WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.480 Alright, we are in a series on our new vision statement here at St. Columbus, so we're 00:00:07.480 --> 00:00:14.640 looking at passages from where our vision statement comes, and we're in our fourth 00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:17.039 sermon on this, the third part of the vision statement. 00:00:17.039 --> 00:00:23.440 So let me read, again, the vision statement to you, and it says this, St. Columbus and 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:29.600 our family of church plants exist to seek a city-wide movement of the gospel by helping 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:38.160 people find and follow Jesus, love God, and one another, and seek the peace of the city. 00:00:38.160 --> 00:00:43.560 And so we've looked so far at what it means to seek a city-wide movement of the gospel, 00:00:43.560 --> 00:00:48.600 and to help people find and follow Jesus and be a witness unto that, that's the last couple 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:53.040 of weeks, and then this week, the third piece of our vision is that we are called, every 00:00:53.039 --> 00:01:00.399 human is called, to respond to God's love expressed into the world by loving God in return. 00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:03.320 So we want to help people in our city to love God. 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:05.560 And so that's what we're focused on for a bit today. 00:01:05.560 --> 00:01:12.480 We read, Colin read for us a very classic text, Acts chapter 2, and I want to particularly 00:01:12.480 --> 00:01:21.799 look at the very end of it, verses 40 to 47, and this is the short summary of the earliest 00:01:21.799 --> 00:01:24.439 moment of the church. 00:01:24.439 --> 00:01:30.039 So as soon as Jesus ascended into heaven, what you get in Acts 2, 40 to 47, is what 00:01:30.039 --> 00:01:32.759 the first church did. 00:01:32.759 --> 00:01:39.560 So the Holy Spirit came down in Acts 2 at Pentecost, and immediately we get to read what 00:01:39.560 --> 00:01:43.679 a church that's been filled by the Holy Spirit does. 00:01:43.679 --> 00:01:49.439 So this is what the first church ever in human history after Jesus's work was finished did. 00:01:49.439 --> 00:01:55.840 And so you could say the old theologians, the Puritans would talk about, this is what 00:01:55.840 --> 00:02:00.039 a church experiencing vivification does. 00:02:00.039 --> 00:02:03.719 Vivification, the word to vivify means to make alive. 00:02:03.719 --> 00:02:08.400 And so when the Holy Spirit comes into your life, the life of the community of a city 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:11.960 and makes people alive, they're vivified. 00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:13.800 This is what they do. 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:16.639 And that's where we get our word revival. 00:02:16.639 --> 00:02:20.239 Revivify, revivification, revival. 00:02:20.239 --> 00:02:24.919 And so another way to say it is anytime a citywide movement of the gospel happens, which 00:02:24.919 --> 00:02:31.519 is what we've been talking about, a revival happens, the church ought to and always will 00:02:31.519 --> 00:02:37.119 in some sense move back to what verses 42 to 47 says. 00:02:37.119 --> 00:02:40.679 This is what a church filled by the Holy Spirit ought to look like. 00:02:40.679 --> 00:02:42.839 It's what the first church looked like. 00:02:42.840 --> 00:02:49.520 And so one way to say it is what you get here in 42 to 47 is the vital signs of a healthy 00:02:49.520 --> 00:02:51.020 church. 00:02:51.020 --> 00:02:52.680 It's a way to ask our questions. 00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:58.039 It's a way for us to look at St. Columbus, all of us as part of this church and ask, 00:02:58.039 --> 00:02:59.159 is this what we look like? 00:02:59.159 --> 00:03:00.840 Are we a church that's alive? 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:04.879 Do we have the principles of what the first church filled by the Spirit had? 00:03:04.879 --> 00:03:06.680 And so that's what we see here. 00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:08.120 It's key for our vision. 00:03:08.120 --> 00:03:10.680 It's really the source of our vision statement. 00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:12.280 And so let's think about it. 00:03:12.280 --> 00:03:18.000 Peter preaches a sermon and then he says, he applies it. 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:19.479 That's what we're focused on, the application. 00:03:19.479 --> 00:03:24.639 And he says, flee from a crooked generation. 00:03:24.639 --> 00:03:26.759 That's the first thing he tells them. 00:03:26.759 --> 00:03:32.199 So that secondly, you can be a counterculture versus 42 to 47. 00:03:32.199 --> 00:03:37.120 And then finally, if we're to summarize that in one phrase, it's that humanity, we are 00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:40.379 made to love God. 00:03:40.379 --> 00:03:42.000 So let's think about those three things. 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:47.199 First, Peter says here, flee verse 40 to 41 from this crooked generation. 00:03:47.199 --> 00:03:48.879 All right. 00:03:48.879 --> 00:03:52.360 We won't focus as much on the sermon Peter preached, the first sermon ever preached in 00:03:52.360 --> 00:03:55.639 the church that Colin read the first half of the passage. 00:03:55.639 --> 00:04:04.719 But if we were to summarize it, up to verse 39, Peter says, you crucified Jesus and God 00:04:04.719 --> 00:04:07.639 raised him up from the dead. 00:04:07.639 --> 00:04:10.400 Therefore, repent and be baptized. 00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:16.480 And then in verse 41, he applies that and says, now it's time to save yourselves. 00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:19.240 The Greek actually says, be saved. 00:04:19.240 --> 00:04:24.600 Be saved from a crooked generation, a bent generation, a broken generation. 00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:27.759 Now what does he mean by that? 00:04:27.759 --> 00:04:34.920 That word generation is a word that could be translated also just as culture. 00:04:34.920 --> 00:04:42.720 Be saved, when you say that Jesus, I crucified Jesus, but God raised him from the dead. 00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:48.720 And you repent and you seek baptism, you've immediately entered into a life where Peter 00:04:48.720 --> 00:04:54.240 says now, be saved from a crooked culture, a generation. 00:04:54.240 --> 00:04:58.720 Now the reason it uses the word generation is because we do that too in modern English, 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:00.319 don't we? 00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:02.639 We talk about the generations. 00:05:02.639 --> 00:05:10.560 We talk about baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, the most recent. 00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:16.000 Gen Alpha are kids who were born from 2012 up till now. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:20.000 The age, the generation, the culture. 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:25.279 The current culture, Gen Alpha is a culture who was born inside the technium. 00:05:25.279 --> 00:05:27.599 They don't know a world without social media. 00:05:27.599 --> 00:05:28.839 They've never seen that. 00:05:28.839 --> 00:05:33.239 They don't know what it's like to have dial up internet or anything even before that. 00:05:33.239 --> 00:05:35.599 So we talk about generations still. 00:05:35.599 --> 00:05:38.039 That's exactly what this word is here. 00:05:38.039 --> 00:05:42.919 And Peter says, be saved from a crooked culture, a bent culture. 00:05:42.919 --> 00:05:48.559 Every single generation has good things and bad things about it. 00:05:48.559 --> 00:05:53.079 So the baby boomer culture was a culture that rose up after World War II and experienced 00:05:53.079 --> 00:05:57.359 probably more change than any generation in human history maybe has ever experienced. 00:05:57.360 --> 00:05:58.840 And we talk about the millennial generation. 00:05:58.840 --> 00:06:02.560 I am an elder millennial standing before you. 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:10.199 And the elder millennials know that we transition from the age pre-computer, very earliest moments 00:06:10.199 --> 00:06:14.439 of our lives, were pre-computer right at the dawn of the computer age, right? 00:06:14.439 --> 00:06:19.680 And then we could talk about Gen Z, the TikTok generation, and Gen Alpha, right? 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:23.960 Different ways of qualifying the cultures that we've all grown up in. 00:06:23.959 --> 00:06:32.959 Now Peter says, if you experience the love of God in your life, flee, save yourself from 00:06:32.959 --> 00:06:37.799 the generation that you were raised in, from the cities, the bad things, the hard things, 00:06:37.799 --> 00:06:40.120 the sinful things about the culture that you were raised in. 00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:45.879 In other words, he's saying, be awake to the fact that every single one of us are born 00:06:45.879 --> 00:06:51.319 into a world, into a city, into a town, into a culture where we naturally exist by walking 00:06:51.319 --> 00:06:52.319 in a stupor. 00:06:52.319 --> 00:06:54.040 You know, what's a stupor? 00:06:54.040 --> 00:07:01.199 A stupor is when you walk in a fog, you're just not conscious about the ways, the world, 00:07:01.199 --> 00:07:06.360 the culture, the time you live in, the social media you engage in, the Netflix you always 00:07:06.360 --> 00:07:12.319 come back to is changing you, is shaping you, that it is your discipler. 00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:17.120 And he's saying, but when you see, when you say that Jesus Christ really did die and rise 00:07:17.120 --> 00:07:23.160 from the dead, he's saying now it's time to see it, to get out of the fog, to know that 00:07:23.160 --> 00:07:30.639 this world is shaping me in sinful ways and that God has now set me apart to be a counterculture 00:07:30.639 --> 00:07:36.840 for my city, to be different, to be a new community, to be part of a different genera, 00:07:36.840 --> 00:07:41.199 generation, culture than the one that I've grown up in, than the one that I've been trained 00:07:41.199 --> 00:07:42.199 in. 00:07:42.199 --> 00:07:43.199 And that's what he means here. 00:07:43.199 --> 00:07:49.599 In other words, the question in verse 42 to 47 is what does humanity look like when it's 00:07:49.599 --> 00:07:54.159 been rescued from the sinful generations of every age? 00:07:54.159 --> 00:07:57.719 And it looks like the church, it looks like the church had its best, it looks like the 00:07:57.719 --> 00:08:03.560 church vivified, made alive in the midst of revival, in the midst of a citywide movement 00:08:03.560 --> 00:08:05.000 of the gospel, that's what it looks like. 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:08.680 Now how do you enter into this countercultural movement? 00:08:08.680 --> 00:08:14.280 When he tells us in verse 38, he says right before, save yourselves, be saved from the 00:08:14.280 --> 00:08:20.040 crooked generation, he says the entrance is repentance and baptism. 00:08:20.040 --> 00:08:24.879 So if you want to be a part of the countercultural community and have a new vision, a fresh vision, 00:08:24.879 --> 00:08:30.480 a different way of seeing life in reality, he says the entrance into that is repentance 00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:32.639 and baptism. 00:08:32.639 --> 00:08:36.600 And repentance, if you've been in the church for a long time, it's a word you've said 00:08:36.600 --> 00:08:45.360 so many times, but repentance means metanoia, it's a total change of heart and mind. 00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:50.399 Repentance is not just a change of behavior, it's not just a change of the way you feel, 00:08:50.399 --> 00:08:54.080 it's actually a change of your mind, your intellectual life too. 00:08:54.080 --> 00:08:58.200 And so you might be a person who once said, I just don't know what to think about the 00:08:58.200 --> 00:09:04.360 claims of the resurrection of Jesus, and repentance is to say, I have changed my mind. 00:09:04.360 --> 00:09:06.919 And so the change of the life of Jesus Christ really did rise from the dead, and I want to 00:09:06.919 --> 00:09:08.279 live my life in the light of that. 00:09:08.279 --> 00:09:13.480 And then he says also baptism. 00:09:13.480 --> 00:09:17.120 Repentance and baptism, this is an experience. 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:22.560 There's a wonderful book that was written in the middle 20th century by, or maybe as 00:09:22.560 --> 00:09:27.399 late as the 70s, 80s by an author named Sheldon Van Alken. 00:09:27.399 --> 00:09:30.440 This is a forgotten classic of the 20th century, I think. 00:09:30.440 --> 00:09:33.600 It's called A Severe Mercy. 00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:37.519 This book absolutely rocked me when I first read it. 00:09:37.519 --> 00:09:43.800 Sheldon Van Alken met his wife, Davy, that she was called, her real name was Jean, but 00:09:43.800 --> 00:09:46.040 they called her Davy. 00:09:46.040 --> 00:09:48.240 And they fell in love. 00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:51.000 Sheldon and Davy were madly in love. 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:55.000 They were the epitome of a modern romance story. 00:09:55.000 --> 00:10:00.960 And they described themselves as pagans, and they said this, we worshiped human love, we 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:07.720 worshiped the spirits of the earth and the sky, we worshiped beauty, very much like most 00:10:07.720 --> 00:10:11.040 of the people in our modern city of Edinburgh. 00:10:11.040 --> 00:10:17.240 And then they moved to Oxford in England, and they met C.S. Lewis. 00:10:17.240 --> 00:10:24.240 And this book is very famous because it has 18 letters between Sheldon and Davy and C.S. 00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:28.160 Lewis that have never been published anywhere else that we didn't know about until Sheldon 00:10:28.160 --> 00:10:30.320 gave them to the world. 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:35.440 And then this experience with C.S. Lewis, Davy, his Sheldon's wife, she came to faith 00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:39.520 in Christ, and Sheldon did not. 00:10:39.520 --> 00:10:46.560 And year after year after year, Sheldon describes his experience in this book as he interacts 00:10:46.560 --> 00:10:51.760 with Lewis, where Lewis is trying to bring him along to see the truth of Christianity. 00:10:51.760 --> 00:10:58.080 And he writes, he says, I wanted to believe. 00:10:58.080 --> 00:10:59.520 Sheldon said that. 00:10:59.519 --> 00:11:04.159 And then one night, many years later in their marriage, one night, this is what he wrote, 00:11:04.159 --> 00:11:09.279 he said, one night I was staring into the fire, and I wondered with a strange mixture 00:11:09.279 --> 00:11:17.399 of hope and fear whether Christ might be in very truth my God. 00:11:17.399 --> 00:11:18.399 My God. 00:11:18.399 --> 00:11:24.840 He said, suddenly I became aware that my wife Davy was praying beside me, and she had 00:11:24.840 --> 00:11:29.279 stolen into the room, she had snuck into the room, and her nightgown, and she knelt down 00:11:29.279 --> 00:11:34.480 by the sofa, and I looked at her, and I had never seen her pray before. 00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:40.399 She paused a moment, and she said, oh, dearest, please believe, and moved to tears. 00:11:40.399 --> 00:11:44.519 I whispered back, oh, I do believe. 00:11:44.519 --> 00:11:51.919 And when I said that, he writes, I was shaken by this affirmation that had swept over me. 00:11:51.919 --> 00:11:53.000 He said, I wondered that night. 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:58.120 He looked in the fire, and he said, I wonder if Jesus could be my God. 00:11:58.120 --> 00:12:02.519 Not the God of the philosophers, but my God. 00:12:02.519 --> 00:12:04.399 And that's repentance. 00:12:04.399 --> 00:12:06.960 It's a change of mind. 00:12:06.960 --> 00:12:11.639 And then you come and you're baptized publicly, Peter says, and one New Testament scholar 00:12:11.639 --> 00:12:16.440 puts the entry into the counter-cultural community, the church, through baptism like this. 00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:23.000 He says, the real enemy in the first century, after all, was not Rome, just like it's not 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:25.480 the generation you live in. 00:12:25.480 --> 00:12:30.440 It's the powers of evil that stand behind human arrogance, that stand behind all violence, 00:12:30.440 --> 00:12:36.519 and on the cross, the kingdom of God triumphed over every single kingdom of this world by 00:12:36.519 --> 00:12:40.320 refusing to enter into the spiral of violence. 00:12:40.320 --> 00:12:44.200 On the cross, Jesus loved his enemies. 00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:45.879 He turned the other cheek. 00:12:45.879 --> 00:12:52.159 He went the extra mile, and so the cross became an upside-down pattern. 00:12:52.159 --> 00:12:57.839 It contradicts the way normal humans expect culture to go, because at the heart of the 00:12:57.839 --> 00:12:59.919 cross is costly forgiveness. 00:12:59.919 --> 00:13:03.159 The cross beckons a reversal of all values. 00:13:03.159 --> 00:13:08.959 The world, the Roman Empire, said power, wealth, class superiority, recognition, these are 00:13:08.959 --> 00:13:10.559 the ultimate goods. 00:13:10.559 --> 00:13:17.879 And the cross subverted every culture of the age and created a counter-cultural community. 00:13:17.879 --> 00:13:24.759 When you go to be baptized, it's the moment where you say, I've entered a counter-culture, 00:13:24.759 --> 00:13:25.759 repentance and baptism. 00:13:25.759 --> 00:13:28.000 And so the church is a counter-culture. 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:29.000 The church is a new vision. 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:31.960 The church is a place that's different from the culture of this world. 00:13:31.960 --> 00:13:35.600 And so secondly, what does that counter-culture look like? 00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:39.519 These are the vital signs of a healthy church, verse 42 to 47. 00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:41.639 This is what to look for. 00:13:41.639 --> 00:13:44.879 Some of you today are here evaluating churches. 00:13:44.879 --> 00:13:47.519 You're in that phase right now in September. 00:13:47.519 --> 00:13:50.159 What do you look for in a church? 00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:54.799 Acts chapter 2, verses 42 to 47, tells you exactly what to look for. 00:13:54.799 --> 00:13:55.799 And here it is. 00:13:55.799 --> 00:13:58.120 This is a glimpse of humanity under Christ. 00:13:58.120 --> 00:13:59.120 Now there's five. 00:13:59.120 --> 00:14:04.319 I'm only going to do two of them very briefly, but I'll list the other three we're not going 00:14:04.319 --> 00:14:05.960 to do for you very quickly. 00:14:05.960 --> 00:14:12.199 And if you look down at the text, you can see in verse 42 to 47, it says they devoted themselves 00:14:12.199 --> 00:14:15.840 to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship. 00:14:15.840 --> 00:14:20.639 That's the word koinonia in Greek, quite a famous word, and it means an intense devotion 00:14:20.639 --> 00:14:23.440 to community, to loving one another. 00:14:23.440 --> 00:14:28.320 And so in our vision statement next week, we will say that our calling is to love one 00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:33.480 another, intense commitment to the local community of the church, generous hospitality. 00:14:33.480 --> 00:14:38.480 That's one of the aspects of healthy churches, the ministry of fellowship or hospitality, 00:14:38.480 --> 00:14:41.480 deep internal Christian friendship amongst the body. 00:14:41.480 --> 00:14:46.279 Also in, if you look down at verse 46, day by day they were attending the temple together 00:14:46.279 --> 00:14:50.360 and they're breaking bread in all their homes and they received their food with glad and 00:14:50.360 --> 00:14:53.039 generous hearts, hospitality. 00:14:53.039 --> 00:14:57.920 And then verse 47, they had favor with all people and the Lord was adding to their number 00:14:57.920 --> 00:14:59.680 day by day. 00:14:59.680 --> 00:15:03.800 Last week we looked at the ministry of evangelism or witness. 00:15:03.800 --> 00:15:09.240 So the first church had a commitment to helping people day by day come to faith. 00:15:09.240 --> 00:15:10.480 They added to their number day by day. 00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:14.360 The ministry of evangelism, the ministry of witness by word. 00:15:14.360 --> 00:15:20.159 And then just before that, they shared all their possessions with anybody who had need. 00:15:20.159 --> 00:15:24.840 And that's the ministry of mercy, the ministry of giving your stuff away because you've been 00:15:24.840 --> 00:15:26.519 changed by the gospel. 00:15:26.519 --> 00:15:30.480 Three ministries we won't talk about anymore today, the ministry of mercy, the ministry 00:15:30.480 --> 00:15:36.200 of evangelism, the ministry of fellowship or intense commitment to the local community. 00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:39.360 But let's talk about the other two for just a minute. 00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:45.840 And you see in verse 42, they devoted themselves first to the apostles teaching. 00:15:45.840 --> 00:15:52.320 Now that word that Peter uses, sorry that Luke, the writer of this book uses, that verb 00:15:52.320 --> 00:15:57.440 they devoted themselves is a verb of extreme intensity. 00:15:57.440 --> 00:16:05.120 So some scholars talk about this word as meaning intense perseverance through long segments 00:16:05.120 --> 00:16:06.680 of time. 00:16:06.679 --> 00:16:11.639 And so there's this verb of intensity, they intensely devoted themselves to the apostles 00:16:11.639 --> 00:16:12.799 teaching. 00:16:12.799 --> 00:16:18.959 And what that means is that they were committed to growing in theological depth. 00:16:18.959 --> 00:16:23.159 So the very first thing we read about the first church filled by the Holy Spirit is 00:16:23.159 --> 00:16:28.719 it says they intensely devoted themselves to the apostolic teaching. 00:16:28.719 --> 00:16:30.959 And that's found in the Bible. 00:16:30.959 --> 00:16:36.639 So we learn here that one of the marks of a healthy church, a spirit filled church is 00:16:36.639 --> 00:16:42.159 an intense devotion to theological depth and rigor, to the truth. 00:16:42.159 --> 00:16:49.080 And so what we see I think is that we should never apologize, never feel like there's a 00:16:49.080 --> 00:16:54.000 competition in the Bible and in the Christian life between the head and the heart. 00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:55.000 Never. 00:16:55.000 --> 00:17:00.279 And if you go back to the sermon that Peter gave in chapter two about Jesus, one of the 00:17:00.279 --> 00:17:05.000 things you would notice is that the whole thing is structured as an argument. 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:11.960 So Peter says, know this, use your mind, and realize that Jesus was attested to you by 00:17:11.960 --> 00:17:17.440 signs and wonders that he fulfilled the conditions of the Old Testament Messiah ship that we've 00:17:17.440 --> 00:17:18.960 read about all throughout the Old Testament. 00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:23.920 And he says, and listen, you crucified him, but he came back to life. 00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:28.599 He's talking about the empirical evidence, and he's saying the mind is never set against 00:17:28.599 --> 00:17:30.519 the heart in Christianity, not at all. 00:17:30.519 --> 00:17:34.839 And instead what we have here is a commitment that a healthy church must be intensely devoted 00:17:34.839 --> 00:17:41.119 to theological depth, to teaching the whole of the scriptures, to exploring it. 00:17:41.119 --> 00:17:49.919 That means I think that we've got to see that the Bible teaches that oftentimes, most often, 00:17:49.919 --> 00:17:56.480 we are cut to the heart, verse 37, when we've worked through the mind. 00:17:56.480 --> 00:17:57.480 So what does Peter do? 00:17:57.480 --> 00:18:02.039 He gives you a logical argument for believing in Jesus, and then in verse 37, the end of 00:18:02.039 --> 00:18:06.680 the sermon, he says, so they were cut to the heart. 00:18:06.680 --> 00:18:14.319 And one of the dangers, I think, in our time is that we can become so anti-intellectual 00:18:14.319 --> 00:18:20.559 when it comes to words like theology, the hard things of God, the hard sections of scripture, 00:18:20.559 --> 00:18:24.759 that you may actually find that you're in a season of numbness, maybe to the things of 00:18:24.759 --> 00:18:29.759 the Lord, of being a little bit dull with the gospel. 00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:35.640 And that may be because of thinking everything is so simple. 00:18:35.640 --> 00:18:41.519 And instead what we have in scripture is a gospel, a good news that a child can understand, 00:18:41.519 --> 00:18:46.640 that a child can enter into, and at the same time, depths that, well, the famous quote, 00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:51.319 it's often attributed to Augustine, but it was Gregory the Great who said that the gospel, 00:18:51.319 --> 00:18:57.519 the good news, the scripture is shallow enough that a lamb can wade, and deep enough that 00:18:57.519 --> 00:19:00.000 an elephant can swim. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.359 And oftentimes when you realize that, that a five-year-old can understand the gospel, 00:19:04.359 --> 00:19:10.200 amazing, but boy, there is depth to the gospel, dimensions to the gospel that you will never 00:19:10.200 --> 00:19:12.599 understand. 00:19:12.599 --> 00:19:17.279 And when you realize that, the theological depth, the rigor, that is what strikes your 00:19:17.279 --> 00:19:19.319 heart all over again. 00:19:19.319 --> 00:19:23.160 It's realizing that theology is nothing but the pursuit of the knowledge of God in all 00:19:23.160 --> 00:19:28.840 its depths, and to know the world and the light of all that God has said about the world. 00:19:28.840 --> 00:19:32.720 You realize, boy, there is so much I don't know. 00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:38.040 And it's realizing how much you don't know that cuts you to the heart to say, look at 00:19:38.040 --> 00:19:39.560 the God of the gospel. 00:19:39.560 --> 00:19:40.560 Wow, amazing. 00:19:40.560 --> 00:19:43.120 I love, we'll move on to the second one. 00:19:43.120 --> 00:19:51.080 I love how Peter, who preached the sermon also in his second letter, he says that the 00:19:51.079 --> 00:19:53.439 Bible is sometimes difficult to understand. 00:19:53.439 --> 00:19:57.119 So the Bible says the Bible is sometimes hard to understand. 00:19:57.119 --> 00:20:03.960 So John 3.16, very famous, 2 Peter 3.16, easy to remember. 00:20:03.960 --> 00:20:09.720 And in 2 Peter 3.16, Peter says, I know that you've read Paul's letters, and sometimes 00:20:09.720 --> 00:20:11.679 Paul is hard to understand. 00:20:11.679 --> 00:20:12.679 That's what he says. 00:20:12.679 --> 00:20:15.639 The Bible says the Bible can be difficult at times to understand. 00:20:15.639 --> 00:20:19.039 Ah, but yes, theological depth. 00:20:19.039 --> 00:20:20.799 Diving in intense devotion, that's our calling. 00:20:20.799 --> 00:20:26.759 Now the second and final thing we'll say today is we see here also, they devoted themselves 00:20:26.759 --> 00:20:30.599 to the apostolic teaching, intense devotion. 00:20:30.599 --> 00:20:36.559 And then it says, and notice the definite article in each of these lines, the, the, the, 00:20:36.559 --> 00:20:42.440 they devoted themselves versus 42 to the apostolic teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking 00:20:42.440 --> 00:20:45.960 of bread, and to the prayers. 00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:51.200 And the reason that the definite article is there, the, the, the, is because it's talking 00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:57.319 about, it's talking about liturgy, as we say, it's talking about formal worship. 00:20:57.319 --> 00:21:01.840 The apostolic teaching is the opening of the Bible in public worship. 00:21:01.840 --> 00:21:03.759 The breaking of bread is what? 00:21:03.759 --> 00:21:05.240 It's the Lord's Supper. 00:21:05.240 --> 00:21:07.000 It's the meal of the people. 00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:09.400 The prayers is the Lord's prayer. 00:21:09.400 --> 00:21:12.840 It's the formal prayers of God's people gathered together. 00:21:12.839 --> 00:21:16.879 The fellowship is the gathering on Sundays, on the Sabbath day. 00:21:16.879 --> 00:21:22.559 So what we learn here, intense devotion to theological rigor, secondly, and then secondly, 00:21:22.559 --> 00:21:24.359 an intense devotion to worship. 00:21:24.359 --> 00:21:27.159 What's the, what's the life of a healthy church? 00:21:27.159 --> 00:21:32.119 It's a devotion to coming and worship, to breaking of bread, to the prayers, the ministry 00:21:32.119 --> 00:21:33.119 of worship. 00:21:33.119 --> 00:21:40.720 And in verse 43 it says that all, this word all or holy fear came upon every single person 00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:42.639 as they gathered. 00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:49.160 And so we see here that there's a commitment to the ministry of worship where holy fear, 00:21:49.160 --> 00:21:53.160 reverence, and joy comes upon God's people as they gather. 00:21:53.160 --> 00:22:00.320 And so here at St. Columbus, in our values, we say that we long for joyful Sundays, holy 00:22:00.320 --> 00:22:04.880 worship, all in reverence coming upon the people. 00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:08.880 Now we'll move to the close. 00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:14.680 What tends to happen is the personality of, every single one of us has a different personality 00:22:14.680 --> 00:22:17.240 to some degree. 00:22:17.240 --> 00:22:21.480 And churches all tend to have different personalities as well. 00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:26.800 And what can often happen when all of us gather with different personalities, the church takes 00:22:26.800 --> 00:22:33.240 on a certain personality, and we tend to think, we tend to become a church that has only one 00:22:33.240 --> 00:22:36.160 or two of these five emphases. 00:22:36.160 --> 00:22:42.519 And so if we did this exercise, probably we could talk about the theology church in 00:22:42.519 --> 00:22:46.800 town, which I know has sometimes been attributed here. 00:22:46.800 --> 00:22:50.920 The theology church, people talk about the community church, the place where there's 00:22:50.920 --> 00:22:53.120 just an intense devotion to the community. 00:22:53.120 --> 00:22:56.200 People talk about the worship experience church in town. 00:22:56.200 --> 00:23:00.000 People talk about the social justice church, the mercy church. 00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.960 People talk about the evangelism church, the place that does the biggest best evangelism. 00:23:04.960 --> 00:23:10.920 And when you come to Acts chapter two, 42 to 47, what you learn is that the only right 00:23:10.920 --> 00:23:14.480 answer is yes. 00:23:14.480 --> 00:23:22.720 All five, a commitment to worship, to evangelism, to witness by word and deed, to the fellowship 00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:27.799 of the saints, a deep intense commitment to communion, and all of that grounded by theological 00:23:27.799 --> 00:23:29.759 rigor. 00:23:29.759 --> 00:23:34.160 And it will always be the case that a church will tend towards one or the other, and it 00:23:34.160 --> 00:23:39.320 will always be the case that revival, revivification, a movement of the Holy Spirit means bringing 00:23:39.320 --> 00:23:43.920 us back to balance, bringing us back to all five. 00:23:43.920 --> 00:23:46.360 And this is the heart of where our vision statement comes from. 00:23:46.360 --> 00:23:49.279 And so let me close with this thirdly. 00:23:49.279 --> 00:23:55.360 If we were to summarize these vital signs of a healthy church, a spirit-filled church, 00:23:55.360 --> 00:24:01.440 we'd get here a glimpse of new humanity where we could simply say it like this, God calls 00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:02.440 us. 00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:07.320 We realize the love of God, we realize we were made to return God's love for us with 00:24:07.320 --> 00:24:08.320 our love for God. 00:24:08.320 --> 00:24:09.320 And that's the way we do that. 00:24:09.320 --> 00:24:13.360 These five areas, these five ministries, how do you love God? 00:24:13.360 --> 00:24:19.680 You do it through worship, witness by word, witness by deed, an intense devotion to God's 00:24:19.680 --> 00:24:23.519 people and a love for the apostolic teaching. 00:24:23.519 --> 00:24:26.920 To love God, that's how it's expressed here. 00:24:26.920 --> 00:24:33.400 There's a writer in Virginia, Catherine Sonderrager, and she writes a lot about God's love. 00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:34.400 I love what she says about it. 00:24:34.400 --> 00:24:41.920 She says, love is the lesson that the Lord has taught us, that we should love God and 00:24:41.920 --> 00:24:44.759 love one another because he first loved us. 00:24:44.759 --> 00:24:49.560 And then she says this, first John teaches us, along with the rest of the Bible, that 00:24:49.559 --> 00:24:57.359 we do not know God if we overlook or turn aside from divine love, if we do, we have 00:24:57.359 --> 00:25:03.440 missed the centerpiece of the fiery heart of the living God. 00:25:03.440 --> 00:25:11.759 And then she writes, can we imagine, can we imagine that we could live as those unscathed, 00:25:11.759 --> 00:25:19.359 unchard by divine love, loveless citizens of an icy cold and indifferent world, and yet 00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:23.119 say that we know God? 00:25:23.119 --> 00:25:28.799 The truth, who is God, is not within our minds, should we be loveless, even as the living 00:25:28.799 --> 00:25:32.279 one is not in our hearts or in our deeds. 00:25:32.279 --> 00:25:34.519 What is love? 00:25:34.519 --> 00:25:36.000 What is God's love for us? 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:38.039 How do you describe it? 00:25:38.039 --> 00:25:44.679 You remember what Farner said, they said, I want to know what love is, right? 00:25:44.679 --> 00:25:48.599 And you come to the Bible, you say, I want to know what love is, I want you to show me. 00:25:48.599 --> 00:25:52.759 The apostolic teaching, I want to know, I want to find out. 00:25:52.759 --> 00:26:00.159 And I think for most of us, we find that answer more in Elton John. 00:26:00.159 --> 00:26:02.879 Can you feel the love tonight, the Lion King? 00:26:02.879 --> 00:26:04.279 That's where we get our answer. 00:26:04.279 --> 00:26:08.159 That for us, most often, love is just a feeling. 00:26:08.159 --> 00:26:11.679 It's a chemical, it's a brain synapses firing. 00:26:11.679 --> 00:26:15.079 That's what most of the people in the modern world think about love, it's the way you 00:26:15.079 --> 00:26:16.079 feel. 00:26:16.079 --> 00:26:18.759 It's romantic. 00:26:18.759 --> 00:26:23.279 And when you come to the Bible, what you find out is that the love of God is not primarily 00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:28.480 expressed first in the noun, but actually in a verb. 00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:32.559 And there is one little line in this passage that conveys that to you, and it's so easy 00:26:32.559 --> 00:26:38.839 to pass over, but it's in verse 39 that headlines this whole counter-cultural movement. 00:26:38.839 --> 00:26:45.679 And in verse 39, Peter says, the promise of the Spirit is for all of those who God has 00:26:45.680 --> 00:26:49.120 called to himself. 00:26:49.120 --> 00:26:52.920 And that's love being described. 00:26:52.920 --> 00:26:58.400 And it's love being given to us, the love of God in the language of pursuit. 00:26:58.400 --> 00:27:02.440 The love of God, all those God calls to himself. 00:27:02.440 --> 00:27:08.759 And if you go from Genesis to Revelation, what you see is that the love of God is, of 00:27:08.759 --> 00:27:13.160 course it's a noun, of course he feels love, of course he has affection, but boy, we primarily 00:27:13.160 --> 00:27:20.720 see it in this verb, this action, this agency that he takes up in chasing us, in pursuit, 00:27:20.720 --> 00:27:22.920 in calling us to himself. 00:27:22.920 --> 00:27:27.320 And you can think about all the metaphors in the Bible like Luke 15, where the woman 00:27:27.320 --> 00:27:33.080 flips her house over to find one coin, where the shepherd goes out for the one lamb when 00:27:33.080 --> 00:27:40.320 he has 99 others, where the father in reckless love runs out to his prodigal son to say, 00:27:40.320 --> 00:27:42.200 I want you to come home, I want you to come to the feast. 00:27:42.200 --> 00:27:47.559 You can think of the types and shadows of this love of pursuit in the Bible like when 00:27:47.559 --> 00:27:53.840 Ruth clung to Naomi and said, wherever you go, I will go, I will not let go of you. 00:27:53.840 --> 00:27:59.519 Or when Jonathan clung to David and gave away his armor to David because of friendship, 00:27:59.519 --> 00:28:04.559 every single one of these moments is a type and a shadow of the radical verbal love of 00:28:04.559 --> 00:28:09.039 God which is pursuit love, chasing love. 00:28:09.039 --> 00:28:14.319 And here we learn that when the Spirit comes into your life and you with Sheldon Van Aak 00:28:14.319 --> 00:28:18.559 and say, could Jesus really be my God? 00:28:18.559 --> 00:28:20.680 It is because God has chased you. 00:28:20.680 --> 00:28:24.039 It is because the love of God has pursued you all the way to the bottom. 00:28:24.039 --> 00:28:28.799 And let me just leave you with one moment from Peter's sermon. 00:28:28.799 --> 00:28:36.079 The love of God, Peter says in verse 23 and 24 that it was the definite plan and foreknowledge 00:28:36.079 --> 00:28:43.399 of God from before eternity that you would crucify Jesus and that God would raise him 00:28:43.399 --> 00:28:45.240 from the dead. 00:28:45.240 --> 00:28:51.960 Now when he says you crucified Jesus, he is talking to all sorts of people that are gathered 00:28:51.960 --> 00:28:57.119 in the city of Jerusalem 50 days after the crucifixion. 00:28:57.119 --> 00:29:02.119 And so many of them actually were not physically present for the crucifixion. 00:29:02.119 --> 00:29:09.159 He's talking to thousands of people that were not there the day that Jesus was crucified. 00:29:09.159 --> 00:29:15.639 And yet he says you, in English it's hard to see because it actually says y'all crucified 00:29:15.639 --> 00:29:16.639 him. 00:29:16.639 --> 00:29:19.159 That's the best way to say it. 00:29:19.159 --> 00:29:20.439 Y'all crucified him. 00:29:20.439 --> 00:29:23.159 You crucified him. 00:29:23.159 --> 00:29:24.679 It's the plural. 00:29:24.679 --> 00:29:28.399 He's saying to people that weren't physically there, you crucified him. 00:29:28.399 --> 00:29:29.759 Y'all crucified him. 00:29:29.759 --> 00:29:32.759 You know what he's saying? 00:29:32.759 --> 00:29:37.799 He's saying human beings of 2024, you crucified him. 00:29:37.799 --> 00:29:40.000 Everybody, your sin put him there. 00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:42.920 Your evil put him on the cross. 00:29:42.920 --> 00:29:47.359 And you see repentance is when it's that personal when you can say the love of God has so chased 00:29:47.359 --> 00:29:54.440 after me that I can say I crucified him yet God raised him from the dead for me. 00:29:54.440 --> 00:29:57.720 That's the love of God for you. 00:29:57.720 --> 00:30:04.240 The ministry of worship, the ministry of fellowship, the ministry of witness by word and deed and 00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:10.160 the ministry of intense theological devotion is the way we respond to God with our love 00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:15.600 for him because he loved us all the way to the point of death. 00:30:15.600 --> 00:30:22.039 And so our counter-cultural vision, taking up this counter-cultural vision, your love 00:30:22.039 --> 00:30:26.039 for God is not the means of your salvation, not at all. 00:30:26.039 --> 00:30:28.599 Not love for you is the means of salvation. 00:30:28.599 --> 00:30:33.359 And yet the measure of your growth in this life, the measure of your love for God, your 00:30:33.359 --> 00:30:37.399 love for God I should say, is the measure of your joy in this life, of your growth, of 00:30:37.399 --> 00:30:43.519 your sanctification, of being changed, of taking on a counter-cultural movement, the church, 00:30:43.519 --> 00:30:44.519 the life of the church. 00:30:44.519 --> 00:30:45.519 Let's pray. 00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:53.079 Father, we ask that you would raise up a counter-culture and we ask, Lord, that it would start today, 00:30:53.079 --> 00:30:58.119 right here with us, that we would be changed by the power of the gospel. 00:30:58.119 --> 00:31:04.000 And so we ask, Lord, that we would just taste as we sing to close a bit of your love for 00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:07.639 us, that we would be changed by it. 00:31:07.639 --> 00:31:12.679 And that in response to it, I pray that someone here would know the sweetness of repentance 00:31:12.679 --> 00:31:18.919 on the one hand, the joy of baptism perhaps if they've never been baptized on the other, 00:31:18.920 --> 00:31:23.080 and from that, that they would enter in, we would enter in together to a counter-cultural 00:31:23.080 --> 00:31:27.000 vision expressed in seeking a citywide movement of the gospel. 00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:29.160 And so change our hearts, Lord. 00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:30.360 Don't leave us the same. 00:31:30.360 --> 00:31:32.800 We pray and we ask this in Jesus' name. 00:31:32.799 --> 00:31:49.839 Amen.