Jeremy Duncan: But then there are these moments where the bible will cut through all of that cultural expectation with such precision. It should absolutely destabilize even our biases today. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, but spirit will be poured out on men and women. We are better when we listen to each other. We did start a new series last week as well.
One that is gonna take us straight through to the summer and our annual stampede breakfast. And this is a series looking at the book of Acts. Now, we're not gonna be able to cover everything in there. There's a lot in Acts, but we are gonna move through some of the highlights of the story together. And we're gonna do that in two parts.
The first half of the series, we're looking at the first half of the story, which is largely the disciples preaching the story of Jesus in their immediate context. And then, the second half of the series is where they take that story out from Jerusalem, and it starts to spread beyond that local community to the world. And last week, Bobby opened the series by reflecting on what it means for us to keep moving forward with our faith. And, I really like how she framed this. Acts is a book focused not on the why, but on the how.
As in, how the followers of Jesus would continue after his departure. And how they would navigate fear and conflict and uncertainty. How they would trust that spirit would lead them into something new despite everything it seemed they had lost. And so, we looked together at how the early church is born in the tension between order and unpredictability, and how the disciples are trying to rebuild some sense of stability after Judas' betrayal in Jesus' death. We looked at how at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit all arrives like wind and fire, and yet speaking with language that surprisingly can be understood by everyone.
It seems to cross our borders and gather in strangers. And I think ultimately, what we landed on was this idea that sometimes spirit seems to show up or at the very least, seem to notice spirit most powerfully at the beginning of something new. Like new churches and new relationships, new journeys and communities and possibilities. All of those new moments seem to spark our imagination in ways that maybe help us recognize God's spirit around us or maybe even near us in new ways. And I think this is part of why when we look back and when we narrate the start of a new season like the start of the church, We often use such outsized, almost grandiose language to do it.
It feels right. I mean, I think about the launch of Commons Church twelve years ago. Was thinking about it this week. And when I reflect on that period, it all just seems magical and wonderful, a genuine move of God's spirit. And it was.
But the truth is when I was actually there, it was quite stressful, to be honest. And I think that's maybe the way that it goes. Right? Like, new birth is hard, and yet new birth really is where spirit seems to live. And so, as we now find ourselves on the verge of birthing something new all over again at Commons, maybe we find ourselves in the right place rehearsing the birth of the church in the book of Acts.
Today, we're gonna push a little farther into that story. But first, let's pray. God of new beginnings, spirit who rushes into fearful rooms and opens our imagination to what is possible. Would you meet us here again today? Where we're anxious, grant us courage.
Where we're skeptical, give us curiosity. Where we've mistaken your judgment for vengeance, would you teach us again what grace and resurrection really looks like? Help us to hear in your story words that we can understand. And maybe more importantly, would you even teach us to listen well to each other for what we have to share. As you reflect on the story of Jesus and the birth of your church, would you remind us that spirit is still moving, still speaking, still making all things new even this day.
And might we now find the courage to trust you in that path as we walk it. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Last week, we launched into the book of Acts. Today, we push our way through chapter two.
And to do that, we will cover moving forward, sons and daughters, the day of the Lord, and finally some mistaken identity. However, I do wanna start by backtracking just a little bit to where we left off last week. We ended with this incredible arrival of the spirit of God. She blows in like a rushing wind, and the disciples begin to speak in tongues. Now, if you've been around charismatic or Pentecostal circles within Christianity, you'll know that is still a common practice today, people speaking in tongues.
In fact, the roots of my Christian journey are in that Pentecostal tradition, And there remains a lot of that experience. I still value and work to retain. I think that profound sense of the immediacy of God's spirit and the very real belief that God can guide and lead us. Those are important ideas to me. And, here in Acts two, we find the roots, the birth of the church born in that same kind of Pentecostal imagination.
Now, importantly though, I'm not talking about speaking tongues and rushing to altar calls. I actually think it's probably the least important part of Pentecost. I think what we see here though is a church that is born in this renewed imagination of what could be possible. Remember, these disciples have just lost their Jesus. They've been betrayed by one of their own.
They've encountered a risen Jesus and that was great, but now he's gone. And, I think they fear maybe they've been left on their own. And then all of a sudden, spirit rushes in to say to them, look, there is far more possible than you can even begin to imagine right now. And I think this is why the real miracle of Pentecost is not the disciples speak in other languages. It's really that those around them begin to hear the story in language that they can make sense of.
I mean, if you actually pay attention to the story, if you read it closely, we don't get told specifically what language anyone is speaking. We don't know what the disciples were saying, but we do know that somehow Parthians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus in Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, Christians and Arabs, all of them somehow hear the wonder of God in their own language. Which means, the miracle really isn't about how we talk. The miracle is sometimes about how we hear, what we listen for, and how spirit speaks. And yet, even with that still, verse 13 tells us that some of them, however, made fun of them and said, look, they just had too much to drink.
Now, here's where I wanna start today. You can absolutely believe the spirit of God is active and present in your world. You can become convinced that God's spirit is sometimes most tangible in the beginning of a new idea and a new possibility. You can even actually see real tangible evidence. You're heading in the right direction.
You're making the right choices. You're targeting the right goals, and still not everyone is gonna see the vision. And that's okay. Doesn't make them bad people. Doesn't mean they're your enemy.
Doesn't even mean they're not on your side, to be honest. It just means that sometimes, maybe particularly when we find ourselves on the front end of a new adventure, when that's beginning to seem real but it hasn't been proven yet. Sometimes that's where we need to find the courage to trust and to move forward anyway. Which is exactly what we're going to see Peter do as he preaches into that skepticism here. So, next verse.
Peter stood up with the 11. He raised his voice and he addressed the crowd. Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I say. These people aren't drunk as you suppose it's only nine in the morning.
And you gotta appreciate that approach. Right? Like addressing objections right off the bat, that's persuasive rhetoric one zero one. Good job, Peter. He knows what he's doing.
But he continues. No. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. Now, what Peter's gonna do here is he's gonna quote two somewhat lengthy passages from the prophet Joel and a Psalm of David, and then he's just gonna offer a little commentary on those passages. Basically, he's just setting the standard for what we do today.
I don't do much more than that on a Sunday. I read a bit and I offer a few of my thoughts. But, I wanna key in on a few of the lines that he quotes. And, I wanna look specifically at the way he interprets them because I think it's really instructive to see the focus of this nascent Christian movement. And this is what he says from Joel.
In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit on those days, and they will all prophesy. Now, that's not the end of the quote.
I wanna stop here for a second though because there's something neat going on. Last week, Bobby pointed out that it was the women who first discovered the empty tomb. And it was the women who first preached the good news of resurrection. It was the disciples, The dudes who actually missed out on the big moment. And yet, in the opening of the book of Acts, the women are now suddenly missing.
And I think she's exactly right. There's a bit of respectability politics at play. The early church is trying to stabilize. They're trying to legitimize themselves. And choosing leaders and spokespersons that can cut through a skeptical culture is maybe their priority right now.
But, we also shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the very first sermon preached in the post Jesus era then very explicitly refers to the spirit of God poured out on sons and daughters on men and on women. Now, oftentimes newer translations of the bible will take this Greek word, which means brothers, and they will translate it brothers and sisters. That's because that term was used to refer to mixed gender groups in the first century. So, that's actually the appropriate way to translate that into English today. This, however, is not what's happening in these passages.
Both of these lines very explicitly mention girls and women alongside their male counterparts. And the reason I point that out is because the Bible and the church, even down to this day, all of it is very much a product of the culture and the moment that it's birthed in. And you and I, we have to be able to read through the cultural context in order to understand properly. That's just good exegesis. But then there are these moments where the bible will cut through all of that cultural expectation with such precision.
It should absolutely destabilize even our biases today. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. God's spirit will be poured out on men and women. We are better when we listen to each other. And I might add, when we start listening to our kids and to our elders as well.
There is enough hierarchy in the world to last us a lifetime. It should not be that way at the feet of Jesus. And beautifully, sometimes even when we forget that like we do at the start of the church, the spirit seems to be there to remind us of something that's better. So, let's continue Peter's quotation of Paul. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Well, that's an interesting passage to start with to say the least. Blood and fire, billows of smoke, a black hole sun, and a blood moon, a glorious day of the Lord. What on earth are you doing here, Peter?
Well, actually, there's some pretty interesting theological interpretation that's going on here. And it all hinges on a reoccurring theme found the old the old testament called the day of the Lord. And Joel, in particular, is all about that day of the Lord. In Joel, the day of the Lord is this beautiful poetic mishmash of apocalyptic imagery and judgment fantasy and restoration narrative in which all things were eventually healed by God. But, along the way, in Joel, what we get are these like cataclysmic cosmic signs of collapse, and empires crumbling, human arrogance dissolving until ultimately there's this final confrontation with divine truth, which at one point is called the great and terrible day of the Lord.
And Joel sees this as sort of a cataclysmic event at the end of a long wait for righteousness to finally arrive. Peter now reinterprets all of that as the cross. This is what he says. Fellow Israelites, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth with a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, signs which God did among you through him as you yourselves know.
That man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to a cross. But then God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for even death to keep its hold on him. Now, couple things here because this is actually super important for the formation of early Christian theology. But first of all, Peter is going to reinterpret the day of the Lord, but he's not doing that out of nowhere. At the very start of Jesus' public ministry, before even before he's done the Sermon on the Mount, Luke, who remember is the same author behind the book of Acts, records a moment where Jesus goes to the synagogue in his hometown.
And there in chapter four, Luke very specifically mentions Nazareth just the same way Peter does here. I think the author's trying to link these passages together. But Peter goes up to the front of the room. Sorry. Jesus goes up to the front of the room, takes the scroll of Isaiah, and he reads out this.
The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. Sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoner and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then, important, Luke says, he rolls up the scroll, goes back to his seat, and tells everyone there, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Now, what's important is that passage Jesus just read, it is about the day of the Lord. Because in fact, what Isaiah says is that the Messiah would proclaim the year of God's favor and the day of God's vengeance.
What Joel calls the great and terrible day of the Lord. So Jesus very clearly, very intentionally cuts off his reading halfway through a verse, rolls up the scroll, sits down, says, here it is. And first, I mean, he's making a pretty wild claim about himself here. But second, he's also saying something incredibly important about how you and I, how religious scholars of his day have misinterpreted the nature of God's judgment. See, we have thought the day of the Lord would be equal parts good news and bad news for humanity.
Great and terrible. Favor and vengeance. Jesus hints at the idea, maybe we don't actually understand the story yet. Now, that passage in Luke four is kind of day one. Right?
Like, Jesus hasn't done anything yet. But, of course, the story unfolds and we start Jesus teaching about this kingdom of God. The expansiveness of it. The inevitability of it. And, eventually, how he will have to, like a seed, fall to the ground and die for it.
And then, right at the climax of that story, on the verge of holy week, as Jesus is facing down the cross, we hear him say clearly in John 12, now is the time for the judgment of the world. In other words, Jesus has spent his life proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor and in his death and significantly here in his resurrection, what we witness is God's judgment on the world. You can think of it this way. God's furious judgment on the world, what we thought would look like fire and brimstone and cataclysm is actually the resurrection that overturns our worst violence. Death is annihilated.
Sin is undone. Violence is overthrown. The world is judged all because God refuses to allow violence to have the last word over the universe. And so now here, in the church's first sermon, Peter picks it up and he says, okay. I think I'm starting to get it now.
When Joel talked about the spirit of God being poured out on the earth of light that would look like darkness and a moon that would look like death, when he imagined God's judgment coming down on us in God's mind, that was always going to be grace that would swallow up violence for good. That's what Jesus was trying to tell us all along. Just look at how Peter talks about the cross here, atonement here. Jesus was handed over to us by God's plan, and then we, with the help of wicked men, put him to death on the cross. Notice, God's not nailing anyone to a cross here.
God's not pouring out violence on Jesus here. God is planning. God is participating in the salvation of the world through Jesus, but God is the one absorbing the sin of the world and refusing to pay it back to us. Hear me. God is not the villain of the cross wounding Jesus.
God is the victim of the cross experiencing exactly what our violence does. But then, as Peter says, God raised him from the dead because it was impossible for even death to keep its hold on him. God enters the human story. God descends into the worst parts of the human story. Then God transcends that story so that we can as well.
That's Peter's gospel. Today, it's what we call the Christus Victor theory of the atonement. It's actually the primary way the church talked about the cross for at least the first four hundred years of Christianity. But notice, it's a story not formed primarily around metaphors of penalty and justice. It's a narrative that's shaped around the metaphor of God's participation in the world, participation in our lives.
Christ enters our story. Christ experiences our story alongside us, but because of Christ's faithfulness to the way of God, God judges his story to be true, our story to be false. And so our sin and our violence, all the ways we make a scapegoat of Jesus, all the ways we still do that to each other to this day, all of that is no longer the most true thing in the universe. Now, resurrection is. You can say it this way.
The day of God's judgment on sin is the proclamation of God's favor on creation. That's the gospel that Peter preaches here. And it's also the first sermon in the era of the church. That's where our story begins. Everything is different because of Jesus, and therefore everything about everything needs to be reinterpreted in the light of Christ.
And so, that's what Peter does next. Because immediately after he offers his take on Joel, he jumps straight into another quote. This one from the Psalms. Now, specifically, Psalm 16, it's a Psalm of David. He does it in two parts though.
Starts this way. David said about him, I saw the Lord always before me because he's at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will rest in hope because I will not be abandoned to the realm of the dead. You will not let your holy one see decay.
You made known to me the paths of life and you fill me with joy in your presence. Now, Peter goes on to make the argument here. Look, David is dead. Not long dead and long buried. He has long decayed.
So, he can't just have been talking about himself here. In fact, he must also have been talking about Jesus because Jesus is the only one who's ascended to be in God's presence. And then he builds on that argument by saying in verse 34, for David not not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. Now, he's right. That is indeed another quote from David.
It's a different psalm this time though. This time he's jumped over to Psalm one ten. Few things are important here. First, he's very much building on the first half of the sermon. Right?
Like, he's made his argument the day of the Lord was different than we expected, and that the cross was both God's judgment on sin and God's showering of grace on the world. Everything is different now in the light of resurrection. Now, he's arguing, not only was Jesus resurrected, Jesus has now ascended to the right hand of God. In other words, Jesus is reigning over the world, which means that God is at work now slowly healing everything. However, he makes that argument not with something he's cup on on his own, but once again, something he's gonna steal from Jesus.
Because in fact, Jesus has quoted this same Psalm in the same way about himself back in Matthew 22. Now, over there, Jesus is talking to the pharisees and they are deeply skeptical of his credentials. And so, he asked them, well, who do you think the Messiah will be the son of? And they say, a son of David. That's the right answer for the record.
The Messiah was always associated with the line of David and the gospel writers go to great lengths to make it very clear that Jesus is part of that line. The problem here is that the pharisees mean more than that the Messiah will emerge from the lineage of David. They mean he will be a son of David, or they think he will be like David. And that was not an uncommon expectation. Most religious scholars at the time expected the Messiah to be a militaristic leader in the vein of David who would challenge the Roman Empire and free his people.
In fact, in the book of Revelation, there's this fascinating moment where we get a glimpse into the throne room of God, and there is a someone seated on the throne holding a scroll. And that scroll represents the ability to direct the flow of history. It's like a pivotal moment in the book. But the problem is we're told no one is worthy to take the scroll and open it. And so the whole scene breaks down in chaos.
Like there's crying and weeping. There's despair that the will of God will not be carried out. And then in Revelation five five, we hear one of the elders says to John, look, don't weep. See, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll.
So, John is told about the lion of the tribe of Judah. That's the root of David. There was someone like David who can take control of history, rest it away from evil, and turn everything back in God's direction. Everything. All the Pharisees wanted in a Messiah.
Except, what happens is that the writer turns and sees not a lion, not a warrior like David at all, but a lamb looking as if it had been slain. And that's an ongoing motif in Revelation. It happens over and over again. We've heard one thing about God. We've been told one thing about the divine.
And yet, when we turn and we actually look at Jesus, God looks very different than we expected. Well, that's kind of what's going on here in Matthew. Jesus says, okay, the Messiah will be a son of David. Sure. I'm with you.
What about this? What about when David says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand? If David calls the Messiah Lord, how can the Messiah be his son? And basically, just kinda messing with them. Right?
Like he's saying, yeah, I am a son of David, but I'm not bound to follow in his footsteps the way that you think. You're looking for a lion. That's not my game. That's your mistake, not mine. And so now here, in the very first sermon of the church era, Peter picks up that moment, maybe even as if to say, look, I didn't get it when he said it either, but I think I'm starting to put it all together now.
Everything looks different in the light of resurrection. And so whether it is the day of the Lord, or the identity of the Messiah, or the expansiveness of God's grace, or even the story of goodness that will ring out in more languages than those early Christians could even begin to imagine. The starting point of the church, the beginning of the story that would lead to us here in this room today, is grounded in this conviction that the good news of Jesus is always better than we expect it to be. And when that becomes the foundation for how you and I understand the divine, then we know we are at least pointed in the direction of Jesus. And that's a pretty cool way for our story to start.
Let's pray. God, for this story that you have held onto and handed down to us, The way that our ancestors in this faith wrestled through ideas in the light of your grace and your peace. Your non violence and your overcoming of death. We are incredibly grateful. And yet, sometimes we still lose the plot and revert back to older imaginations of the divine formed in wrath and anger, frustration.
Instead of this God who has so deeply loved his creation that God would judge the world and shower grace on it at the same time. God, might we begin to understand that your judgment of our greed and our selfishness, our sin, the way that we put others down and push people away, that is only ever for our good. So that we might become the people you imagine us to be full of grace and peace. People who can walk the path of Jesus in the world. And in that, find ourselves drawn back to your heart.
God, might that story and that conviction that the good news is always better than we expect be what pulls us, draws us, slowly reels us into your heart. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information.
You can find us on all of the socials CommonsChurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server. Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you.
Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.