This Book: Acts – The Gospel Continues (Acts 15 v1-21)

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Throughout the book of Acts we find names that are familiar if you've read the gospels. You'll see repeats of the names of Peter and John and James and Philip and Mary and John Mark.  

Luke also introduces us to a whole bunch of new people, new believers. It's really interesting to read right at the beginning of Acts about two men named Matthias and Justus who Luke says were:  

...men who have accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John’s baptism until the day Jesus was taken up from us. Acts 1 v21-22 

Matthias and Justus, among others, had been there the whole time, quietly in the background, following and learning and listening. Besides them, we meet Stephen, Barnabas, Priscilla, Apollos, Dorcas, and Saul. Those people became the Church. They built the Church. They bequeathed to us the Church that Jesus established on Peter's declaration of faith: 

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  Matthew 16 v16 

Since then, every generation is born (and born again) into the challenge of knowing what it means to be that Church. 

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I have been invited a few times by friends to AA meetings when they were receiving their one-year chip. I love those meetings. They are an mazing mishmash of cussing, and coffee, and a tremendous amount of grace. I love being there for a friend who's getting their one-year chip because it is such an amazing achievement. 

One of the things that the AA ‘liturgy’ says is this: 

First, we admitted that we were powerless...  

Not ‘that we'd made some mistakes.’ Not ‘that we were having some problems.’ Not that we had some things to fix. 

“We admitted that we were powerless..." 

To be the Church that Christ built—humanly, we are powerless.  

If we are a ‘church’ that is not obeying the Holy Spirit, not following the prompting of the Holy Spirit, we are powerless. Holy Spirit makes us the Church in the first place. We need Holy Spirit to help us to continue to be the Church.  

Part of the gift that the Holy Spirit has given us is the Bible. There we read the stories of the people who came before us, and who were just as overwhelmed by everything that was happening as we can be. They were just as powerless on their own to make anything good happen, just as powerless to draw people to Christ as we are without the Holy Spirit. So we look at their lives in the book of Acts. We look at the things that they did, that they learned, and from them we gain wisdom. We learn how to be the Church.  

We see wisdom in their words: 

• In the way that Paul retold his own story. He told it probably speaking in Hebrew to Jewish people in Jerusalem. He later told it again in Jerusalem, but this time perhaps speaking Greek or Latin, as he spoke to King Agrippa. He gave the king a chance to meet the Jesus who knocked Paul off his high horse and brought him home. 
• In how Peter preached on that first day of Pentecost, quoting to the “men of Israel” the Holy Spirit-inspired prophetic words of Joel and David, pointing his audience toward Jesus on the day that the fire was lit. Giving them people a chance to hear and recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit that they had heard before in those prophecies that were now coming true.  
• In Stephen's sermon, preaching at his trial. Reminding the Jewish ruling council of the Yahweh God of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob, and Moses. Telling those powerful men their own story, and giving them a chance to see themselves anew in the light of the fire of the Holy Spirit.  

We see wisdom in how they acted and lived their lives. The event in our scripture focus is a brilliant example of that. 

They didn't know what to do, how to resolve this tension that had arisen among new believers. So they came together and found ways to be faithful to what was true: by doing things that nobody had ever done before. Together they opened the doors of faith as wide as they possibly could to all of the diversity of what God was building out there in the world, rather than just trying to make ‘them’ act more like ‘us.’ 

They went on defying the powers, whether it was Herod or Caesar or Jerusalem's ruling council or just your friendly neighborhood charlatan.  

They went on demonstrating Christ's authority: healing the sick, raising the dead, freeing people from oppression, both spiritual and societal.  

They went on speaking truth and hope, and they went on directing our path.  

The path that those first generations of believers carved out for us is not the path from the couch to the fridge and back again. They blazed a path that followed Jesus everywhere: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth, every tribe, every tongue, every people, every nation, every mountaintop, every condo hallway, every classroom.  

They set the precedent of what it means to faithfully and creatively follow Christ, and share his love in ways that nobody had done before.  

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The story of Acts is the story of the stupendous missionary achievement of a community inspired to make continual series of creative experiments by the Pentecostal Spirit. Against a static Church, unwilling to obey the guidance of the Holy Spirit, no gates of any sort are needed to oppose its movement, for it does not move. But against a Church that is on the move, inspired by the Pentecostal Spirit, neither the gates of hades, nor any other gates, can prevail. ~ Bishop J.E. Fison, Fire Upon the Earth  

A ‘church’ that does not obey the guidance of the Holy Spirit might be a bunch of nice people who like each other and do good, but they are not the Church that Jesus established.  

The book of Acts is not a cookbook, with step-by-step instructions. There's nothing in there that we can copy and paste and replicate. They were the Church in their time. We are the Church in ours.  

We are intended to follow their example.  

• The first prayer recorded in Acts is a prayer for guidance (Acts 1 v24): 

What does that example tell us? They didn’t expect this to be easy. Neither should we. We have work to do in settings, in relationships, in circumstances that are complex and that can be frustrating. There are times when people in churches disagree on things. There are times in churches when we have to forgive each other. And there are times in churches when we need to confront each other. We need Holy Spirit’s guidance as we work together. 

• The second prayers recorded in Acts are prayers they prayed together (Acts 2 v42): 

Christians in the first generation of the Church did not try to follow Jesus alone. Neither should we. Jesus did not build a ‘man-cave.’ Jesus did not build a ‘she-shed.’ Jesus built a gathering—a Church. That is where we belong together. Almost never in the book of Acts do you see anybody going out alone. They go in teams of twos and threes. They return and reconnect to talk about the things they need to work out, and then they—again together—go back out into the world. The Church of Acts did not function as solo acts. They were gathered. They worked together. And that is where the Holy Spirit has brought us today: together.  

• The third prayer recorded in Acts is a prayer for boldness (Acts 4 v28): 

They did not try to bring the good news about Christ to the world by standing still. Neither should we. Yes, there are times when it's appropriate—even God-ordained—for us to have seasons of rest. We pause to pray, to heal, to gather our strength, to regain our focus. But the model set out for us in the Bible is ‘six days of work and one day of rest,’ not the other way around. We have work to do. We have no business standing still.