A Sermon delivered at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN May 26, 2013
texts: Deut.6:4-9,12, Acts2:29-42
This is Trinity Sunday, the day we acknowledge the
three-fold nature of God. I’m not going to talk about the Trinity because Peter
gets to the core of it for all of Jerusalem in this passage from Acts.
This is Shavuot, one of the more important Jewish
religious celebrations, and the first Pentecost is here. It is late morning and
the Holy Spirit has just descended on the entire congregation of believers, about
120 mostly Galileans.
And now we have this rowdy bunch of Galileans with tongues of
fire dancing around their heads creating quite a stir and drawing a crowd.
Jews from countries all over the Mediterranean are here for
this Jewish holy day. They are confused and puzzled because every one understood
what the believers were saying as if they were speaking in their own native
tongue. Some listeners were amazed and perplexed by the spirituality of the
words, but you remember the proud urban folks in Jerusalem looked down their
noses at Galileans as uneducated country people. The cynics in the crowd said this
is just drunken rambling of a bunch of good old boys from Sand Mountain.
Peter did not take this comment very well. He stood up
and in a loud voice that everyone could understand began preaching, “These
people are not drunk! I ask you didn’t the prophet Joel say, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and
your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your
old men shall dream dreams…in those days I will pour
out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy before the coming of the Lord’s great
and glorious day.’ Then everyone who calls on the name
of the Lord shall be saved.” No one here is drunk, they are filled with
the Holy Spirit.”
Peter was preaching to more
than just these outsiders - the cynical Jerusalem Jews. He was preaching also
to the 120 Jewish believers who perhaps harbor doubt about Jesus now that He
has gone.
Peter very carefully and
methodically explained to them exactly what has happened in the last fifty
days. (2:22-24, my words) “All of you who are Israelites listen to what I have
to say: Jesus of Nazareth was a man attested to you by God. God did deeds of
power, wonders, and signs through Jesus while he was with you and you know it yourselves,
you saw them. What you (the "Jerusalem Jews") do not know is that God also knew and planned from the beginning to
hand Jesus over to you so you could crucify
and kill him using the hands of Gentiles who are outside the Law (so you could
try to avoid guilt). But God raised Jesus
up from death because it is impossible to hold God in the power of death. I
command you to let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that the One God has made this Jesus whom
you crucified both Lord and Messiah.”
Peter’s has just said that Jesus with this gift of the
Holy Spirit is the one Lord, not God. (v36) These are fighting words that ought
to challenge this crowd as heresy. His claim is particularly pointed on this
particular holiday because a devout, penitent Jew has the Shema on the tip of the
tongue. The Shema is Moses’ declaration of God’s covenant with Israel delivered
with the Law to Israel. The Shema reveals the nature of God, his steadfast love,
and his commands. (Deut 6:4-9,12)
“Hear O Israel, The Lord is One. You shall love the LORD
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
might. Keep these words that I am
commanding you today in your heart. Teach
your children well that they remember them; talk about them everywhere you go
and when you lie down and when you rise. Tie them to your hand as a sign of my
promise, write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates lest
you forget that I AM the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of
the house of slavery.”
The Shema is the deepest connection of Israel to the
steadfast Love of God. This is the distilled essence
of the covenant of Judaism because it confesses the true nature of the One
God with the command Jesus said is his greatest: (1) You
shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your might. The Shema concludes, “Let these words of the Law guide
your life.” Even the cynics among the penitent Jews know this.
Peter didn’t finished
preaching until he told them that these deeds of Easter were done as part of God’s
eternal plan foretold by David. They crucified the prophet who is the Son of God,
the one who God had made as Lord and Messiah. He is telling the Jews of
Jerusalem that they have crucified their God about whom they proclaimed with greatest
honor and respect, “Hear O Israel, The Lord is One.”
They ought to be as outraged
by Peter’s proclamation as the chief priest, Caiaphas was by Jesus’ answer when
he asked Jesus if he was the Son of God… “You say I am.”
If you imagine yourself a Jew in Jerusalem hearing this
outrageous allegation of guilt of sin against God, guilt caused not by willing
desire but by God, why is your reaction not to shout “Crucify him!” like they
shouted when the Jesus acknowledged the truth of the allegation of Caiaphas?
But something has gone wrong. We
don’t hear “Crucify him!” What happened?
What has happened is that many of those Jews in
Jerusalem were cut to the heart by Peter’s words because they came to understand
fully the magnitude of the tragedy of their actions. God used them for his own purpose, blinding
them to the sin of their action so that when their eyes and ears were opened to
understanding the gravity of their sin against God, it heaped despair upon them
like a massive millstone around their neck. As a doctor would say, their pain
was exquisite. All is lost. They have committed the worst imaginable act that a
penitent Jew can do. Is there any more
heretical action than to do violence against God? They have no recourse, no
place to hide. There is no exit from this deed. They are cornered by their
guilt and can only repent by asking Peter “What must we do to be saved?”
If you are listening carefully you may see the
fulfillment of the prophesies of Jesus. Everything is coming to pass like the
falling of rows of dominos. Do you remember Jesus quoting the commission to
Isaiah by God? (Is 6:9-12):
“Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening,
but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ I will make the
mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they
may not look with their eyes and listen with their ears, and comprehend with
their minds, and turn and be healed.” Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he
said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and
the land is utterly desolate; until the
LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the
land.
All the people of Jerusalem
have to do to understand their cities are in waste and the Promised Land is
desolate is feel the chafing under the heel of Roman power, observe all the
Jews coming from other lands, and look
around their city and temple and see the Roman soldiers everywhere.
If Peter is preaching the Good
News to them, it is not very comforting. He says, “Let the entire house of
Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this
Jesus whom you crucified. God has blinded you and made you kill Jesus, the
Messiah, Emanuel (God is with us).” How can the despair go deeper?
Friends, we are seeing God and
the Holy Spirit at work here. The Holy Spirit brought these Jerusalem Jews to
Peter. The Holy Spirit inspired these 120 believers to speak. The Holy Spirit allowed
everyone to understand their testimony. The Holy Spirit inspired Peter to
proclaim the Good News, Peter the man who was afraid of persecution and
denied Jesus three times, one of the fellows who ran off and left Jesus to die
alone on the Cross. Can there be any doubt the
Holy Spirit is at work here?
Isaiah’s prophecy comes true.
The Holy Spirit opened the eyes of the Jews of Jerusalem to the depths of their
despair. They have crucified their God.
But the depth of this tragedy does
run divinely deeper. Even Jesus is cut to the heart by their actions because he
understands and knows the deed of their hands was ordained. Do you remember his
words spoken on the cross before he died, “Father forgive them for they do not
know what they do.” Divine compassion arising from human despair.
Peter understands. Peter answered
the question “what must we do to be saved?” with “Repent, acknowledge your sins
that they may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For
the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone
whom the Lord our God calls to him.” Christ has bound together forgiveness and
repentance - compassion and despair, fulfilling his prophetic promise. Forgiveness
comes from only asking the question, “What must we do to be saved?” The Lord
said through Isaiah (42:16) “I will lead the blind by a road they
do not know, I will guide them by paths they have not known. I will turn the darkness before them into
light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and
I will not forsake them.” There is a home.
These words, “…the promise is
for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the
Lord our God calls to him” ring like the Shema but do not. The promise of the
Shema is to Israel; that if it obeys the Law God will protect you. The threat
is, if you do not obey it and God will punish you. The promise of the Holy
Spirit is to everyone: repent by acknowledging your guilt and receive
forgiveness. There is no threat.
Luke makes it clear that none of this understanding, repentance
and forgiveness is an act of choice or free will. This was all God’s plan from
the beginning. Peter may proclaim the
Good News but the power of the Holy Spirit guided him. The Holy Spirit operated
on those who listened. It awakened understanding. Paul says faith comes to us
from hearing the preaching of the Word of Jesus. It came so powerfully to the
people of Jerusalem that they could only ask, “What must we do to be saved?”
At the end of the day, 3,000
more people heard and understood with the Holy Spirit’s help and joined the
congregation of believers. Luke says they devoted themselves to the apostles’
teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers, growing in faith
to carry on proclaiming of the good News.
I ask you, who are the
ministers of the congregation of believers?... Each person in the congregation
of faithful believers is its minister. The Holy Spirit dwells in them and
empowers us. Only one question remains. The Lord used the Holy Spirit to cause
Peter and Luke to send this question to us from across the ages. I hope it is a
rhetorical question for all of us, that is, I hope the answer is self-evident
and answers itself: “Have you got the Spirit? AMEN.
