The End Times
Sermon Notes
Recap: I know it’s been a while since we were in the book of Acts, so a little refresher is in order.
We started this journey to learn what a church is, not just the Church, but a “small c” local church community.
Part of this journey is about defining some core convictions of the early church, things that they believed that shaped what they did.
So that we can follow their lead in those beliefs and live them out in our context.
Some of the core convictions we’ve encountered thus far:
The Church is the body of Christ.
Jesus is Lord
The Holy Spirit empowers the Church to be the body of Christ.
We, right before Advent, spent a month exploring that last conviction via the story of Pentecost.
If you missed those four weeks and want to know what this church is all about, I highly recommend that you go back and give a listen.
All these convictions are absolutely essential (that’s why they’re called, “Core”), but without this one none of the rest of them stand.
History has titled this book, The Acts of the Apostles, but it should rightly be called, The Acts of the Holy Spirit. Without the power of the Holy Spirit, nothing that we’re about to read about in the book of Acts would happen.
We believe the same is true of this community.
There is no plan, strategy, person, community that can take the place of the Holy Spirit.
The dreams we have, we can’t accomplish without him (God-sized dreams).
He has dreams for us that we haven’t even begun to imagine.
Right after Pentecost: Let’s pick up with the story immediately following the upper room on the Day of Pentecost.
A private prayer gathering became a public event.
This is the way it’s supposed to be. The worship that happens here is never supposed to stay here.
This is a public faith, meaning we both hear from God and then share what he has to say.
As it spills out into the street, people have a lot of questions. After all, these ordinary folks were:
Speaking in languages that prior to that moment, they had never done before.
Sharing the “wonders of God.”
In other words, they were prophesying.
The people there that day had a category for what was going on; it was not totally unprecedented, but it shouldn’t have been happening with these people.
Some people made fun of them, saying they were drunk.
In response, Peter, who just a couple of months earlier had been so terrified to be identified with Jesus that he denied ever knowing him, now stands up in front of the crowd, in the same city where Jesus had recently been crucified, in front of some of the people who had been a part of his crucifixion, and preached the first church sermon. Today, we’re going to talk about that sermon.
Peter’s sermon
The main idea (I know some people really like three-point sermons, but I’m a big fan of one-point sermons. Peter has a really great one-point sermon here.): we are living in the end times.
Now, I’ve heard a whole bunch of sermons that go something like this over the years, and they all tend to have a similar feel: terrifying.
Quote Matthew 24 (out of context): wars and rumors of wars, famine, disease, etc.
Come to think of it now is a perfect time for a good end times message.
There are a whole book and movie franchises based off this kind of fear-mongering message.
Peter’s take on the end times (the “last days,” as he puts it) is decidedly different.
End times is not defined by terrifying political events but by the presence of God.
Jesus inaugurated the end times.
He is the fulfillment of every promise: all God’s promises find their “Yes” and “Amen” in Jesus.
The true King of Israel, David’s heir
The crusher of the serpent’s head
The blessing to the nations
All of this meant that the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated among us.
I used to think that Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ question in Acts 1:6 was essentially, “Not yet,” but that’s not at all what he meant. That’s not at all what Peter said on the day of Pentecost.
His claim was that the King had come, had fought the battle, had won a great victory, and now sits enthroned at the right hand of God, reigning over the heavens and the earth.
And the empowering presence of the Spirit in everyone (the most diverse, unlikely) is the evidence
Fulfillment of Jeremiah’s great hope that everyone would know the LORD. This is the great hope of all the prophets.
Jesus planted the seeds of the Kingdom, and the Spirit is the water that makes them grow.
The last days begin not with destruction and chaos (as many Christians believe) but with resurrection and empowerment. That’s what we’re supposed to get out of the last days: a sense of excitement being in the cusp of a new work of God swept along by the power of His Spirit, not a sense of fear and dread at what is happening to us.
What does it mean, then, to live as end times people?
First, it means repentance.
A turning around.
There was a misconception that the kingdom’s coming would begin with judgement and the ending of this present wicked age as the just are welcomed into the next.
What Peter shows us, though, is that the Kingdom begins not with judgement but with mercy, that the King’s first act is to proclaim a general amnesty for the unjust, to establish an era of grace, and era of Jubilee (where debts are canceled, slaves are freed).
This means that the present, evil age continues, but in the middle of it springs up a new Kingdom running the opposite direction, and we have a choice to enter into it.
The door is open to everyone.
Even the people who crucified Jesus, who stood opposed to him.
This is good news because there is, in all of us, something that stand opposed to the Kingdom, yet Jesus has flung the doors wide open and says, “Enter, not because of who you are or what you’ve done but because of who I am and what I’ve done.”
Second, it means power.
Third, it means purpose.
The power comes with a new commission: we are witnesses. Every citizen is an ambassador.
To be a witness to the resurrection and enthronement of Jesus, to the reality of the Kingdom of God is to sow hope.
It’s to be people of beauty (beauty will save the world).