I. Improving Reality 00:01

…Lord Jesus, we pray that you’d be with us this morning, that just as you called Matthew the tax collector out of his sin into your saving grace, you would call us, call our hearts this morning, transform us, into the places that you’ve called us to go. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

So there was a fascinating announcement this week. Maybe you missed it, because you’re not as much of a nerd as I am, but Apple came out with their virtual reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro. Augmented reality. It’s just an amazing sci-fi technology. You put this thing on, and the world comes to life with images and icons and desktop windows, and it adds so much to our life, and everyone should go buy it for thirty-five hundred dollars. Just get out there. It’s important. You’ve got to do it.

I will tell you, we Christians could learn a thing or two about preaching the gospel from places like Apple, because after watching their keynote address, I was ready to come to the altar and be saved by Apple’s technology. I’m telling you, we could do better. I think they have some things about how to tell winning stories. And the idea of the Apple Vision Pro is that they are improving reality. They are taking this mundane existence and lifting it to a new plane of pleasure and productivity.

And I was just thinking about it, because immediately after that, of course, you get the slew of videos talking about, “Oh no, the end is nigh! The world is coming to an end, because everybody’s going to be plugged into these machines, and it’s going to melt our brains, and nobody’s going to be real anymore.” In both of those things, Apple’s vision of the utopian future, where we’re all just plugged in and we have this beautiful reality, and then the dystopian idea that everyone’s going to just stop being real and interacting with the world, and we’re all going to be vegetables plugged into these machines, I think both of them are actually wrong. I don’t think either of those is going to happen. And I think Christianity has a much better answer to this age-old problem than any other worldview that exists.

II. The Pleasure Machine 02:30

In fact, there’s this problem that was posed by a philosopher in 1974, called the pleasure machine problem. The idea was that if you could plug somebody into a machine where they got undiluted pleasure for eternity, would people elect to plug in, or would people, for whatever reason, decide to opt out? Now, at the time, they decided that there was something about reality that was so important that people would opt out. In this day and age I think that was a rather dubious claim, because already, without the Apple Vision Pro, we see an entire swath of our culture who see nearly everything through the glowing rectangle in their pocket, or the TV screen, or the monitor, whatever it might be. And the idea that people are just going to opt out of this pleasure box because they are committed to reality is naive, unless there’s a better story.

Because what we have tried to do as a culture, and what a lot of our philosophies and our TV shows and movies try to do, is they’ve kind of embraced this idea that God doesn’t exist and you are the maker, the arbiter, of meaning. So you see many movies where the big crisis is like, “Well, nothing means anything anymore, and so I’m going to go my own way and just be this beautiful, wonderful butterfly.” And something about those movies gets to you, and you’re like, “What’s the point? You get to express yourself, fine, but what’s the point?” And if that’s all our culture is selling, either you can be in this pleasure machine, or you can make your own way and put your toes in the dirt, “real stuff matters,” that’s just not good enough.

In fact, I think the only story that’s better than the pleasure machine is the story that the Christian Church tells: the story of our God, who sent his Son to die on the cross, that even in the midst of our suffering we might have hope of resurrection. And so, as we talk this morning, we’re going to continue in our Acts of the Apostles series.

III. Life Is Pain 05:05

And the point that I want you to hang on to is that they’re trying to sell pleasure as an escape from reality, because reality is suffering. It was said very well in one of the most monumental philosophical works of the 20th century: “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.” Sorry, that’s The Princess Bride. So maybe not a monumental philosophical work, but very quotable, and very true. Life is pain. The framework for our story, the Christian story, is that yes, life is pain, and even death, but there is resurrection. So we are not shying away from the reality of people’s pain, of people’s suffering, of the difficulty. We’re inviting people to take up that cross of our suffering and follow our Savior, who has made a way through death to life.

And so when we go back to the Acts of the Apostles, we have this fantastic event that happens on Pentecost. God sends his Holy Spirit to live in us. And last week we talked a little bit about that. He quotes Joel, where it says the Father shall pour out his Spirit on all flesh (Joel 2.28): your sons, your daughters, your slaves, your free, everyone, old men, young. There is no limitation to who has access to the Holy Spirit, God Almighty. And because we have that access, now Peter’s going to tell them why it matters that they accept this gift. What must they do?

And so we stopped in the middle of his sermon. He has quite a few things, but we’re actually going to take it up from there. We had this great shaking of the house, the tongues of fire; we’ve got all this stuff going on. And then Peter gets up to explain to the people who have gathered around to see what’s going on. He’s going to explain to them why what’s happening here is actually for them. So he stands up to address the crowd, and first he has to tell them, “No, we’re not drunk. This is actually something better than the meaningless pleasure of inebriation. This is something real.”

And so then he talks, in Acts 2, and like I said, we’re halfway through his sermon. He just reminded them of the prophecy of Joel. He said, “This is happening right now.” Now he’s going to give them proofs of why he knows this is happening right now. Because everybody’s sitting there going, “Wait, aren’t you the guys who followed that Messiah who just got crucified by the Romans? Why do you have the gumption, the gall, the boldness, to stand up and say that God is with you and has poured out his Spirit on you? Your savior died.” That’s what everybody’s thinking who comes to this house.

IV. The Least Welcoming Sermon 07:38

So Peter tells them, “All are welcome here. Just do what you want, and God loves you. Seeker friendly. Come be a part of us. Pleasure.” No. In fact, he preaches probably the least welcoming sermon in the entire Bible. What does he say? Acts chapter 2, verse 22:

22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. Acts 2.22–24

So he calls them all murderers. Not only murderers, but murderers of God, murderers of the Savior of the world. “Come be a part of our church.” Now, he’s framing what has happened for them, because everybody knows that it was a sham. In the culture, they knew that this Jesus was sent to be crucified, but they had nothing on him. You read those stories: Pilate goes, “I find nothing to condemn this man.” What do you mean? Herod finds nothing to condemn this man. And they got him killed anyway. And the religious leaders are strutting around going, “See what happens when you contradict us? Even if you’re innocent, we’ll take you out.” But Peter’s using that to his advantage, and he’s saying, “You Israelites crucified him by lawless men. There was no law that could have crucified our Christ.”

And then he says this crazy thing: “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” That is the claim that Peter now has to prove to these people. Because yes, a dead Messiah is not worth anything to them. A risen Messiah changes the world.

V. You Will Not Abandon My Soul to Hades 10:02

And so Peter goes back to their own Scriptures. First of all, he said, “Look, God already demonstrated that this was the Messiah, by him healing the blind, making the lame to walk, raising the dead. You didn’t accept it, and you crucified him, even though God had attested to his truth, that he is the Messiah. But God raised him from the dead, and so now you have to reckon with the reality of Jesus.” And so he goes back to the Old Testament, which is the only Testament they knew of at the time, the Scriptures, God’s word to the Israelites, and he says:

25 For David says concerning him, “‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; 26 therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. 27 For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. 28 You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ Acts 2.25–28

Interesting. He could have picked a lot of passages. What is he doing by picking this one? Well, first of all, in this passage is the hope of Christianity: “My heart was glad, my tongue rejoiced, my flesh also will dwell in hope.” What is this all about? That verse is right before he says, “For you will not abandon…” Why is my heart resting in hope? Because you won’t even abandon me in death to Hades.

Now, Hades isn’t really hell. We have this idea: you die and you’re judged; you either go to heaven or you go to hell. Before that, before Jesus came, before the new covenant, the way it worked was, when you died you went to Hades, which we’re going to call the waiting place. I’m not going to try to explain how it works. I’m just telling you what it says, because I believe the Bible. I don’t know how it works, but I do know that what David’s talking about is, when he dies, he knows he’s going to go to a waiting place. And even back then they believed that there was some sort of resurrection at the end. There was some promise of afterlife, but they didn’t really flesh it out.

And so what David’s saying is, “I believe that even after I die, you will save me. You’ll keep your promises to me.” That’s a radical belief. I don’t know about you, but that takes a faith that goes beyond anything being sold by Apple. That Vision Pro headset doesn’t last beyond death. God willing, it never does. No, I am confident that there is nothing anyone can do to impact the future of your existence beyond death except for the God of the universe. And so he has this radical faith, and therefore he can be glad, and his tongue can rejoice, even facing the worst of the worst in this world, even facing death.

And then what happens in David’s life? This is so fascinating to me. He dies, like everyone, and he’s sitting in Hades at the moment that Jesus sets everyone free. Once again, a very complicated idea, but it’s in Scripture; I believe it. Jesus, when he dies, goes to that waiting place, preaches the gospel, and anybody who accepts Jesus gets to go to heaven with him. And so David wrote this psalm about a thousand years before Christ, and then a thousand years later he’s sitting in the waiting place, and he’s thinking, “Man, was I wrong? A thousand years is a long time.” I have no idea what his experience was. But in that moment Jesus breaks down the gates of hell, or the gates of Hades, and he says, “I am here.” And David goes, “I knew it! I told you he was coming!”

So it’s this fascinating thing that Peter is playing with, where he’s like, “Yeah, you see? He knew about the resurrection.” In fact, I had to cut down my sermon a little bit, so I cut out the next paragraph. But basically he says, “Look, what does he mean, he won’t allow his Holy One to see corruption? He must mean resurrection, because he died and was buried. So he obviously didn’t mean he wouldn’t decompose physically. He meant that there was another reality that was going to supersede his physical existence and raise him from the dead.” He knew something was different. And so what Peter is saying is, “That’s what Jesus is.”

And then he pulls out another scripture that says, “…at the right hand of my Lord” (Acts 2.34–35). And this is the same scripture Jesus used to say, “Look, even David knew that the Messiah was God.” Very complicated, in the sense that exegetically we don’t have the same lingo as the Israelites did. But basically what he’s saying is, David called the Messiah the same name as he called God. And David said that the Messiah existed even when he was writing his Psalms, that there was something he could prophetically see. And so Jesus claims that about himself. He says, “Look, I am the Promised One.” And so Peter throws that at them and says, “Hey, what do you think the scripture means, if not to describe this Jesus, who you crucified, who has risen from the dead?”

Basically, he’s continuing the theme in Joel, where he says, “Look, the promises that God made here, he fulfilled right now. Get on board. Come be a part. Those things that you’ve been praying for from your youth.” We can’t even imagine the oppression that the Israelites were under. And their parents would tell them every night, “Yes, but the Messiah is coming. There’s a savior. We’re not always going to be everyone’s punching bag. We’re not always going to be under the cruel oppression of this world. The Messiah is coming.” And he’s saying, “The Messiah has come.”

VI. This Jesus Whom You Crucified 15:44

So that’s what he’s pointing out. He’s walking through these scriptures and he’s explaining this, and he ends, as he’s laid out these proofs, and he says:

36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Acts 2.36

So he’s laid out the proofs. He fulfilled the prophecies. He did all the signs and wonders. He rose from the dead. “You know now for certain. There is no excuse. This Jesus whom you crucified.”

Now, at this point, if those men standing in that courtyard were anything like my son, my five-year-old Rowan, they would have found a lot of reasons why they actually didn’t crucify Jesus. “I didn’t nail the things. The Romans crucified Jesus. What do you mean, we crucified Jesus?” Or like what happened yesterday. He’s playing with this bouncy ball in the playroom, and I go, “Hey, Rowan, don’t bounce the ball in the playroom right now. The baby’s in the playpen. You’re going to hurt the baby.” I go back to doing what I’m doing, and I hear bounce, bounce, and I’m like, okay. Well, apparently Rowan had been bouncing the ball, and it had hit his baby sister Margot, who’s like six months old, in the face. So I looked at him and said, “Rowan, you just hit her in the face. Didn’t I tell you to stop bouncing the ball?”

“Oh, I didn’t hear you.”

Okay, so let’s get past that. “Yes, you did. You heard me. I looked at you; you nodded and said, ‘Yes, sir.’” Let’s move on; that’s obviously not going to play.

“Oh, it was an accident.”

“Yeah, but you already did what I told you not to do. Accept your culpability.”

“Yeah, but you know, Ruby actually hit me while I was bouncing the ball, which knocked the ball over, and so it’s really not my fault, Dad.”

And we can go down this rabbit hole forever. And what’s funny about it is we do the same thing all the time. “But it’s not my fault that this happened. It’s not my fault that the trash cans didn’t get taken out on Wednesday like you asked me, love. I was running late for work.” We have every excuse in the book, which is the sign that the Holy Spirit fell on Pentecost, because those men in that courtyard did not offer the infinite number of excuses that they could have. In fact, what did they say? This is the clearest sign that the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost. They said:

VII. Cut to the Heart 18:58

37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Acts 2.37

Peter just told them they crucified the Son of God, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, the King of the universe, and they said, “Oh my God, what have we done? Brothers, what can we do?” What does that mean, they were cut to the heart? What does the Holy Spirit do? It convicts us of our sin and invites us to repentance. And so the Holy Spirit falls that day. It convicts them.

And this is what the pleasure machine misses: we are all sinners, and we know it. We are all sinners. And so, you know what? You don’t deserve pleasure forevermore. That’s not what you deserve. In fact, something in us… they’ve proven this over and over again psychologically. If you’re working in a job and they give you a raise of, let’s say, fifty thousand dollars a year, just this insane raise, but you’re doing the same job, and you don’t think your job is worth that extra fifty thousand dollars, you will be less happy than if they paid you what you thought you were worth. Isn’t that interesting? Across the board, they can give you more money, which sounds good, but if it’s not what you think you’re worth, you will actually be less satisfied in your job and more likely to go to another job. Why? Because something deep in us has an intuition for justice, because God has written the law on our hearts. We want what we deserve.

Now, I will say, there are about 10 million ways to deaden that impulse and to work your brain around and say, “No, actually, I deserve everything.” In fact, what we see today, when our culture is falling apart, what does everybody complain about? Entitlement. “I actually am a victim, and therefore I deserve everything. Everything I’ve ever done is not my fault. It’s society’s fault, it’s my parents’ fault, it’s everybody else’s fault.” Yes, you can find ways to justify yourself. But you know what’s better news than “I’m not to blame”? Reality. “I am to blame, and yet God loved me, and God chose me, and God paid the price that I might be forgiven.” That is so much better than “I am not to blame.” Because when you walk around saying, “I’m not to blame,” you still have to deal with suffering, and there is no explanation. There’s nothing that justifies your suffering. But when you say, “I am to blame. I am the sinner. I nailed him to the cross by my sin,” then you can experience suffering as joining in the suffering of the cross. Then you can rejoice to say, “I am completing in my flesh what Christ did on the cross” (Col 1.24). And not only that, I can do it with the hope of resurrection. There’s nothing he will take from me that he cannot give back to me a hundredfold.

And so when we look at this, what’s the problem with these Apple Vision Pro pleasure machines? It’s just not real. They’re augmenting reality; they’re creating virtual worlds. It’s just not real, no matter how it makes you feel. As one of my favorite commentators says, the facts don’t care about your feelings.

Now, there’s this movement that goes along with this. It’s called self-care. There are all these books about how you need to take care of yourself, you need to love yourself, you need to forgive yourself. And they’re falling into the same trap as the pleasure machine. It’s just not real. You actually can’t forgive yourself, did you know that? You don’t have the power. You can’t steal from your job and then walk around going, “Well, I forgive myself. I’m all good.” Rowan can’t slap his sister in the face and say, “Ruby, don’t worry, I’ve forgiven myself.” We know how wrong that is. I am tempted, though, to try it on my wife every once in a while: “Don’t worry, Haley, I have forgiven myself for that thing that I didn’t do for you.” Ultimately, we know that we need forgiveness from the person whom we have offended, or in other words, sinned against.

And ultimately, who have we sinned against? What do we say in our confession? We have sinned against God, the creator of the universe, who loves you. We have nailed his Son to a cross. We as humans share in that burden of guilt for his crucifixion. And so we need God’s forgiveness. But just like I said, the reality is so much better than these false imitation realities, because the reality is, yes, you need forgiveness, and it’s offered to you today. None of you has to leave this room with the burden of sin in your life. You are all forgiven by the power of God. Wow. Just take a breath. That thing you’ve been carrying around for ages, that you haven’t told anybody about because you’re so ashamed of it, can be forgiven. It is forgiven. It’s paid for. You confess, you repent, boom, you are forgiven, you are accepted. And then you pick up your cross and follow him, because it’s a long journey to live that way.

Okay, one more thing about this self-care, the love-yourself thing. I was listening to this song the other day (don’t ask me why), this Miley Cyrus song, probably one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. She’s singing about how she had this breakup with this guy she liked a lot. Most of the young people know this song; they’re looking at me, they know what I’m going to talk about. And what does she say? “I’m not sad anymore, because I can buy myself flowers, I can hold my own hand, I can dance by myself for hours.” What? I’m sorry, what? In every instance she’s completely missed the point. Anybody can buy themselves flowers. Anybody can hold their own hand. Do you know who it helps? Nobody.

We are designed to be loved. We are designed to be in community, to be cared for. We’re even designed to find husbands and wives. And you know what? If you’re one of those few people who are called to singleness, then guess what the church has always taught: if you’re a woman, your husband’s Christ; if you’re a man, your wife is the church. You dedicate yourself to communion, to connection, to service, and all of a sudden you’re not the glowing center of the universe, unlike Miley Cyrus, who seems real happy. Not to be too sarcastic here, but let’s just think about this. It’s the pleasure machine: you can be alone together. No, you cannot. You can only be one or the other. Choose.

VIII. The Promise Is for You and for Your Children 25:54

Now, really, I actually am excited about these goggles. I want you to know, if at any point I get a chance to have these goggles, I will. Do you know why? Because the technology you use does not have to be your world. And there are probably use cases for this particular technology that will blow our minds, that we would never have predicted, that could save lives, that could transform the world for the better. But God’s here for your souls. Let’s read this; this will get the point across here. What do you do?

38 And Peter said to them, “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. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” Acts 2.38–39

So we talked about that. There’s forgiveness here. There’s the power of the Holy Spirit here. Repent, be baptized. Reality is calling, and you cannot escape it. But it’s better than you could ever imagine, and also more costly than you could ever imagine. Being committed to the truth, following Jesus’ way, is truly the way of the cross, truly the way of crucifixion. But it’s also truly the way of resurrection, joy, life, hope.

And the reason it’s worth it for everyone in here is because it’s not just for you. It’s for you and your children and all who are far off. That’s the battle we’re fighting in our culture, truly. What are these Apple Vision Pro goggles for? They’re probably not really for us. They’re for our children. They’re for the next generation, the people who grew up thinking it’s normal to be disconnected from people, that it’s normal to only connect through a glowing rectangle. And like I said, I don’t want to harp too much on the technology side of this, but you need to see: the messaging everywhere is that you don’t need other people, you don’t need God, you only need you. And I’ve never heard a sadder idea. We are desperately needy for each other, for God, for our families.

And our kids need to know that the answer is not in the box. It’s not in Google. It’s not in these technologies. It’s not in climate change activism. It’s not in the church of agnosticism and atheism and self-pleasure and hedonism, all of these temples to these different gods, money, all of those things. They need to know, “No, actually, reality is that you are a sinner, and the only answer is your Savior. But he is here today to offer you life, and life everlasting.” That’s why we have a school at Saint Michael’s, you know that? Because our kids need to know that what is being taught almost everywhere else is utter baloney and won’t get them anywhere. They’ll eventually encounter reality, and reality, unlike God, is unforgiving.

IX. Save Yourselves From This Crooked Generation 28:08

40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, Acts 2.40

So that’s my justification for long sermons right here. He kept talking after this. No.

saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. Acts 2.40–41

Has anything ever sounded so relevant out of the Bible? You look around: “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” All of this is about what’s going on in here. You can have whatever technology you want; you just have to live like Jesus. It’s like that phrase that’s commonly brought up: what’s the purpose in Christianity? They’ve got one rule: love, and do whatever else you please. The problem is, what does love demand of us? Everything. Love, and do whatever else you want. But first, love.

Reality is suffering. It is costly. But we know it leads to resurrection. And I can tell you where the pleasure machine leads. It leads straight to hell, not just in the afterlife, but here and now. We see that so clearly all around us. People are just chasing their own will, their own dragons, their own pleasures, and it just leaves them broken. So are you going to be the person who, when that person is broken, can walk in and say, “Hey, reality is so much better than what you’re chasing. You’re a sinner, sure; eventually everybody knows that. But there is a Savior”? Amen.