereas they had mocked and jeered when Jesus had died, had laughed when they heard Jesus’ followers that morning, now they were cut to the heart. Three thousand responded to Peter’s call to repent and be baptised – thousands more than had given their lives to Jesus as the Christ during the course of his public ministry.
The Spirit had enabled the people to hear the disciples in their own native tongue earlier that day. Now, by implication, the Spirit was taking Peter’s words and opening their eyes to the truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the Lordwith whom we all have to do business.
It is extraordinary that the God of the universe is passionate about rescuing men and women who ignore him. Significantly, God calls on each of us who has turned to the Lord Jesus, to be partners with Him in his work of salvation. The question is, do we share God’s passion?
Is there anything that can really make us different – that can shake us out of our apathy and anxiety, that can inject enthusiasm and joy into our lives? The poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it”. Can we find it in Christianity?
In Acts 2:1ff we read:
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
The Day of Pentecost has been called the birthday of the church for it was the day when Jesus switched on God’s power supply amongst his people and the impact of his life, death and resurrection began to spread. God’s Spirit turned cowardly disciples into intrepid apostles.
PENTECOST
Pentecost is the Jewish festival that celebrates the giving of the Ten Commandments. Violent wind and tongues of fire had enveloped Mt Sinai when Moses was given the law. But the law failed to change the world because the law had failed to change people. Now once again at the time of Pentecost, God was coming with fire and wind. This time it was not to impart his law, but to impart his Spirit. The sound of a mighty wind symbolised Jesus’ power. The fire symbolised his purifying and cleansing work. The speech that day announced the good news of Jesus reaching people from every nation. And so, in v.5 we read:
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. … And everyone was bewildered because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
The crowd was composed of people from the Caspian Sea in the east to Rome in the west, from modern Turkey in the north to Africa in the south. ‘How is it we can understand them in our own native language?’ they asked. The cynics mocked and said they were drunk. But Peter responded, ’No! We’re not drunk. It’s only nine o’clock in the morning – the bars aren’t open yet. This is the Spirit of God at work.’
It was God’s Spirit who enabled people that day to hear and understand in their own native language or dialect, what was being said. It was not inarticulate babbling, as some describe it. It was the miracle of language being wrought by the ultimate Author of speech. It was the ‘remaking of language’ so that it could be understood by all. It was the reversal of Babel.
The disciples who had been demoralised and defeated, came out on the streets with a new enthusiasm, confidence and joy. Who would have thought that Peter, who had so vehemently denied that he even knew Jesus, would ever speak up in public in the face of potential death, saying that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah? No longer a coward, he was a courageous preacher.
THE FELT SPIRIT
What made that difference? It was the Spirit, the ‘Companion’ Jesus promised (John 14:16ff). For many, Christianity is little more than a moral code that they must struggle to observe, or a creed they must recite mindlessly every week. But in John 14 Jesus had spoken of ‘Another Helper’ who would enable his people to experience a vital, personal and trusting relationship with the One who is at the heart of the universe. He is trustworthy because he is true.
It is, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, the Spirit who opens our eyes to our need to respond to God’s good news. It is he who turns our hearts to love and trust the Lord Jesus, enabling us to experience a peace and joy, enthusiasm and courage that is beyond human understanding. As we read on in The Acts of the Apostles, we see what happened then, and what can happen now when God’s Spirit is at work.
Let me urge you, as you read this, to pray. Pray that the Spirit of God will truly fill your life, instructing you from God’s Word, bringing the presence of Jesus Christ into your life, enabling you to call upon God as ‘Father’, equipping you to be the person God wants you to be, giving you purpose, joy and a new enthusiasm in your life. Prayer:
Almighty God, who taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending them the light of your Holy Spirit: so enable us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things and always to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (BCP, Whit Sunday – adapted)
Most of us long for a better world –a world free from conflict and war, lying and cheating, corruption and injustice. We long for a world where there is justice and peace. But the reality is that in various ways and to various degrees, we become caught up in the ebb and flow of human conflict and injustice. ‘Can anyone be trusted?’ we ask. And indeed, because these human failings seem to have become endemic, we become cynical about law-makers, the opinion-makers, and the traditional church.
Where in the world today do we look for hope – to lawmakers, educators, or the courts? All these institutions can do great things, but if we’re honest we know they can only do so much. I want to suggest that because our real problem is our broken relationship with God, there is no real answer apart from the events of Good Friday and Easter day that we have touched on over the last weeks.
Consider the charge he left his disciples that we read about in Acts 1:8: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. These words go to the heart of The Acts of the Apostles which we can sum up with the phrase: ‘The Hidden Rule of Christ’. Two things stand out: the limited agenda of the disciples, and the global agenda of Jesus.
The limited agenda of the disciples: Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? they asked. Jesus had been speaking about how the new age of God’s Messiah had dawned and how the promises of the prophets were being fulfilled. The disciples were excited about this and began thinking that at last Jesus was going to reveal his true power and position as Israel’s rightful king. They spoke of Jesus restoring the kingdom. Clearly they were thinking in political categories – the restoration of the monarchy.
They also referred to the kingdom of Israel. They were thinking in nationalistic terms: the power and position of Israel as a nation. They questioned whether this would happen soon. They were thinking that now Jesus was risen from the dead, his coming in kingly power and glory would soon take place.
We need to consider this.Many have thought in much the same categories as those first followers. Events in the Middle-East, especially if they involve Israel, always stir some people to open up the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New, with a view to making predictions concerning the end times.
But look at Jesus’ response: He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. His words are a rebuke: ‘Friends,’ he is saying, ‘That’s not for you to know. That’s ‘Top Secret’! We need to remember this when people are getting excited with predictions about the end times: ‘You’re not to worry about that,’ says Jesus. ‘I have something much more important for you to do with your time and energy.’
Consider his agenda: You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Yes, it’s another agenda, but it’s his action plan for his followers. Their vision is short-sighted and parochial – limited to the nation of Israel. Jesus wanted them to lift their eyes to the needs of the world. ‘Listen,’ he is saying, ‘you’re being nationalistic and territorial. Come with me and see the big picture. The account and the implications of my death and resurrection must be told – first, here in Jerusalem, then in Judea and Samaria, and finally to the ends of the earth.’
It is easy for us to be like the disciples and put all our energies into working at political solutions for the world’s ills. Yes, politics have their place, but God did not send a politician to rescue the world. He sent a Savior. What is more, the Savior, Jesus Christ, now calls us into partnership with him in his agenda that is spiritual in its focus (men and women need God’s gospel to touch and change their minds and souls), global in scope, and far-flung in time.
