It just seems like yesterday, but I can remember when the Disney movie, “Mary Poppins” was first released in Scotland. I was seven years old at the time and everybody I knew wanted to see Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke sing and dance and laugh on the big screen. Sadly, I also knew that I wouldn’t get to see it because my Dad was unemployed at the time. In fact, it would be three years later, when my Mom worked as an usherette at a downtown cinema, that I would get to see it for the first time.
The movie was released in Scotland during Easter. To coincide with this, my local Glasgow newspaper had a young actress dress up as Mary Poppins and she went throughout the city subdivisions distributing chocolate Easter eggs. The newspaper even printed where she would be and so on Easter Sunday in 1964, I got up early and quietly left my home to walk about a mile to where Mary Poppins was meant to be. I waited and waited and waited. But Mary Poppins did not come and eventually I went home empty handed and completely dejected. I found out later that Mary Poppins had given away all of her Easter eggs in other subdivisions, so there was no point in coming to where I was. It’s funny, but even today 45 years later when I see parts of the movie on TV, I still remember my disappointment.
The Jewish people had waited for hundreds of years for the Promised Messiah to come into their land and rid them of their enemies. The Christ, the Anointed One, chosen and sent by God, would restore their dignity, their status, and their place at the top of the world as God’s Holy and sacred people. The messiah would solve all of their problems and making them feared and respected by all the nations around them. They waited and waited and waited.
And then their Messiah came, but instead of following Him, they fought with Him. Instead of rejoicing, they rallied against Him. Instead of crowding around Him, they crucified their Messiah. They had missed the moment; they had misunderstood; they had made a major mistake.
When Peter preached to them on the day of Pentecost, he didn’t beat around the bush or mince his words. “This Jesus, whom you crucified, has been made Lord and Christ by God.”
The people in Jerusalem were horrified by what Peter said. They knew that Jesus had been a great teacher, a miracle worker, and a prophet. But now they were being told that the Holy One, whom they had been waiting for across the centuries and generations, had actually been this person Jesus whom they had sent to His death. They had destroyed the One who was meant to deliver them from their enemies. They had falsely accused and executed the Messiah who was meant to embrace and free them.
The terrifying thought that must have crossed their minds was this: if we killed the Holy One who was sent by God, God will be mad at us and will probably destroy our nation. He will give us into the hands of our enemies and everything that we have striven for over the past five hundred years will be gone. (In fact, this actually did happen about 43 years later when the Romans completely Jerusalem and Herod’s Temple). So they asked Peter what they could do to avoid God’s displeasure and wrath. To which Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
That message was not what they wanted to hear. They wanted to be told how many sacrifices at the temple could be made to make them clean. They wanted to be able to repeat many of the psalms in order to be absolved. They wanted to know what religious rituals and temple rites they had to perform to appease God’s wrath and make things better.
Instead, Peter tells them to change their ways and turn their lives around completely. He insists that they ask Jesus, not God or a priest, for forgiveness. And to cap it all, Peter uncompromisingly informs them that they all need to be baptized – in other words to humble themselves and make a public act of contrition, that would identify them with Jesus, in front of the priests who arrested Christ and the Roman authorities who executed Him.
Do you fully understand what Peter is asking them to do? It would be the spiritual equivalent of burning the US flag and giving up our American citizenship in order to say “Sorry” to the rest of the world for our actions. The Jews in Jerusalem believed that they were exempt from this kind of act of repentance and contrition because they made special sacrifices, gave of their tithes, kept religious festivals, read the scriptures, and said their daily prayers. But those traditional rituals were just outward customary practices that showed they were devoted to their religion, but not their Redeemer.
I think that you know where this sermon is headed. We are no different from the people in Jerusalem. Peter is preaching to us just as much as he was preaching to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost. If those Jewish people way back then, who were so meticulous about their old time religion and keeping the faith, had to repent and change their lives completely, are we deluding ourselves today in thinking that we are exempt from repentance just because we come to church, say our prayers, sing our songs, and give our offerings?
When the great Reformer John Calvin, the Father of Presbyterianism, was writing about this passage, he urged his readers to make repentance and to seek Christ’s forgiveness each and every day. If church people were willing to do this, Calvin believed that they would become totally addicted to God and not to religious rites or superstitious beliefs.
Finally, we are told from this passage that Peter continually preached to the people for a long time. Luke writes in verse 40: “With many other words he warned them, and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”
He could have been preaching to our world, our society, and even to our Western church today. We have so corrupted our beliefs, justified our mistakes, and so brazenly exhibited our sins that we are all in need of being saved from our generation. We are so far from Christ’s Truth that we have lost His Way and are in danger of losing His life. We crucify Christ through our careless ways; we nail Him to the Cross with our neglect of faith; we execute Jesus by embracing the world’s ways instead of Christ’s.
If we truly want our sins to be forgiven, we need to truly repent and change our ways. Half measures and half hearted attempts won’t cut it. It’s all or nothing with God. Almost persuaded, almost repentant, almost turned around won’t do it. Good enough is not good enough; that’ll do just won’t do at all.
In the end, three thousand people accepted what Peter had to say and acted upon his message. In one day, the local congregation in Jerusalem went from 120 souls to over 3000 members and became the first mega-church in history. It was a good day’s work for the Lord.
The question we need to ask ourselves today is this: are we ready to add ourselves to that number? Are we willing to accept Peter’s straightforward and uncompromising message? Will we make repentance and seek Christ’s forgiveness on this day, at this hour, in this holy moment?
Prayer.
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