Acts: The Missional Church. Part Two.

Greetings everyone! Later on today I will leave for Cameroon, Central Africa. I will be there for 18 days and be back on November 5th. So this will be my last post for a brief period of time.

As we stated in the previous blog post, Jesus commanded His disciples to stay in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit, and He declared they would be His witnesses right where they were and through out the whole world. In Acts 2 God poured the Holy Spirit down on them and they started speaking in any number of different languages. When this was happening, it was the day of Pentecost. So there were possibly thousands of Jews there and they could here the disciples talking in the vary languages they spoke. And they were stunned and amazed!  All of this was in fulfillment of the 8th century prophet Joel (2:28-31). A lot of them were amazed, but some of them made fun of the disciples saying they were drunk.

Simon Peter took this great opportunity to preach the word. He explained why he and the other disciples were speaking like that and it was all a fulfillment of prophecy. And then he told them about Jesus. Probably some of those who were present that day were amongst those who cried out for Jesus to be killed. Peter told them how Jesus was an innocent man and they had Him killed. But it was all for the grand purpose of God to save them all. At the end of this grand sermon, all the people were convicted to the heart.  They explained” what have we done?” and “what are we going to do?”.

And Peter says, “I’m glad you asked!” and tells them how they can be saved. They had to call on Jesus’ name by being baptized. All throughout the book of Acts we see that phrase “calling on the name of the Lord”. How do you call on the name of the Lord? By being baptized. And about 3 thousand of them were baptized. What a remarkable day that must of been!

No dought these new believers were so happy and made great friendships with each other! They were constantly meeting together in each others’ homes and sharing food. They continually learned at the disciples’ feet. And no dought there were many more people who joined them in this new life as well.

Thank you all for reading my thoughts here. As always, your thoughts, questions, etc are always welcome. I’ll write again when I return from Cameroon in November.

God bless you all. Grace and Peace.

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