What Happened Next #3 “Its Still Happening” Acts 2:37-47

TRINITY SUNDAY: We believe in One God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

• 38Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39"For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.
  

One of the works of the Holy Spirit it to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ – and to enlivien the faith of those who already believe. When the first disciples “wake up” at Pentecost the people are drawn in. Peter gets the chance to explain about...... about Jesus. What he has done. Who he is. How they have treated him. And then...

People Respond: “What must we do?”

1. Something to Start: Repent & Be Baptised & Receive HS- like this?
   1. Turn around: blindfold and instructions
   2. Join the group: go through the hoop (baggage?)
   3. Open wide: blindfold off, accept the prize
   4. Could you do that for someone else? Try!
      
      
      
2. Something to Keep Going. First steps must be followed by another, and another....v42 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
   
   
   1. Teaching HS – where are people coming to seek God? - Cell/Small Groups, Alpha
      
   2. Fellowship HS – Baptised into “one body” - how do people feel they belong?
      
   3. Breaking Bread HS – Are we Re-membering Jesus – fitting Jigsaw pieces. “Butterfly”
      
   4. Prayer HS – Talk & Listen to God through HS are we dong this together?
      

The story is one that must be passed on – to those who are “far off”.

The Trinity is not a starting place. The starting place is the experience of the disciples. They all knew that God is ONE. “I am the Lord your God and there are no God's before me”. Yet their experience of the living, dying, risen Jesus led them to a shocking confession from “You are the Christ – the Son of the Living God” and onwards to “My Lord – and My God!” for they had heard Jesus “the Father and I are one” and “if you have seen me you have seen the Father” and seen Jesus open the eyes of the blind, forgive sins, raise Lazarus from the dead with divine power. Now they had experiences the power of the Holy Spirit for themselves, just as Jesus had promised. The Spirit “from the Father” which the church recognised as the very presence of God. The only way to honour these realities is to insist that God is ONE still. But that in the One-ness there is a community: Father, Son, Spirit. A community of love into which we are invited for “he is with you and will be in you”.