While so many of us have been sheltering in place over the past several weeks it has revealed some of the dark sides of our broken humanity. There are so many stories of lost patience, increased levels of severe anxiety, higher rates of all kinds of abuse: verbal, domestic, sexual; it would seem that while we are designed by God to be together, we rebel in ways we don’t even understand when we are forced into close quarters. We have notions about freedom that are different from God’s definition of freedom in Christ. We like to go, we don’t like to stay.

Here at the end of Acts 2, scripture provides us the model for the Christian community. Some scholars have suggested that it is a model based on a false sense of reality that Jesus would come again in those followers' lifetimes and therefore no longer applies to us in the same way. I would suggest that those first organized groups of Jesus followers were getting their cues from the Spirit and were doing their best to be obedient. It shows us a model of unity within disruption. Something we are all familiar with right now. And I think there is a lot we could learn from them. Unity within disruption has a ring to it, stay with me to the end to hear about a special way we can think through those themes.

Welcome all to another ‘pandemic post’ for April 29, 202 here at Peachtree Baptist Church, my name is Paul Capps, pastor. We have been looking at Peter’s speech over the past several days and now we are at the end of chapter, where the people are responding to the message they have accepted - that Jesus is both Lord and Messiah, Master and Provider, Shepherd and Redeemer, Servant and Savior. Jesus was, is and just as he will be for these early followers, he will be our future as we anticipate with our lives the redemption of this world. 

When the people accepted Peter’s message, they asked “What shall we do?” Peter told them to repent and be baptized, but in verse 40 it says, he also “warned them with many other words and pleaded with them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Save yourselves. If it’s Jesus who saves, how can we save ourselves from anything? What does Peter mean here? This is one of those situations where it really helps to study the words in their original context, and here, the word used for ‘save’ is better translated as ‘turn away from’ or ‘escape from.’ Even the New American Standard Version is better than most here when it says, ‘Be saved from.’ And the word corruption is a kind of twisting, like a straight path that has been manipulated into knots. Peter says many words as Luke tells us, but ends with this idea of moving away, turning away from the crooked path that humanity has developed and towards the salvation available for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, as we see from the Joel reference Peter used early in his speech.

So with all that in mind, it makes perfect sense what comes next. Because orthodoxy, that is, a corrected understanding, must also be paired with orthopraxy, that is, the practice, or living out of that understanding. Verses 42-47 show us what living into the idea of saving themselves from a corrupt generation looks like. They people accepted the message, they asked what they should do, they said the words and then Peter told them to live into the words. And so they escaped into the church. They developed a way of living that was a turning away from the path that had been developed by a rebellious humanity. And so I’ll close today with just a reading of these verses from the New International Version and we’ll pick up with more in the coming days, but as you listen think about your situation at home. Are you practicing your salvation with your life?

Acts 2:42-47

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

As we continue to learn how to coexist with this virus, we are continually reminded of the disruption it brings our lives. But we are also reminded here in Acts that we are called to live in such a way that we are unified by our love for God and for one another. 

And so with that in mind I want to tell you about a special treat. PBC will be releasing an EP from Thomas Ballew. As many of you know, Thomas has an extraordinary gift of extemporaneous jazz. He composed the intro and outro of these podcasts, plays each Sunday for us even on our zoom calls, has had a concert with our organist Lamar Savage and also provided a community concert last year. On Saturday, May 2, PBC will post a recording to this website of Thomas playing impromptu pieces based on the theme of unity within disruption. Look for a link on Saturday, and we’ll see you tomorrow.