Make the Call – February 13, 2022 (The Book of Acts)

Make the Call! The Book of Acts

Pastor Drew Shofner – February 13, 2022

“And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Acts 2:21

TO KNOW:  When we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, love wins, death dies, and life begins to reign. 

TO DO: Make the call, then share the call!

• Everything’s broken, but everything can be redeemed—if we make the call of our lives.

• “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6  When we make the call and Jesus shares His life with us, we share His life with others!

• And all of this is verified, validated, and confirmed in the resurrection of Jesus, earth’s only solution to the problem of death.

In Acts 2:17-21 we find a transformed human being sharing the life of Jesus. Peter, an impulsive “nobody” fisherman becomes a world leader.  How? He shared Jesus’ life (accepted it, received it, said “Yes!” to love)! this passage, God confirms the rightness of the resurrection with the supernatural stamp of His Holy Spirit. 

Peter, the fear-filled, Jesus-denying failure of a follower becomes the first spokesman of God on the stage of Christ-ascended history.  Acts 2:14-41 is a beautiful, culturally relevant summation of the sweeping salvation history of God. 

Peter’s message captured everyone’s attention; “salvation” is a crucial conversation for everyone because everything on earth is broken. Sin infects everyone and everything with death and all death’s cold shadows–the various shades of sorrow and shame, distance and alienation, regret and despair.  And without the light of Christ, at the end of all life’s sorrows and shadows is only eternal darkness.

Peter then, driven by the hope of the resurrection, steps up and to a surprised group of people (Jews and God-fearers) who thought they knew everything they needed to know about the story of God. 

But what they didn’t know, what they’d all missed was Jesus as the necessary  Savior, and their own personal need to depend on His name for salvation!  His resurrection is proof!  Jesus IS the resurrection and the life! (John 11:25)

In the resurrection, love wins, death dies, and life reigns!

 The whole story of salvation is summed up in Acts 2:21:

“And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Love Wins. Death Dies. Life Reigns.

• This is an offer for desperate people, not qualified ones. The way of salvation for the willing!
• Calling on the name of the Lord is the way salvation starts, the way it begins.  It’s the way love begins to win, death begins to die, and life begins to reign!
• But calling on the name of the Lord is also the way salvation continues for life!  It’s prayer, it’s faith, it’s focus.  (We are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved—it’s a process, a faithful journey.)
• There is nothing so dead in life, no situation or circumstance so hopeless that the power of the resurrection can’t invade it and redeem it.
• But this isn’t just about us receiving, it’s about us giving! When we share the life of Jesus, we SHARE the life of Jesus—just like Peter did!