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You Can Depend on God

 

January 31-February 1, 2009

Glenn McDonald

Acts 3:1-26

 

My children were born at just the right time to be caught up in the national craze called Where's Waldo? A children's author with a quirky sense of humor and apparently a great deal of time on his hands invented a series of books in which kids had to find a cartoon character named Waldo. Waldo has this habit of blending in with colorful crowds. Just for reference, this is Waldo. The reader's goal is to memorize every detail of that happy face and those dapper threads, and then to locate Waldo somewhere in a scene like this one. This is way better than average entertainment.

Now let's imagine another exercise that requires a bit of searching. Where is Jesus? Where can Jesus be found in your home right now? Does he stand out because he's right in the middle of everything, or does he tend to get lost behind stacks of bills, and your crazy schedule, and decisions you have to make this week that don't really seem to connect with anything that Jesus has to offer?

Where's Jesus when you go to work? Where will Jesus be in your school this Monday? Would we have to look through scene after scene, and study crowd after crowd, just to find some evidence that he's there? Here's the scariest but most important question of all: Where's Jesus in this church? Is he front and center in everything that we do, or has he gotten lost behind ministries and programs and slogans and doughnuts? If God were to take a snapshot of our church, would Jesus stand out and be easy to find, or would we have to squint our eyes and look all around the perimeter of our property?

For the first six months of 2009 we're working our way through the book of Acts, which happens to be the Bible's account of the early Church. It's taken us four weeks to tackle just two chapters. That's because these opening chapters set the tone for everything to follow. And the most notable reality is that the name of Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus, and the power of Jesus are everywhere. It's not hard to play Where's Jesus? when you read the book of Acts. Jesus' followers act and speak and make decisions as if Jesus is in the middle of everything.

We have already seen that certain themes routinely emerge during these earliest days of the church. For instance, there is the Great Commission. Jesus has given his followers of every generation the assignment of being disciples who make disciples, starting right where we are and going to the ends of the earth. This church has enthusiastically embraced the Great Commission as our very reason for existence. Then there's the apostles' teaching about Jesus, which becomes deeper and stronger the farther we go into the book of Acts. Right now you are looking at the top two identified priorities of ZPC. Last year our elders confirmed that we want to be all about Jesus' mission and all about Jesus' message. Our third priority, by the way, is providing transforming ministry to families and children.

What other themes recur in the earliest chapters of Acts? Last week we encountered the disciples' commitment to authentic community - a new way for God's people to live together with a common purpose in a common place with common possessions. And here we can only say, "Uh-oh." ZPC may have pockets of true community, but the depth of our fellowship is mediocre at best. As one woman said to me last weekend, "This a friendly church, but not yet a church that is filled with friends."

The early church in Jerusalem was also known for prevailing corporate prayer - that means disciples praying together, and not just on their own. Now we've gone from preaching to meddling. Prayer, after all, is one of those irrefutable measures of whether we happen to think that God actually exists and is still at work today.

Prayer leadership is crucial because most of us learn how to pray by praying with others. A grandmother once invited some guests over for dinner. There were a lot of preparations, and at one point she became rather exasperated. Finally everyone arrived and sat down to dinner. The grandmother asked her six-year-old granddaughter Jennifer to pray.

"But I don't know how to pray," said Jennifer. "Well," said Grandma, "just pray like you heard me pray earlier today." "OK," said Jennifer. She folded her hands and said, "Dear Lord, why in the world did I invite all these people over for dinner? In Jesus' name, Amen."

Pastor and author Daniel Henderson regularly speaks at events where he makes the Bible's case for church-wide prayer. After one such presentation, the chair of another congregation's pastoral search committee took him aside. He showed Henderson the list of 85 desirable qualities that this church hoped would be embodied by their next senior pastor. There were many good things on that list. But being a prayer leader was not one of them.

A major contrast between the modern Western church and the ancient Jerusalem church is that we so often assume, without even thinking about it, that we don't need a supernatural dependence on God in order to make things happen. Too often we try to discipline ourselves to make our lives better, or to reorganize the church to achieve greater health. In both February and March our session is going to participate in important strategic planning retreats. Please know that we do not for a moment assume that strategic planning leads to revival. Revival is what happens when people allow God to be God.

Today we come to another recurring reality of the book of Acts: signs and wonders. These are miraculous events that point to Jesus as the Messiah and generate a sense of wonderment and awe amongst disciples and skeptics alike. And this is where a majority of contemporary American churches are simply stopped in their tracks. We may embrace the Great Commission, teach our hearts out, and yearn for deeper community and prayer, but what are we supposed to do with the Bible's unapologetic reports of signs and wonders?

Here's how Ken Blue puts it: "If a new believer sat in a sealed room for thirty days and read the New Testament for the first time, would he or she be likely to conclude that the normal experience of Christianity includes miracles, healings and mighty expressions of God's power?"

Let's put that question to the test. Let's open our Bibles together to the beginning of Acts chapter three, and let's do our best to read these words as if for the first time:

"One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer - at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, ‘Look at us!' So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.

"Then Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him."

The first thing we note at the beginning of this story is that Peter and John are committed to the practice of prayer - and not just to a new pattern that they have invented, but to the ancient Jewish practice of praying three times every day. Faithful Jews would pray at dawn, at about three in the afternoon, and right when the sun went down. These first Christians had no intention of separating from Judaism. They saw Jesus as fulfilling or completing the deepest yearnings of the Old Testament.

Verse two tells us, in the original Greek, that this beggar at the temple gate is "crippled from his mother's womb." In other words, he has some kind of birth deformity that has prevented him from taking a single step. Friends or family members carry him to the temple gate because that's where the crowds are going to be at 3:00 p.m. Worshippers coming to meet with God may, after all, be moved by compassion to give him a gift.

Now one of the tragedies of ancient Judaism is that this man or his parents are assumed to have done something horrific for him to be in this condition. It's simple cause and effect. His life is ruined because someone has sinned. Some of the rabbis during the time of Jesus even taught that physically disabled people were excluded from heaven, because obviously God hadn't forgiven their sins. Otherwise they would be up on their feet.

Have you ever felt trapped like that - that you're stuck wearing a sign that says Divorced, or Lost My Business, or Can't Control My Kids, or Addicted, or All Alone? There's something broken at the center of so many faith communities that makes people want to step away from those who are emotionally, physically, sexually, or spiritually damaged.

Peter and John will have none of that. "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." In the Middle East, a name is not to be confused with a nametag. Someone's name expresses the very nature of their being. It was assumed that if you speak the name of a certain person, whatever power that person might have becomes present and available. For instance, I've only watched one major football game in my life from the press box - that is, from the really good seats. On that occasion I didn't walk up to the press box and say, "Hey everybody, it's me." Instead, I was granted entry only because I used the name of someone who had the authority to put me into one of those seats.

So in this scene in Acts three, where's Jesus? Peter pronounces the name of Jesus over this crippled beggar, and Jesus' power is thereby present to make his legs whole. This man immediately walks, and leaps, and praises God. Now everybody in the crowd is a student of the Old Testament. They realize that this kind of event is one of the classic signs of the kingdom of God. Isaiah 35:6 says that when the Messiah comes, "Then will the lame leap like a deer."

Since we believe that all disciples of Jesus are citizens of God's kingdom, shouldn't it be typical for us to experience such signs and wonders? Last year two members of our church - Joyce Ter Horst and Pam Bierwagen - traveled to Uganda as members of a team leading a revival amongst central African villages. As God worked through their prayers and their touch, they personally experienced blind people receiving their sight. They watched and felt as crippled legs became strong, and disabled men and women began to walk. One man who had arrived at the meeting leaning on a cane got up and began to dance. "Here," he said, "you can keep my cane!" This is the very one.

Stories like this are rampant in the Developing World. They happen every day, wherever people are ministering at the growing edge of God's kingdom. But frankly such events are rare in the United States, and all too often they become entangled with the fraudulent claims of certain evangelists. The fact is that signs and wonders were at one time much more common here in the Midwest. That was 200 years ago, when the Tennessee and Kentucky and Indiana territories, among others, were what we would now call the Developing World.

Pastors and seminary professors who lived on the east coast heard these stories and asked, "What's going on out there in the frontier?" It was the arrival of civilized Christianity here in Indiana that changed the expectation of what ought to be happening in a church on any given Sunday. Let's look again at the recurring realities of the early church. Congregations have historically adjusted themselves far more easily to the Great Commission, to teaching, and to the quest for real community, than to prayer and signs and wonders. We've frankly become used to the fact that our church experience is not going to be a supernatural experience, even though the Bible says otherwise.

I'd like to ask you to read aloud the words that are about to appear on the screen. Are you ready? Paris in the the spring. Did you notice that the word "the" appears twice? A good many of us probably missed that, but it's not really a surprise. We tend to see what we expect to see.

Because most of us have been trained to think that we can live the Christian life all by ourselves, we tend to overlook the parts of the Bible that shout about our need to depend on God. We cherry pick the teachings of the Bible that easily align with the idea that we can be spiritual people in our own power, instead of recognizing our need for radical dependence. Because we have left little room for God to work, and do not honestly expect to experience signs and wonders, our spiritual life stays under our control instead of God's control.

How did we get to this place? During the Reformation 500 years ago, both Martin Luther and John Calvin felt the need to distinguish the growing Protestant revolution from the Roman Catholic Church's strong emphasis on miracles. "The Bible is all we need!" The Bible is a wonderful gift from God...but do the blessings of Bible study exhaust what God is willing to give to us?

When I was in fifth grade, a new half hour drama debuted on TV. It was called Flipper. Flipper was the ongoing story of two brothers who lived on the Florida coast, had access to cool powerboats, and were friends with a dolphin that was considerably smarter than the local police. All the girls in my class wanted to hang out with Luke Halpin, the show's primary actor. I just wanted to be Luke Halpin.

A couple of years later the next best thing happened. My family moved to a lake on the northeast side of Indianapolis. We got a powerboat. Actually, it was a rowboat with an outboard motor. But still, it could zip around the lake. We also got a sailboat. It's interesting, but I have no significant or important memories connected with the powerboat. But the sailboat proved to be one of the really captivating memory-makers of my adolescence.

Daniel Henderson points out the difference between a boat powered by gasoline and a boat powered by wind. I'm in control of the first one. I pull the cord, and off we go. But an unseen and unpredictable force powers a sailboat. A sailor has to learn to depend on the wind, and quite often simply to wait for it. Only with experience do you learn what the wind is likely to do, and even then you still have to wait and trust.

It's no accident that the Greek word pneuma means both "wind" and "Spirit." Trusting the Holy Spirit is not like jumping into a powerboat and saying, "Thanks, Lord, but I can take it from here." Instead we give up our need to be in control. We leave space for God to work, and to come to us according to his own schedule and his own designs. We give God permission to do signs and wonders in our bodies, our minds, our emotions, and our relationships.

When we leave no room for God to act, what we're really saying is, "Lord, I think I can fix my bitter spirit all by myself, instead of asking you to heal it. I think I can manage around this broken relationship I have, instead of facing it with the grace that only you can give. I think I can control my fears, instead depending on you in the face of my fears. I think I can put up with the things that are broken in my life until I die, because it might be embarrassing if I ask you for healing, and nothing happens." Before we know it, spirituality becomes an exercise in personal life management, instead of a supernatural experience of depending on Jesus and the power of his name.

Whenever we say, You Can Depend on God, we're really making two statements. The first is that God is dependable. God is someone on whom we can count. The second statement is that this kind of trust is something we can actually do. It is not beyond any of us. There's not a single prerequisite that you have to meet in order to begin trusting God right now.

And right now you have an opportunity to express such personal dependence. Right after I pray, you're invited to come forward to receive anointing and blessing from one of the members of our ministry team. You won't have to say anything. Nor will you have to do anything - nothing except to present yourself to God in the presence of one of his humble and imperfect representatives. The team member will anoint you with oil on your forehead and speak a word of blessing over you in the powerful name of Jesus.

What might happen? Leave space for God to work. You might pray very simply, "God, I will receive from you whatever you want to give to me." That might be assurance, courage, direction, forgiveness, healing, peace, the power to forgive someone else, or simply the experience of being profoundly loved by God.

Where is Jesus? Jesus is wherever his people call on his name and serve each other in the power that he alone provides.