completely well through the power of the name of Jesus
Christ of
whom you crucified and whom God raised from
death............
Salvation is to be found through Him alone….”: Acts. 4.10,12 (GNB)
Recently, a friend from the
He was telling me that before he came, just out of curiosity, he put our
address into Google Earth… if you have never seen it before, it’s a piece of
software that shows satellite pictures of most of the earth, most of the world,
its cities and towns.
And yes, he was telling me, with a couple of clicks of the mouse,
he could see our
house…. the garden………
zooming in from high above
first on
Something like that happens in the Book of Acts:
as the Church is built
and grows through the Spirit,
we focus in on the
detail of what the disciples say,
and do, a healing,
perhaps, or their preaching.
But the Book of Acts also allows us to see these events from a distance….
in a bird’s eye view, a
survey of the entire ground.
We can see in the book of Acts how healings, journeys, shipwrecks, riots,
all take their place in
what God is doing in His Church……through His Spirit.
We have a good example here this morning in Acts 4.
Peter and John have healed a man at gates of the
When the authorities ask Peter and John By what power or by what name did you do this ?
Peter, we are told, filled with the
Holy Spirit began to speak………
Stepping back, looking from a distance at what Peter says
let us consider two
things this morning, that we learn here from the book of Acts. These have to do
with what the Holy Spirit does, how He works, how He builds up the Church.
Now, in John’s gospel, for example, we learn that one of the great things
the Holy Spirit does, is to deepen our faith, to
expand, to enrichen, to deepen our faith in Jesus.
In the book of Acts, we are shown two other broad dimensions to the work
of the Spirit:
reading Acts, we discover that the Spirit
shapes, creates the Church, calls the Church into being, drawing men and women,
believers together
We see this, for example at Pentecost,
or in the congregation
at
among the believers in a city in
among the believers in
the Spirit comes down on the believers, blessing them as rain blesses the
dry and thirsty desert, and the Church springs into life, green and fresh and
new……
That’s one work of the Spirit we see in Acts.
What do we hear from the Word here ? We hear
this: that while we are shaped and guided by many things as a congregation -
the supreme and most
important work is that of the Holy Spirit among us,
drawing us together, blessing us,
bringing us life, green and fresh and new……..
But there is another aspect to the work of the Spirit in Acts
beside the creating of the Church as a community in Jesus Christ.
The Spirit also equips the Church to speak, equips the believers with a
living, dynamic, true word for their situation:
so that they proclaim, they preach, they witness to Jesus Christ.
This is just as we would expect, for this is just what
Jesus promises in the gospel: read the word of Jesus
in Mark 13.11
“you
will come before governors, kings, and the Gentiles as witnesses !
you
will be given what to say by the Spirit of the Father speaking through you……”
How fascinating that we see the fulfilment of this promise all through
the book of Acts:
When Stephen is brought before the authorities, in the last moments
before his death - he speaks, filled with
the Spirit, about Christ in heaven,
Philip, filled with the Spirit,
goes to speak to an Ethiopian, a Gentile about Jesus,
and here,
Peter filled with the Holy Spirit..................
speaks boldly to the
Isn’t this is just as the Lord Jesus has promised ?
that the Spirit will fill, speak through and in his followers ?
And so in the book of Acts
in all
the changing circumstances the Church finds itself in,
the work of the Spirit
is to give new voice, true voice, new power to what men and women say
about Jesus……..
Now – what of the circumstances
the Church finds itself in today in
Well, some feel that the Church
is finding it difficult to know what to say….
our
circumstances have changed so much and so quickly…..
I am sure there is some truth
in that………
but -
there is a Word here in the book of Acts for our own situation !
The teaching of the book of
Acts is that
in all
the changing circumstances in which the Church finds itself……
the work
of the Spirit is to inspire, to uplift, to reveal to the Church
how to
witness to Jesus Christ.
The work of the Spirit
is to
give us new voice, true voice, new power to enable us to speak of the living
Jesus Christ……..
let us
pray, let us pray for that work of the Spirit among us, and in our beloved
Church.
Now, to return to the book of
Acts – what precisely is it that Peter says –
in
truth and in power ?
What are the words given to him
by the Spirit moving, uplifting, him in a word of creative power, as He speaks
of Jesus Christ ?
What are the words given to him ?
Well, Peter does not begin
by
saying ‘this is what I think’, ‘this is how I feel‘
‘I want to tell you my story’.
He does not begin
by
telling the authorities about his life .
Quite the opposite – filled with the Spirit
Peter declares that
in the
a disabled man has been completely cured
and this is through the power and
authority of Jesus Christ.
“you should all know says Peter......
that this man stands here before you
completely well through the power of the name of Jesus
Christ of
whom you crucified and whom God raised from
death............ !”
And this is precisely what we
would expect.
Jesus says:
the Spirit will bring glory to me….
and
that is exactly what is happening here, as Peter speaks before the
filled
with the Holy Spirit,
He speaks of the power and the
authority of Jesus !
The authorities, we are told,
saw the courage of Peter and John, and realised that they were unschooled,
ordinary men,
the authorities were astonished and took note that these men had been with
Jesus…….
We might add: they still
were……….with Jesus !
For the crucified,
risen ascended Jesus,
the New
Testament declares, is the one to whom all power has been given
He is the one who
sustains the Church, creates the Church ever anew through the Spirit, and all
power, all authority belongs………to Him……
God exalted Him to the highest
place and has given Him the name that is above every name………that at the name of
Jesus, every knee shall bow, as we read in Philippians.
The ascended Jesus has been given all authority.
And so it is, that we here, we come to stand with Peter,
waiting, longing, praying for the Spirit to equip us anew and afresh.
To give us a new voice, a true
voice, to enable us to speak of the living Jesus Christ……..
in our
own circumstances………..
We come to stand with Peter
knowing that
Christ is the One to whom all power has
been given.
He is the one who
sustains the Church, creates the Church ever anew through
the Spirit, and all power, all authority belongs………to Him……
and we are His.
AMEN.