"Joy in the City" - Tim Williams

"Phillip went down to a city in Samaria"!  This phrase of Scripture reminds us of some varied verses.  One is Jesus' command to be a witness in Samaria (Acts 1:8).  The other is about the prejudice between Jews and Samaritans of that day (John 4:9; Luke 9:52,53).  It is amazing how the Gospel moves us BEYOND color, culture and customs to share Christ with everyone!

Prejudice (pre-judging, irrational attitude) is nothing new.  It is even identified in the Biblical record.  Aaron and Miriam opposed Moses because of his interracial marriage (Numbers 12:1).  The Old Testament books of Esther and Jonah are about events brought on in large part by prejudice.  Even in the New Testament the Apostles struggled with it, both in race and religion (Galatians 2:11,12; Luke 9:49,50).

Prejudice can come in many areas...race, religion, economic status, culture, gender and age.  As Christians, what is our response to be?  While certainly aware of distinct differences among people and each of us having our preferences we must remember John 3:16: "For God so loved the WORLD..."  We must be willing to go BEYOND our "comfort zone" since all have sinned and all need the Savior!  This Sunday's sermon will offer a few helpful hints in dealing with prejudice.  We will also see Philip presenting Jesus as the Messiah (Christ, Anointed One) as well as bringing miraculous relief to the hurting.  The proclamation of the Messiah is listed ahead of the miracles in the text. This is a reminder that while we should be a blessing to people in practical ways we must never lose sight of sharing the message of salvation which will benefit them eternally!

The result of Phillip's mission is that there is great joy in that city.  We, too, can be partakers and promoters of great Gospel joy as we go BEYOND as witnesses of the love of Jesus in word and deed!

See you Sunday!

1.  Did Jesus acknowledge the prejudices of His earthly era?  Study Mark 7:24-30; Luke 17:11-19

 

2.  How did Jesus cross the boundaries of prejudice?  Study Luke 5:29-30; John 4:4-42

 

3.  Read Jesus' great parable of the "good Samaritan" in Luke 15:25-37.  Do you see a remedy for prejudice?

4.  In the sermon text in Acts Phillip ministered to both soul and body of the Samaritans.  The Bible commentator, William Barclay stated, "Christianity has never been a thing of words only."  Consider the following verses.  James 2:14-17; 1 John 3:16-18

5.  There was great joy when Phillip went BEYOND to Samaria and the Gospel was at work in that city.  Where else is there rejoicing when the Gospel takes effect?  Luke 15:7, 10

"Jesus Our Priest" - Doug Rehberg

For forty years I’ve known a man who’s become a mentor to me.  Interestingly, our paths have rarely crossed over those forty years, and when they have, it’s never been longer than for a year or so.  But about fifteen years ago I met someone he had referred to me.  When we met, the first thing out of the person’s mouth was, “Hi, our mutual friend sent me.  He said, ‘Go see Doug, he understands grace!’”  Of all the compliments I’ve ever received that has to be near the top of the list. 

It’s a strange thing how easily we gravitate back to the law when Jesus came to set us free from the law of sin and death through His grace. 

Recently I was leading a class on discipleship and I mentioned a quote from Dr. Douglas Kelly of Reformed Theological Seminary, “If you want to make people mad, preach the law to them.  But if you want to make them really, really mad, preach grace.”  And he’s right, just look at Jesus!  Just look at Stephen! 

The law offends because it tells us what to do – and most of the time, we hate anyone telling us what to do.  But grace offends us even more, because it tells us that there’s absolutely nothing we can do, that everything’s already been done for us.  And if there’s something we hate even more than being told what to do, it’s being told that we can’t do anything; we can’t earn anything – we are absolutely helpless and hopeless without divine grace.  And that’s exactly what we see in Acts 6 & 7. 

A few weeks ago we mentioned that Luke is famous for his transitional sentences or paragraphs.  He uses them to move the reader (or listener) from one scene to another.  But here he used two whole chapters – 6 & 7 – as a huge transition.  His story of Stephen is the story of the one the Holy Spirit uses to move the church out of Jerusalem and into the rest of the world.  Without Stephen, the church of Jesus Christ would have remained an obscure sect of the Jewish religion.  According to Luke, without Jesus there’d be no Stephen.  And without Stephen there’d be no Apostle Paul.  And without the Apostle Paul there’d be no ministry to the Gentiles.  And without Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles, there’d be no Hebron Church. 

For eight weeks we’ve been examining what it means to fulfill Micah 6:8 – “…to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.”  And we’ve seen that when the power and presence of the Holy Spirit is poured out on the church, men and women begin exhibiting the signature of Jesus which is the fulfillment of Micah 6:8.

 

Of all the people Luke introduces in the Book of Acts, no one bears the signature of Jesus more clearly and more indelibly than Stephen.  Every Christian who seeks to know the meaning of Micah 6:8 would profit from looking carefully at Stephen, and so we do this Sunday. 

In preparation for Sunday’s message you may wish to consider the following: 

1.      What is meant by the phrase, “I was seized by the power of a great affection?”

2.      Why do you think the Iroquois attributed divinity to intellectually handicapped children?

3.      What do you think it means to say that Jesus loves you for who you are and not for whom you should be?

4.      Why would Dr. Luke devote two chapters, 7% of the Book of Acts, to a man named Stephen?

5.      What does “Stephen” mean in Greek?

6.      How does he live up to his name?

7.      What does the description of him in verse 8 mean?  (i.e. full of grace)

8.      Who else in Scripture is described like that?

9.      Who is behind the opposition to Stephen in 6:11?

10.  How is Stephen a perfect fulfillment of Jesus’ command in Matthew 9:13? 

See you Sunday!

"Jesus Our Hero" - Doug Rehberg

Years ago Edward Hutton, the English author, was awarded the highest civilian honor the Italian government can award – Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Republic.  What was his achievement?  He authored the finest travel book on Italy ever written. 

In a 1958 interview, he described the difference between the Italy of his studies forty years earlier and the nation of the present day.  He said, “Italy then was the land of the traveler.  The traveler was one who did his homework and sought to educate himself on all that he sees.  Today, however, Italy is the land of ‘the tripper’ or ‘the tourist’.  They don’t understand what they are seeing.  It’s possible for a person with no classical background to look upon the amazing relics of the past and be completely unaware of their meaning.” 

Hutton’s remarks of sixty-six years ago perfectly illustrate the way in which many Christians read their Bibles.  Instead of being travelers who journey slowly, absorbing the spiritual blessings and plunging into the spiritual depths, they are trippers who rush by at high speed, not knowing what they’ve read, or what to read.  One girl who “traveled” in Italy said she remembered Rome as the place where shoe polish spilled on her best dress, and Venice as the place where the hairstylist burned her hair with a curling iron!  That’s much like those who say that the God of the New Testament is much more neighborly and kind than the God of the Old. 

If we have seen anything resembling the truth over our years of reading and studying the Scriptures together at Hebron, it is that there is absolutely no distinction between the God who met Abram at the Oaks of Mamre and the Lord Jesus Christ.  The God who sets forth His delightful intention for His people in Deuteronomy 15 is the same One who tells of a man who threw a great banquet, in Luke 14.  When Jesus tells His audience that when they throw a party they should invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and they will be blessed, He’s simply repeating what His Father says to Israel throughout its history.  Indeed, Jesus is so emphatic about the guest list that He repeats Himself less than ten verses later! 

For seven weeks we have sought to rediscover the essence of God’s words in Micah 6:8: 

“He has shown you, O man, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God.” 

The amazing thing is that God doesn’t just say that to ancient Israel, He acts it out perfectly in Jesus. 

Jesus Christ is the human face of God.  As we examine Luke 14:1-14 and Acts 5:29-33 this Sunday, under the title “Jesus Our Hero”, we will see exactly how He is not only the author and the finisher of our faith, but our source in doing justice and loving kindness. 

In preparation for Sunday’s message you may wish to consider the following: 

1.      Do you have an image of God to which you return again and again?

2.      How closely aligned is your image of Him with the description of Jesus in Matthew 12:18-21?

3.      What would Jesus tell you to do in a case where your resources have been “wasted” by a needy person?  (Hint: Jonathan Edwards’ response to the 4^th objection – “They will waste it.  It won’t be long until they’re right back in the same story shape.”  (See Jonathan Edwards’ 1733 sermon, “The Duty of Charity to the Poor.”)

4.      What does Peter mean when he says, “We must obey God rather than men” in Acts 5:29?

5.      What had God commanded Peter and the other apostles? (see verse 20)

6.      What is “this life” of which they are to speak?

7.      What do the apostles mean when they refer to Jesus as “Leader and Savior”?

8.      What evidence does Jesus give the disciples of John the Baptist of His messiahship?  (see Luke 7)

9.      What is meant by the words, “What makes God’s kingdom come is doing justice and loving kindness”?

10.  Why does Jesus say that we should invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind to our dinner parties?  What’s to be gained? 

See you this Sunday as we Give, Gather, and Serve!  It’s not too late to do all three!

"Having Everything in Common" - Doug Rehberg

Deuteronomy 15 is a famous chapter of Scripture that has been lifted and applied to many current ministry efforts, like the CCO’s Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh every Spring.  The Bible records the Lord speaking through Moses to His people Israel saying:

At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release.  And this is the manner of the release:  Every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor.  He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord’s release has been proclaimed.  Of a foreigner you may exact it, but whatever of yours is with your brother your hand shall release.  But there will be no poor among you; for the Lord sill bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess – if only you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today.

Acts 4:32ff is a clear fulfillment of that promise.  The church is the perfect expression of this fulfillment.  We read that through a great distribution of divine grace upon the church (vs. 33) there were no poor; no unmet needs.  Through the distribution of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in these first thousands of Christians, justice and loving kindness was done instinctively.  How?  The Lord puts it succinctly in Jeremiah 9:23-26:  He circumcised their hearts and the result was that they had everything in common.  The testimony of Scripture couldn’t be clearer – the more one grasps the incomparable grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the more of a giver they become.  And this should come as no surprise for throughout the Old Testament the word “righteousness” tzadequa (in Hebrew) refers not to personal morality, but right relationships.  It’s a word that is far more social than personal.  And that’s exactly what we will see in our study of Acts 4:32-37 and Jeremiah 9:23-26 this Sunday.

Verse 33(b) is the fulcrum on which Acts 4:32-37 is balanced.  Luke says, “…and great grace was upon them all.”  Listen to what Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City, says, “My experience as a pastor has been that those who are middle class in spirit tend to be indifferent to the poor, but people who come to grasp the Gospel of grace and become spiritually poor find their hearts gravitating toward the materially poor.  To the degree that the Gospel shapes your self-image, you will identify with those in need.”  That’s what Luke shows us in Acts, chapter 4.

On Monday night I shared with a group of ten who are equipping themselves to do justice and love kindness even more intently, the words of the late Episcopal priest, Robert Farrar Capon, who died last September in New York City, regarding the Gospel of grace.  Capon writes:

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late Medievalism, a whole cellar-full of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince everyone that God saves us single-handedly.  The word of the gospel – after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps – suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight:  no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case. 

And once it’s drunk, really drunk and re-drunk, the natural result is free, generous giving.

In preparation for Sunday’s message you may wish to consider the following:

1.      Find out who Fr. Gregory Boyle is, and think about getting his 2010 book, Tattoos on the Heart.

2.      How do you read Jeremiah 9:23-26?

3.      How would you define “kinship”?

4.      How does being of “one heart and soul” play itself out?

5.      How many Christians is Luke talking about in chapter 4?

6.      What does it mean to say that Jesus never met a stranger?

7.      How often in the Bible do you find the word “grace” (charis in Greek) modified as it is in verse 33?

8.      Do you agree with the statement, “The deeper you grow in the Spirit the poorer you become”?

9.      What common objections do you hear for not giving to others, especially the poor?

10.  What does the word that’s used to describe Barnabas in verse 36 mean?  And what is the significance?

 

See you Sunday as we continue to Gather and Give Beyond ourselves!  If you haven’t yet brought your “Gather” – you’ve got all month to do it.  This Sunday we begin collecting our “Give”.  (The goal is $20,000 over and above our regular giving.)

"Making the Lame Walk" - Doug Rehberg

Lorraine Hansberry in her play, Raisin in the Sun, tells of an African American family living on the South Side of Chicago when the father dies leaving a small insurance claim.  The mother has specific designs on the money.  She wants to use it to fulfill one of her fondest dreams – buying a little bungalow on the other side of town. 

The problem is that her son wants the money to go into business.  He’s a young man who’s never had a break and now he’s got one.  All he needs is the money to go into partnership with a friend, and he’ll be making all kinds of money, he says.  So he begs his mother for the money.  She refuses at first, then later acquiesces.  She puts half the money in his hands and you can guess what happens. 

The family is gathered together when another victim comes in to announce that he, too, has been swindled.  With his head down and his shoulders slumped, the son confesses the whole story.  Instantly, his sister, Beneatha, rips into him.  She pours out contempt. She screams at him for being so stupid and destroying their only escape route from the squalor they’ve lived in all their lives. 

When she finishes her tirade her mother says, “I thought I taught you to love him.”  Beneatha shouts back, “Love him?  There’s nothing left to love!”  Then her mother says, “There’s always something left to love.  And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.  Have you cried for that boy today?  I don’t mean for yourself and the family ‘cause we lost all that money.  I mean for him; what he’s been through and what it’s done to him.  Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most?  When they’ve done good and made things easy for everybody?  Well then, you ain’t through learning, ‘cause that ain’t the time.  It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ‘cause the world’s done whupped him so.  When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right.  Make so you done take into account what hills and valleys he’s come through before he got to wherever he is.”   

That’s what Jesus always did.  That was His signature.  And, it’s His signature that we see so vividly displayed not in the days following the Pentecost, but throughout the Book of Acts. 

This Sunday we are in Acts 3 where we read the account of the healing of a man born lame.  It is the first recorded encounter of the disciples outside the Upper Room.  Luke tells us that Peter and John are heading into the temple for afternoon prayers when a lame beggar calls out to them for many (alms).  This is interesting on many counts.  First, they are headed to the temple.  This is the first place these spirit-filled believers go after Pentecost.  Second, the lame man is carried to the temple gate every day for years.  Third, the gate offers a picture of his condition.  Fourth, there’s a mirror image of this man in II Samuel 9.  Fifth, Peter and John redirect the man’s eyes from the milling masses to them.  Sixth, Peter offers the man a curious command.  Seventh, Peter declares that neither he nor John have any money.  (Or is that what he really says?)  Eighth, Peter exercises his faith on behalf of this man.  Ninth, the man joins Peter and John in the temple.  And tenth, the man’s healing offers Peter a platform for lifting up Jesus. 

There’s so much in this passage that informs us as to what doing justice and loving kindness means.  It’s not by accident that Luke places this miracle as the first miracle after Pentecost. It is a perfect model of what the Holy Spirit can do through you and me as we are moving along this poor, lame world. 

In preparation for Sunday’s message, “Making the Lame Walk”, you may wish to consider the following: 

1.      Read II Samuel 9 and explore the correlation between Mephibosheth and this lame man in Acts 3:1-16.

2.      How is the God of Jacob described in Psalm 146:5-7 different from the gods of other ancient cultures?

3.      How does the description of Jesus in Matthew 12:18-21 mirror the God of Psalm 146?

4.      How is Peter’s description of Christians in II Peter 1:4 an apt description of what happens after Pentecost?

5.      What is the background on giving alms?  Was it required?

6.      Where was the “Beautiful Gate” in the temple in Jerusalem?  Why was it called that?

7.      What contrast is Luke pointing out in stating that the lame man was positioned by that gate every day?

8.      Why does Peter tell the man to look at him and John?  (vs. 4)

9.      Acts 3:15 is the first recorded time Peter uses the word “faith”.  What does he mean by it?

10.  How do this miracle and this message signal God’s purpose for Pentecost?

This Sunday, October 5, 1024, is World Communion Sunday.  It’s the day in which Christians around the world gather at the Lord’s Table to remember.  May the Holy Spirit be quite active this Sunday helping us to remember all Jesus has done to enable us to do justice and love kindness. 

See you Sunday!

"A Generous Heart" - Doug Rehberg

Thirty minutes after Pentecost the apostles knew more about Jesus Christ than they had known from three years of following Him as disciples.  The effluence of Pentecost had given them a new capacity they had not experienced before.  The infilling of the Holy Spirit had given them the gift of faith and the desire to exercise it.  Prior to Pentecost they had felt dependence and loyalty, but they had no firm faith.  They had witnessed Christ’s death with anguish and His resurrection with wonderment, but didn’t really understand the cosmic or personal meaning of it all until the gift of faith was mysteriously birthed within them through the distribution of the Holy Spirit’s power.

Albert Camus, the existential philosopher and atheist, once wrote, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very act of existence becomes an act of rebellion.”  That’s what we see in the life and ministry of Jesus.  That’s what we see in the Book of Acts as those first disciples carry with them the full signature of Jesus.  On the day of Pentecost they receive what God had spoken through the prophet Ezekiel so many centuries earlier.  He puts in them a new spirit and a new heart and their lives begin to reflect a generous justice.

Years ago a man I know was on a trip to South Carolina from New Orleans to speak to a group of Episcopalians.  On the first leg of the journey he sat on the aircraft and centered his thoughts and prayers on Jesus.  He silently repeated Jesus’ name over and over again.  He focused on all that Jesus had done for him on the cross.  He said that he became so conscious of Jesus’ presence in him that the flight into Atlanta seemed like minutes.  During the two-hour layover he decided to get his shoes shined so that he might look more presentable to the crowd later that evening.  He approached the elderly shoeshine man and asked for the going rate.  The man instantly said, “A dollar fifty, sir.”  He handed him two bucks and sat in the elevated chair while the shoeshine man shined his shoes.  When he finished the traveler said, “Now it’s your turn.  You get in that chair and I’ll shine your shoes.”  The man stuttered, “Huh?  What?”  So the traveler said, “I won’t charge you.  Go ahead, get up in the chair and let me shine your shoes.”  The man stared at him and said, “What for, then?”  “Because you’re my brother,” he answered.  The man looked disconcerted.  Finally, he said, “Well, when I ain’t busy, the boss leaves me some shoes to shine.  But thank you anyway.”  It was at that point that the traveler saw the tears in the elderly man’s eyes.  Instantly he reached out to him and hugged him.  And when he did the elderly man said softly, “No white man ever talked to me like that before.”

Now what had possessed this traveler to engage in such conversation?  Had he planned it?  Was it his good deed for the day?  Was it the product of a fertile mind?  Was it an underlying desire to be lauded by a stranger?  Was it a way to make the traveler feel superior or wonderfully altruistic?  It was none of that.  It was the result of being lost in Jesus.  It was the product of a Spirit-controlled heart, rather than a craven mind.  In fact, it was the confluence of two biblical attributes – justice and kindness.

This week we continue our examination of what the Lord tells us in Micah 6:8.  What does the Lord require of us?  To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with Him.  In Acts 2:42-47 we see how the disciples of Jesus are living that out.  As we will see, justice and kindness or mercy are not two separate things.  Throughout the Old Testament the Lord portrays them as the two sides of the same coin.  Justice or misphat in Hebrew signifies an action.  Misphat is used more than 200 times in the Old Testament.  When you read the Old Testament and pay attention to this theme you find that God, by His own character, is acting our justice all the time.  However, it is critical to note that rarely is justice required without hesed (mercy) or tzadegah (righteousness).  Scores of time in the Old Testament justice and righteousness are spoken of in the same breath.  While justice is the action, kindness, mercy, or righteousness is the attitude behind the action.  When the Lord commands His people to discharge justice it’s always intended in a merciful or kind way.  And that’s exactly what we see in Sunday’s text.  In short, we will see that justice and mercy are the principle features of the Signature of Jesus.

In preparation for Sunday you may wish to consider the following:

 

1.      Do you think Jesus was tolerant or intolerant of sin?

2.      What charge was repeatedly leveled against Jesus regarding sin?

3.      What did Martin Luther mean when he spoke of “the sin under the sin”?

4.      How and where does Jesus address the sin under the sin issue?

5.      How is doing justice and loving kindness a matter of heart motivation rather than willful behavior?

6.      How do you define “fellowship”?  How can the Holy Spirit be the only author of true fellowship?

7.      What does it mean when Luke says in verse 42 that they “devoted themselves”?

8.      Is it true that one’s grasp of grace determines how much justice and generosity someone dispenses?

9.      What is the motivation behind God’s command in Leviticus 24:22?

10.  Look at Judges 6:34(a).  What does that mean to you?

See you Sunday!

Raising Him Up

We hear a lot today about Timothy Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.  Indeed, in one of the fly leaves of one of his books he’s called “the renowned” pastor of Redeemer Church.  A few years back, when Newsweek was still a “hold in your hands” publication, the editors called him “the Smart Preacher.”  But before Keller ever got to New York City, he studied at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.  It was there that he was profoundly impacted by Dr. Harvie M. Conn, the director of Westminster’s Urban Mission Program.  In fact Keller says that one of the principal ways in which the Lord called him to Manhattan was through the teaching and writings of Harvie Conn.

In 1982 Harvie Conn wrote a little book entitled Evangelism:  Doing Justice and Preaching Grace that has had a profound impact on many, including Tim Keller.  In it Conn cites a German by the name of Rudolf Obermüller who wrote a book in 1952 entitled, Evangelism in Latin America where he tells of a Brazilian university student who left the Christian faith for Marxism.  The student said, “You Protestants seem to be concerned only about getting people to stop smoking, drinking, and dancing.  When the communists speak to us about feeding the starving, teaching the illiterate, and putting an end to exploitation and injustice.”  And the sad truth is that that’s largely the sad truth of many Christians and Christian communities.  Conn calls it, “one-dimensional spirituality.”  But, as Conn points out, God refuses to see a dichotomy between the spiritual and the material.  We see that throughout the Old Testament where God defines “righteousness” and “doing justice” as serving “the least of these.”  Remember a few weeks ago when we mentioned “the quartet of the vulnerable” in Israel – the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant?  From the beginning of Israel’s history the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob stood apart from all the gods of all the other religions as being on the side of the powerless and the disenfranchised.  (See Palms 68:4-5; Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:16-17; Zechariah 7:9-10; Psalms 146:7-9; Deuteronomy 10:17-18, to cite only a few such texts.)  The truth is that most, if not all, of the Lord’s searing indictments of His people in the Old Testament have little to do with their individual morality and everything to do with their oppression of the poor and weak among them.  It’s a remarkable thing to realize that though the Lord has called us, saved us, and blessed us so that we can do likewise for others, our basic tendency to keep it all for ourselves or worse to steal from others.

Last week was the second message in our series, The Signature of Jesus, and we were in Acts 1 talking about how doing justice and loving kindness is a matter of the heart.  And as we saw, the truth is simply this – that the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in a life will manifest itself in Jesus’ heart becoming our heart.

Let me give you a great illustration from Harvie Conn’s book.  In the summer of 1980, Harvie joined a half dozen other Christians on the garbage dumps in Kampala, Uganda nine years after Idi Amin had left the city devastated by terror and a public health crisis.  There were massive amounts of garbage on almost every street corner with children all over them throwing stones at rats.

Harvie says that every street told the same story and the question was, “What can we do to dramatize God’s love for the city and our willingness to serve in humility?”  Jack Miller was with them and he gave them the answer – “Garbage Evangelism” was born.

They went to the Minister of Health and asked for a truck to haul away the garbage.  He couldn’t believe it.  “Why?” he asked.  They answered, “Jesus!”  He gave them two trucks.  The first thing they did was raise a banner on each truck that read, “Jesus is the Answer.”  Within a few short days hundreds of Ugandas circled the piles and joined in loading the trucks and singing praise songs to the Lord Jesus.  During the breaks they’d preach the Gospel to them.  Soon a newspaper reporter showed up for an interview.  “Why are you doing this?  Are you members of a political party?”  They answered, “No.  We are members of the body of Christ – the same body that suffered, died, and rose again because of His great love for Ugandans and Americans alike.  We are here picking up garbage because He picked us up first out of His great love.  And it’s out of His love that we love you!”

This week we are going to look at where all of this begins – Acts 2.  Indeed, the reason Harvie Conn, Jack Miller, and the others were engaged in Garbage Evangelism in Uganda was because the same Holy Spirit who showed up in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost showed up in Uganda.  What He did in the heart of Peter and the other disciples is what He did in Harvie Conn’s heart.  It’s exactly what He intends to do in your heart too!

In preparation for Sunday’s message, “Raising Him up,” from Acts 2:29-41 and Matthew 6:19-24 you may wish to consider the following:

1.      What does Matthew 6:19-21 have to do with Matthew 6:22-23?

2.      What’s Jesus mean by “the eye is the lamp of the body?”

3.      Is there a connection to Proverbs 31 and the virtuous woman?  (Of course there is)

4.      Is there a connection to Genesis 22:14?  (This one too!)

5.      How many times does Peter reference Jesus in Acts 2:29-41?

6.      How does Peter demonstrate inclusivity in what he says?

7.      How does Peter mirror Jesus in his speech?

8.      Why do the foreigners call Peter and the other disciples “brothers” in verse 37?

9.      How does Peter demonstrate a “good eye?”

10.  What’s the significance of Peter’s words in verse 40?

For fun:

·         Who was Frederic Bartholdi?

·         Who was Giovanni Montini?

 

See you Sunday!