23rd March 2025

New Testament Heroes 10 – 23/03/25 – Martin Mowat

Readings: Psalm 2, Acts 4:1-12

Two powerful readings, both proclaiming the authority of Jesus, the Kings of kings.

Last week we saw Peter and John in the temple, one ordinary weekday afternoon, healing a man who had been lame from birth, and transforming his life completely. My friends, we are in the life transformation business. Isn’t that exciting?  

The temple was full of people and when the miracle happened it just erupted, and our hero Peter was quick to make the most of the situation.

“Men of Israel, why does this surprise you?” he asked, or shouted even.

And then, before he had finished saying what he wanted to say, as we’ve just heard, the muscle arrived on the scene – NOT HAPPY, not one bit.  You see the authorities had been pretty confident that when they put Jesus to death, in the most public, cruel and demeaning way available to them, that would have been the end of it.  Crucifiction was designed to be a deterrent, supposed to stop crime and crush dissidence. But this time, though, amazingly, incredibly, it hadn’t worked, which explains why they were NOT HAPPY, not happy at all.

So they grabbed the two ringleaders and put then in prison for the night while they could have a meeting and decide what to do next.

The following morning, they took them out and put them in front of a powerful panel of big wigs.  Not only were there the usual rulers, elders, and teachers of the law, but there were also no less than TWO high priests, Annas and Caiaphas, as well as two men called John and Alexander, and other members of the high priest’s family. This was the Jewish top brass, possibly as many as 20 of them. They weren’t messing about.

But staggeringly, after quizzing Peter and John, Luke tells us that “when they saw their courage and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.  But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say.”

Do you see what the Holy Spirit can do? 

OK.  That describes the drama of it all, and it WAS dramatic. It was also unprecedented.  But what we have on our hands now, from the Bible teaching point of view, is two more of Peter’s sermons, well, more like speeches really. The first one was the unfinished one to the people in the temple, who had witnessed the miracle, the second was to the dignitaries who hadn’t seen it, but they had doubtless been told about it in graphic detail. 

We didn’t have time to read what Peter said to the people, I wish we had, but the very first thing he said was a disclaimer.  “This wasn’t me, this was God, YOUR God.”

The second thing he said was designed to hit them hard with what they did to Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he decided to let him go.  You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you.  You killed the author of life, …

That was the bad news, but then there was the good news. “… but God raised him from the dead”. 

Then he lets them off the hook, well sort of “Now, fellow Israelites, he said, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders.  But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. 

And then their doctor’s prescription “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.”

“Turn to God”, he said.  These were Jews, remember, who thought they knew God, they thought that they were doing all the right things, praying in the Temple in the afternoon, giving money to the poor and the lame, they had a whole list, not to mention the 10 commandments.

But none of that impressed Peter one bit. “Turn to God”, he said. “Don’t rely on ritual, good deeds, your priest or your church leader, … “you, repent and turn to God”. 

“Indeed” he said, “beginning with Samuel, all the prophets who have spoken have foretold these days. And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers.“

“Wake up!” he was saying, “Smell the coffee! Understand what’s going on here! You have a HUGE problem, and your ONLY solution is Jesus, God’s long promised Messiah.” 

Then the next morning, when Peter and John found themselves almost on trial, Luke first makes it clear that Peter and John were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Straight away, their examiners fell into the trap of asking them “By what power or what name did you do this?” 

And for Peter that was the perfect question.  “Rulers and elders of the people! He replied, doubtless looking them straight in the eyes. If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed,  then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. And then, quoting from a psalm that these priests would have known by heart, Psalm 2, the one Alan just read to us, he said “Jesus is the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.“

And then, so that there wasn’t any doubt at all, he said “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given to mankind, by which we must be saved.”

Peter wasn’t beating about the bush, and I don’t want to beat about the bush, either.

Each of us here this morning was born with what we call “human nature”, which a dictionary will define as something like “the general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioural traits of humankind, regarded as shared by all humans.” 

So whether I am Donald Trump, King Charles III, Emanuel Macron, the Pope, or just plain old Martin Mowat, I was born with a “human nature”, and that’s not good. I want to determine my own agenda, my own programme, I want others to fall in with those plans, I’m basicly selfish, I break the rules when it suits me to and when I think that I can get away with it, and so on, and so on. In other words, I’m on a path of personal spiritual destruction.

“Turn to God”, said Peter. Turn to Jesus the stone the builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.  Why? Because Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

You see, the bottom line is that “human nature” is what the Bible calls a “sinful nature”. 

Being sinful isn’t necessarily killing somebody or stealing things, or breaking any other of the 10 commandments, it’s just being “human”. It’s our default status.  It’s how we are, whether we like it or not. 

Is there anything we can do to change that sorry state of affairs?

Yes! Happily, there is. We need to become what Paul described to the Christians in Corinth as “new creations”, new creations with “new natures” to replace our “human natures”. 

So, I say it again, whether you are Donald Trump, King Charles III, Emanuel Macron, the Pope, or just plain old Martin Mowat, and I’m just taking names from a hat because they’re on everyone’s lips at the moment, (apart from my name hopefully,) you need a “new nature”. 

Paul said to the Ephesians “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ."

But we can’t do this for ourselves. only Jesus can. So there’s a journey. A journey from ‘human’ to ‘new’. You have to go there, to go to the cross, to go to Jesus, to submit to his Lordship and let him change you from someone with a human nature to someone with a new nature.

If you’ve already done that, great. Well done!  If you haven’t, can I encourage you to? And if you want someone to hold your hand while you do it, there are people here who would be happy to do that for you.

But don’t put it off.  Jesus is waiting for you. Just do it, as the saying goes.