Acts 3:19-26
Last week we started the first half of Peter’s second sermon where he introduced Jesus as the servant of the Most High God of the Jewish scriptures. This was right after Jesus through Peter healed a lame man at the entrance to the temple and during one of the trice daily periods of time when the more devote Jews gathered for prayer.
In this second half of his sermon, Peter returns to his hard line that everyone most repent and convert to Christianity (although it would not be known by that name for some time yet) if they want to avoid the judgment to come. Since Peter is addressing an audience of Jewish believers he uses the common ground of the Old Testament Scriptures to connect Jesus to prophecy and show that he is the one that has been promised by their own Holy Books to come and bring them salvation. For them belief in God was a given, they just had to learn that Jesus was God.
Today the lost that we, at least in my personal experience, deal with on a daily biases have a much different view on the church. One shining example is a site called “The Skeptics Annotated Bible” which is a site dedicated to pointing out all the author’s problems with the Bible. The author of the site claims that few of those that actually read the Bible believe it. I cannot begin to count the number of Bible studies and their students across the globe that would stand in direct contrast to that claim, but still it is a fair claim that many Christians have never read the Bible. Personally I stand in stark contrast as I read the Bible through twice before becoming a believer, which the author of The Skeptics Annotated Bible claims is the opposite of what will happen if people read the Bible for themselves.
The Skeptics Annotated Bible attempts to build a case to make the scripture look as bad as he can make it. I have only skimmed parts of the work, but the vast majority of the comments I have seen so far are merely things the sites author just does not like. For example if God does something supernatural he labels it “absurd” or says it violates science. If the people of God go to war, and win it is considered cruel. If God grants mercy with regard to the Law, it is considered a contradiction. These kinds of things seem, at least after my first pass, to make up the majority of the so-called “problems”. As a side note, plenty of people have refuted the claims he makes, such as http://www.berenddeboer.net/sab/ which contains the complete text of “The Skeptics Annotated Bible” with much of it refuted right by its side. It is a good place to see how shallow and flimsy most of the arguments against the Bible are.
Another place where we can see what is the modern day lost person’s view of Christianity is in a book I just read called “On Writing” by Stephen King. It is a book dedicated to teaching a young writer about the craft of being a novelist. It does a very fine job at that, and if you can look past the use of vulgar language, I would recommend it for that purpose. It does contain quite a bit of autobiographical material, including some discussion on where he got his inspiration. One such part that is of interest to us is where he got the inspiration for his first major novel, Carrie. There was girl named Sondra that he went to school with who was an outcast, down trodden, and fairly miserable. Well this girl’s mother hired Stephen King to move some furniture, and while there Stephen saw a statue:
“Dominating the trailers living room was a nearly life sized crucified Jesus, eyes turned up, mouth turned down, blood dribbling down from the crown of thorns on his head. He was naked except for a rag twisted around his loins. Above this beechnut were the hollowed belly and jutting ribs of a concentration-camp inmate. It occurred to me that Sondra grew up under that agonizing gaze of this dying god and doing so had undoubtly played a part in what she was when I knew her, a timid and homely out cast that went scurrying through the halls of Libson high like a frightened mouse.
“That’s Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior,” Sondra’s mother said following my gaze, “Have you been saved Steve?”
I hastened to tell her that I was as saved as saved could be, although I did not think you could ever be good enough to have that version of Jesus intervene on your behalf. The pain had driven him out of his mind. You could see it on his face. If that guy came back he probably would not be in a saving mood. (Steven King, On Writing)
As you can see, he is not struck with the message of love, hope and salvation. He in fact sees the image of Christ as a reason that Sondra was so bad off in school, and so miserable. There are a few other places where inspiration for Carrie came from according to Stephen King, but interestingly enough this is the only one he goes in to great detail with.
In my general experience, and I suspect this is true for most of us, the normal response to Christianity is nothing like the extremes above, and instead it is seen as a weakness or old fashioned. We do not need religion any more because we are all grown up and understand how nature works, and where everything came from. We do not need an invisible friend to save us since we have doctors, hospitals and militaries to do that. This is a far cry from the crowd that Peter was preaching to, but the pattern of his out reach still applies.
His message starts with making Jesus real in the way his listeners would understand, and then he moves in to convicting them of their own sin. It has been said many times you can not be found until you know your lost, and that appears to be something Peter believed based on his preaching. From there he moves in to a salvation message and invites the lost to receive this salvation.
This is still a good model for us today. When we speak to someone that is not a Christian, and we feel that the time is appropriate to share (you must follow the prompting of the Spirit in this), you must first show them that they are lost first. The message of freedom from sin does not make sense unless they first understand sin and accept that they are a slave of sin. Once they understand this, then and only then can you move into the path to freedom from sin.
In the example I gave from Stephen King, we have the unusual privilege to see what he thought about the situation, and we can see that it would have been a great time to reach him. He already knew in his own mind that he could “never be good enough” to have “that version of Jesus” save you. He shows that he not only understands sin and that sin deserves punishment, but he also understands that nothing he can do would be good enough. Christians have a perfect and complete solution to that problem, and Christians are the only ones that do.
When we share the good news that Jesus came to save the world from eternal judgment we would do well to take the model presented by Peter. First explain Jesus in terms our hearers understand, then move them to an understanding of sin and offer them the free gift of salvation. Please keep in mind this needs to be backed up with an authentic life lived for Jesus, or else the lost will never accept that we believe what we claim to, and if we do not believe it, why should they?
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