corrupt

Why do we need the Holy Spirit? I found an unexpected answer in the familiar story of Pentecost this morning. That event is recounted for us in Acts 2, and most of the way through the chapter we find this, in verse 40:

“With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’”

This is a verse packed full of amazing stuff. First off, it says Peter used many other words. He’d already been speaking from verse 14 to 49, that famous Passover message that most of us only know bits of because we zone out while reading it. But that wasn’t enough - he used many other words.

And he used them for a specific purpose: to beg. Peter used many other words to warn and plead it the people. This was really important to him. And what was he so worked up about? He was worried about the danger they were in. He begged them to save themselves from this corrupt generation.

The first few verses of this chapter tell us that this is a huge crowd, made up of God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. Although they didn’t know Jesus yet, these were good people who tried to obey God’s commands. Yet Peter knew that wherever they were from, the culture was different than God’s perfect plan. So he warned them of the people around them.

What’s so bad about our national culture? Why as Christians can’t we jump into it as much as we’d like to? Because non-Christian culture does three things.

It diverts us from Jesus. Every minute we spend in a bar or coffee shop talking politics or in a movie theater watching Avengers, every minute with non-godly people on non-godly topics, we’re not paying attention to Jesus. In fact, we’re soaking in ideas from people who don’t get them from the Bible.

It also coarsens our spiritual sensitivity - our consciences grow calluses. We get so used to profanity and revealing clothing and drunkenness and every kind of relationship that we forget how appalling this all is to God.

Even worse, our culture makes sin look positive. In fact, it makes our faith look negative. We can no longer speak truth about gender and marriage and morality. If we want to fit in we support transgender ideology and accept all other religions as equal to our own. We think hats meant to evoke genitalia are cool. We don’t want to stand against Planned Parenthood anymore because that organization is the darling of our political party.

Peter knew our culture could kill us - the wages of sin, after all, are death. And he knew we couldn’t really save ourselves. The only thing we can do is make the choice about where to put our faith and hope.

Salvation doesn’t come on Air Force One, as Chuck Colson famously said, or from any other power or idea in our nation. It comes from the cross of Jesus Christ. And, in this culture, we’re never going to see the cross without the Holy Spirit.