Today, as we continue our journey through the story of the early church in Acts, we come to one of those stories that threatens to derail the whole thing. This is a hard story. It’s hard to understand. It seems totally inconsistent with what we think we know of God’s character. It seems to paint the church in just the kind of judgmental light that is so often shined on it today. And we are going to dive right into the middle of it. We’re going to tackle it head on because I think there’s something happening here that we absolutely cannot miss if we want to get doing church right. So, buckle up and get ready, because this is going to be a wild ride.
Taking Things Seriously
I often start off our time together with a question. I’m going to do that this morning. This question, though, is a little more personal than what I often ask. I want you to think back to your past a bit this morning—hopefully not the recent past if you haven’t yet been around here very long. I want you to think for a minute about whether or not you’ve ever had a bad church experience.
This week we are continuing our new teaching series on the story of the early church in Acts. This incredible story helps us grasp more fully where we came from so that we better understand where we are going. After the church fairly well exploded into existence after the coming of the Holy Spirit and Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, a happy end to the story if we were writing it would be for the church to sail on forward to accomplish its mission without anything getting in its way. That is not, however, how life works. Challenges started coming the church’s way left and right; inside and out. How did the church navigate her way through all of these? That’s what we’re talking about today. Keep reading to find out.
Just as a heads up: I’ll be traveling some this week. Posts will still go up, but they may not be as long or as early as usual.
A Bold Movement
Do you remember the first time you got burned? I don’t necessarily mean physically burned. I mean, do you remember the first time something happened to really shake your confidence? When I was six my parents took me on a mild roller coaster ride at Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO, called Fire in the Hole. The idea was that you were on a mine train that keeps nearly crashing into a burning building. At each such junction the train makes a quick drop and turn. It was all inside and didn’t really have any high hills or crazy turns. But I was always kind of a cautious kid, and as we were waiting in line I began to lose my nerve. At this point, my parents were presented with a choice: have one of them take me on the chicken exit while the other enjoyed the ride with my sister who was much braver at three than I was at six, or take me on the ride over my increasingly insistent protests in hopes that I would see that it wasn’t nearly so bad as I was thinking. They didn’t know it—and indeed no parent recognizes this in the moment—but this was one of those parental judgment points where there’s really not a right answer, but whatever you decide is probably going to have lasting implications. They decided to go with the latter option on that list. When the terror-ride finally ended I was traumatized. As I bawled my eyes out I swore to myself that I would never again ride a roller-coaster or anything even remotely like that. I got burned and I wasn’t about to reach my hand back out there again. My nerve was shot.
This week we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series. Over the next few weeks, we are going to be journeying through the first part of the story of the early church in Acts. We will be looking together at how the church got its start and what that means for churches today. This is an incredible set of stories that you will not want to miss a single part of. In this first part we are talking about the church’s explosive start and what exactly it was that fueled it. Read on and find out for yourself.
Explosive Beginnings
One of the things we so often miss when we go to the Scriptures is the humor. We start reading and even in our heads put on our “Bible reading voice” and make it sound all dry and boring. The truth, though, is that it is anything but boring, and it is often very funny. Our passage last week as we challenged our graduates (and, really, all of us) is a perfect example. You can’t help but to appreciate the humor of Moses’ doing his best to wiggle out from under the thing God was calling him to do (and which He was abundantly clear was going to end successfully if he would just go do it). But one of the passages that has long been the funniest to me comes right at the beginning of Luke’s historical record of the early church we call, “Acts.”
The Nexus 