They Came to Him | Pastor Terry A. Smith (Follow Me – Week 2)

Pastor Terry A. Smith Devotional Plan for: Week of June 14 - June 20 Monday - Read Acts 2:37-41 Acts 2:37-41 NIV: "When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call." With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation." Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day." A frequent question posed to Christians from those who don't yet follow Christianity is, "How do I get saved?" By this, people frequently mean, "How do I go to heaven?" The typical Christian answer is, "Put your faith in Jesus." This week, we're going to look at a few different stories of the first people who became followers of Jesus. This gives us incredible insight, because it shows us how the Apostles preached and how the first believers followed. Meaning, there's a sense in which these stories are normative, or help us to understand how we both share the Gospel and receive the Gospel. In today's story, we see Peter preaching to what ends up being the first ever converts to Christianity (outside of the Apostles). He gives a long message to them (in the verses prior), spanning the story of Israel and how we have come to Jesus, and why the hearers should give over their lives to Jesus. As we see, his message cuts to the heart of those who are listening, and they ask, "What should we do?" This should be the response of our sharing our faith: the truth is so compelling that people want to know what they're supposed to do about it! Now, in our contemporary day, someone may say, "Put your faith in Jesus." But, what does this mean to people today? Most often, this means, "I believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead." That's not what Peter asks them to do though, nor what that New Testament asks them to do. "Faith" is not some intellectual ascent to facts, saying, "God exists." As James says, "Even the demons believe and shudder." To be in a covenant relationship with God is absolutely not to believe in his existence, but to give over your existence. "Belief", "faith", in Scripture is similar to "trust", "loyal obedience", "allegiance", "faithfulness". When we act out faith, we act out those synonyms. See what Peter says, which is more reflective of this approach to how we respond to the message of the Gospel. He tells them to repent, which means to turn the other way from their sins, to be baptized, and to receive the Spirit. He tells them they are a part of a corrupt generation, and because they're part of the corrupt generation, they have to turn away from it and join a new generation (the family of God) and receive a new Spirit, that of God's. Is our generation corrupt? Stop and think about that, if you will, for a second. There's a common phrase called "chronological snobbery". This, essentially, means that those who are further along in time look back on those in the past and think they're so much better than them. "People in the medieval times were so brutish and uneducated", "people in 19th century America were so ignorant", "people in the 1950's were so unloving". Some of our statements about previous generations may be true, but remember that in 100 years, we'll be people in the past that future generations are labeling as something negative. Thus, we have to be careful not to have "chronological snobbery", thinking that because we're further in time, we are so much better. My (Christian Smith) opinion is that people in our day think very highly of themselves. But the reality is that all generations experience corruption, and perhaps ours is m