GOD’S WORD FOR JANUARY 1

Our  book this month  is a continuation of “Chiseled by the Master’s Hand ~ Lessons From the Life of Peter,” by Erwin  Lutzer.  Dr. Lutzer is  Canadian-born and served as Senior Pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago for 36 years, until his retirement in 2016.   He now serves as Pastor Emeritus of Moody Church.  He’s written many books and has radio and internet teaching programs.

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STRENGTHENED BY THE MASTER’S GRIP

(Read Acts 2:14-36; 3:11-26; and 4:18-22)

Can human nature be changed?  Or are the behavioral ruts too deep, the basic stuff of the human psyche too calcified?  Are we stuck with our personality type no matter how negative, angry, or earful we might be?

C.S. Lewis says, “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird;  it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.  We are like eggs at present.  You cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.  We must be hatched or go bad.” 

Thankfully, God helps us get hatched!

Peter gives hope to those who think that change is impossible.  Christ had promised him that he would become a rock, a stone in the foundation of the church.  As we have learned, if the change would happen, Christ would be the One who would bring it about.  First, Peter’s heart would be changed by Christ’s power.  Then second, circumstances that the very presence of Christ would be the chisel that would mold Peter into the man Christ wanted him to be.  We’ve already noticed changes in his life, but now the contrast becomes even more remarkable.  With the coming of the Holy Spirit, Peter is indeed a new man.

From the beginning of their friendship, Peter had a single-minded devotion to Christ.  But he was compulsive, vacillating, and at times a coward.

IN THE GOSPELS HE IS THE COCOON; IN THE BOOK OF ACTS HE BECOMES A BUTTERFLY.

Or, to put it differently, the fertilized egg gets hatched.

Acts 2 is best known because it describes how the Holy Spirit came upon believers and they began to speak in tongues, that is, in the languages of those countries that bordered Israel.  This special gift was given to the Jewish people as a sign that the era of the Gentiles had now come to pass.  The good News would no longer be limited to the beautiful Hebrew language but would be spoken in the diverse Gentile languages represented in Jerusalem.  The gift of tongues was always actual languages; these languages could be interpreted by those who knew that particular language.  Or, sometimes, God may have also given the interpreter the ability to understand a foreign language supernaturally.  He was making a powerful statement that the gospel would now go to all the nations of the world.

But more important than this special gift was the inner transformation that God brought about in the apostles by the filling of the Holy Spirit.  The promised gift arrived with the sound of rushing wind, and with it came an empowering that would make this small group of believers band together to shake the world.

Fifty days had elapsed since Christ’s resurrection.  During forty of those days Christ was with His disciples, preparing them for the great work that lay ahead.  Then, at His ascension, He told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit.  After ten days in the Upper room, the miracle happened.  Though all the disciples were changed, as a result of the Spirit’s coming, Peter the spokesman is the clearest example of the transformation.  He scarcely resembles the vacillating man we see in the Gospel accounts.

Tomorrow we’ll consider the contrasts.

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Romans 12:2

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

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John 14:26

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you.

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Matthew 12:32

And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

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Mark 1:8

I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

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Luke 3:22

and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came from heaven: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well pleased.

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2 Corinthians 3:18

But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

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Philippians 3:21

who will transform the body of our lowly condition into conformity with His glorious body, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

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