Acts 29

Yes, I know there isn't one and it finishes with chapter 28, but reading through Acts you can't help but notice the abruptness with which it end - you are left high and dry, you want to know what happens next.

And there's the point, it's not supposed to end, the story continues right down to today, and right around the globe!

The Acts of the Holy Spirit through God's people are still being done and told. God is still using ordinary people, filled with his Spirit to accomplish extraordinary things.

People are being saved and added to the church, delivered from the power of the evil one and set free to be who God wants them to be, healed from all kinds of sickness whether physically, emotionally or spiritually. Baptised in water; baptised in the Holy Spirit. Speaking in tongues, prophesying, seeing God's miraculous provision.

Yes, God is still on the move, moving by his Spirit, fulfilling his purposes, bringing his Kingdom in.

Do you know it?
Are you part of it?
What part are you playing in Acts 29?

Continuing the Ministry of Jesus

Reading the Acts of the Apostles one is gripped by its unfolding drama.

The way Luke starts it off is enough to make you sit up and take notice – “in the first book (Luke’s Gospel) Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit….”

Implication, it’s not finished, I going to tell you some more! And my, does he!

But hang on, where is Jesus? In heaven – hallelujah!

So how can it be about his continuing ministry? Jesus said he would not leave us on our own but send One just like himself, who would be poured out on all flesh, and enable that flesh, those people, to take the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth and do greater works than he – not just words, as important as they are, but demonstrations.

Yes, Jesus was certainly physically present in heaven, but he had received from the Father the Gift of the Spirit, and he had come to the church in  order to release that ministry on a worldwide scale through the church – a people saved and incorporated into Christ, and known as His Body, of which Paul says, he, Christ, is the Head.

Acts vibrates with such a people and church that knew the presence of God, and where God is things happen! As the story unfolds we encounter the continuing ministry of Jesus in the proclamation of His word and works, his saving, healing and delivering power, his guiding and providing influence.

From the outset Luke for the benefit of Theophilus and those who would hear and read down through the centuries writes an ordered and verified account.

This is not sterile religion.

This is not about being comfortable.

This is not about stained glass windows – however nice they may be.

This is not about orders of service – however useful they may be, and even the charismatic has them.

This is not about holy buildings – the people are now the Temple.

This is not about having everything packaged so that we know what’s happening next.

This is not about programs, though they may be useful.

This is about knowing God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not words on a page about God, but God himself. It’s about the life of God in the soul of man, and in the ‘soul’ of the church without which there can be no continuing ministry of Jesus.

Over the intervening centuries, that life has ebbed and flowed as different generations come and go. There are those who’ve grown up in churches or renewal/restoration movements but not had the same encounter with God their parents or grandparents had, and doctrine and practice is modified to account for it, and very soon structure and order become the norm. Then some desperate souls realise something is missing and get back to seeking and finding God again and encounter him afresh and so the tide comes in.

Where God is there is life, and ministry flows as the heart of God is revealed – it’s not tidy, nor is it static, but it pulsates with life, a life that challenges and changes, trumps and transforms our small lives and ministries.

O God grant us more of it!

The Cross Has Said It All

In a world that likes to exalt man and speak of his advances and goodness, the cross doesn’t make sense.

In a world that likes to say we are all victims but no one’s guilty, the cross is a foreign and alien concept.

For many it belongs to a bygone era when humanity didn’t understand itself and needed the idea of a God and religion to help it on it’s way, but today we supposedly know better, we’ve advanced beyond these things.

Not only are there those in the world who struggle to understand the message of the cross,  there are those in the church too.

The idea of penal substitution (that Christ was crucified for our sins, in our place, bearing ourpunishment) is sadly falling out of favour. At one time it would have been liberals, but now some evangelicals are raising their doubts more it would seem from an emotional point of view than a scriptural one.

It troubles our personal sensitivities that someone should have to die for us, and in such an awful way, and as a result it’s becoming increasingly popular to speak in terms of ‘identification with our suffering and pain,’ a ‘moral influence upon us,’ or/and a ‘victory over sin and satan’ – a death you’ll note that has no reference to God.

The pride of man likes the idea that he’s pretty good and can pull himself up by his own efforts, that he can improve on his situation, each of which the aforementioned offer. But the Bible just wont have it – all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and totally unable to save himself or herself.

Memory Loss

The problem is we have memory loss. We have forgotten how grievous our sin is, we have forgotten how far we have fallen and it’s consequences and power in and over our lives, and how it separates us from God. Sin has caused a huge rupture in humanities relationship to God and completely messed up his own psyche, and it’s evidence is seen all over the place no matter the amount of education or social welfare etc..

An identification with our suffering and pain though comforting is insufficient, a moral influence is good but completely inadequate to get me, you, out of this mess, and a victory over sin and satan is great but how will that moment in history help me if that is all that there is to it? I need a cross that speaks a bigger and stronger word than that, a cross that radically goes to the root of the problem and gets me out of it.

The Cross Speaks

The cross speaks of God coming and taking human flesh not simply to identify with us, or provide us with a good example, or tell us that sin and satan have been defeated, but of God’s great power to go to the heart of the issue and provide a substitute who would take our very sin and bear the judgement of a Triune God on it.

I put it that way deliberately – it was a Trinitarian affair, it was the business of Father, Son and Holy Spirit – not one over and against an unwilling other. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. This plan had it’s origin in the heart of the Trinity, a truly staggering plan in which the ‘chastisement or punishment of our peace was upon him’ as Isaiah says prophetically by the Spirit.

As Paul says, ‘Christ died for our sins.’

A cross that is not penal carries no great salvific message, it simply gives me a form of moralism – I nearly wrote a moralistic gospel, but such would not be good news!

Isaiah says:

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed himstricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soulmakes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.” (Isaiah 53:4-6, 10)

The cross has to do with God and man.

He bore and was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

He bore our chastisement/punishment.

He was wounded for our healing.

He paid the price for all our sin.

He was stricken, smitten by God – it was God who put God in flesh to grief.

It was God in Flesh who made an offering for all our guilt.#

The Cross has Said it All

The cross has said it all. It is a full word, complete and sufficient in every way.

This truly is a saving gospel. It is this gospel that has been the good news to many a soul down through history, thousands upon thousands, indeed millions of them. Yes, as this gospel is preached he shall continue to see his offspring (those who believe) and be satisfied!

The Importance of the Incarnation

"For God loved the world in this way: He gave his One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

"(God) condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin's domain." Romans 8:3 (HCSB)

The incarnation is as important to our salvation as the death and resurrection of Jesus. As Gregory Nazianzen (one of the old church fathers) put it, "The unassumed is the unredeemed." Jesus therefore had to enter our very real, fractured humanity, in order to redeem it and heal every part of it, and offer it back to God.

Glorious mystery, wonderful Saviour, so great a salvation!