Day Fourteen

If you have 5 minutes!

Read Acts 3:17-23

17 “Now, brothers and sisters, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. 18 But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. 19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, 20 and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. 21 Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. 22 For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you. 23 Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from their people.’

Peter acknowledges the crowd’s ignorance and uses this to introduce his argument that, far from being a failure, Jesus’ death actually fulfilled God’s plan! However, their ignorance doesn’t mean they don’t need forgiveness rather Peter follows this up with an urgent plea that they repent.

Here, as in a number of other places, the Bible assumes a significant parodox; that on the one hand people are free and their actions and choices have consequences, which are often bad and need forgiving. However, on the other hand, God is somehow ultimately still in charge and manages to weave his will through these free and fallen decisions such that his purposes are outworked!

• How do you feel about this paradox? Is it something you take comfort from or something that frustrates and confuses you?
• Although the Bible seems to hold the two sides in equal tension – and practically it’s important that we try to follow suit – in reality this can be hard to do and so we tend to migrate to one side more than the other. What is your bias in this regard? i.e. Are you more likely to become overly fatalistic and feel like everything that happens is completely down to God (which can lead us to be very mistrustful of God as lots of bad things happen in life as well as good). Or are your more likely to become overly burdened, feeling like it’s all down to you and one small mistake will scupper everything? Or – like me – do you sometimes flit between the two?!
• If you find this all a bit headwrecking (and/or interesting!) and want to read more about it, I recommend a talk my Dad wrote entitled, “Free and Chosen?” 

If you have a bit longer :-)

Read Acts 17:29-34

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” 32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Within his speech in Acts 3, Peter tries to persuade the crowds to turn to Jesus, giving them four incentives:

1. So that your sins may be wiped out (like a whiteboard being wiped clean)
2. So that times of refreshing may come from the Lord (the postive counterpart to forgiveness)
3. So God may send Christ, the appointed one, when it is time for God to restore everything
4. Because if you don’t you’ll be cut off from the people (the negative consequence of not turning to Christ)

• In terms of evangelism today, do you think Christians are similarly confident in sharing all four aspects? If not, are there one or two we tend to highlight more than the others and why do you think this is?

Now, as I mentioned in Day Eight, we do have to remember that Peter is speaking to a crowd who were familiar with all of these concepts – albeit they wouldn’t previously have connected Jesus with it all.

• Therefore, looking at Paul’s speech in Athens in Acts 17 (where the listeners weren’t Jewish), what similarities and differences are there when compared with Peter’s? (Obviously, within all of this we have to remember that both speeches are actually Luke’s summaries, in reality the speeches would have probably been much longer. However, I think it is fairly likely that Luke has not only picked out the main points within these particular speeches but that also what he includes are, in fact, hallmarks of their speeches in general).