Point to Jesus

INTRODUCTION

This morning we are continuing our series on the life of the church in the book of Acts. What does it mean to be the church, gather on Sundays, give generously, submit to leadership, grow and mature in the Spirit, and live out our identity as a new kingdom society? That’s what our time in Acts is all about. We are exploring how the early church lived and worked and served and loved and gave, how they were defined by a tangible sense of the presence of God dwelling among them and the boldness and power by which that same presence enabled their society to thrive and the grace and mercy of Jesus to spread wildly. And pray that we would be marked by the same presence, the same boldness, the same power.

PRAY

Last week, Don taught on the holiness and purity of the early church, how deeply they valued the integrity of their commitment to the Holy Spirit leading and directing their generosity. And when that was threatened by a couple in the church who sought to use the image of generosity for their own glory and gain, they were essentially destroyed by their dishonesty, their selfishness. And as gathered in our breakout group, I was struck something that I want to explore a little further today.

What is it that made the church so distinct from every other community around them? And what is it that ought to make the church today distinct from every other community around us? Is it our morals? Our charity? Our rituals and relics? Potlucks? The truth is, lots of other groups do these things, and many of them do it better. There’s one thing that makes the church the church, that empowers the church to look different, to offer something different, something better. And it’s nothing that we do, nothing we wear, nothing we say. It actually has nothing to do with us at all.

What makes the church different? It’s the all powerful, wholly loving and gracious God dwelling among ordinary men and women. It is our allegiance and submission to him. It is his will, his way, being made known and being followed. You cannot diminish the effect that the presence of God has—our could have, or should have—on the church. Everything we do as a community ought to point clearly and obviously to this reality.

Open your Bibles to Acts chapter 5, verses 12-16, and let’s dive in a little deeper.

Acts 5:12–16 CSB

Many signs and wonders were being done among the people through the hands of the apostles. They were all together in Solomon’s Colonnade. No one else dared to join them, but the people spoke well of them. Believers were added to the Lord in increasing numbers—multitudes of both men and women. As a result, they would carry the sick out into the streets and lay them on cots and mats so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on some of them. In addition, a multitude came together from the towns surrounding Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those who were tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all healed.

Luke is recording this ongoing experience in the church. Many signs and wonders were being done. This is not a one time thing, but a pattern of occurrences where broken bodies were healed, and tormented spirits were restored. So much so that very different reactions were going on around them. Luke mentions three different groups here. There are those are with them, the people who are all together on the temple grounds (Solomon’s Colonnade) where this is all going down every day. These are the believers, the church, those who are experiencing justice being restored to those whom the rest of society has considered cursed, abandoned, forsaken, worthless, the lowest of the low. They’re riding the ride and watching God work. Then there are those in Jerusalem who are scared out of their minds that within this group, powerful things are going on that they do not understand. And then, there are those who encounter this society, who see God present, and then they believe and join in.

At any rate, the church is living out life with God in such a way that the world takes notice. Some love it, some are freaked out, and some, we find out a verses later, are filled with such jealousy and rage that the power they thought they possessed has zero authority over this community, and it’s driving them insane. But it ought to be that the church looks different somehow. That should be the norm. It should not be that the church is tolerated because they believe a little different, or valued because it’s quaint and charming, or hated because it’s so smug and self-righteous and hypocritical. If that is what we are known for, if we are recognized for the wrong reasons or ignored because there is no mark of God’s presence in our midst, then we need to very seriously consider why we keep meeting.

SIGNS AND WONDERS

I want to home in on verse 12 here:

1. Many signs and wonders were being done

2. among the people

3. through the hands of the apostles.

That’s our structure for this morning.

First, signs and wonders. What’s going on here? Were Peter and James part-time illusionists? Are we talking slight-of-hand card tricks? I grew up watching those magician specials on TV; they were like three hours long (with commercials) and I stayed up until 11 at night watching mentalists and sawing-in-half tricks, and I would always watch to the end, because I knew they were going to make an airplane disappear, and that was cool. But we’re not talking about sideshow tricks. In fact, in Acts chapter 8 there’s actually a magician named Simon who tries to pay for whatever power the church leaders have so he can add it to his act, and he gets taken to task for it.

We’re not talking about magic; we are talking about miracles. Acts of healing and exorcism that took place among the church. Now, we are looking at this two thousand years in the future, in a church building in Cottonwood, California, on the other side of the globe. And in our every day, we, like most of the observers outside the early church, do not encounter miraculous healings on the regular. And the tendency in the church, when we read stuff like this that is foreign to our modern sensibilities, is to overreach in one of two ways: we either dismiss or we duplicate. Some might dismiss the concept of signs and wonders because it’s weird, it’s strange, and it’s sensational. We’ve seen signs misused and abused by people who work parlor tricks, like Simon, to gain fame and attention. And so we just assume that signs and wonders were something the apostles did, something Jesus did, and God never works that way anymore. Others will see what goes on in Acts and say, if we’re not healing diseases and casting out demons and raising the dead and walking on water, we’re not good Christians, so we gotta duplicate exactly what’s going on.

Here’s the deal: Luke isn’t writing this so you would dismiss the miraculous workings of God through his church as archaic, or duplicate them and force feed miracles as if the Holy Spirit were a genie who granted wishes. He’s writing this so you would glorify God, point to Jesus, and learn to recognize the presence of God’s rule taking its rightful place, one gracious moment at a time.

Now, often we think of miracles as unnatural acts of God that break in and disrupt the natural order of things. Someone gets sick, someone dies, someone goes blind, someone is born deaf, or without the use of their legs, and that’s just how it is, except in these extremely unusual and confounding moments when the natural order is reversed or undone, and cannot be explained other than divine intervention. In fact, that’s how Webster defines a miracle: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.

But that is not exactly what a miracle is. I mean, if your worldview cannot account for a Creator God, or the way in which man brought sin and death into the world, then sure, that’s exactly what a miracle is.

And that’s my point.

A miracle is a window, a glimpse of God’s restored order of things. Sin, death, sickness, pain, suffering, injustice and hate—that is the unnatural order that disrupted God’s better ways. God created humans to live forever with him; man chose independence from God and invited death to take hold. God created a world without sickness, without strife, without hunger; and then humans betrayed God and one another, took for themselves, and ravaged creation until its resources ran out. Little by little, humanity pushed God out to the margins, out of our view, and tragically, the unnatural ways of man became the familiar, the norm. But there have been moments, recorded through biblical history, where God worked through prophets, through leaders, through men and women, to offer a glimpse into what God originally made, and what he will do finally, for the whole world.

For this reason, when we are confronted in the Bible by the idea of signs and wonders, before we dismiss them outright or seek to duplicate, might I suggest we first celebrate the fact that God is working to break his kingdom into ours, and that he does it through his church. And then, we need to examine, to think through just how God is working out signs and wonders even today, even now, right now, in this room.

AMONG PEOPLE

Now, that leads to the second point. Signs and wonders were being done, and that’s great. But there are other warnings in the Bible telling us to watch out, because false teachers and cult leaders will use signs and wonders to distract and draw people away from God. So how do you know what a God sign is?

A God-sign reveals God’s heart. It offers a glimpse into the reality of God’s good order.

Signs and wonders were being done, where? Among the people. If I get up here and turn water into wine (or grape juice, because the sign says we’re Baptist), and you all ooh and ahh, is that a sign? Nope, that’s a parlor trick. If I get up and speak with great oration and speak nothing of the transforming power of the gospel, is that a sign? Nope, that’s just a good public speaker. What’s the point of these signs? Jesus actually tells us in the gospel of John. Signs point to the Father. If God is a compassionate God, then a work that is compassionate draws attention to that character. If God is a forgiving God, than a work that is forgiving draws attention to that character. If God is holy, or loving, or just, or generous, or self-sacrificial, then any work that points to that reality is a sign.

Here’s the point: If you go and read about the nature of YHWH in the Bible—OT or NT, doesn’t matter—you will not find a fickle god, or a selfish god, or a hateful God. You will find a God whose every emotion, every action, is others-centered. He’s a protector, a comforter, he’s good and right and pure and gracious. He is the others-centered God in a world full of little, whiny, self-centered gods.

Signs point to the reality of God’s kingdom breaking in to ours. And that means that signs in the church will build others up. So when we care for broken hearts and bodies, that’s a sign. When we speak words of comfort and encouragement, that’s a sign. When we give generously to those who are in need, that’s a sign.

See, ministry in the church is not joining a team, participating in a program, having a title of some kind. Even as I say that, if you want to join our welcoming team, or our kids ministry team, or our worship AV team, we’d love to have you, and there are opportunities to minister from there. But ministry is just meeting the needs of the people around you, leaning on the spirit of God to lead you to serve and love and show kindness.

A sign is not a sign if it is not with people (in their presence), for people (changing lives) and unto people (leading them to the nature of who our God truly is). And that leads to the final point:

THROUGH HANDS

Signs and wonders are tracers, acts of tangible grace that point back to the source of good and glory. They are authenticating marks that God’s presence is with men. In Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, he declares that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was attested by God with… signs and wonders. Later on in Acts 3, Peter and John tell a disabled man to get up and walk, and he does, and people start freaking out about the power these guys have; Peter speaks up and says, “why are you amazed at this? Why do you stare at us, as though we had made him walk by our own power or godliness?” Instead, Peter says that it was faith in the name of Jesus restored his health.

Now, if the sign to the world is healing through your hands (or through your shadow!), praise God! Point to Jesus; because that wasn’t you, that was him working through you. If the sign is a smile and a sandwich for the vagrant on the street corner, praise God! Point to Jesus; because that wasn’t you, that was him working through you.

There are lots of signs and wonders present among God’s people if we would just open our eyes a little wider. Men who love their wives and children, who do not undress other women with their eyes and treat them like objects of their own satisfactions, but honor and serve and sacrifice and protect—that is a disruption of the current order of things, is it not? Kids who care for the outcasts on the playground and offer unconditional friendship and safety—that is a disruption of the current order of things.

The transformation of hearts and lives through the gospel, the renewal of the mind by the Spirit of God, individuals coming and receiving the grace and mercy of God and being changed from the inside out, and discovering abundant, eternal life—that is a disruption of our current order. It points to the truth that God’s kingdom is breaking into ours, one gracious moment at a time. But in every situation, note that it is not our hands that perform these deeds, but through our hands that God does these deeds.

I wonder, if we were to truly let God have his way in and through people, how that might honestly look different; yes it will scare the ever-living daylights outs of us, but boy, would any of us who claim to follow Jesus argue that it wouldn’t be overwhelmingly great and glorious to see?

COMMUNION PASSAGE:

John 1:14–18 CSB

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John testified concerning him and exclaimed, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one coming after me ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ ”) Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.