Is Christianity anti-Semitic? (Acts 2:14-41)
Billy Milton - May 23, 2004
Two weeks ago, when we looked at the beginning of this amazing chapter, Peter Swaffield pointed out a few things that we needed to bear in mind as we continue in this passage today:
- God is an extraordinary God - the Bible is full of his supernatural dealings and to try and say otherwise would be to tear out much of the Bible.
- He reveals himself to ordinary people like you and me, not just the super-heroes of the Bible.
- When a supernatural God touches ordinary people amazing things happen, as we can see in Acts chapter 2.
But, as usual, when God acts supernaturally the world looks for a natural explanation - “Surely God can’t break into our world today? These men must be drunk.” Sadly if this happened again today people would believe exactly the same.
Over the past week an encouraging number of us have been meeting to pray together and each evening we have watched excerpts from a video called “Transformation”. The video simply recounts the stories of 4 communities from different parts of the world that have been transformed in amazing ways. One city called Cali in Colombia used to be the drug capital of Columbia. The drug lords ruled the city and people lived in fear. That was until the Pastors got together, humbled themselves before God, called the people from all churches to prayer and fasting and watched as God began to work in amazing ways. Before long the whole city was transformed as up to 70 000 people regularly met together in football stadiums to pray and worship God. The drug industry was crushed, crime levels plummeted, church attendance rocketed and all because God supernaturally moved in that city. Borrow the video from Ron and be prepared to be challenged as you watch God at work transforming whole communities. God is still a supernatural God and we were praying this week for Him to transform our community here in Berkhamsted.
But,their cynicism presents Peter with a tremendous opportunity and in v14 this once fearful disciple stands up and fearlessly addresses the crowd. Like all good preachers he splits his sermon into 3 main sections:
- He explains that the men are not drunk (its only 9am) but that they are the fulfillment of an 800-year-old prophecy from Joel which predicts exactly the phenomenon that they have just experienced. Incredible!
- He then accuses his listeners of crucifying Jesus, whom God had quite obviously put his seal of approval on.
- He tells them how they can escape the awful judgment that must surely fall on anyone guilty of such an act.
The results of his little sermon are astonishing - Peter simply states the plain facts - “You guys, all of you, Jew and Gentile alike, are responsible for the death of the Son of God! Repent!” and about 3000 people believed and joined the church! Wow - what’s going on here? God’s at work transforming people’s lives.
God’s Holy Spirit was certainly working through Peter. As he preached he made it perfectly clear that despite it being part of the set purpose and foreknowledge of God these people who were listening to him were guilty people. They were guilty of crucifying Jesus and Peter calls them wicked. How would they respond to that accusation of Peter’s? How would you respond? Well, there are two ways of responding when we feel guilty about something, as you probably know from personal experience:
- Deny responsibility and point the finger of blame elsewhere, or
- Face up to the guilt as being justified and seek to deal with it appropriately.
How did Peter’s listeners react? Well, they could have taken route one and made excuses for their guilt. “No it wasn’t me who crucified Christ. It was the Roman guards (or the Jewish authorities).” Or ,”we didn’t know who he was at that point or else we wouldn’t have done it.” etc,.etc. In other words, like Pilate, they could just have denied all personal responsibility for Christ’s death and walked away with wet hands.
However, such was the sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence and such was the depth of their own sense of guilt that they took route two and admitted their guilt right away and asked for help in dealing with that guilt. In v37 the Bible uses very strong language when it says that they were, “cut to the heart” and asked “what shall we do?”. Peter’s sermon had done its work.
In v38, in response to their honest question Peter speaks honest words that must have sounded like sweet music to their guilty ears. “Repent and be baptised for the forgiveness of your sins”. These people are dreadfully upset, in fact “cut to the heart”. They feel enormous guilt, so notice what Peter doesn’t do?
Firstly, he doesn’t attempt to minimise the seriousness of their position - they are guilty; they should feel cut to the heart; they do need to do something about it! I wonder today if we are embarrassed to confront people with their guilt? It’s just not P.C.. I think of a recent Church of England debate over whether it is helpful or not to refer to people “living in sin” just because there are so many people doing it and it might embarrass them and make them angry! What nonsense! Peter made no attempt to minimise their sin or to excuse their guilt. Neither should we today.
Secondly, he doesn’t preach easy-believeism. They have to repent and be baptised. Repentance is the acknowledgement that they were wrong, accompanied by a deep heart-felt sense of sorrow for their sin. It’s more than just a casual “sorry”. Those of you who have children will probably be able to recall times when you’ve grabbed a hold of your child, taken him over to another little friend that he’s upset and said, “Now say you’re sorry!” At which point he has quickly weighed up the options and mumbled, “Sorry.” Does he mean it? Not likely. Will it change his behaviour? Probably not? Repentance isn’t a sullen mumbling of sorry just because we’ve been caught. Repentance is more than just saying sorry. Repentance is one of God’s greatest gifts to us because it means a heart-felt confession and a heart restoring forgiveness. We can experience such freedom simply by coming to God in repentance.
Baptism, on the other hand, is the public acknowledgment that repentance has taken place and that you are now aligning yourself fairly and squarely with this group who follow Jesus. In NT times this might have meant mocking and persecution and there’s coming a day when it will once again mean that in the UK, if things keep on going the way they are. It symbolised a transformed, forgiven life. And that public, open confession of their guilt was what Peter demanded if they wanted forgiveness. No easy-believism here.
I wonder if today perhaps we minimise both the problem and the solution? There’s a tremendous fear of saying anything in public that might lead to others feeling guilty. We can’t handle it. Yet, whether or not we in the church induce feelings of guilt by our preaching, I suspect that many people are still walking about with enormous guilt complexes and if we don’t acknowledge that people are feeling guilty then how can we propose a solution to that guilt?
Allow me just a little aside here. One of this societies grubby secrets is sexual abuse. I’m no longer shocked to hear that someone has been sexually abused. The sad thing is that these victims often, in fact almost always, carry around a load of false guilt. It’s the perpetrator who should feel guilty - it’s the victim that often does. In KRC we have a small group of ladies who meet to talk about this enormous issue in their lives. They’ve found it very healing. If you’ve been sexually abused then please come and talk to me about it and I’ll point you in the direction of this group. For obvious reasons we don’t make a big song and dance about it and your anonymity is guaranteed, but don’t struggle with false guilt - talk to others who understand.
If, on the other hand, your guilt is real and you know you need to get right with God then we’ll be giving you a chance at the end to respond to God’s invitation to repent.
I want you to notice something else that I think is significant. Peter is addressing a crowd that we know contains a substantial number of Jews, people who because of their religious background would consider themselves favoured by God. And yet in v39 he says that the message he is preaching is “to all who are far off.” For all their religion they were far from God. Millions of people around the world are very religious but also very far from God. But it might be that you’re here this morning and you know that you’re far from God. If so doesn’t this passage speak strongly to you? If you know that you’re far from God then you are exactly the type of person that Jesus came to reach - those that didn’t pretend to be religious.
There’s an amazing verse in 1 Tim 1:15 that says “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Jesus loves sinners - Not good people, nor charity workers, nor church attenders even - but sinners. Doesn’t that just turn our human thinking onto its head? The very people that we naturally avoid or look down our noses at, Jesus came to reach, and ultimately die for. If your guilty conscience weighs heavy on you this morning then consider Peter’s words, “Repent and be baptised, every one of you, for the forgiveness of your sins.”
What was the result in the lives of those who repented? They became part of the community of believers. And we’re going to be looking at that a bit more next week. Not only does Christ bring forgiveness this morning but he also welcomes you into his church with all the belongingness that this brings with it. That’s the gospel in a nutshell - repentance, forgiveness and belonging in Christ.