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Sermons from The Landing Church in Duluth, MN. For more information about the Landing, visit www.TheLanding.church
Our scripture reading today comes from the book of
Speaker 2:Acts. We're gonna be
Speaker 1:in chapter one, verses 12 through 17. So you can open your Bibles up and follow along, or on the screens above. Let's read together. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon the zealot, and Judas the son of James.
Speaker 1:All these, with one accord, were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. In those days Peter stood up among the brothers. The company of persons in all was about a 120, and said, Brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us, and was allotted in his share in this ministry. That ends the reading of our word, and at this time, children can be dismissed to the Little Landing.
Speaker 2:Good morning, Faith family, The Landing. Let's pray one more time together. Almighty God and heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Savior, and by you, the Holy Spirit, whom we love with our love that with which we love the son and the father. We pray now that your presence would be among us in a powerful manifest way. Stand among us, pour yourself out upon us with tongues of fire as it were, like you did at Pentecost in order that the whole world might hear of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and that all who call on the name of the Lord might be saved.
Speaker 2:Lord, I pray that you would save from among this number who listen right now, who do not yet know you as their Lord and savior, redeemed and given new life. I pray father that all those who do have new life within them would be strengthened and upheld and blessed to offer vertically to you their thanksgiving and praise and to share freely horizontally with all around them who don't know Christ, the good news, and to stir and strengthen and awaken in and among their friends in Christ, their brothers and sisters, new courage, new zeal, new joy, new gifts, new fruits to bring you glory and to strengthen your church. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to pour over Acts chapter one, a sweet and poignant passage. Instruct us now by being our teacher, let the word run on in triumph and not return void, but achieve its perfect aims by your will in your people's hearts. I pray it in Jesus name.
Speaker 2:Amen. Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. It's like the precious oil of anointing running down the beard, down the beard of Aaron even to the collar and to the hem of his robe. It's like the dew of Mount Hermon coming down the mountain and falls upon the Mountains Of Zion for there, there the Lord has commanded his blessing life forevermore. David writes in Psalm 133, this glorious declaration that celebrates the life of God that's present when believers gather in unity, the unity Christ Jesus purchased on the cross, Jew and Gentile, man and woman, old and young, rich and poor.
Speaker 2:Every background those new in the Lord those long in the Lord together United because they're all United in Christ Jesus. He has given the spirit of unity to them and they dwell together in that unity. That's God commanding life to be there. How desperately I want and long along with the elders and those of us who know the Bible and love the Bible for The Landing to continue to be a place of unity where the Lord commands life here. You know that if you experience any unity here at The Landing, you know you can't point to any human being and give them credit for it.
Speaker 2:Right? It's not because of any one of us. It's because the Lord has commanded the blessing of life there forevermore. Oh, may the Lord be commanding the blessing of life in all the churches of the Northland and all the churches of The United States Of America and all the churches around the globe. May the Lord command the blessing of life there as well as here.
Speaker 2:Amen. That's what the purpose of God is around the world right now, that the church is so thrilled with their salvation, that they're worshiping the Lord as we've just done, and that they are eager to share it generously with those around them even at the cost of their lives. And they are so eager to stir it up in one another that they will set aside all kinds of lesser tasks and activities in order to come together and foster and flourish and enjoy and drink deeply from the fountain of life that the Lord has commanded there. That's Psalm one thirty three. The aim of my message today from Acts chapter one is not only to show you how the early church experienced unity, but to awaken that unity in you.
Speaker 2:We're not just gonna study history for the sake of saying, oh, look back then, see what they did and wonder whether it has anything to do with us. No, no. The scripture is alive and powerful and it creates what it models. It's gonna model life in the early church in Acts chapter one. You just heard Tom read it.
Speaker 2:And it's not only gonna model it, it's going to awaken it in you right now today. You're going to yearn with overwhelming desire for this kind of sweet community and unity more in the next few minutes than you have before you came in. We love unity at The Landing. Elders pray for it all the time. I yearn for it constantly.
Speaker 2:It's an awakening of the Holy Spirit of life among us. It's not only that we can do and act in a certain way to foster that unity, we'll see that here, but it's also that if we act in these ways, as Tom just read in Acts one, it reveals the unity that Christ has already granted to us. Why is that? Why is Acts one or any passage in the scripture talking about unity together, both something we can do that fosters unity and something that Christ has already done to feature the unity he's already given. Why is that?
Speaker 2:It's because unity is not a manmade recipe. It's not a manmade achievement. It's not a manmade effort. You can't go to a broken church and just say, Stop doing those things and start doing these things and you'll have unity. Anyone who talks like that hasn't read their Bible and they haven't grieved with a broken experience of unity.
Speaker 2:Maybe you've experienced it. I sure have. Oh my, It's heartbreaking. It feels like you're up in a hot air balloon and somebody turned off the furnace and poked a hole in the balloon. And all you can do is just spin downward.
Speaker 2:Seeing the crash coming. Have you ever felt like that? It happens in marriages. It happens in friendships. It happens in ministries and in the workplace.
Speaker 2:It happens wherever human beings, especially those who are filled with the spirit of Christ and long to stir that up in one another, but are then the target of the enemy's attack. And all of a sudden it seems like everything they say is misunderstood and every intention is seen negatively instead of positively and every effort at trying to patch things up seems to make things worse. If you're here today and you know the love of Jesus in your heart and you love other people just because they love Jesus too, that is a miracle in your life. That is a miracle. It's not natural to you.
Speaker 2:It's not natural to me. It's a miracle of Jesus' presence and the purchase he won for us on the cross when we want to be together, to talk about him and to delight ourselves together in him and to stir one another up to love and good works as the writer of Hebrews commands. Don't settle for counterfeit community. Don't settle for forced, programmed, pushed, manipulated, trickery that's supposed to create community. Oh, there's all kinds of counterfeits of community out there.
Speaker 2:I listed them in my manuscript. I won't even take the time. You know what they are. They're all kinds of temptations to phony kinds of community. Why are they out there?
Speaker 2:They're out there because there's a real community that Christ gives, and they want to be it, but they can't. All they can do is create a deeper longing and create dysfunction, inward ingrownness, or pride, or discouragement of being left out. And there's that horrible, horrible feeling that every human being has that somewhere somebody's having a really fun time and I'm just not with them. I'm missing out. That yearning inside every human heart and experience that you and I have all had and will have again is an echo of what I'm talking about here in Acts one.
Speaker 2:It's an echo of this longing to be home, to be safe, to be seen, to be valued, to be understood, to be prayed for, and to be loved. Oh, Lord God, give to Jack and his family, the Dunbar's grace as they have laid yesterday Marlene into your hands. Give to everyone in this faith family who longs to be cared for and understood and wept with and rejoiced with at the sorrows they endure and the joys they endure a sweet taste of your life Lord. Sometimes I forget that I'm preaching and I just talk to God because I ache so badly for something wonderful to happen in your life that I have no words to bring about. It's so easily ruined.
Speaker 2:It's so easily counterfeited because it is so precious. You were not made to live the Christian life alone. Your family was not made to live the Christian life alone. Nobody you know was made to live the Christian life alone. You were made to be united miraculously by Christ with the people of God.
Speaker 2:Not just because that's what heaven's like, the people of God united together in the presence of the triune God singing worthy is the lamb who was slain forever and ever and ever, but because now the foretaste of heaven spills backward and upstream into your experience today. I wanna show you five observations that I made out of Acts one. Many more could be made. Smarter people could be reading this passage and see much more, but I know for sure these five are here and I want to offer them to you not only as something you and I can do to foster unity among us, but when they begin to happen, it will actually reveal Christ has already granted his unity to us. You see, this is the third Sunday in a three Sunday series in which I've tried to say that we, The Landing, who have been forgiven of our sins and granted Christ's righteousness, we want to say, being saved and born again, I want to love you, God, and adore you and exalt you and worship you.
Speaker 2:I want to delight and savor you for all that you are. That's the first thing that all healthy churches focus on doing and spend their time and give priority to. The second thing they do is out of the overflow of that worship of God, they will extend that witness through every effort of language learning and sending and giving and going, not only to their neighbors, but all the way to the nations and everyone in between. And they will do so with different forms of music and languages and methods and means of communicating the same glorious, true, deep, sweet gospel once for all delivered to the saints. That's why we make such an effort at The Landing, such a deliberate effort to focus not on the wrinkles and confusions of church history on the right and the left like the swamps on the right and the left of a deep running river, but rather to stay in the deep water.
Speaker 2:What has Christ said in his word and obedient believers have done for the last two thousand years? That's what you should find at The Landing. After we have shared that extended witness beyond our circles, we say, what's the point? What's the aim? And the aim is to gather together as a global transtemporal faith family and expressionist here at The Landing and say, aren't we so glad to be together?
Speaker 2:Aren't we so glad that you're mine and I'm yours? Aren't we so glad that we have each other, that we can raise our kids together and we can care for our parents together and we can stir one another up to love and good works in a thousand different ways. We can go through job transitions and visit each other in the hospitals. We can pray together and forgive one another and declare God's grace and power and love and glory over one another. I had fun with this sermon outline.
Speaker 2:You'll see. I'm gonna give you the five observations and you only write them down if you're quirky like me. Don't bother writing these down. You're gonna forget these anyway. They're quite forgettable.
Speaker 2:Just notice this is how it helped my brain to think about these five things that we do that foster unity. But really when we do them, we just reveal Christ has already granted his sweet sovereign unity. Here they are. The five observations that I make. First, I saw faithful obedience.
Speaker 2:That's not too weird. Faithful obedience. The second thing I saw is, this is weird, one holy vehemence. Thank you, Thesaurus. One holy vehemence.
Speaker 2:You know what a vehemence is? It's a heating, a white hot heating. One holy fire. Only vehemence work better. That's number two.
Speaker 2:Number three, after one holy vehemence, whole family sustenance, whole family sustenance. You'll see that as we get to it. Whole family sustenance. Thank you, Lord. Number four, word saturated diligence.
Speaker 2:Word saturated diligence. And finally, God astonished confidence. God astonished confidence. Let's go through them quickly. Look at verse 12.
Speaker 2:You remember that these disciples were standing out on Mount Olivet. So many of you drew these wonderful pictures for me last week and you saw them in the email. Christ ascended bodily levitated while He was standing in a cloud from Mount Olivet as He had commanded His disciples to go make disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit that would soon come upon them for ministry in Judea, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Then in a cloud, he rose up into heaven and two angels appeared and they said, why are you looking up there? He will return in the same way that he went on a cloud, gloriously, bodily, visibly for all to see.
Speaker 2:Then look at verse 12. It says, they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away, and I'm asking why. Why does Luke tell us that? Why does Luke tell his reader, Theophilus, whom he wants to become a believer? Why does the spirit tell us why this happens?
Speaker 2:And the answer is, of course, twofold. One is they were obeying exactly what Jesus said back in verse four. In verse four Jesus said, while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said you heard from me. They're obeying Jesus by going back to Jerusalem. That's what he told them to do.
Speaker 2:So the first thing you and I ought to say about fostering unity among us is, oh Lord, let me obey. Cause me to obey. How do you want me to obey? Show me the last place in my life where I didn't obey you and help me go back there and start again. And I will walk with you and obey.
Speaker 2:I've had the experience four or five times this week, but I bet you have too, where the Holy Spirit is at work in my life. And as I'm praying or reading scripture morning or evening, he tells me to do something and I get up and do it. It's happened several times. It's happened as recently as yesterday. It's probably gonna happen again today.
Speaker 2:He says, If you keep in step with me, I will guide you by my Holy Spirit. He's talking to you right now louder than my voice is by far. He says, when the believers saw Jesus ascended into heaven, they didn't run to tell the the nearest newspaper or get their own podcast or turn it into some kind of fundraising effort. They didn't decide we're gonna build a building or booths right here on Mount Olivet. They went back to Jerusalem because Jesus commanded them to.
Speaker 2:Like a child, I would just simply ask you, what is the Lord Jesus commanding you to do? Whatever you do affects not just your life, but it affects the life of everybody who is united with you in this church. Do you know this? My obedience affects you. Your obedience affects me and us.
Speaker 2:You know this, right? We're bound together, united in Christ. And what that means is when you're walking close with the Lord, I know it because I'm seeing and experiencing that, and I too am encouraged to walk close in the Lord. That's true with me, with you, with us, each other, with all the leaders and members and servants, newcomers and long timers of any local church, we in our lives affect each other. If someone decides to pull away and disconnect, that wounds everybody.
Speaker 2:The second reason why they went back to Jerusalem helps us to look more deeply at this passage and ask, What's so special about Jerusalem? Well, we know that that's where the Holy Spirit will be poured out, but does that mean it's that chunk of land, that section of dirt, that little mark on the map which is so important? No. No. Because the Holy Spirit comes upon that point, Jerusalem, at that time, Acts chapter two, and then says, I'm sending you out to the ends of the earth.
Speaker 2:You can listen to the way the writer of Hebrews understands the identity of Jerusalem. Listen carefully. But you've come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God. Don't miss the fact that the writer of Hebrews calls Mount Zion the place of God's people just the same way David in Psalm one thirty three says, The dew of Mount Hermon coming down on Mount Zion. What it means is the gathering of the people of God under his blessing.
Speaker 2:It is not a reference merely to a certain square footage on earth. But you've come to Mount Zion into the city of the living God, calls the church the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable gathering of angels in festal gathering and to the assembly of the firstborn that is born again, are enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks of a better word than the blood of Abel. It isn't necessary that we go back and find where Abel's blood was spilled on the ground and touch that dirt, nor is it necessary that we go find exactly where Jesus died on the cross and his blood spilt on the ground and touch that dirt. No, but by faith, we receive the full glory and power of his death on the cross for all who will come to him and we absorb and receive into ourself and feast on him spiritually. This is the miracle of the gospel.
Speaker 2:The spirit goes out and it says, you don't need to come to a certain place for we come to God, not through land or buildings or altars or animal blood anymore, but through the preaching of the blood of Jesus Christ received spiritually by you and by me. That binds us together and it unites us. We are together the Mount Zion. We are together the heavenly Jerusalem. We are together the people of God.
Speaker 2:Where's that experience now? Jesus answered so plainly in Matthew 18, again, say to you, if two or three agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. This is how heaven breaks in to your life. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. It's the same promise as Psalm 133.
Speaker 2:We're so thankful for the Bible studies and prayer groups that happen at the Landing. We're so thankful for this Sunday morning gathering and tonight's Sunday evening gathering and for lunch at The Landing. Those are so helpful and many, many more will be added. Lord, grant faith groups to The Landing where we might grow and give each other trust in a safe place to talk about our struggles and pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the counseling that happens and the men's and women's and youth and children's ministries and young adult ministries that gather.
Speaker 2:But most of all, wherever two or three gather in your name, oh Christ, you be there also. And let there be life there as well, just as powerfully. When I look back on the fellowship experiences of my life, I have enjoyed so many Bible studies and small group gatherings and worship services and meals. So many prayers with missions teams on the other side of the world. So many prayers inside rooms before preaching or before singing and so many sweet moments of fellowship with other believers.
Speaker 2:But I will tell you most powerfully, the fellowship experiences, the unity with Christ experiences of my life have been most powerfully with my wife and secondarily with other men and women in a small two or three setting in which we've had open and intimate face to face clear conversation about the Lord. I can remember so many of those, but time does not permit me to give you examples. What I want you to see first is this glorious obedience that the first disciples gave to the Lord in obedience to go back to Jerusalem in order to go back to the place where the birth of the church would occur and all this life we experience in Christ might begin and flow across the globe. Second, look at one holy vehemence. You'll see why I call it that in just a moment.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at verse 13, and when they entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying, Peter, John, James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, the son of Alpheus, and Simon, the zealot, and Judas, the son of James. You notice only 11 are there. You notice that? And then it says at the beginning of verse 14, all these with one accord. All these with one accord.
Speaker 2:This is 120 persons, men and women, led by the 11 disciples gathering in one accord. Luke is emphasizing this. The spirit is emphasizing this right now because he wants to show you something glorious. Why only 11? Why one twenty?
Speaker 2:Think about this with me. Luke is careful to say one twenty because he, Theophilus, others would have known that throughout the Jewish tradition for a city to have a ruling Jewish board or council called the Sanhedrin among them, there had to be 120 persons. This one twenty is not a throwaway number. This one twenty is actually the embryo of the church. It's the city of God that the writer of Hebrews just mentioned.
Speaker 2:The one twenty is the number that was significant because it is the 12 tribes of Jacob times the perfect number 10. It's exactly why Jesus chose 12 disciples to follow him, but there's only 11. This is a unity question. This is a poignant, painful, heart rending, glorious unity question. We're a 120, but you're just 11.
Speaker 2:Did God's design in Israel as a lesson book for the church and the nations fail? Do we as a church fail if someone makes shipwreck of faith? You see what glorious unity truths are going on here. That phrase in one accord literally is the Greek word for they had the same fire. I just love reading this stuff.
Speaker 2:They had the same fire. They had the same passion. They were united together because they all wanted the same thing. They all had the great uniting fire that they would look in each other's eyes and say, You love Jesus? I love Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yes, we do. That delight, that joy, that excitement when a father reads The Lord of the Rings over and over year after year to his son, And then the Peter Jackson film comes out and they go to the dark theater and sit and see the opening scenes of The Lord of the Rings. And they look at each other and nod like, Woah, this is it. Or your granddaughter shoots a three pointer and you look down at your kids, the parents of your granddaughter, as she shot that three pointer and you look at them and you nod and you high five and fist bump. You've got the same fire.
Speaker 2:I have the same fire as many of you do. You have the same fire as each other. They had the same fire. They were in one accord, all 11 of the disciples and the one twenty that they were a part of. They were gathering together saying, Wow, did you see Jesus rise off of Mount Olivet?
Speaker 2:Did you see Him? He was resurrected in glory and He had saved us from our sins and He gave us His righteousness. And then He says, The spirit that He did everything by is gonna be ours and we're gonna go to the ends of the earth. That's cool. And they nod at each other with knowing glances because they were of one accord.
Speaker 2:They had the same fire. You can see the exact same thing in Acts two forty two to 47. Listen, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and of prayers. And awe came upon every soul. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles, and all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. Judas didn't do that. We're told he held the money bags because he was concerned about the money. He was warmed by a strange fire. You see what's happening here?
Speaker 2:They were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need and day by day attending the temple. And here's the word for Accord, same fire. It's the word same fire. Attending the temple together. It says in the ESV, kind of weak as a translation.
Speaker 2:It was in one accord or with the same fire and breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. How do we access this fire? How do we access this fire?
Speaker 2:How does this fire grow? How do we fan it into flame and it become a mighty bonfire so that when you come even to the fellowship or gatherings or even read the emails or begin to pray and hear about the things that are happening at The Landing and you say, I'm gonna show up for that or I'm gonna be a part of this or I'm gonna begin to pray for that missionary or that need or that ministry. I'm gonna help out with the children or with the kitchen or with security or with counseling or with some of the, any of the other ministries that are underway. How does that fire spread? Well, the fire plainly spreads by prayer.
Speaker 2:You can look at the third observation I make. This one comes from verse 15. I call it whole family sustenance. What I mean by that is prayer. Look at it with me.
Speaker 2:All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brothers. Now just imagine, I spent a lot of time yesterday imagining this. I hope this is a blessing to you. How does unity get created at the landing? How do we fire up in one accord together?
Speaker 2:It happens by whole family sustenance in prayer. Can you imagine being in a prayer meeting where you just saw Jesus rise off Mount Olivet and you're gathered together, heads bowed in a circle and to your right is Mary, the mother of Jesus. And she starts praying. Oh, my father in heaven, thank you for the privilege of giving my precious son Jesus back to me. Not just as my beloved son whom I raised and taught to walk and fed and clothed, but who has become my savior.
Speaker 2:She calls him her savior back in the beginning chapters of Luke. Can you imagine being in a prayer meeting with Mary, the mother of Jesus? Can you imagine being in a prayer meeting with those who have encountered the living Christ for years and years and years? Well, guess what? Every one of our prayer meetings has got somebody in it like that.
Speaker 2:They devoted themselves to prayer and that's how the fire starts. Prayer is like pouring gasoline on the fire of our unity. Prayer is the power behind us. So when the early church prayed in Acts four twenty nine, it says, And now Lord, look upon their threats and grant your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal with signs and wonders and are performed through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with all boldness.
Speaker 2:You know that the prayer room is the boiler room of the life of the landing. You know that prayer is like us acting out our speech and our praises and our confessions and our thanksgivings and our supplications as we learned this morning, out onto the very hydrogen of God and the combustion of our oxygen and his hydrogen is the massive rocket launching thrust of his will in our lives. Don't miss the power of prayer. Don't neglect prayer, but say, I want the fire in my life. I want to be in one accord.
Speaker 2:I'll say it very, very strongly. If you're not a part of the praying for regularly day to day and at some prayer gatherings of The Landing, you will always feel disconnected and wonder why you feel lonely even among a crowd. But when you come in prayer, when you dive into prayer, whether by prayer gatherings that are underway or a new one that could start by you and someone else, or you add prayer for the landing into your daily prayer closet time, you'll find your heart uniting with the very people you're praying for. It always happens. It's the power and truth of Christ's unity in us.
Speaker 2:Fourth, look at word saturated diligence, verses fifteen and sixteen. In those days, the 120 are gathered. They just saw Jesus lifted off up into the heavens, knowing he's at the father's right hand, praying. They know that in order for Christ to fulfill his ministry, he lived a righteous life, but was falsely accused, and even by Judas was handed over in the garden to be arrested and identified to the Pharisees guards who arrested Jesus by coming up to him, Judas, his friend, and kissing him on the cheek. The very picture of the holy greeting you and I ought to share freely with one another the holy kiss.
Speaker 2:The very expression of our fire and our unity and our love for Christ and for each other. The very sweet accord that we're to have together expressed in a kiss. The very thing Judas had been offered for three years. He takes a kiss and says that will be the means by which I betray Jesus. That's more painful than I can imagine.
Speaker 2:Not just because it aches for me to think about someone who knew Jesus so very well and heard his teachings face to face and enjoyed seeing his miracles, seeing him pick up the babies and hold them, seeing him make men and women walk away rejoicing for their healing, feeding thousands, refuting false teaching at every turn with love and with kindness and truth, and yet could still kiss him to betray him. That's not the worst part of it. The worst part of it is, I'm Judas. I've seen more of Christ than any man has a right to expect in his life time, and I still sin against him. I'm still in need of his grace.
Speaker 2:You are too. I'm still in need of a church that will speak truth and grace to me. Sing it to me, preach it to me, and you are too. Look at how Peter leads this one twenty. In those days, Peter stood up among them, the brothers, the company of persons was in all about one twenty and said, brothers, that must've been a very weighty word to address them with because of the fact that they had just lost Judas.
Speaker 2:Brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David. The first thing Peter, one of the restored, having sinned himself disciples like the rest of us has his own history with Jesus where he denied him three times even using curse words, takes the lead and steps up and said, Turn to the scriptures with me, brothers. Because Peter knew well that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but by men who spoke from God as they were carried along by the holy spirit. So he says so plainly, I'm gonna bring you to the Bible. I'm gonna bring you to the word of God.
Speaker 2:Word saturated diligence is gonna foster and fuel. It'll be the logs as it were the kindling on the fire of our one accord flame. Let the word of God dwell in your heart, brothers and sisters, daily read it and then share it freely. Let the word of God be the script and content of your fellowship with each other. When two or three gather in the name of the Lord, let the word of God come out.
Speaker 2:Let it come out in song or in sharing or in the way it applied in your life or the way you found and discovered some fresh new insight or reminded of a sweet promise. Let the word of God dwell in you richly. That's what is the fuel God has appointed for the presence of his Holy Spirit to a kindle that one accord vehemence and fire among us. And you find yourself saying, I'm not just observing the fire and the one accord that they have at The Landing. I'm in it.
Speaker 2:Not because I'm perfect. I'm just like Peter. In fact, I'm just like Judas, but oh, the forgiveness, the grace that's been found when asked for. Oh, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. I intentionally had Tom stop reading at verse 17.
Speaker 2:You can read verses eighteen and nineteen if you wish. I want to end with the last observation I told you I would make out of this passage, God astonished confidence. God astonished confidence. Look at verses sixteen and seventeen with me. Look at what Peter draws out for the one twenty to be comforted and guided, pastored as it were and strengthened.
Speaker 2:Brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, had to be, essentially had to be fulfilled. It's really strong in Greek. It must be fulfilled that the scriptures had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas. See what Peter's saying? A thousand years ago, David wrote the Psalms and it was concerning Judas.
Speaker 2:Thousand years later, the one who would betray Jesus with a kiss for 30 pieces of silver. He was impassioned by another fire. He wasn't in one accord. Concerning Judas who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. The depth of pain here cannot be plumbed and I'm drawing to a close.
Speaker 2:I won't try any further, but maybe your holy spirit guided reflection will help you see how God grieves, the spirit grieves, the son grieves, and we grieve over the acts of Judas, who for money betrayed Jesus and guided the guards to arrest him to where Jesus was, then kissed him on the cheek so that they would know who to take. All the while Jesus says, no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. Now Peter is preaching, and here's the comfort that he gives. He has this rock solid God astonished confidence. You know the word astonished means made into stone.
Speaker 2:When I look at this passage of scripture, I am made into stone before the holy God. You ought to be as well. The Psalms that he quotes in verse 20, For it is written in the book of Psalms, and he quotes two Psalms, Psalms sixty nine and one hundred nine, May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it, and let another take his office. Confusing, yes, but gloriously true. God appoints Judas from before the foundation of the world to walk with Jesus, to learn from Jesus, to be marveling at Jesus with the others, to have his share at the last supper with Jesus and to have his feet washed by Jesus.
Speaker 2:Then for the spirit of the enemy to come within him, Luke 24, and go and betray Jesus so that the guards would come and after picking themselves up off the ground because Jesus presence laid them over would arrest Jesus, falsely accuse him, falsely try him, brutalize him, and hang him upon the cross for the sins of people like Judas who call on the name of the Lord. There's a glorious gospel here. There's a glorious grace here. The wonder of this is what unites us together. It's what makes unity and the grace of God at work in our lives so powerfully that we say it has produced life in me.
Speaker 2:I will tell you the landing produces life in me. My testimony is I love being here because I love Jesus more because I'm here. My wife and I enjoy the Lord Jesus more because of you all. Not just when you address us or care for us directly, but when you care for each other and when you delight in the Lord and when you carry out your lives in Christ. All your obedience becomes fuel for our fire, and we want ours to become yours just the same.
Speaker 2:Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and leader against the fascist Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler in 1939. He went back to The US for a while to be a teacher, but he couldn't leave the unity that he had with the confessing Lutheran believers. That's a key word, confessing Lutheran believers. They love Jesus. They love the gospel and they hated what Luther and his Nazi anti Jewish fascist regime was doing to Germany and trying to do to the world by then.
Speaker 2:So he returned even though he knew it likely meant his death, and he unashamedly helped and plotted to try to remove Hitler as I likely think I would have joined in with him to do as well. One of the ways he did that and got in trouble for this is he started a group of young seminarians who would learn to become Lutheran confessing pastors. Why do I emphasize confessing? Because they confessed the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ as opposed to Lutherans who took a statue of Jesus, mark this, you can find it on Google if you need, a statue of Jesus Christ in their Lutheran church and draped a swastika over it. They're impassioned by another fire.
Speaker 2:He stood against that and said, that's a blasphemy I can't abide. We are gonna be the Lutheran confessing church he and several other leaders formed in the nineteen thirties precisely because of what we're talking about today. In order to say, when we get together, we will stir up love for the Lord Jesus Christ risen and glorious and not for the ruling and reigning over and the pride and the hatred that comes from putting one ethnic nationality over another, no matter which they are. My favorite book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer by far is called Life Together. Listen to this brief statement from the opening chapter of Life Together.
Speaker 2:I highly recommend the book Life Together to you by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us. The time that separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Let him who now has the privilege of living with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare it is grace and nothing but grace that we are allowed to live in community with other Christian brethren.
Speaker 2:Communal life. When believers gather and the Lord commands life there forevermore being recognized by Christians as the grace that it is, the rose, the lilies of the entire Christian life. Would you pray with me? What a grand theme, Lord. What a glorious passage full of deep, deep, sweet realities far too deep for words.
Speaker 2:We shudder with God astonished trembling at the way Peter drew out those Psalms and explained to the first embryonic church why Judas wasn't among them. While those who have parted ways from the church still live, We have hope. Would you restore them Lord to this or another Bible teaching fellowship? Would you guard everyone in the hearing of my voice from any straying from the fire to be lit and warmed by a strange fire? Would you guard our children and children's children from being warmed by strange fires and long for the warmth of gathering around you the fire of our fellowship together by your spirit?
Speaker 2:Would you remind us of what the grace it is to be a united body together and to recognize how undeserved we are that we are the Judases receiving all the blessings of Jesus. The forgiven ones receiving the blessing of the holy one. What a sacred charge it is to be a church. Oh Lord, put aside every silly man made confusion and make us a church that you delight to be in. Pour out your Holy Spirit on every person in this room and on every couple and family and family connection, every circle of friendships, every ministry, every venture of faith that's welling up in the hearts of people's minds right now.
Speaker 2:Every resolve of faith to read, to pray, to gather with others two or three and you be there also. Bless that obedience. Bless every plan for good that you're awakening in your people right now at the end of this time of worship over your word. We will respond, Lord, now as You help us by singing back to You. Let our hearts feel and say, be worshiped and glorified, even as You pour out Yourself among us.
Speaker 2:In Jesus' name, we pray and sing. Amen. Would you
Speaker 1:stand