Acts 2, Scene 2

At the end of the passage we looked at last night, Luke casually drops in that, as a result of Peter's testimony, "about three thousand" were saved. 3000! Any churches fancy hosting a baptism service of that size?


When first looking at the passage, someone pointed out that we in fact should have carried it on a little longer, as we'd missed some of the best verses of the chapter. I thought I'd give it a read, and when I did I found some really quite uplifting and challenging words.


Acts 2 continues suchly:
⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. ⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. ⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.


We're shown here several ways in which those who were baptised kept firm to what they had learnt - they devote them selves to way they're taught about Jesus, they pray regularly, and they spend plenty of time in the company of other believers. Through their steadfastness God enables them to perform miraculous signs, and this allows yet more people to know and come to faith in Jesus. One verse leapt out at me though - verse 44.


"All the believers... had everything in common." Bear in mind this comes directly after Peter's speech - a speech heard by a crowd containing representative of at least ten different countries! These were a very diverse bunch of people - what is this "everything" they have in common? It can only be their new faith in Jesus.

Peter's words of "Repent and be baptised" in v38 aren't words to be taken lightly. These are game-changing words. Repent means to turn 180, completely change the focus of your life away from serving oneself, and onto serving Jesus. Being baptised today means various things to various people, but in Luke's time it's a clear picture of people accepting Jesus' forgiveness.


The challenge for us is firstly is to make sure we treat Jesus as our "everything". The believers in Acts clearly did - their time, their money, and their energy were all motivated by a desire to know Jesus better, and also to make him better known.


This is the second part of our challenge. As we embark on a term where we reach out to people and give them the opportunity to know the Jesus we know, we must make sure they can see that Jesus is our number one. If we can begin to do that then perhaps the second half of verse 47 can be as true for us in Wolves as it was for them in Jerusalem.