Summary
Pastor Safrit continues the series on the Book of Acts, focusing on Acts 2:37-47, where the early church responds to Peter's sermon. He emphasizes the importance of repentance and baptism for forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit, illustrating how the early believers formed a community devoted to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. The sermon challenges listeners to reflect on their own responses to the gospel and their commitment to living as a unified church, actively engaging in spiritual growth and outreach.
Welcome and Series Introduction
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And we are continuing our series in the book of Acts, and man, I have just thoroughly enjoyed this.
I hope you have, as we've been continuing to look through the early church and what that looks like, and how we as a church should look, and how we as a church should operate, and just love looking at
what Jesus said the mission of the church should be, and that transition time as we're waiting, and then Pentecost, and then last week, Peter's sermon, the first sermon of the church, and what that looks like.
And today we'll look at the people's response, and how the people responded when the Word of God was preached in the first church there in Jerusalem.
So if you found your place, we'll stand and we'll read these 10 verses out of the last passage of chapter 2, verse 37 through 47.
And when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what should we do? And Peter replied, Repent and be baptized, each 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. For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call.
With many other words he testified and strongly urged them, saying, Be saved from this corrupt generation.
So those that accepted the message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 people were added to them. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled in awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles.
Now all that believed were together and held all things in common. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all those that had need.
Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their numbers those who were being saved.
Father, we love you. We thank you for your word.
Lord, I'm so thankful as we look at what your word does, the preaching of your word does. And Lord, I pray that you would help us to allow it to penetrate our hearts the same way. That we would ask that same question, what must I do this morning?
I thank you, Father, for what you've done. Be with the preaching this morning.
John Burke's Transformation Story
In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
Came across a story as I was looking through some different historical archives. In 2019, a man named John Burke stood in a courtroom awaiting his sentence. He had lived a reckless life. He was addicted to drugs.
He was stealing to support his habit, and he was hurting everyone who had loved him.
And for years he ignored the warnings from his family, his friends, and he even had a pastor that once told him, John, one day you're going to stand before a judge, maybe an earthly judge, and maybe the heavenly judge, which is God.
And he made this statement, you won't be able to run from the truth. That day had come where he was found guilty, and he was in that courtroom. And as the judge read the charges, something unexpected happened. Instead of feeling scared of the punishment,
John felt something much deeper. A piercing conviction that he had spent years of his life blaming his parents, blaming the system that he was raised in, blaming bad luck. And in that moment he realized, all this is on me. I'm guilty, and I have done wrong.
Tears filled his eyes, and he looked over at his lawyer as he was standing there before the judge, and he asked the lawyer one simple question, four words. He said, what can I do?
The judge gave him 10 years in prison, but something greater happened that day. A chaplain visited John in his cell,
shared the gospel with him, and he explained that John's guilty before this earthly judge was a reflection of a greater guilt
that he was going to have before a heavenly judge one day. Unlike the courtroom where justice must be served, he explained that Jesus had already served his punishment, and that he would no longer have that punishment because Jesus had that punishment taken for him, and if only he would believe
in Jesus. That day John repented and trusted Christ as his true freedom began, and over the next few years he became a leader in the prison, he led Bible studies, he led prayer groups, he helped other inmates find the same forgiveness that he had received.
Just like John, the crowd here in Acts chapter 2, the Bible says they were cut to their heart when they realized that they had sin in their lives.
I want us to just imagine back to that moment where you received Christ for the very first time, when you understood the gospel and what it meant for me.
It was a five-year-old little boy on a Sunday night service as my pastor was preaching, and I grabbed my mom by the hand and I said, Mom, I understand that I'm not going to go to heaven. I know that I'm going to go to hell because of my sin.
I need salvation. I want you to remember back to that moment and ask yourself the same question that was asked here by these men and women that said, what must we do? Peter's answer was the same as the chaplains, and it's the same this morning.
Just as John repented and responded in his faith, he was forgiven, he was changed, and he became part of a new community.
And these same believers here in Jerusalem were the same way. They repented, they believed, and they became a part of this new community that began at birth here in Acts chapter 2 as we know it today as the church. We stand here today because Peter stood up and proclaimed the boldness of Christ.
He stood up and proclaimed what says the Lord. And today we get this wonderful reward.
As Peter says here, he says, Your sons and your children and those who are far off will receive the promise of the Lord.
We are in that passage, church. We are those that were far off. We're the children and the grandchildren because someone stood up and someone told us about Christ and what it meant to receive redemption.
And so as we begin to look through this passage and begin to process a couple of things, I want us to look at the first couple of verses and look at the response that was taken. You see, we all have a choice to make.
We all have a choice to understand what we're going to do when this opportunity of salvation presents itself to us.
In 2005, I was a junior going into my junior year of high school. I know that sounds, I'm young.
I know that sounds crazy when I say 2005. But we stood before our football coach there that day. And in 2005, the coach we had was Coach Scott Young,
who has passed away at this point. But he looked at us and 120 boys showed up for the varsity football team that year. Scotty here, I'm sure he's wishing that he could get half of that. But the varsity team showed up, 120 people.
And he looked at us and he said, Men, I'm not going to cut any one of you. As many of you that want to remain on this football team will remain on this football team. He said, I believe that public school you shouldn't cut. And we have the opportunity to do that.
He said, but some of you are thinking, how are you going to have 120 people in a jersey? And he said, not all of you are going to make it through this week. And he said, this week you're going to have a choice to make.
We're going to go through some grueling times and some grueling tests.
And we're going to climb hills. And we're going to have three days. And we're going to have times that you're going to ask yourself, is life even worth this moment? And some of you are going to respond and you're going to quit the team.
And he said, some of you are going to continue on and you're going to have a great season and we're going to see some great things happen.
It ended up that about 40 or 45 of us boys, not me, but 40 or 45 of those boys had quit after about the second or third day. They couldn't handle the heat. They couldn't handle the pressure. They couldn't handle the progress.
And they made a choice that they were going to withdraw their name from that team. And this morning we have to ask ourselves, what is our response? What is our choice when the gospel is presented to us?
Understanding Our Response
The first thing we see is a right response. After Peter's sermons preached,
he said, the people said to them that they were cut to their heart in verse 37. This phrase, when we look at it, says that there is a deep conviction in their life.
The work of the Holy Spirit was working so hard that it was cut like a knife to their heart. You see, imagine a doctor coming in and looking at an x-ray and you're having problems.
I've got a friend of mine, if you pray for him, his name is Brett Martin. He's in Mississippi right now and he's having debilitating headaches and they're running tests on him.
He doesn't know what's going on. He's a pastor that we went to Nicaragua with. And if they came in tomorrow after he had taken some tests and the doctor pulled up the x-ray and said, Brett, this is what's wrong right here.
This spot, maybe it's on your lung, maybe it's in your heart. And the only way we're going to get rid of it is by cutting you open and removing that bad tissue or cancer or whatever it may be. Every single one of us would say,
with the urgency, doc, do it as quickly as you possibly can do it. And this is the response of the people here. They're saying, there's something wrong. There's something in me that is not right. I'm desperate for a cure.
I'm desperate for something to come in and take care of this. What is it that we must do?
As they looked at Peter and as they looked at the men there and they said, what shall we do? As we talked about this morning in Sunday school, it shows a humility and a readiness to receive the gospel.
It shows that they were humbling themselves to say, I cannot do anything in and of myself.
I'm not a doctor. I can't take the scalpel and begin to cut open and do this. It must be someone else that does this. And I must respond in a way that is understanding that Christ is the only one that can help me.
You see, there's a right response and there's also a wrong response. A wrong response and maybe here to you today, who's ignored the warnings of sin.
You are driving in your car and if you bend down I-40 towards the mountains, there's a sign that's about a mile away and it says, up ahead there's a turn.
You must reduce your speed to 40 miles an hour because if not, there's a turn that's going to go off the mountain and you're going to lose control.
And you get closer and the sign says it again and there's more warnings and there's more signs that are telling you that this is going to be imminent danger if you don't slow down.
And you look at it and you say, you know what, I'm a speedster. I can handle this. I can handle this turn.
I can take care of this. And you ignore the signs and you ignore the things that are going on around you and all of a sudden you get to that turn and you lose control and you go off the side of the cliff. The warnings were there yet you chose to ignore them.
Sometimes we try to justify ourselves and we try to say,
you know, what I'm doing is okay and I'm going to live this life the way I'm going to live. I'm not going to worry about the consequences.
And sometimes we excuse our sins and we say that what I'm doing is okay and what I'm doing is fine. So and so did it and nothing happened to them. I'm going to continue this path that I'm on.
Importance of Repentance
So there's a right response. There's a wrong response. And ultimately, number two underneath our response, it should be repentance. Look at verse 38. Peter replied, repent and be baptized.
Peter's response was simple. It was there must be repentance in our life. Repentance says ultimately like this, a good Webster's definition dictionary,
a complete change of mind, a heart that turns away from sin and toward God. It is not merely to regret, but to be transformed.
You're on your path and you're going east on I-40 and all of a sudden you realize that you've made the wrong turn and you're going the wrong direction and you must make a 180 and go backwards and go west toward the other direction.
This is what repentance means. It is a complete change in attitude.
It is a complete change in our mindset of going from one direction to another direction, of understanding that this path has taken me on a path of sin and destruction and death.
And Christ is saying over here is freedom and redemption and life that is more full than we will ever imagine in our life, but it all begins with repentance.
And then it says must also be baptized because this is an outward sign of an inward change of something that has been done in your life and you're showing everyone around you something great that has happened.
I want you to imagine with me as I was even preparing this and we're planning some things for the summer with our convention and the kids have this wonderful vacation Bible school that they do while we're at the convention and it's called Giant Cow.
And this year the theme is a musical of the prodigal son.
And I was telling Jade about it. I said, you know, the prodigal is going to come and she's like, dad, what's the prodigal?
And so I got to explain a little bit of what the prodigal son is, but I want you to imagine the prodigal son this morning. You've heard the story in Luke 15 where he wanted all of his possessions.
He wanted his inheritance from his father and he went out and he lived a wicked lifestyle and he sold everything that he had.
He spent everything that he had on lavish living and he gets to a point where a famine comes in and he's lost everything and he's sitting there with the pigs and he realizes I've done wrong.
I've done things that I shouldn't have done. I've done things that have dishonored my father.
I want to go back and I want to repent and I want to ask my father if he would just accept me to be one of his slaves because they actually have food on their table and I'm sitting
here eating with the pigs. And oftentimes we find ourselves in that pig pit.
We find ourselves in the swine of our decisions that we've made and we must turn and say, God, I don't want to live like this anymore. I want to live for you. I want to live as the prodigal turns and comes home and is welcomed with open arms with forgiveness.
You see, when we come into true repentance, we see a couple of different things in this passage. In verse 38, we see that there's forgiveness of sins. Look here, it says, as you receive Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.
When we receive forgiveness, we receive repentance, we see this forgiveness that is greater than we'll ever imagine here on earth. We also see the gift of the Holy Spirit. It says here that they will receive the Holy Spirit.
When we repent and we receive this gift of salvation, Jesus Christ himself indwells us as the new temple.
And he says, you're going to have all power and authority on this earth and everywhere else because the Holy Spirit's with inside of us. And then we see wonderful things here in verse 41.
When repentance happens and forgiveness of sin happens and the Holy Spirit is inside of us, we see something miraculous. It says that all those that were accepted were baptized and about 3,000 people were added to the church. You see, when repentance happens, others around us see these things. They see our life.
They see that we were on one direction and we were going one way. But forgiveness and restoration happens and they say, something has changed over there in that person and I want to find out more about it. And the gospel is spread in a way that we will never understand and ultimately,
souls are going to be saved that are so innumerable all because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I want you to ask yourself a question this morning. If Peter were standing here this morning and he would have just preached this message that we preached last week, how would you have responded?
How would you have responded? Would you have been of those that were the 3,000 that said, I'm cut to the heart, Pastor Peter. I'm cut to my heart. I don't understand.
I don't know why I'm feeling this way, but I just need forgiveness of my sins. Or would you be like there were others? We don't know how many.
We know that there were a multitude of people there. And we believe that as I look at scripture that more people rejected the gospel this day than accepted.
I want you to understand, more people said no to Jesus this day than accepted, and there were 3,000 that accepted it. Would we have been one of those that said, Peter, you're too radical,
you're too crazy, you're too out there, you're expecting me to leave all that I have to come follow this man named Jesus? And there were those that responded in a different way. Then we begin to see in one verse the very first church emerging.
I want you to think about it. What did this first church look like? What did this first church begin to do?
It was ultimately a community centered on Christ, and beside each of these four things, you feel mark out those verses because that was a typo error for me. But we're going to look at four things that we see in this verse. There's nothing crazy, there's nothing that's going to be like
wowing this morning in these four things because they're laid out very specifically there. But I want us to understand that these four things must be in every healthy church that is around.
Foundations of a Healthy Church
If these four things are not there, or if one of these things is not there, then the church is not going to be a healthy church. The first is this, there must be the teaching of the word. They devoted themselves to the apostles'
teaching. They said, we must have the word of God around us.
Imagine for your moment here, you had a baby that's sitting there, and it's a precious little beautiful baby that's spotless and blameless.
They can barely cry. It's a beautiful picture. And then a couple of moments after that birth happens, for some reason they get hungry,
and they start crying, and they start making this weird noise, and you're like, I don't know what I'm doing. Is it, do they need a diaper change? What's going on here? And you're just sort of panicking in that first moment. And the nurses come in, and they say, hey, it's easy.
Just put a bottle in their mouth. You put that bottle in, and the crying goes away. It's a wonderful sensation.
It's a wonderful thing because you have fed this newborn baby with nourishment that is allowing that baby to grow. They're craving that. They need that. They need this nourishment in their life. And Peter, in the same way, puts it like this in 1 Peter 2, verse 2, like newborn infants,
desire the pure milk of the Word so that by it you may grow into your salvation.
Church, this morning, the preaching and the teaching of the Word allows us to grow into our salvation, allows us to grow into no longer being infant newborn babes, but allowing us to go to soft foods and one day
to wonderful Outback Steaks where we can enjoy these wonderful things that the Lord has given us, but it must be a progression of us growing in our salvation.
Church, this morning, we must be founded on sound doctrine. We must be founded on the preaching and the teaching of the Word, not on flashy lights or not on entertainment or trends, but we must ask ourselves, am I feeding on the Word of God daily in my own spiritual life?
And is the church, therefore, producing spiritual growth because we are teaching and preaching the Word of God?
Or are you sitting here this morning crying like a little baby, trying to figure out
why you're missing and why you're starving spiritually because you have yet to say, God, I want to grow deeper in the Word.
I want it to be when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is open my Bible and begin to pour in God's Word into my life.
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning, I go in there and I get a cup of coffee because I got to wake up and then I begin listening to the Bible and I begin
hearing the Word of God in my life and I begin praying and we begin to go through these things. Just as you need spiritual, just like you need physical sustenance, you must also have spiritual sustenance in your life or you will begin to spiritually starve.
Second thing we see here, not only did they have the apostles' teaching, but they were devoted to fellowship. The Greek word here is a word called koineia. It is a deep commitment to partnership. It's more than just socializing.
We can socialize at a country club. We can socialize at a gathering, at a family reunion. We can socialize in all different aspects, but this thought of fellowship is bearing one another's burdens as we talked about this morning in Sunday school.
As we looked at Colossians and we looked at bearing the burdens of one another. When heartache comes, when difficulty comes, when difficult times come into our life, we're bearing one another's burdens.
It's hard. It's tough. This afternoon, I'm going to go to a funeral at four o'clock today. My former pastor at Sulphur Springs, he's younger than me and him and his wife had just gotten pregnant and about four months into their pregnancy realized they had this weird, rare genetic mutation in their daughter.
The doctor said that if she makes it to birth, she won't live but a couple of seconds after she's born. Most likely before that, she would lose a heartbeat in the womb and we would have to induce your wife. And I got the message just last Monday that my daughter's lost her heartbeat.
We're having to go to the hospital and we're going to be inducing our daughter. She was born one pound and 11 inches. Just a little bitty baby that was born dead. And this afternoon at four o'clock, I'm going to, Lord willing, be at the funeral and be there to help him.
Fellowship and Community Support
And we've met and we've prayed together and we've talked but bearing that burden with one another, this is fellowship. Sometimes it's wonderful.
Sometimes it's the greatest thing ever but sometimes it's difficult and it's hard and it's things that we don't like to do. It's messy but this is what they did. They began to bear the burdens of one another.
They began to say, I want to take on your needs and I want to help you carry that. I want you to be able to trust in me and be able to walk through life together.
I find myself more and more as the weeks go on, men and friends that I had in the past reaching out and saying, can we just meet and have lunch? Can we just meet and talk? Can we just meet and get together? I'm just struggling with some things.
This is what fellowship looks like.
This is what bearing one another's burdens looks like. As you begin to go out and you begin to do things, it begins to work together for the sake of the gospel.
I want you to imagine for a moment you step outside in a summer day and you begin to make a charcoal fire. As you begin to make that fire, if you only light one charcoal cubit,
it's just going to burn as fast and as hot as that one does. But when you put a pile together and you allow it to burn together,
the heat is so much greater, the intensity is so much greater because we are together in that sense.
And it's the same way when the church comes together and the church fellowships together and we bear one another's burdens together, we begin to see our spiritual lives on fire. When was the last time you truly invested in a Christian fellowship?
Not just a Sunday morning coming to church and greeting one another, but a true life-on-life relationship where you said, I just need someone to be there for me. Will you be that person for me? When's the last time we truly dove into what this fellowship looks like?
We also see they broke bread together. This is a meaning that likely refers to the Lord's Supper, but it also was a moment where they shared meals together. They shared in Christ's sacrifice, but they also shared in the unity of believers. Think about it.
Think about this morning when you gather together as a family. You may not do it often.
Sometimes for extended family, it may be at Christmas or Thanksgiving or a holiday or a family reunion where you get together and you share stories and you eat and you enjoy each other's fellowship. You grow physically, you grow spiritually, you grow in a way that is wonderful.
For us and our family, I try to the best of my ability every evening to be at the dinner table.
We try to have a dinner together where we pray together and we talk together and we share the burdens and we ask our kids what they're going through and what struggles they're having and how can we help them and what are the difficulties? Who's their boyfriend?
Who's their girlfriend? And thankfully they say no one, which is a blessing. We go through these things in these intimate settings and we grow as a family. And this is what eating and fellowshipping together and breaking of bread together means. We're growing in a unity of one another.
And then it says the last thing they did was they prayed. They were a people of prayer. This was a praying church this morning, church. This was a church that said the only way we're going to grow is by coming together and seeking the throne of God.
I want you to think for just a moment a soldier on the front line of an invasion and they go to radio back to their commanding officer to get advice or to get their command and all of a sudden their radio is broke.
They don't have a way to get communication. They've been disconnected from their unit. They're disconnected from their command and they are beginning to sort of panic in what's going on. This is what happens, church, when we do not pray. We are disconnected
from our commanding officer, Jesus. We're disconnected and we no longer have a lifeline to God, our spiritual battle. Our prayer is our lifeline.
Our prayer is our grabbing hold of heaven and saying, I need you here today, God. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know how I'm going to get through this day, but I know that you're in control and I know that I can trust in you.
Prayer as a First Response
Is your prayer life this morning a last resort or a first response?
Is your prayer life this morning the last thing you do when you've reached the end of your rope and you don't know what you're going to do, how you're going to make ends meet, how you're going to get
through that day, is that when you go to God and you say, God, I've done everything I can do. I need you now.
Or is it when you wake up and you say, God, I can't even take one step today without you. I can't even get up and brush my teeth without you helping me today.
I can't get in my car and go to my job. I can't get in my car and go to my family member's house. I can't get in my vehicle and do what I need to do today without you intervening in my life.
See, that's the difference of what a praying church looks like. It's not when everything is going to hell and we don't know what's going to happen in life. That's when we turn to God.
We turn to God at the very first moment of our life and we say, God, I cannot go through this moment without you. I cannot go through this day without you. I can't go through this second without you. That's why the Bible says it must be a people of praying without ceasing.
A people who are praying in a way that we are searching for God in a way that only God can give us that direction. And so a church here, the first church was a church that was teaching and preaching the word. They were a church of fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer.
But then in verse 43 through 47, we see a true miracle happen.
You see, there is some evidence here of prayer and the devotion that happens.
We're going to quickly talk through this. I didn't put them in your notes for sake of time, but in verse 43, we see signs and wonders. In verse 44 and 45, we see a radical generosity.
We see people who are willing to give of themselves and give in a way that is radically different than what we see today. We see a joyful worship in verse 46, where it says, they mate together and they broke bread and they worship together.
And then ultimately, we see more growth in verse 47. Every day, the Lord added to their number.
And we look at that and we say, man, this is a miracle. And oftentimes, we focus on the miracles of speaking in tongues and the wonders that were done and the crazy things that we look at and we say, man,
Miracles and Transformed Lives
this is a crazy miracle that happened. But as I studied this this week and as I was preparing this, the one thing that stood out to me was this. There was the greatest miracle of transformed lives.
There were lives here of all different nations and all different tribes and different tongues that we see as we look at the beginning. And all of these people came together in verse 44. You ready? All the believers were together and held all things in common. A person maybe was there overcoming addiction.
Maybe there was someone who was hard into their heart to sin that they were doing and all of a sudden, their lives became soft and they began to turn from their addictions and turn from their hardness and they turned to the greatest miracle of all, which was the gospel, bringing together this church
in a miracle
because this was a diverse group of people, a people that we would never have put together in a body of people together. And yet it said that they were united in Christ. They were united.
Man, more days than not, me and my wife aren't united on what we're going to do, right?
If you're a husband in here, you can probably testify that you have your own agenda, she has her own agenda and it's tough for you as a spouse to be united and to want to do and go in life in the same direction. And all of a sudden, we see 3,120 people
all united in all things and going in the same direction.
Church, that's the miracle that we must see here. We must understand that the Holy Spirit worked in a way that molded hearts and mended hearts in a way where I'm sure there were brothers and sisters and moms and dads that had difficulties that all became Christians this
day. And God worked in a way that brought them together and they were so unified, they were so working together that it said that every single day people were added to the church.
Every single day someone was coming to the saving knowledge of Jesus because this group of people held all things in common and they worked together.
They worked in a way that is so supernatural. We look at today and we say, this has to be a fairy tale. This has to be some crazy misconception.
Maybe Luke was wrong when he wrote this. But we understand that he wasn't and he said that they sold their possessions and they worked together and they gave generously because they were wanting to see God's word
penetrating the hearts of people who were in darkness. People who were so far away from him. People who were in a life that was leading them to destruction.
And they wanted them to come to know Jesus. The question that I wrote after I wrote this down was this. And it penetrated my heart just as the disciples,
the people there in verse 37 when they heard this, they were pierced to their heart and they said to the rest of the people, what should we do? This was the question that the Lord laid on my heart. If Luke were writing the book of Acts today about our church,
would this be his description of our church? Would he say
they were together in all things? They sold what they had and they gave so generous that they had more than what they could do. They were devoted to themselves. They met together every time the doors were open. They began to break bread together from house to house. They ate food. They were joyful.
They were sincere of heart and ultimately they praised God and enjoyed the favor of all the people.
And every day they were added to the church daily.
Would this be what Paul would write about Pleasant Grove Baptist Church? Would this be about, I'm sorry, Luke. Would this be what he wrote about our church today? It's a challenge for us this morning. It's heavy.
It was heavy on me this week as I processed this, as I meditated on this over the weekend and I continued to go back to this thought. Would this be what he said about my family?
Would this be what he said about my church? Would this be what he said about the community of believers that he placed me in that we had all things in common? We were joyful.
We were sincere. We were praising God so much that we were enjoying his favor. Is this what the church would look like
if Luke were writing today? As Terry comes, I want to share one other story as I concluded.
A story back in 1977. A man named Thomas Whitaker, a promising young man from Texas. He came from a good family. He was well educated. He had every opportunity to ahead himself in life. But inside his heart, he was filled with anger, selfishness, and rebellion.
Instead of dealing with his sin, he let it fester like a disease, like a sore inside of his life and it led him to make one of the most tragic decisions imaginable. One night, Thomas orchestrated a murder plot against his own family.
Hoping to inherit the wealth of his family and the blessings that they had, he hired two friends to ambush them at dinner. These two friends were instructed to kill his mother, his younger brother, and his father.
They came in and they shot the three individuals and the mother and the younger son died that day. The father miraculously survived.
After his arrest, something remarkable happened. His father, the man he had tried to kill, forgave him.
Even while recovering in his hospital, his father wrote notes to his son pleading him to repent and to turn from these actions and ultimately to turn to Christ. You see, because Thomas' family was a believer,
his mom and dad loved Christ, they came to church often and Thomas every time refused the invitation of his father.
For years, he was on death row, chaplains visited him, they urged him to repent and to accept the grace of God. He admitted that he was guilty and he felt remorse, but he said, I'll never fully surrender to Christ. He said, I'm almost there, but I'm just going to keep delaying my response.
The day came when the execution arrived, his father showed up to the room and his father begged him for his soul.
He asked him one last time, Thomas, will you turn to Christ? And this is what Thomas replied. He shook his head and said, not yet. Moments later, he was gone. You see, the people in Acts 2, they were guilty.
You and me today, we are guilty of what we had done. They had crucified Christ, the Son of God, and they had a choice. They were going to repent and be saved and some did, or they were going to ignore like Thomas and stay lost.
Thomas is the example of so many of us today.
He was cut to the heart. He knew that he was wrong. He knew that he did wrong, but he never fully surrendered. Today, church, almost is never enough. Just like Peter's sermon, salvation was offered,
and yet he delayed and his delay was too late. Four things this morning. How are you going to respond?
Invitation to Reflect and Respond
Are you convicted by the word of God this morning? Do you need to repent?
Are you devoted to God's word and fellowship and prayer and the community that God has placed you in to grow in your faith?
Are we part of this wonderful, miracle-transformed community that is on mission together, that is here to see the word of God proclaimed and the lives changed that are around us? And what is causing you not to respond?
What is causing you to say, I just don't know if today is the day? Because as Thomas said, not yet is the same as no. If we choose to not respond,
if we choose to continue to do what we want to do and not do what God wants us to do, then we'll be just like Thomas and say that not yet is just not yet. I'm here today, church,
to say if we look in our lives and our hearts and we say, what area am I struggling in this morning? Am I struggling in the apostles' teaching and the preaching of the word?
Am I struggling in the fellowship that God has put me in? Am I struggling in the fellowship of the breaking in bread or is it that you're just struggling in your prayer life? And you need to say, God, I need to be more unified. I need to be closer to you.
I don't want to be in the not yet anymore.
You see, we all have a step of faith we can take to grow closer to the Lord every single day of our life. We're never always arrived.
We always have another step to take. What will be your step this morning? Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done.
At this time of invitation, I pray, God, that you would help us to ask ourselves, how are we cut to the heart? I know this week has been tough for me in many different ways,
but ultimately, how are we cut to the heart and how are we going to respond this morning? Help us to respond appropriately. In your name we pray. Amen.
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