LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1992, Page 79

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LIFELIGHT® BIBLE STUDY—DEVOTIONAL THOUGHTS |

Bible Study 1
A Sight to Make Hell Tremble
(Acts 2:42-47)
Everybody celebrates Christmas—rich man, poor min,

beggar man, thief; we all observe the day—doctor, lawyer, ‘

merchant, chief. Not a home, not a heart fails to feel the
radiance of Christmas or brighten to the joy and merriment
of that great holiday. Easter is not quite so big. stil! it
calls for a parade, a new outfit, and an annual pilgrimage
to church. But when it comes to Pentecost, most People,

often even church people, are left unimpressed and un-
aware and largely unaffected. Has it ever occurred to you
how opposite that is to the way in which those days were
first observed? The first Christmas found a handful | of
shepherds who had been keeping watch over their flocks
by night, taking maybe 30 to 45 minutes to kneel at the
foot of the manger, and then it was right back to work
again, albeit sharing with everyone they met “the saying
which was told them concerning the child.” As a matter of
fact for the first 400 years of its existence the infant church
of Christ didn’t even celebrate Christmas except in pass-
ing. The first Easter caused a little wider stir. There were
holy women hurrying to the grave at dawn. We hear of the
disciples engaged in animated conversation behind closed
doors in an upper room somewhere in or around Jerusalem
and for years afterward Easter was remembered. Yet,|of
the three festivals, in the beginning, the most spectacular,

the one that caught the public eye and caused the greatest
stir, was neither Christmas nor Easter. It was Pentecost.

The holy city, thronged with visitors, was set to turmoil
by a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire, and three
thousand souls at once became the church of Jesus Christ.

, Christmas is one day and stretch it as we may,.the best ,

we can come up with is “the 12 days of Christmas.” Easter
and its season, at least for liturgical purists, claims 40 days
out of the year. But Pentecost is an age, an era, is still
going on today. Granted we’ve streamlined it some. Those
first 3,000 spent their time we're told with the apostles’

teaching (Bible class), fellowship (church), breaking lof
bread (Holy Communion), and prayer. We pretty well
squeeze all that into the time between 8:00 a.m. and noon
on Sunday, leaving the rest of the week free for TV, bage-

ball, work, and the Lutheran Bowling League. But we’ re
at it, just the same. It’s still happening, Pentecost is. And
that’s our point. What was really going on in Acts 2: 42-
47 was the beginning of something still going strong today,
the holy Christian church.

In C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, one of the devil’s
agents frets because his intended victim has joined the
church. But Satan comforts him: “There is no cause ‘0
worry,” he says, “so long'as he doesn’t see the church as
we see it, spread out through time and rooted in eternity,
terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, isa sight
to make hell tremble.” There’s not much chance you and
I will see the church like that. Most of us think of the
church as a gathering of human ailments whose weak-
nesses we are quick to detail to anyone who is willing to

79

listen, a fifth-rate power for which keeping its head above
water is equated with success and for whom survival is
synonymous with churchmanship. We forget so often what
we are—and whose. Maybe if we took the church as seri-
ously as Satan does we too would see it for what it is, “a
sight to make hell tremble.” _

The church, which the Spirit of God brought into ex-
istence as recorded in Acts 2, is God’s gift to us for our
warfare. The enemy is Satan.and the forces of evil. Really.
All around us—on our streets and in our nation, at home,
at work, at play. Dibelius describes Jesus’ arrival on earth
as an advance into enemy-held territory. Some of you will
rerriember that famous photograph from the days of World
War II of a slain marine’s hand, thrust in death upon the
sands of a Pacific island beach. That was the price we paid
to advance into enemy territory. The hands of Christ nailed
to the brace beam of the cross are the Price God paid to
advance into enemy territory. The price was paid. Now the
church, the holy Christian church, The Lutheran Church—
Missouri Synod, and your congregation, occupies enemy
territory. Satan walks about this world which once was
his and here and there he sees a church, living, moving,
having its being, sometimes even thriving, and Satan
knows the world’s no longer his. It’s Christ’s. The church
is proof of that. God has set us up to be a fellowship of
God’s people right in Satan’s own backyard, a constant
reminder that Jesus lives and reigns. The church is Jesus’
army occupying enemy territory. That’s first.

i And this is next. Hell, someone has said, is being alone.
Iti is part of the devil’s strategy to keep people apart. He
works that strategy well. In this world your heart may
break, or even stop, and the faceless people in the apart-
ment next door do not even know, much less care. One
person alone is no match for armies, especially the armies
of Satan. Even great masses of separated people cannot
stand against his armies. But suppose you could break
down the walls between people, overcome their separation.
Suppose you joined all those separated people into a com-
munion, like an army. Call them a church. Put Jesus in
command. Why, hell would tremble. “Where two or three
are gathered together in My name, there am I,” says Jesus,

“going on before.” To face the devil alone is déspair. But

we: don’t face him alone. We face him together. Like an
army, the church doth stand.

Like an army, not like a country club or service orga-
nization. Like an army, with its face set against a common
enemy. It is said that the whole is no stronger than its
weakest part. But here someone watches the church
gather, let us say, to worship, watches its members enter
one by one, weak men and women, sinful all of them, spine-
less some of them, disagreeable many of them, and he lis-
tens to them sing together “Lift High the Cross.” Suddenly
it dawns on him that the church defies the laws of physics.
The church is greater, stronger, more vital than its indi-
vidual members because it is a communion, a fellowship,
an army with the cross of Jesus going on before.

! Now the third thing. The old evil foe loves to make folks
keep their eyes on the clock and their feet on the ground.