Lechem Panim #124 "The Meaning of Life" (Acts 2:14-47) Pastor Cameron Ury

Hello, and welcome to Lechem Panim. It’s so good to have you with us as we continue to embark on our journey together through the book of Acts.

The Meaning of Life— Today’s topic is on the meaning of life. Now that may seem a little too ambitious of a topic to cover in such a short radio segment. But actually for the Christian, the question of the meaning of life is not all that complicated. In fact, you can sum up the meaning of life in three very simple statements. 1) To know and receive God’s love for you made available through Christ Jesus, 2) to allow that love to enable you to love Him with all of who you are through the Holy Spirit, and 3) to join with God in His work (which on earth is focused primarily on making disciples of all nations). Those three elements constitute the meaning of life. And note that God is foundational to all three of those. He’s not just one of many categories. No, all the things we consider dear to us (friends, family, personal fulfillment, our sexuality, our future) all fit under and are rooted in one or more of those categories: Receiving God’s love for us through Christ, loving Him wholeheartedly in return in the Holy Spirit, and joining His work (which on earth involves making disciples of all nations).

Building On Each Other— But notice how each of these builds upon the other. You cannot have a heart broken for the world until you have a heart like Christ’s. And you cannot have a heart like Christ’s until you love Him with all of who you are. And you cannot love Him with all of who you are without first recognizing and receiving His own love for you. And so knowing God’s love for you; that’s the starting point. And that is where Peter begins here in his first sermon here in Acts chapter 2; he begins with the death of Jesus at the hands of the very people that he’s preaching to. Christ died for them and (even though they killed Him) Peter promises a path of forgiveness which must have sounded unthinkable; that God would ever forgive us for killing His Son. But Peter promises that not only will God forgive, but will also pour out His Spirit on those who receive Christ. It says in…

Acts 2:38-39 (ESV)— 38 And Peter said to them, “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. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 

Is Our Love Enfleshed?— And so the first step of salvation is receiving the love and forgiveness of God made available to us in Christ Jesus. That is the starting point of salvation. Because once we receive His love for us and the Holy Spirit enters into our lives, then the Holy Spirit can enable us to love God with all of who we are. And if we then love God with all of who we are, then out of that relationship with God will also come a love for others that will drive us to share the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them, so that they too might experience the love of God and the transformation He can bring to their lives. But if there is no evangelistic drive in our hearts, then there is something wrong in one of those three areas, even if you might feel that deep down you really do care about the lost. Because a true love for God will always work itself out in loving and ministering to others. There cannot be an inward work without producing external fruit. That is why when Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, He met with such resistance from Peter. Was Peter too humble to have Jesus wash his feet? Is that why he said, “Lord, you will never wash my feet.”? Maybe. But what is more likely is that Peter recognized the power and the implications of what was happening to him. And Jesus points this out. He says…

John 13:14-15 (ESV)— 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.

Does Love Move Us Into Mission?— And so we see that our service, our love, and our mission of evangelism is the outflow of what Christ first did for us. It says in…

1 John 4:19 (ESV)— 19 We love because he first loved us. 

Compassion Enfleshed— We are called to make disciples of all nations because Christ first loved us enough to make us disciples of Him. We are to be shepherds of other peoples’ souls because He first shepherd our souls. So the question is “have we (in our own lives) experienced God’s transforming love in such a way so as to move us into joining with Him in making disciples of all nations? Are we moved? Is our love and compassion an active love and compassion?” Just as Jesus had to become enfleshed in order to become God’s instrument of love in our lives, so also our love and compassion need to become enfleshed by what we actually say and do. Because it is in-so-far as our love is enfleshed and lived out that it really becomes real.

Screwtape’s Concentric Circles—  Now Satan doesn’t want our love to become real; He wants to keep it in the realm of our feelings; in our minds. C.S. Lewis stresses this so strongly in his book The Screwtape Letters. In it he describes a Christian as being a set of three circles; each inside the other. The innermost circle is our will (our actions), the next circle out being the intellect/mind, and then the outer circle as our imagination (or fantasy). Now what Satan’s strategy is is not to eliminate our love and compassion, but merely to paralyze them. Lewis says that while there is always going to be kindness in a Christian’s soul no matter what he does, he says that what Satan does is he tries to get us to move that kindness from our immediate neighbors whom we meet every day and to push our kindness out to groups of people in general (in a non-personal sense), and then eventually into the realm of fantasy. And Lewis is right on point here; and he masterfully points out that it is only in so far as the virtues in our life reach the will and are there embodied in habits that they actually become a threat to Satan.

Loving Mankind But Not Liking Men— You know, someone once pointed out how [a philanthropist {(a person who seeks the welfare of others)} may give money and/or time to help humanity but then treat individual men and women like dirt, loving mankind but not liking {individual} men {or women}. Charles Dickens paints a picture of such a person in Mrs. Jellyby, one of his memorable characters in Bleak House. Mrs. Jellyby is working on starting a philanthropic project at "Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger {River}.” And this engages her attention to the extent that, in her first scene in the book, one of her children gets his head caught in a railing and another tumbles down the stairs — yet she never notices. Dickens says her eyes seem "to look a long way off. As if . . . they could see nothing nearer than Africa!" {Now there’s nothing wrong with missions to Africa. That’s not his point. His point was that} She loves the idea of serving mankind corporately, but she fails to serve even her own children individually.]

Fantasy Love— Now I say all of this because many Christians (myself included); we love the idea of ministry and missions generally or corporately, but not individually; with our hands and our feet (which is what we see here in this early fellowship (koinonia) of the early Church. For many Christians today, it’s all in the mind. But it needs to get to the hands and the feet. But it can’t do that without first going through the heart. Until your heart is united with Christ, it will never be broken for the lost as His heart was broken for you. It is having the heart of Christ that moves us to reach a dying world.

God Loved Us With His Will— God doesn’t love you corporately or in a general sense. No, He loved (and still loves you) individually. Seeing you redeemed was more than a nice idea in His head. No, His love became enfleshed. He entered into our sickness; into our death; He washed our feet; He touched our wounds; and He even allowed Himself to be executed on our behalf in order to pay for our sins. God’s love for us was enfleshed in the provision of Jesus for our sins!

Isaiah 53:5 (ESV)— 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

Are We Desperate— And so the question is, what about our love. Is our love enfleshed in the lives of those around us? If it is Godly love, then it has to be. Are we desperate enough to see those around us find Christ? Are we willing enough to change our environment; to change our profession; to leave our worldly dreams behind in order to become instruments of salvation in another person’s life?

John 1:14 (ESV)— 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Not Ritual, But Heart Change— It is so interesting how often, when I am talking with a person about their faith, when I ask about their relationship with Christ, how they will tell me how often they go to Church; or how they grew up in the Church; or when or where they were baptized. And you know, that bothers me because that is Pharisee talk; that is “Hey, I’ve got the temple; I’ve done the rituals; I am impervious to the judgment of God.”

When It Becomes Real— Let me tell you, while all those things are important, they will not do you one whit of good if you have not allowed God to touch you in the realm of your heart. It is when He touches your heart that everything becomes real; when you come to realize His love for you. Because then that love moves you to love Him with all of who you are (with a united; whole; complete heart); and then finally that love for Him moves you to seek to join with Him in His work. It all starts with the heart. The question is, has the Gospel truly reached our hearts? Because when it does, living out the Great Commission becomes as natural as breathing; because we will not be able to contain the love we have found in Christ Jesus. The question is "Are we there yet? What circle does our love fall into? Has your inner circle been touched by the Holy Spirit? 

Change Me— I want to encourage you today, if you have not yet experienced the kind of transformation we’ve been talking about, ask for the Holy Spirit to apply (or to apply anew) the death and resurrection of Christ to your life. Tell the Holy Spirit that you (now, in this moment) want to give full control of your life to Him. Ask Him to make you altogether new. If you receive that work of grace in your life today, every corner of your life will be forever changed and there will be no telling the lives that will be touched for the Kingdom of God. Please do so. Amen.