Sunday Praise & Worship 10:00
Christian Education - 10:00 - Casual Dress - Loving Childcare
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Sermon Notes for Matthew 5:17-24 Key Verse: Acts 3:17 “Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away.”
The new community of Jesus followers had ignited after the explosion of Pentecost and spread like wildfire wherever they happened to be. Acts 2:47 reports that the Lord added daily to their number those who were being saved. Two of the leaders of the movement, that began to be called “The Way” (see Acts 9:2 and 18:25), Peter and John, healed a man at the Temple Gate (called Beautiful—don’t you love it?) and crowds came running to see what was up.
The relationship between miraculous signs of healing and sermons of Good News weaves itself through the Gospels and Luke’s testimony of the Acts of the Apostles. This word comes with power to affirm it—yet that very power always threatens to overshadow the word itself (see, for instance, Matthew 16:4, Mark 8:11-12, Luke 16:29-31, John 6:15, 26-27, and 12:37-43). Peter struggles to refocus the crowd’s attention back to God, who has glorified Jesus Christ (this will happen again in Acts 10:25-26 and 14:11-15).
Yet they did heal the man (and see Acts 5:12-16). The power of the Holy Spirit was evident in their lives and proved the testimony of their words, just as it attested to God’s blessing of Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 2:22). It also got them a hearing in the first place. Crowds came not to hear them speak, but to see what all the fuss was about—and it was about a man who had to be carried to the Temple Gate who was now walking and leaping and praising God. There seems to be an inextricable relationship between the power of our testimony and the power of the Holy Spirit in those who bear witness to God in Jesus Christ.
So what does Peter have to say when the people come running?
His sermon (Acts 3:12-26) parallels and departs from his Pentecost sermon recorded in Acts 2:14-39). In both sermons Peter addresses the crowd as “fellow Israelites,” lays the crime of Jesus’ crucifixion at their feet, states that this was God’s plan, that God has raised Jesus from the dead, and that he and the people of the Way are witnesses to this fact. Then, in both sermons, Peter calls the crowd to “repent” of their complicity in Jesus’ crucifixion, so God can forgive them and so they can receive certain blessings from God.
In the first sermon, Peter links repentance with baptism; in the second, with an act of turning to God. In the first, the promised blessing is the “gift of the Holy Spirit”. In the second, the blessing is two-fold: (1) times of refreshing from God’s presence, and (2) God will send the Messiah, Jesus, to bring a time of universal restoration promised by the prophets. In the second sermon, Peter then quotes two scriptures, namely Deuteronomy 18:15, 18, 19 and Genesis 12:3, to show a continuity between God’s covenant with Israel and the Way. In the first sermon, Peter had appealed to the Prophet Joel (2:28-32) and to David’s Psalms (16 and 110) to demonstrate this continuity.
In both sermons, Peter accuses his listeners, who were Jews, of culpability in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (even as he allows for their ignorance of this crime in 3:17), and calls them to repent of this sin and believe that Jesus is the Messiah of God. After the first sermon, 3000 accepted Peter’s invitation to repent (Acts 2:41). After the second, the temple guard arrest Peter and John, but another 2000 repented and believed Peter’s message (Acts 4:4).
Questions for Reflection
1. When
have you been “cut you to the heart” by someone’s accusation (Acts 2:37), in a
way that caused you to immediately apologize and ask for forgiveness? What
happened after you apologized? What is different about this experience than a
time when you responded not with an apology but with anger at being found out
and (justly) accused?
2. The
Greek word for repent is metanoia, which is compounded from words that mean
“transform”, and “comprehension”. Jesus and John the Baptist called people to
transform their thinking of the Kingdom of God as a present reality. Peter
associates this adoption of a new way of understanding with a “turning” or
“conversion” toward God. When do you “repent” of your sins (separation from
God)? What does the word “repent” mean in your life? 3. In Peter’s time, many Jews could not comprehend a “weakling” God who would submit to the shame and powerlessness of a public execution. Peter and the other Apostles went to great lengths to prove that the Prophets had foretold this plan. How does God’s “weakness” in Jesus Christ’s crucifixion affect your understanding of God and your life?
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