Acts 7:54-14:28
Victory in Tragedy Acts 7:54-8:3
Go back with me to elementary school and recess. Kick ball was always a big deal and you were supposed to have 10 folks to play and of course, more than 10 wanted to play. You know how it worked, the 2 most popular kids in your class got to chose up sides. Remember the agony of wondering whether or not you were going to be chosen?
Well, maybe you were one of those beautiful folks who got chosen every time, but I wasn=t. Sometimes I got chosen, but allot of times I didn=t. I never remember being chosen first. Am I going to be chosen to be one of the special people who get to do it? If you ever were chosen, you know how special that feels.
Now, the really special thing about being a Christ follower is, no matter what the world thinks of you, everyday I wake up, I=m a chosen person! Peter said this in 1 Pt. 2:9, ABut you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.@ Out of all the mass of people out there, God called you and you and you, and said, come out of all those and be over here with me in the kingdom of light. Do you feel good that He chose you?
But, know this, in scripture the cost of being chosen is usually very high. It most always demands suffering. The Jews were God=s chosen people. Out of all the races of folks, God chose them and said you will be my people in whom I will work until my Son comes. There has never been a race of people on this planet that has suffered like the Jews.
Mary was chosen and the angel came and said, don=t be afraid Mary for you have found favor with God. She was chosen from all women by God to raise the Christ child. What a glory, but it had a high price! She takes the child to the temple and Simeon prophecies that this child will be a sign of the rise and fall of many people and a sword will pierce even your own soul. You=re going to suffer and hurt for this great honor God has given.
Another classic illustration of this is Saul. He=s on the way to Damascus and the Lord knocks him down, he goes to the city and Jesus tells Ananias to go to tell Paul what he must do. Go tell him he is my chosen instrument, to carry my name before the Gentiles and before kings and the people of Israel, and I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.
When God chooses anyone, He is up front in telling them, with this blessing comes a price. To be a chosen people means to be a people set apart for suffering. Now, how good does it feel to be chosen?
God had chosen Steven. He told the church to go out with the Gospel, into all the world. Start at Jerusalem, then Judea, Samaria, and then into all the world, but they weren=t doing it. God wanted the church to move out, but wouldn=t so God chose and instrument to get it done. Steven understood the church was bigger than one place and was meant to go out and so he preached that the good news was for the Gentiles too.
He dared to say God has purpose and message for all races of men, not just the Jews. What a privilege to be Steven the man God chose to start the movement out to all the world. With this honor came a high price.
Steven challenged his own brethren; because the Messiah has come the implication is He is the Messiah of all people and not just of the Jews. God had to push this message out, to bring it to all people, not just Jews. God is not going to live in one place anymore, or live in just the temple; God is going to reach out to all people through Jesus the Messiah. The Jews did not want to hear that! They did not want to hear this!
Acts 7:54-8:3 AWhen they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul was there, giving approval to his death. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.@
This is a story of incredible tragedy, but what we see is how God turns that tragedy into victory. He did it before and he did it then and He will do it again today if we let Him.
1. Why did they execute Steven? Did you notice the fury? Why are they so upset with him?
What they feared most was losing their unique identity as the people of God. They had become very proud that they were the chosen people. Steven came and preaches powerfully that God is not just the God of one nation, He doesn=t live in just one temple, or have a plan for just one country, but He is the God of all people.
God doesn=t see colors, or boundaries, He just sees people and He loves them all. He sent his Son because God so loved the world that whoever believes in Him, not whoever Jew, but whoever believes in Him, would not perish but have eternal life. They didn=t want to hear that. They didn=t want anyone else to be the chosen people.
That=s what they were afraid of. If we let him go on preaching this we will not be the only chosen ones. This made them furious insane mad! They gnashed their teeth at him! That=s an indication of the hellishness of their nature. They ground their teeth at him. You remember what Jesus said hell would be like? One thing there=s going to be is allot of grinding of teeth.
That doesn=t mean sorrowful or repentant, but just what we see here; allot of people mad as hell at God. You grind your teeth when you=re furious at what God has said and done. Jesus said one time to likeminded Jews in describing hell to them, you will be weeping and grinding your teethe, when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the others in the kingdom and you will be thrown down.
Hell is going to be full of people mad at God, many of them Jews, the once chosen people of God, who gave up following God, because of the pride we see here in this story. Too many times when the chosen people of God sin and God judges them for their sin, way too often a hard heart just gets harder and God ends up throwing them out because of it. Instead of softening your heart, obeying, and repenting, you harden your heart and say no it can=t be true, God wouldn=t do that, yet He does and you lose.
These people are fit for hell because they are acting like people in hell act. But, look carefully, that was just the set up, it=s not what cost Steven his life. What cost him his life is what he said next. It says he open his mouth and shared a vision! ABut Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." When they heard this they literally put their hands over their ears and said I don=t want to hear anymore!
Why do you think that made them so mad? Not long before this another Jew was on trial for crimes he didn=t commit and the high priest asked Him, tell us plainly are you the Christ or not? This young Jew looked them squarely in the eye and said, I tell you, you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of God and coming on clouds of power!
They couldn=t stand that! They killed Jesus because He said He would sit at the right hand of God. So, what is Steven doing? Steven is saying, Jesus was right and you are wrong! You shouldn=t have killed Him; He is at the right hand of God just like He said He would be. They couldn=t stand that, so they had to kill him. If you don=t kill him, you have to admit you=re wrong.
If you would kill Jesus for saying it, you have to kill Steven for saying it. You can=t let him get away with it, not only would you be admitting you=re wrong, but the implications are too big for you to handle. Steven is making them decide what they believe, do you believe Jesus is the Son of God seated at the right hand of God, because he is declaring it is so.
Here=s an exciting specific about this text. This is the only place in scripture where it says; Jesus wasn=t sitting but standing at the right hand of God. What do you think that means? Many say it was because He is standing to welcome Steven home and I think there could be something to that, but I think more.
In all the places of scripture it says when Jesus= work of redeeming man was done He was seated at the right hand of God. The work is done, is what that symbolizes. There is nothing more to do, for you or anyone else; it is by that grace you are saved, end of story it is done. Why then does He stand up?
I think He stands up every time His brethren are on trial! In Jesus= time when you were a witness for somebody you stood up for them.
Steven is on trial being falsely accused in an illegal court and John told us in his letter that we have an advocate a lawyer with the Father, He=s Jesus Christ the righteous! Anytime you are being falsely accused in this world, Jesus is standing up defending you before His Father and ours! He is defending us!
Jesus was defending Steven in the only court that really counts in the end. That=s what He does for us, when people put us down, persecute us for no good reason, Jesus stands before the Father and says, I stand with him, I will account for him. I=m on his side. The judge listens to this advocate, because of who Jesus is.
You have got to grow in your admiration for this man the more you look at him. If you look close you=ll see the Jews had a kind of structured way to stone someone and that=s what we see here.
First, you had to have witnesses and they had to hear what his crime was. Steven was charged with Blasphemy, for daring to say Jesus was at the right hand of God.
Then, you couldn=t stone him inside the city; you had to take them outside, just like they did with Stephen. You would find what they called a cliff, obviously didn=t have to be too big, but just twice as high as the person. I don=t know why, it was just one of their rules, about 12 feet high. At the bottom of it were other rocks all around sticking up and the like.
They took the person and threw him down into those rocks and that would just about kill right there. But, then the witnesses had to take off their robes, because they had to throw the first stones. They took those outer garments off and lay them at the feet of Saul, because they need to be free to throw those rocks as hard as they can. They take 2 big old rocks one to crush his ribs and then his organs. That=s what they did to Stephen.
Then they paused for just a moment, to give the person one last chance to confess their sin before they died. They wanted to hear him take it all back pleading for forgiveness from God and them, but they heard a confession all right. They bent over real close and heard Stephen say, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. They got a confession.
This made them so mad they picked up the stones and started throwing them as fast as they could, they weren=t going to let him say one more thing about Jesus. Yet, he got it together enough to pray for them and say, Lord do not hold this sin against them. Do you or I have the spirit of Steven? What would we do, will there be such glory at our death given to God and even others?
Some folks try to get it all together before they die and try to do something they think will impress God somehow before they die. Not Steven. He didn=t have to get it altogether before he dies; he had it together all his life.
Your going to die just like you lived, there will be no fooling God 5 minutes before you die. You can=t clean yourself up in a few minutes. If you live like a disciple, that=s how you=ll die.
If you=re living like a pagan, don=t think you=ll die giving glory to God and asking Him to welcome you home. Luke tells a few times that Steven was full of the Holy Spirit. You think maybe Luke was trying to tell us something? If you want to live like Steven, you=d better get your life full of God. His human emotions didn=t control this situation, because he had become like God in character. He didn=t get mad, or bitter, he didn=t resist with all his might, or pray Lord pay them back, even harder than they gave it to me.
He died like Jesus! He was able to do that, because, that=s how he lived. You can tell me not to say the name of Jesus all you want, think you can stop him by killing him, but that won=t work. The quickest way to get him to say Jesus is to kill him. The first word he=ll say when you kill him is Jesus.
It says, godly men buried Steven and mourned for him. I=m not sure they were Christians? The term godly men is most often used for the best of the Jews. The law said don=t mourn for a criminal, but these men couldn=t help it, they knew he wasn=t a criminal; he was a good man. It seemed tragic that they could kill a man so full of goodness.
Yet, the text goes on to say, it doesn=t get better, it gets worse, for that marks the beginning of a great persecution against the church and the leader is Saul. Saul went after others like Steven, who didn=t stay in Jerusalem, like the Apostles. They didn=t live there, but all over. All the deacons we read about here and all the Gentile sympathizers. Saul would say they have polluted the Holy city and he was going to get the contamination out of the city.
He would drive them, torture them, put them in jail, and drag them out before everyone, as he went about ridding the city of this scourge upon God=s Holy city. You need to know you can be zealous for your religion and you can be wrong! You can be so sure you are ARight@ and everyone else is wrong, but know you could be wrong! Being zealous for what you believe doesn=t mean it=s the truth.
Notice the result of this persecution. What it tells me is the world never has understood the cross. If Saul understood the cross, he would have known how stupid it is to persecute the church. The cross is a sign to the world that God changes enmity into glory! The world did the most wicked evil thing it could think of at the cross and God turn it into glory!
You can=t hurt God by hating Him; He takes it and brings glory out of it. You can=t hurt the church by persecuting it; God takes that tragedy and turns it into victory. What did God want?
He wanted them to take the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then to the whole world and the world said no, we=ll persecute you and God said I=ll empower the church through that to go into all the world. All Saul was doing was moving the church into its manifest destiny.
All he wanted to do was stop the church and the gospel and all he did was spread it. I bet even Saul wondered a time or 2, when he would go into one of those houses and drag one of those families out and see them take it just like Steven! A sweet spirited people, who would even die if need be for the one they loved so much. How could they die like that for an illusion, he might have asked?
How could these folks die for a lie? I think this because of what Jesus says to Saul after He meets him on the Damascus road and says, Saul why do you kick against the goads? Saul why do you keep doing that which hurts you, bothers you? Irony here don=t you think? He hated Steven so much for wanting to preach to Gentiles, so Saul killed him. So God says, I lost a chosen instrument to the Gentiles, so I need another one. So who does God pick?
I=ll take the mantle from Steven and give it to you Saul and change your name to Paul and now you are the messenger to Gentiles and I will show you how much you must suffer for my name. And he suffered much. He was even stoned once like Steven and so much more; he suffered all the rest of his life. If anyone ever learned the truth that God can take a tragedy and make it a victory Paul did.
I often wonder if we have learned this. Have we learned that the power of our faith is seen by the way we live? We can show the world, there is no way we can be defeated, we are a chosen people and we cannot lose! God never called us out of darkness and told us we would never suffer, he said; when you suffer glorify my name!
2. The world can crush my flesh but not my spirit. Do we know this? The church needed to know then, what Steven showed, whether faith in Jesus would sustain you in your death and the answer was a glorious yes, given by Steven. Even in death you can be like Jesus because he will be there with you, just like Steven. He=s not promising safety, but strength.
1 Pt. 4:14 Peter says, if you suffer for Jesus= name you are blessed, for the spirit of glory and God rests on you. When the world turns on you for your faith and treats you like they did Jesus, God comes and strengthens you, so you won=t act like the world when it is treated in an ugly way. Even in the worst of circumstances you can act like Jesus!
I cannot lose! They cannot make me come down to their level, even if they crush my flesh. They can=t crush my spirit. I think one the reasons Paul was so driven is because the words of Steven in prayer. I don=t think Paul ever forgot those words for the rest of his life; they rang in his ears every day. Everyday, I killed a man who forgave me for doing it. That changed his life. The world can crush your flesh, but not your spirit. I am not a loser! I=m a winner!
3. Another exciting thing here; the world can take my house, but not my home! Think about it! Those folks lived in their homes all their lives.
They saw kids born there, raised, the whole family with all those memories and one day the husband comes home and says, honey we got go, no time to pack, put on a coat and lets go, they=re coming to get us! Everything you=ve ever had, or owned, everything you=ve ever cared about, you leave it behind; the only thing you=ve got is the cloths on your back.
When you go to the next town, what do you do? You start preaching the very message that got you kicked out of your home. What is a house if you=re pilgrim? How can pilgrims have houses anyway? Those folks were kicked out the old Jerusalem, so they could go to the New Jerusalem! How much do we want the new one? They can take my house, but they can never take my home.
How does the world react to that? They crush my flesh, take my house and I still don=t act like they do, because they can=t touch what really matters.
4. The world can stop my life, but it can=t stop my influence. The impact of a life has nothing to do with the length of it. You could live 95 years and mean absolutely nothing! You can live 15 years and change the lives of thousands, all because he knows Jesus! Steven dies rather young here, but what about his influence, did it stop?
Steven didn=t die one day before everything God wanted him to do was accomplished. Neither will any of us. God wanted me to take what he=s given me and through the online church, give to some others. What if I died today? Whatever God wanted me to do with this church, I=ve done it, if that were to happen.
Do you think my influence would die with me if I died today? No way! Years after I=m gone my influence will still be helping others hear the message and so will yours. Gotta make the devil mad, the world frustrated, what can they do to me? Crush my flesh; take my home, stop my life and I=m still making an impact. Still loving folks and living for Jesus. Still winning!
It=s not that none of this hurts, it=s when you suffer it=s turned into glory! Even your tragedies are victories. Live like chosen people. Yes, with the privilege comes a price! Don=t come here thinking there will be no suffering or hurts, that=s a terrible mistake. I=m not saying the suffering gets changed, but the sufferer sure does.
Don=t waste your tragedies! You were called out of darkness into light so that the world could see you turn your tragedies, your whole life, which includes all the tough stuff, into victories! Turn all of them into victories! There are allot of Saul=s out there watching you. Wherever you go, whatever you do with your life, people will see and wonder, how do they live like that, when bad times come? Don=t waste the chance to show them that you are chosen!
Strange Goings and Comings Acts 8:4-17
We are now going to consider the process of how the church evolved from this little sect to a universal religion. Now, I don=t want you to miss what=s happening here, so try to put some of all we=ve been looking at together. If you don=t tie some things of the whole together you=ll often miss what=s happening and I believe this is especially true in this section.
We saw last time, that the Jews lead by Saul is ravaging the church. The word used to describe it is a word used of a wild animal that would just tear up anything in its path and that=s what Saul is acting like. He is out to destroy the church. He=s putting men and women in prison, He=s torturing them so they will recant and disown the name of Christ.
This leads to some strange goings and comings. Lets look first at a strange going:
Verses 4-8, AThose who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. 5Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there. 6When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed. 8So there was great joy in that city.@
2 incredible things these folks decided to do when faced with this persecution:
5. They preached! Luke uses an unusual word for preach here, he uses a word that actually says they were AGood newsing.@ They were going around preaching the good news in spite of the fact that, that is precisely why they were on the run. You see this fellow with maybe a little sack of cloths, with his family and he=s on the road, most people would think something=s wrong, so you ask him what=s the bad news.
What are you fleeing from, why are you on the road and he says, it=s not bad news, I=ve got some good news! It cost me my house and my job and everything I owned, but it=s great news! This is incredible, is it not? In a chapter that speaks of a people being scattered, 6 times preaching is mentioned.
That is the inevitable result of Christ in your life; no matter what happens to you in this life, you have good news and you must share it! The devil is doing everything he knows to stop the spread of the good news and all he is doing is causing it to spread even faster.
The very first word of the sentence in vs. 4 is, therefore (in the original). When you see the word therefore, always ask what it=s there for! Therefore they went everywhere preaching the word. Therefore is because of the persecution and men and women were being thrown into jail. They responded to Saul trying to destroy the church by going everywhere preaching even more.
Luke is saying it like this is the natural reaction to persecution. If the church gets persecuted, therefore it preaches! That=s just what it does.
Imagine the devil calling all his demons together and gets them to focus on one thing, we have got to do something about Christianity. It=s growing too fast. One of the demons says, what about dividing them? We tried that already, says another. We got the Greek speaking Jews and the Hebrew speaking Jews to try to fight and they just appointed some folks to take care of it and they stayed strong.
Another one says, what if we try spreading the lie that He wasn=t raised! Another says, it won=t work 500 folks saw him alive at one time and we tried that already through the Sanhedrin and it didn=t work. What if we say the apostles don=t have any power? That=s just stupid, people are being healed, lives changed, broken families brought together; that city is full of people that know about the power of the gospel.
Well then, let=s persecute them! I don=t mean just pickin= on the Apostles by whipping them or something like that, we=ve done that before; we=ll just go after every Christian in that city. We=ll try to scare their religion out of them! Devil says, what=s your rank? Not anymore, you=re a Cornel now. What a superb idea, we are going to stomp out Christianity! So, it begins, serious real persecution, lives on the line type trouble.
What happened? Therefore, they went everywhere Agood newsing@ the word. The devils gather together again and the devil says where=s that guy who suggested persecution? Devil says, good to meet you private. That just doesn=t work; it just made it worse. They responded by telling more people about Jesus, more than they were before.
Once again we see the religion of the Cross has taken hatred and turned it into glory!
6. They preached to Samaritans! They not only preached, but they preached to Samaritans. Incredible! Why is that incredible? Notice what=s happening here. This is a major shift in Jesus= outline of this book. The first point was, you=d be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea. Point number 2, then to Samaria and then 3 will be to the world.
Luke is showing Theophilus how the church went from this little beginning, Hebrew speaking Jews, then we see them taking it to Greek speaking Jews, and now they are preaching to Samaritans. These are the half Jews, just a little closer to non-Jews. Soon in this chapter we=ll see a Eunuch, a foreigner, who becomes a Christian.
In Chapter 10 we see a man named Cornelius, who isn=t a Jew and then we=ll see God sending Paul out to the pagans! Luke is showing how the church was taken to people further and further away from Judaism.
The first step is always the hardest, however. It=s true of your babies and you and it=s true of the church. The animosity between Jews and Samaritans is well documented. John in chapter 4 says Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Luke recorded a good look at the history of these 2 peoples in chapter 9:51-56.
AAs the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" 55But Jesus turned and rebuked them, 56and they went to another village.@
This how the disciples felt about Samaritans, they=re only good for fuel for fire. The Christ changed these folks inside and out, old prejudices are laid aside and they eagerly preached to them. I wonder why they accepted Philip? Maybe they heard he got kicked out of Jerusalem, so they may have felt a bond there. They share a common lot. Why are you running? I was kicked out of Jerusalem and I=m running for my life, the Jews there hate me. Well, we know what that=s like, why did they do it to you?
What did Philip preach to them? Well, they=ve been looking for the Messiah. Remember the woman at the well, she was a Samaritan and said to Jesus, we know the Messiah is coming and then went to the city and told them, could He be the Christ. He preached, God performed miracles to back up the word and there was great joy in that city.
Now, I=ve already told you I don=t believe I can do miracles to back up the word when I speak it, but does that mean we shouldn=t have the joy these folks had upon hearing the good news! I wonder if folks would believe we have such joy sometimes when they hear us preaching and then join in that joy with us. When Christ is preached and people respond, it should stir up great joy wherever it happens.
Now, let=s look at an incredible coming, vs. 14-17. We skipped the section about Simon and we=ll come back to it next time, but this section intrigues me. AWhen the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. 15When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. 17Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.@
That=s an interesting text folks. First I=ll share what various interpretations have been made, before I tell you what I think it says.
There are those who have taught that this text teaches that there should be an elite leadership of some king in the church, a hierarchy of leaders. They say it teaches these leaders are to have authority over other leaders, who live in another town. Since Peter seems to be the dominate one, so there should be an elite among the elite and John would have next in line honors of authority. Whole denominations have used this to structure their churches leadership. Do you think that=s what Luke is saying?
Others teach that when you are young, even an infant in some peoples conclusions, you should be baptized and later when they are older you should have a ceremony that declares them to be full members of the church. That is what some churches have done with this text, what do you think about that?
Then there are groups who teach that there should be a Asecond work of grace.@ They teach a person can become a Christian, but they don=t receive all of the Holy Spirit, so later in their Christian walk they need to receive an extra measure of the Holy Spirit, so that they can do miraculous things. They would say this is the norm for the disciple, not an exception. What do you think about this one?
There is yet another one that I have heard many times. When you were baptized you received the indwelling Spirit, but it did not give you miraculous gifts, so that the only way you could get the ability to do miracles was to have the Apostles come and lay hands on you, which would in time explain why miraculous ability would cease in the church. People could do miracles when the apostles laid hands on them, but they couldn=t pass it on to others, so eventually miraculous gifts would cease. What say you about that one?
Let me share what I see is happening and then you tell me what you think that does to these interpretations. The question I ask of all four of these interpretations, is this, what Luke is trying to say? First, if you want to understand the text biblically, you have to understand it first historically! What is happening historically in Acts chapter 8?
Remember the bigger picture of why Luke is writing to the Romans about Christianity. He is trying to present Christianity as the true Judaism, as the true Israel. Just as old Judaism was legal, so should true Israel be a legal religion under the Romans. Christianity is what Judaism has become old Judaism is no longer. There=s been this major shift in Gods= work among His people and we are what God has created.
So, the Romans will ask the question, if that=s true, then what are Samaritans and Gentiles doing in Christianity? Luke is saying the Spirit of God led us to incorporate them into Christianity, we didn=t just make it up; God led us to include these folks into Christianity.
Since Pentecost day there have been no special pouring out events of the Spirit, although 1,000=s upon thousands of people have been added to the body. A special event marked the beginning of it all when 120 people received the Spirit in an very special outpouring that Peter goes on to say was prophesied would happen and it did. Since then how did folks receive the gift of the Spirit? In the text, how did it say they receive the gift of the Spirit? =When they were baptized, 2:38. No major event like the upper room, you believe Jesus is the Messiah, repent, and then you are baptized and you receive the Spirit.
Now, in Acts we are going to see 2 major events take place in the church and the first is here in Acts 8, the Samaritans come in to the church. He says they were baptized into Jesus name, but they had Anot yet@ received the Spirit. They had been baptized, but something happened where they hadn=t received the Spirit yet.
He=s showing in this text that something that should have happened didn=t happen, there is an abnormality going here. Luke has already taught us, baptism and the receiving of the Spirit go together, but it didn=t happen here, why not? Look with me at acts 10 at something that may shed some light.
This is the other major event of the pouring out of the Spirit. God sends Peter to a man named Cornelius, a Gentile, a roman officer who has never been circumcised, he=s not a Jewish proselyte and Peter preaches to Cornelius in verse 44-48, AWhile Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. 46For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, 47"Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have." 48So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.@
Now, notice with me; in Acts 8 we have people who were baptized, but they had not yet received the Spirit, yet here in Acts 10 we have people receiving the Spirit who had not yet been baptized. Why the seeming confusion? The bible is a logical book, but this seems a little off for some reason.
To the Samaritans we see something hasn=t happened that should have! Luke doesn=t say what these folks lacked was the laying on of hands it was the Holy Spirit! Now, we remember the history of the Samaritans right. Assyria came in and took off the Samaritans and brought in other people to live there and then the Samaritans intermarried with them, they compromised their bloodline.
When the southern tribes were captured by Babylon they didn=t intermarry with the foreigners. When they came back they found Jews who had intermarried with foreigners and therefore weren=t true Jews anymore. As the history goes, when they came back and wanted to rebuild the temple there rose a dispute among the pure Jews and the mixed ones, so the Samaritans went off and built there own temple. So, we have 2 people with their roots in Judaism, but they hate each other.
If you went through there as a Jew from the South, they wouldn=t let you stay there. The Samaritans used to sneak down when the Jews were having a feast in the temple and throw bones over the wall to desecrate their feasts. There is big hatred here, so what do we see in this text? If the Spirit had come immediately when they were baptized there would have been no connection between them and the Jerusalem church. The division would have continued on in Christianity and you would have two churches.
The Jewish church and the Samaritan church and neither one thinking they needed the other. God did not want that to happen! So God had to work to show everyone some important things. One is that the Samaritans know that the Apostles are now Gods= spokesmen of divine truth. They can=t run off and start their own thing, they need to listen to the Apostles and respect the Jerusalem church. That is what God is up to here.
And of course, the church in Jerusalem and the Apostles need to accept the Samaritans and respect them, which is huge historically speaking. After this event, you don=t read about the Spirit having to do another special outpouring on Samaritans. From here on when did the other Samaritans receive the spirit? When they were baptized. God had made His point to all involved and there won=t be two churches in Israel.
To look again at Cornelius, turn with me to Acts 11:1-3, AThe apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3and said, "You went into the house of uncircumcised men and (baptized them, right? No, that wasn=t the problem, you can baptize them Peter we just can=t fellowship with them) ate with them." Do you see the problem we=re dealing with in this event?
Look at verse 19-21, ANow those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. 20Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.@ Did you notice the persecution they are talking about here is the one that happened right after Stephen was stoned, that was 3 years earlier? They had been preaching to the Gentiles for quite some time before Cornelius and making disciples of them.
The Jerusalem church knew this, but it was removed from them in these far off places so we don=t have to deal with them. There weren=t any right in Judea trying to become Christians and join in fellowship with the church, so they left it alone. Isn=t it amazing how our attitude about something is different when it=s far away, instead of across the street? I=ve known churches that would send money to start churches in Africa and help them, but wouldn=t cross the street to teach black folks right in our neighborhoods.
If it=s across the ocean, it=s okay, but we don=t want to deal with, are we going to fellowship them right here? That=s what is happening to the church here in the first century. As long as they live in Antioch, they can teach all the Greeks they want, but God is going to make Cornelius a test case for the Jerusalem church. Why this, why now? Because all the Jewish Christians everywhere, looked to Jerusalem for their leadership. If the Jerusalem church won=t fellowship Gentile Christians it would have sent a message through the whole church in the world.
That is why the Holy Spirit showed up in a big time way, so all would notice, before Cornelius was baptized. Peter would say in Chapter 15 that the Holy Spirit came just like it came on me at Pentecost day. God doesn=t want anyone saying, if it weren=t for us you wouldn=t even have the Holy Spirit. God is the one who made this happen, not any of us.
So, you have two incidents of the Spirit showing up in dramatic fashion, which was not the norm, but He does it to force the church to make some necessary conclusions. One group, the Samaritans doesn=t even want to fellowship with the Jerusalem church, or Jews, so God shows up and says, wait a minute Samaritans, you don=t get the Spirit until you learn to submit to the Jerusalem church and fellowship Jews.
In Acts 10, you have folks who want the fellowship of the Jerusalem church, the Gentiles and the Jews aren=t doing it, so God says, I won=t even wait on you guys, I=ll give them the Spirit now so you=ll have to deal with this big issue. Note 8:40, APhilip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.@ Now look at 10:1 again, AAt Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment.@
If all God wants is for Cornelius to hear the gospel, why doesn=t he just send Philip, because he=s already in town? Why does God send all the way back to Jerusalem to get Peter? God has a big message to send and He must do it in a big way; the Gentiles have been accepted by God, now the church everywhere must fellowship them. After this event, we don=t read anywhere where the Spirit is poured out on any Gentiles before they are baptized.
We see He has to make an exception once for Samaritans and once for Gentiles, but how many times does the Spirit have to do something to get His point across? From here on we see all Gentiles receiving the Spirit when they were baptized, which is the norm. The Spirit is not only promoting outreach, but unity as well. These special cases addressed the need at the moment.
Remember, Acts is a book of a major transition! It takes the church from Jerusalem into a universal church for the whole world through the first century. The historical context is vital to understand what is going on in this book, so don=t rush to make up doctrines saying from one piece of scripture we=ve come to this conclusion how things are to be done on a normal basis in the church. Some norms are laid out, but there are exceptions and you better take notice, or you can be confused and reach wrong ideas of practice.
Conclusion: Is this relevant to us today?
7. The kingdom of God was meant to be universal. God has a missionary heart that beats for the world. Christianity is not a Jewish religion, or a Samaritan religion, or a Gentile religion, or an American religion, or a whites only religion, Christianity is a Awhom-so-ever-will religion.@
The church was first called Christian in Antioch, chapter 11, why there? Antioch was the first church to practice universal Christianity. They understood every kind of man; every kind of background can be a Christian. This isn=t just some little sect of Judaism; this is a whole new ball game. Something this new needed a new name.
They named this new church something new, because it was doing something different. Any church that is exclusive in some way; doesn=t allow certain folks because of their background, nationality, or whatever, is not Christian, simply because the kingdom is designed by God to be universal.
8. The Kingdom is meant to be unified! All the way through here, as we see the church reach out, the Spirit is working to make sure the church stays together and doesn=t splinter and separate into many different churches.
The role of the Spirit here is huge, to bring all Christians together in love. The Spirit teaches us that Christ is one language. If you find a church that is fighting and bickering and splintering, that church is not a Spirit filled church. If the Spirit is leading we will always be working together in love, that=s what He does.
9. The kingdom is meant to be understood. We do not keep it to ourselves. It says, Philip preached the good news of Jesus Christ. It cost him his house, his job, all his possessions, but he had some good news that you can all be free from the devil and enjoy the kingdom of God. Something this good has to be shared.
The devil cannot stop the kingdom from growing! Only we can do that, the church! He can=t stop us, but we can stop ourselves. We can simply stop Agood newsing@ the kingdom of God. I think we can see the relevance for today. We=ve got some work to do.
Playing Simon Says Acts 8:9-13 to 18-24
Do you remember that game? We take games pretty seriously in life don=t we? We pay men some pretty ridiculous amounts of money to play games, don=t we? Now, you can argue whether they=re worth that kind of money all day long, but in the end, the reason they are paid that kind of money is because we will pay that kind of money to watch them play the game.
Some times we play games at work, as well as at home, and sometimes we play games with our relationships. One of the most popular games among Christians is called playing church. Have you ever played that game? It=s popular game and it=s been around for a long time. Simon teaches us something about this game.
A9Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, "This man is the divine power known as the Great Power." 11They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic. 12But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.@
Lets talk about this guy who practiced magic. He was in a real sense a preacher in Samaria. He may have been a false teacher or prophet, but he was one non-the-less. His Aministry has some interesting aspects to it, that may be familiar to us.
10. Self is exalted! He boasted that he was someone great. He allowed people to call him the great power of God. He may have even done some good things, but the problem was, he was at the center of all things. This is a characteristic of all false prophets, all the attention and applause is directed at him and that=s the way they want it.
11. Fleshly impressions are emphasized! The Lord is not central in his ministry, even though he knew of God. The word of God wasn=t central even though he believed in it as a Samaritan; they believed in the Old Testament. What=s central in Simon=s ministry is fleshly acts and deeds, which create impressions on people that brings, not holiness, but amazement.
The text says they followed him why; because he caused them to live holy lives, walk closer with God, inspired them to understand the scriptures better? No, because they were amazed at the things he could do! That=s a dead give away of a false teacher folks. To emphasize what you can see or hear, but there=s no calling to holiness, or repentance, or love and devotion to God.
12. Counterfeit power is exercised! It says his profession is magic. He practiced magic arts, not slight of hand stuff, or card tricks and rabbits out of hats stuff, not illusions, but Simon was dabbling in the occult. In fact, it says he practiced sorcery. When scripture speaks of magic that=s what it=s talking about, dark powers used to deceive people.
The catching of attention through amazement, there are such dark powers. Scripture tells us the devil can do miracles too. They may not be the kind of miracles Jesus did, or other followers of Christ, but they were things that you couldn=t explain away. Don=t rush in and say, it must be of God! Don=t forget that scripture says the devil can masquerade as angel of light. He can draw a crowd with unexplainable things, but note who is getting the glory, the flesh. Satan has drawn crowds using his wiles and deception powers to draw us into things that take us totally away from giving glory to God. That was Simon=s profession; he was good at it and drew crowds of followers.
Now contrast him with Philip, a man who was driven out of Jerusalem for doing what he does. Notice Philips ministry:
13. There was no boasting of self! Philip preached the good news of the kingdom and the NAME of Jesus Christ. Philip didn=t preach Philip. When he did miracles and people responded he said this is the power of the name of Jesus. They weren=t used to hearing that kind of a message. Philip has heard Simon is around, but he doesn=t try to have a show down with him, or win a debate with him. He simply raises up the name of Jesus. If you hold up the true light, it will outshine the false lie every time.
14. Spiritual liberation is emphasized! Not amazement, not flesh, but the good news of the kingdom of God. What is the good news of the kingdom of God? Remember, the kingdom of God is all about the rule of God, that=s what he preached about.
All your life as a Samaritan you=ve been hearing about all these things that enslave you to a hard life, Simon captures your attention and brings you into even more darkness control that makes your life even harder and then, along comes Philip preaching about a God who can set you free from all that darkness and control from things that enslave and hold you captive, to a God who reigns over you to set you free from all that and brings a rule that liberates and makes you whole.
The rule of God can conquer the devil and his spirits! You no longer have to fear them or be in bondage to them, if you surrender to the kingdom of God. Philip=s call was not to be amazed, but to surrender to the ruler of the universe, who has power over all forces and he calls them to repent and come to God.
15. No grasping for power, or money! He wasn=t doing this for a living! He wasn=t trying to attract a following for himself in anyway. This probably gave him more credibility with these folks than his preaching, they had never seen anyone like this, who would preach just because they loved God. No hidden agendas, where it would cost you money or anything else like that.
How many times do we hear certain ones who may even preach well, or write well, but before they go very long they must say, send me your money? This loses credibility for allot of people, me included.
I=m not even saying that God doesn=t use the tool of TV, or the Internet, etc., to speak to folks, but why must we feel compelled to put pressure on folks to pay for it, or God won=t be available to you anymore? If God is for a particular ministry, using these tools to get the word out, it will be blessed to do so, without us using all kinds of tactics to get money for it.
Simon was a counterfeit, but they didn=t know he was until the real thing showed up. The people immediately see this is real this is what we need. Even Simon is said to have believed and was Baptized. However, as we go on we see he is challenged in what he believes, because maybe he believed a little more in the miracles than the Master Himself. Simon is amazed by the miracles as he follows Philip around. In other words, Simon is doing more watching than he is listening!
That=s a big flag to look at. The kind of belief that is generated by what we see in the flesh, instead of who our faith is directed toward. This happened to Jesus all too often. One time while going into Jerusalem we see the crowds placing trust in Jesus because of the miracles they saw, but it says, He did not put His trust in them because He knew what kind of faith they had and it wasn=t in Him, but in what they saw. He knows people will quickly applaud and even go after the spectacular, but in the end they will turn away from trusting in Him.
It=s a kind of faith where people are impressed with some outward thing that makes this huge impression on them, they like it and are attracted to it and want more of it, but when you challenge them to live deeper and trust more in Him than what you can see and feel, they often run away. Simon is there and it explains what follows starting in verse 18.
A18When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money 19and said, "Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit." 20Peter answered: "May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! 21You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin." 24Then Simon answered, "Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.@
What happened to the guy who in verse 13 believed and was baptized and then in verse 20 he is on his way to hell? He heard the right message and responded correctly, so what=s the problem? It doesn=t say, by the way that he wasn=t a Christian. Philip doesn=t say, I don=t think you=re Christian yet you better get rebaptized. No, he tells him plainly you had better repent and pray that God forgives you of this wickedness.
How can you go from being a Christian to being on the road to hell if you don=t change in your heart from the sin that is there? What=s his problem? It=s the same problem we all face folks. Just because you=re Christian doesn=t mean we automatically sever ourselves from all the old man we used to be. That=s why scripture says, yes you are acknowledging that you died to self right then and there, but Jesus says, you need to do it every day.
If you don=t take up that cross everyday and crucify your flesh, deny yourself, pretty soon that old self is going to find its way back on the throne. This is what happened to Simon when he sees Philip doing these things and even has ability to pass on power to others, this causes Simons old passions to arise in him, I want that, I want to impress folks like that, it=s been awhile since I felt that. It=s been a long time since I was at the center of the stage. I want that chance again! This time I=ll really be doing good, helping people.
In fact, you know if you could just market this just right, you could bring in allot of money doing this. The same old man he used to be is rising up in him; self-glorification. Even if you have been baptized, you know you still struggle with this, don=t you?
Notice how Philip responds to this. Philip is just repulsed at this! He sees his heart and how disgusting it is to think you can buy Gods= power just to advance yourself. He didn=t say, Simon I think you just don=t have some wrong perceptions about things, so lets just get together over coffee sometime and talk about it. He says you and your motive belongs in hell! He=s as blunt as he can be. Now, that would offend us now wouldn=t it?
What if the leaders of the church started using language like this to all those they know are not living as they should and have evil in their hearts, sin is leading the way and they say; you=d better repent of that because you belong in hell for acting this way. That sin deserves to go straight to hell, beg God to forgive you. Would you be offended? Maybe, the church needs to learn we need to get tough on some folks on their way to hell? You don=t be gentile with folks with ongoing sin that will take them to hell!
Playing church, just so we can get ahead in the world, will bring you down the same road as Simon is on. Folks, don=t look at others, lets be honest with ourselves. It is hard to get the love of money and the love of praise from people out of our lives. You can believe and be baptized and even go to church; you can even go to a Christian college and get degrees, but it=s still hard to get this out of our lives. It=s a daily struggle to kill that part of you that wants to be the center of it all.
Believing and being baptized is no guarantee we are winning that battle. Confrontation by a spiritual brother is no guarantee we are winning the battle. Philip says if you repent and pray, perhaps God will forgive you of this sin in your heart. Philip isn=t saying God is not willing to forgive, he is really wondering if Simon is willing to repent. It=s hard for you to get this ugliness out of there! I=ve got to tell you, I have no idea if Simon did.
His response sounds strange to me: AThen Simon answered, "Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.@ At first sight it almost sounds good, right? Philip said to Simon, You had better repent and pray and Simon says, no, you better pray for me. If I was told I was on the road to hell, I would want to pray myself, maybe ask others too, but I would do it.
He offers no confession at all here. He doesn=t say anything that sounds like he agrees with Philip. Philip, you=re right I have this nasty bitterness in me, I=m enslaved to it, help me please. I need to get my heart right, get my life right; he said none of that.
All he asks for is prayers to avoid any consequences that come from my sin. Pray that what you say can happen as judgment on my sin won=t happen. I think he is scarred, but I wonder if he=s headed down the road of salvation. How many of us, just want to escape judgment, and are not really willing to repent of much of anything we want to do? I think Simon=s sin is still alive and many are still playing church.
Conclusion: The rules of the game:
16. Simon says Gods power is more important than Gods presence! Simon says you need to know God; you need to know some religion. When you get to the end of your life and you=re going to meet God, you need to know some religion. All these folks who are disciplining themselves to get closer to God and going through all kinds of stuff to get closer; you don=t have to be that serious. It would really be cool to have Gods power, but not so much His presence.
17. Simon says, right actions are more important than right motives! If you=re doing some good deeds for folks, you can keep whatever you want in your heart. If you pull out some money, you don=t have to worry about what=s in your heart. The important thing is that you play the game. It=s important that you go to church, put your check in the plate, go through the motions; that=s what=s important to God.
As long as you do that you=re okay with God. I believe that America is facing this problem big time, as we have become this upper middle class society and we bring that into church with us. As long as we put money in the plate, or support some other good works, we don=t have to pay much attention to what=s in our heart. I think God would be more pleased with fewer big givers and more big believers.
18. Simon says your profession in life is more important than your profession of faith! He was going to go back to his same career with a little Christianity sprinkled into it. The church isn=t bad, it=s not church or business, it=s church and business, says Simon. Religion will help your career; you get allot of contacts there, looks good on the resume, helps you with your social standing and reputation in the community, so it=s a great thing to add to your life.
It helps you climb up the ladder, but don=t let it take up too much of your life, because if you do it will make the spiritual your priority instead of the material and you can=t get to the top that way. Be a nice little rich Christian at a nice rich little Christian church and everything will be fine.
That=s how you play the church edition of Simon says. Do you think it=s not still a popular game today? I think this game is hurting us more today than all the rest combined. Just pretend this message is for you and not the other ones listening. Be honest with yourself, in your heart where only God, you and the devil can go.
Why did you go to college? If you went to a Christian school they teach you the motto of the school is to prepare you for Christian service around the world, but why did you go, really?
Wasn=t there something that told you, maybe deep down, if not right out in the open; it was because you make more money? Going to college means more money.
How did you decide where you were going to live? You can go anywhere you want, any part of town or the country, etc. Did you let God show you where you could serve Him best and promote the kingdom the most, or was it because you went where you got the biggest offer. I=m not saying I=m opposed to big offers, by the way, I=m asking you what was it that motivated you in your heart to choose where you ended up?
This is a part of our lives more than we like to look at it, isn=t it? What about the part of town you choose to live in? I can serve God better and more here than over there? Or, this looks better for me in trying to promote myself? I=m just trying to get us to think about what really motivates us. Just because we believed and were baptized doesn=t mean all the material stuff that drove us before just takes a back seat and now God is in total control.
Parents, what are your goals for your children? I want them to be successful. What does that mean? What measure do you use to say this is success? If your kids come to you and say, I want to give my life fulltime to serving in the church as a career, what do you think, let alone say? You know many parents jump in and put a stop to that kind of thinking before it even comes out of their children=s mouths, and you know why don=t you?
Parents know you can=t make money in church work, very few ever do. Where do these ideas come from? Why does, how much money you make have anything to do with success?
When was the last time someone came up to you and said they saw something so real and so genuine in your life that they said, can I buy that? Are we that much different, that far removed from Simon? Are we those who really know what the Savior has and all else can=t compare no matter what the cost. It is hard to get love of money, praise, and power out of your life.
We will never be rich in faith until we do! AWhat does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but he loses his soul?@ Do we really know what real value is, or is it all measured by dollars. Are we so caught up in making profit, we can=t see real value, that which we can take with us when we go? Our God is asking us to go out to a world that is totally confused about what is truly of value and not be confused ourselves. We lift up the only real and lasting value any of us has when we lift up the name of Jesus.
We quit playing church and start being the church in every setting of life, no matter what happens around us.
The Road To Salvation Acts 8:25-40
Have you ever taken a trip that changed your life? A trip that changes the way you think about anything you do now? Maybe it has influenced the way you read your Bible? It changed the way you think about the church, fellowship, and missions. It changed your view of what our purpose is; it changed your life?
One fellow told the story after hearing this question of how he got sick of living on the streets of Brooklyn, NY. He was into everything drugs, thievery, and all sorts of nowhere type activity. One day he got the notion to get out, got on bus and ended up in Dallas. He started talking to this girl on the bus on the way down and she invites him to church when they get to Dallas. He never went to church before, but he doesn=t know anybody in Dallas so he goes with her.
The church treated him so well, he thought it must have been a put on of some kind; they were just acting, because no one acts like that in his experience. So, he went back there the following Sunday and found it wasn=t act. Long story short, he ends up accepting Christ and his life takes a turn, he finds a good job, and the church is even teaching him how to read, because he never learned before, so now he can read his Bible.
A trip changed his life; he was never the same again after this trip. A second thing that stands out if you meet this fellow is, it became natural for him to share his faith. He does not wait for you to ask him about God, he will come and ask you if you want to hear his story of how he became a Christian. He is an excited person because he was on a trip that changed his life.
I think that describes the eunuch, when he gets back to Ethiopia? He went on a trip that changed his life and you get the distinct impression he wasn=t going to wait for folks to ask how the trip went. That trip changed his life. He thought he was on the road to Ethiopia, but it really was the road to salvation.
Luke is bringing us to the third phase of how Christianity is becoming a worldwide universal religion. Step one was the Hellenistic Greek speaking Jews, chapter 6. Step 2 was the Samaritans in chapter 8, half Jews. Step three is this Ethiopian eunuch who is a Gentile, yet he is a proselyte to the Jewish religion. Step 4 will be Cornelius in chapter 10, a Gentile Roman soldier, who is a God-fearing man. Step 5 will be Paul=s missionary journeys to the Gentile world. That=s Luke=s process for telling how Christianity becomes a worldwide religion.
Acts 8:25-40, A25When they had testified and proclaimed the word of the Lord, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages.@ Peter and John went into many of these Samaritan villages, because of the preaching of Philip, he was a powerful evangelist. He is turning Samaria upside down preaching the gospel and Peter and John come to help those folks he=s converting.
A26Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Go south to the roadCthe desert roadCthat goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." 27So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. 29The Spirit told Philip, "Go to that chariot and stay near it." 30Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. "Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked. 31"How can I," he said, "unless someone explains it to me?" So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture: "He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the sheerer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 33In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth." 34The eunuch asked Philip, "Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" 35Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. 36As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?" 38And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. 40Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.@
Lots of things could be emphasized using this text, but I want to focus on how we can help folks find the road to salvation. To me the main lesson of this text goes against what many churches in our time have emphasized and that is the tendency for the church to focus inward. Most of our seminars, lectures, conferences, books, and ministries are focusing on us, with exceptions, of course.
We prepare and prepare and educate and when we=re called to put what we=ve learned into practice for the world, we some how forget what we=ve learned, we don=t seize opportunities God sends our way. We take care of ourselves, but others are not a priority. We talk about saving the lost all the time, preach about it, lessons, seminars, and in church classes, but have you noticed we do most of our talking about saving the lost, when the lost are nowhere around?
We don=t need more classes and preaching, and writing on evangelism, we need more evangelism. Then, after saying this, I always get, yeah, but Tony I always thought that how a person lives is more important than what he says. Listen, I=m a big proponent of living what we preach it=s extremely important, it=s vital. What I don=t like is what has become more of a theory I=ll call, Asilent evangelism@. We=ll win them with a Acup of cold water,@ without a word.
I=ve asked this question before and here I am again, when was the last time someone walked up to you and said, AI=ve been watching your life and I know you haven=t talked about it, but I must ask you, how do I become a Christian?@ Seriously, when was the last time that happened to you, or anyone you know? This text and many others teach us that faith doesn=t come by watching!
We have bought into this idea for some time now. Even seeker churches to a large degree have done so. We have done everything we can to get folks to come seeking what we have by getting them into our buildings. As they listen to our music and hear our pastor, they respond and that is not all bad, don=t misunderstand me. I don=t want us to stop doing what has more success than anything we have done for quite some time as a church. People are being saved and I=m grateful.
But, we still aren=t getting out of our buildings much and going to where the folks are. We bring them in so they can watch us and many are responding and we then can speak to them and that=s good, but many are still lost and dying that way, because they won=t come seeking and we=re not going out and seeking them.
However we do it, we are relying on it being done by folks coming and watching us and they come to faith that way. Even then, we must say something or they will remain lost. I know it breaks the ice big time and all that, but the Bible does not say faith comes by watching. This text tells us faith doesn=t come by watching. A church that doesn=t have an outsider focus has lost its focus. We need both! We need a church that seeks and a church that knows how to disciple, not one above the other.
You need 4 things to keep our focus:
19. There must be a speaker! Not someone to watch, but someone who must speak. God doesn=t start with the sinner; He starts with the talker, the witness! Philip has been converting folks in Jerusalem and is pushed out of there by persecution and he is having great success witnessing to the folks in Samaria, he=s converting them right and left. He=s a hugely successful evangelist in Samaria, but God isn=t concerned with what we call personal success; He calls him to the dessert road.
Let me tell you something folks, this is a hard thing to ask us to do, especially the ones who look at themselves as the professional preacher. Preachers don=t leave big churches to go preach in the wilderness to fewer folks! We don=t make moves like this today. Our American concept, which we have adopted, is we go on to bigger and better; go to bigger towns and bigger churches. Don=t ask me to leave the big and go out into the wilderness with only one or so folks.
This exactly what God tells Philip to do. You remember Jesus did this often too. He would be drawing huge crowds so He had trouble getting around and then He would say we need to go over here where they haven=t heard the word yet. Leave the folks Philip and go to the desert. And interestingly enough, Philip didn=t argue with God about that. Without hesitation he goes on a fifty-mile hike out into the desert.
Notice also, God didn=t tell him what to do, He just told him where to go. If you are a fully devoted follower of Christ, you don=t have to be told what to do, you know what God wants you to do. God never had to say, by the way if you run into anyone would you please tell them about my Son. He didn=t have to tell Paul, when you get to that new place, would you please, please, tell someone about your faith in my Son.
All God had to do was tell them where to go. At the end there it says he went to Azotus and a whole bunch of towns and preached Jesus. You didn=t have to tell what to do, just where to go.
So, he goes out to this desert road, think about that! Folks the word of God is paramount, but God doesn=t choose to get it into folks hands so they can teach themselves; God emphasizes the human teacher.
Now, I=ve heard of stories where some, very few have studied themselves to know the truth so as to be saved. But, I=ve never met those folks and mostly my experience has shown me that almost all folks had someone who brought the word to them and witnessed what they knew about the truth and that is what brought them to salvation. Maybe, there have been exceptions to this rule, but I bet it=s very few.
There=s a good reason for this by the way. The Bible says the natural man can=t understand spiritual things because the devil has blinded his mind to see the truth. If a person doesn=t have a human helper, the odds are stacked against him that he will become a Christian. The Eunuch had scripture, but he didn=t understand it. There=s got to be someone who speaks the word of God.
This also shows us once again the importance of one single soul in the eyes of God. It is so important to God, He tells Philip who is turning Samaria upside down, to go 50 miles out into the desert to talk to one man. Just because you may be preaching to masses of folks doesn=t mean you are more valuable to God than the one person who talks to one person at a time.
I happen to believe one on one witnessing is more powerful, because it=s more personal. It generally builds a deep connection between the 2 and discipleship is to a large degree enhanced by such a relationship. Sometimes in a crowd, even though many might respond, folks can fall through the cracks, or just choose not to go deeper and there=s no one there to spur them on to greater things. There must be a witness. You can model all you want and that is good, but faith comes by hearing!
20. There=s got to be a searcher! This guy was a searcher. We know this because he wouldn=t be in Jerusalem if he weren=t. What is an Ethiopian eunuch doing going all the way to Jerusalem to worship; he=s more than a little interested in Judaism? Actually, this was more common than many might think; many people were searching for truth back then.
They were disturbed enough by the loose morals of their nations and their worship of many gods; they could see this ridiculousness of cutting down a tree and with half they would use for fire wood and the other to make a god and bow to it. They new there was something very wrong with that kind of thinking and they were looking for more than that to give themselves to in this life.
He=s impressed with Judaism, because he sees a high moral standard and one God, who cannot be made with hands and that impresses him. He makes a 1200-mile trek to find out more; he is looking for something. How far will we go looking for truth today? Many won=t go 12 blocks to look for truth today. It takes 2 months for such a trip and another 2 to get home and it was long, hard work. He=s looking!
It=s also really encouraging to see an important man, a big shot, who is willing to admit he doesn=t have all the answers. He=s searching and it=s easy to see because of what it takes to do what he=s doing.
What do you do when you find a searcher? What does the text show us? You start where the searcher is. This is what Philip does. He doesn=t say, oh you need to know some other stuff first and then we=ll get to your questions. He says I can help with that. He expressed a desire to help the eunuch with his need. That=s why he=s invited onto the chariot. If someone is searching, start where they are, not where you want to start.
Recognize the validity of their search and say lets talk about that. You ever been on a campaign of any kind to try to find folks who might want to study with you, maybe a door-knocking campaign? I remember how I was taught to do this and we=d go knocking= on doors to see if someone wanted to study the Bible. I was taught how to study with folks, complete with charts and exactly where to go. I could take someone from the very beginning of Genesis and go all the way through the Old Testament to the Gospels and even take them to repent and be baptized in all of about 30-40 minutes.
I remember trying to teach on a number of occasions with those who wanted to study, we actually found some folks who wanted to. I remember feeling very frustrated, because I=d start and I=d put up the first chart and the person always wanted to know about other things, asking questions I had no idea how to answer and I always wanted to take them back to my charts, but rarely ever got through them, because I asked questions they weren=t interested in knowing the answers to. They never asked those questions, they wanted answers to other questions.
Many times what happened was, I found out the real reason they asked me to come into their home was because a short time ago someone real close to them had died and they were struggling with how God can let a fine man like that pass away? There were many like stories they were willing to share and they were asking questions, but I hadn=t charted those answers out. This is what they want to know.
You see, the church didn=t teach me to listen for questions, they taught me to answer some, before they were even asked. We got no instruction how to answer something like, why is there hurt in a world that a Good God made? That question just wasn=t on our charts, our methods of how to study the Bible with folks. I got frustrated with the person wondering what=s wrong with them that they won=t let me present my charts? They just must not be really interested in finding the truth.
The truth is, these folks weren=t being difficult, or unwilling to know the truth, I just didn=t know how to answer real questions that turn folks inside out and are searching for answers to. So many times I can remember where I want to go back and just try to struggle to find answers with someone who was hurting and truly wanted to know God in spite of what was happening in their lives. If I had just spent time even struggling with them, just be with them and in the end said something as simple as, even if we don=t know scripture says we need to trust Him.
It may make trying to put the truth into neat little capsules where we can systematically walk them through to our desired goal harder for us, but that=s where the person is at and that=s where you start.
You can=t chart this stuff, it=s real life questions and everybody=s starting in different places. We should have learned this from Jesus, He always started with the persons questions, started where they were and took them to the truth. Witnessing is not coming in and dictating that you will answer the questions you want answered, it=s about telling the truth you know about the question those who are asking ask.
I went on to hate going on these campaigns because I thought there=s something wrong with the folks, they just don=t want to know the truth. The problem was me, us, not them. If they are searching you begin where they are and build from there. As we see here in this text over and over the results of starting where they are is much more affective.
21. There must be a scripture! He came to Jerusalem looking and apparently he didn=t find it there, he=s still looking and our God wants him to find it, so he sends Philip. Jerusalem didn=t know what to do with Isa. 53. Who is this guy being led to slaughter, bearing our iniquities, etc.? Jerusalem didn=t know the answer.
It couldn=t be talking about the Messiah, because every good Jew knew the Messiah wasn=t going to be a suffering servant, but a conquering King! They didn=t know then what to do with Isaiah 53 and they still don=t.
The most commonly accepted interpretation among Jews today is that it stands for the nation of Israel. Has Israel suffered remaining in silence? Has Israel borne our iniquities and healed us of our wounds? Judaism has no good idea what to do with this passage of scripture. The problem is, when he went to Jerusalem looking for that answer, the eunuch, as Paul Harvey would say, didn=t here the rest of the story.
Luke is showing us here, that only the Christian can unfold the true meaning of the Old Testament, because he knows the rest of the story. Even though these are Jewish scriptures, the Jew can=t unfold these things because they refuse to see the rest of the story. In fact, they deny the rest of the story.
Did you know you could lead someone to Christ using the Old Testament? The Old Testament is full of descriptions of the Christ and what He would do for the people. Isaiah 53 is one of the best for some obvious reasons. Philip could answer the question because he came to know Jesus was the Messiah and that He would be the kind of Messiah scripture foretold, not that people had invented Him to be.
Now, if you=re going to do this, the lesson is obvious; you must know the scriptures to be an affective witness to those asking questions, seeking answers. You need to not run from the question an honest person is genuinely struggling with, but start there and lead them to faith in Jesus.
If you don=t know them start now and learn, so that you can share with those looking for answers. Don=t run from them if you don=t know now, stay with them and struggle through together, go on the journey with them, but find the answers they need and let them know you=ll do it together. The answers to some questions take time to find, because they aren=t as easy as a chart might suggest, but that=s okay, be with them until they find what they are looking for.
22. There must be the Savior! Philip started right there and began telling him the good news about Jesus! If you don=t tell them about Jesus, there is no good news to your teaching. The Gospel is not telling someone what they should be doing in church on Sundays, or talking about all the denominations that have sadly formed around us, it=s not telling they need to repent, or be baptized, or take the Lord=s Supper, etc.
Are these important questions and things for us to know about? Of course they are, or the writers of scripture wouldn=t have made sure we knew about them, but they are not the Gospel that saves.
If we emphasize things other than Jesus, we convert people to a religion and not to the Savior. You start by witnessing about the good news of Jesus! If folks come to believe He is the Savior and then He is Lord of their lives, then they will embrace anything He has commanded. You won=t have to argue with folks, should I be baptized, should I take the Lord=s Supper, should we preserve the unity of His body. When He is Lord they embrace them in their lives.
If you convert someone to a religion, you will spend the rest of your life debating!
Did you notice it was the eunuch who brought up the question of baptism here? Philip didn=t have to push it, or even bring it up as a command, he probably just mentioned it as the response many did who heard the preaching of Jesus from the Apostles, as he told the story of how Jesus rose and then came to them, they received the Spirit on Pentecost day and began preaching Jesus and this is how the church started, 3,000 repented and were baptized in the name of Jesus and that=s how I ended up coming to you.
The story spread, found me and I responded and here I am, telling you the same story. The eunuch never asks is it essential to salvation or not, can I be saved without it, he just says, here=s some water why not me? I=m ready to accept the story and believe and follow, just like all those you told me about, just like you. He heard the good news story of Jesus and how He was still working in folks lives as a risen Savior and what He asked them to do, as believers and he wanted in on it.
He submitted to Jesus! It wasn=t baptism that saved, or the Church that saved, it was Jesus who saved the eunuch. Those other things that directly relate to Jesus only find their power in Jesus. You can obey many commands and still not know Jesus and still not be saved. The Gospel is Jesus. There has to be the Savior!
Conclusion:
23. Let=s reexamine our Gospel. Have you put other things as your emphasis other than the Good news in your witnessing to others? The best way to answer that question is to ask yourself, what kind of preaching do I like to hear the most; that thrills my heart and moves me to want to hear more of?
Is it anything about Jesus? More than any other message, does the message that tells me something about Jesus grab my attention, more than any other? You see we are going to tell others what excites us, that=s how it works. If Jesus doesn=t excite you, you won=t talk about Him. We need to become a people who talk about Jesus more than anything else we talk about.
If we don=t our Gospel will be warped in some way.
24. Reexamine your people! This text points out Gods= involvement in our task. We are not accidents, who just happened to run into each other. The church is not folks who just by coincidence happen to be in our lives. God is involved in this whole thing!
Was it that Philip was just walking along and along came a chariot? Was it just a coincidence? This guy just happens to be reading from Isaiah 53, a coincidence? They get to talking and as they turn the corner there just happens to be a body of water, a coincidence? They=re in a desert and you come upon water deep enough to go down into, just a coincidence?
God is not an uninvolved spectator in our lives, He doesn=t just hope this man gets saved; He=s doing something about it. He doesn=t force anybody to decide to accept Him, but He will give opportunity to anyone searching. He will give us all a chance to know the truth and anyone who seeks will find!
So reexamine the folks you run across in your life. Has God placed them there so you can share the truth with them? Is it just an accident someone gets transferred here from some other place and you happen to have to build a relationship with them, do business, or work with them, or whatever with them, maybe neighbors, etc.? Maybe they never had any intention of living in your city or town, but by mere accident there they are, in your life.
Maybe it=s someone you=ve known for years, who you meet regularly, maybe to do business with, or recreate with, or whatever brings you together; is it just a coincidence they are there? You think it was an accident that that fellow from NY just happened to sit down by this Christian girl, out of all the others on the bus? Do you think maybe God was involved because He knew the man was looking for something? How many of us could he have sat next to and maybe he still wouldn=t be a Christian today? The people in your life are not accidents, but God is working so that none will perish, not one. We have some sharing to do!
The Change of a Lifetime Acts 9:1-9
Luke is going to take us to showing how the church becomes full-fledged missionaries to the Gentile world. Before he can do that he has to introduce the one man most responsible for doing this mission and that=s Saul of Tarsus. We know of course this is all done by Gods= work and power in his life. If you had to say who is responsible for making a little Jewish movement into a world religion, you have to say, Saul of Tarsus.
Now, we see the story of how Saul went from being very Jewish to being this great missionary to the world. It=s more than a story of how he changes from one base of knowledge to another; it=s a story of how his life was changed! Not only was his life changed, but also his whole time was changed and in a real sense, it=s a story of how the world was changed.
He starts to explain in the very first 2 verses, A1Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.@ So, what do we know from this?
First he starts by talking about someone he=s already mentioned. Luke talked about him in chapters 7 and 8. Steven was an interesting guy, because he was one doing what the early church and the Apostles did not. When the church began under the Apostles, it was strictly a Jewish church; it wasn=t until people like Philip and Steven that the church actually preached to the Gentiles, as Jesus had commissioned in the beginning. Start in Jerusalem, then Samaria, and then go out into the world, said Jesus, but not until these men did it happen.
These men were Greek speaking Jews and they went to Greeks and said Jesus is the Messiah. Well, what does that say about Israel then? If Jesus is the Messiah to all people, what does that say about the nation of Israel as a place? Maybe, Israel is not the only Holy land? What does it say about the Law? Maybe, it=s not the only way to God? What does it say about the temple? Maybe, the temple is not the only place to worship God? It was Philip and Steven who started preaching like this, not Peter, or the other Apostles.
Steven got into allot of trouble for doing this. He spoke in a synagogue where Greek-speaking Jews would come from all over including Cilicia, and that is where Saul is from. So, Saul, when he went to synagogue, he would go to this one where Steven was preaching. So, Saul comes and hears Steven preach a message that Judaism has been radically changed from what we knew by Jesus the Messiah.
You don=t have to be born a Jew to be a child of Abraham! That is titanic radical! The church just wasn=t ready for it. Up till now, they hadn=t had allot of persecution, but that=s about to change. They did get some from the Sadducees, because they didn=t believe in the resurrection, but most believed in the resurrection, so it didn=t go too far, yet.
When the Pharisees heard this new teaching that people who weren=t Jews could be brought into the kingdom of the Messiah; they just couldn=t handle that. Saul couldn=t handle that for a long time and he helps to murder Steven for this very reason. One thing Steven and Saul agreed on, was these two systems can=t be joined together. Steven says the new is to replace the old and Saul says, the old is right and the new must be done away with.
Saul didn=t like what his elder told him, Gamaliel, remember? He was too moderate in his approach for Saul. Gamaliel says, don=t persecute these people. If what they are doing is from God we=ll be fighting God, if it=s not it will just die. Saul just couldn=t be that patient and temperate, no way, let=s exterminate these guys, let=s wipe them out. In chapter 8 we see Saul began to destroy the church. He dragged off men and women and put them in prison and he even tortured them.
Saul didn=t want the message to spread to all the people, but when he persecuted the church this way that is exactly what happened. Many fled to other places and Saul wasn=t content to just give Jerusalem Christians a hard time so he pursues them even to Damascus. Saul appeals to the high priest to go get any who fled from Jerusalem and now preaches this new way and brings them back to put them in jail. The Sanhedrin loved it when Saul showed up! They were looking for guys like this to help get rid of this sect.
Why do you think Saul hated the Christians so much? They weren=t bad people for the town or society; they were good folk. They didn=t break any laws, the kept them. They weren=t hurting people; they were helping people. What was it about them Saul couldn=t stand?
You see, Saul believed the Pharisaical teaching that if the people don=t believe in the law the way they teach, that will delay the Messiah=s coming. They believed in the coming Messiah and the kingdom of the Messiah, but they had this notion that they could delay the coming of the Messiah. Since he wants the Messiah to come and set up the kingdom as he thinks, he must stop these folks or the Messiah may not come.
The Pharisees had several theories of what to do with this Gentile problem when the Messiah comes. Some believed all Gentiles would be killed. Others believed all Gentiles would become slaves of the Jews, which was a popular theory. Then there were those with the radical notion that God would conquer the Gentiles with the Love of God and the two shall live together as one people. Saul couldn=t stand that theory.
There was no room in his theology or his heart that Gentiles could be in the kingdom of the Messiah. Now, all the Christians were saying this, that=s why they all have to be stopped. He told leaders of the Romans, as well as the Jews that he felt compelled, he had to stop them, and it was the right thing to do.
You know it=s interesting about us sometimes, how we can be convinced we are so right, yet something inside us keeps nagging at us a bit, just little doubt pains,
even though we are so sure we=re right. You remember Jesus will say to Saul, Saul it is hard to kick against the goads.
Jesus actually told Saul, I know you have some pain over all this, why do you keep insisting on doing? You can=t hide your doubts from me, why do keep doing this, even though you are busy trying to convince yourself it=s the right thing to do. It bothers you to hurt folks like you are, but you keep doing it anyway.
You see such a journey as Saul is on wasn=t all that pleasant and Saul had much time to think on his own. He was a Pharisee, so he wouldn=t walk with just ordinary folks, he walked by himself, so lots of time in the hot sun, walking and thinking. Maybe, Jesus knew his debate with himself over the justice of the Law? The Christians were saying the Law wasn=t enough; you have to have the Spirit of God as well. The law may tell what=s right, but it has no power to move you to do it, to live it.
Maybe Saul didn=t like hearing it, but maybe he knew deep down they were right about allot of things? He explains in Romans 7 how he can will to do the right thing, but then he knows he can=t do it. I can=t do what I really want to do and I find myself doing that which I don=t want to do. Saul knew that externally he stood blameless before the Law, but internally he knew he was not a peace. He knew he was a sinner just like all the rest, even though he looked good on the outside and people were giving all kinds of accolades for it.
We=re not sure exactly what was pricking at him, but Jesus said, something was. The Christians were saying there is a problem with following law to save you and Saul was saying on the inside, I know that=s true.
Maybe Saul thought about Jesus a little on that road? He was a real historical person and even he knew that and wasn=t denying it. They may have wanted to say He wasn=t the Messiah, but no one could deny He did some incredible things. How many times had Saul on his journey gone to some place and maybe was asked what he was doing? Maybe, he we tell them he is on his way to Damascus to persecute those who believe in that name? And maybe, some had said, you mean Jesus? You don=t believe in him too do you? No not really, but I got to tell I think He was a good man.
I saw Him cause this young girl to get up and walk, she=d been unable to all her life, and I don=t know what all that means, or who He is, but He=s a good man, I know that. Don=t you know he heard many of these kinds of stories, probably hundreds of them? Saul of course denied Jesus= claims, but it was very difficult, impossible to deny His power. If He wasn=t the Messiah, then who was He? Saul couldn=t answer that one.
No doubt another thing that wore on Saul, were these people he was persecuting. These folks he was dragging off to jail, etc, were they bad people? These were some of the best folks he had ever met. Were they lawbreakers, no, they kept the law. They also had the peace that Saul hadn=t found. How do you explain that, Saul?
I think also, the thing Saul never quite got out of his mind was Steven. In chapter 6 where it talks of how Steven taught the scriptures, even how he explained Jesus was the Messiah, it said he did it with such wisdom and Spirit that nobody could withstand him. That included Saul. This brilliant scholar who was held up by all the leaders of the Jews, could argue anybody without fail, until Steven showed up.
Then of course, how do you explain the way Steven died, if he=s a bad man? I have to kill this man, but the last thing I hear him say is, Lord forgive them; please forgive them. I=m telling you Saul had allot on his mind and of course Jesus knew it. He=s been kicking against the goads, Jesus told him. How could he go on and do what he did with all those things nagging on him? Only one answer could explain it. Jesus had been crucified!
There=s no way He could have been the Messiah, because He=s dead. The law clearly says, any man who dies on a tree is cursed. I don=t know how to explain who He is, or how He did what He did, I have to admit His followers are good people, but they believe a lie, and as long as they progress this lie, the real Messiah will never come. Lots of things I don=t understand, but I have to stop it, because there is no way a dead carpenter from Galilee can be the Messiah. That=s why he=s on his way to Damascus.
He thought he was on the road to Damascus; he had no idea he was on the road to become of follower of Jesus the Christ. There are 3 qualities to have if you=re going to be a disciple:
25. Verse 3-4 says, A3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?@ Now, lets not think all folks get converted like this, in a split second on a road to some place. People aren=t converted until they know the truth about Jesus and he knew the truth. A long time before he ever went down this road he knew the whole story of Jesus, His teachings, the gospel of Jesus.
He had to argue against, and you can=t do that without knowing allot about it. He=s walking in the day and this light is brighter than the sun and it has the affect of knocking him down on the ground. That=s a good place to be to meet Jesus! Too many meet Jesus standing up with their chest sticking out!
Best place to meet Him is flat on the ground. The voice calls out and says, Saul, Saul! Now, in Luke=s writing anytime Jesus says your name twice, you=re in trouble. Martha, Martha, Simon, Simon, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem; if He says your name twice, you=re in trouble. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? The first step to salvation is a realization of sin.
Saul knows he is doing something God thinks is wrong. Jesus didn=t say you are persecuting my disciples, why are you doing it to me? Jesus is the head, we are the body, and everything goes through the head.
This is Paul=s first taste of this teaching he will later write a great deal about, that when you do something to the body, the head knows about it and feels it all. You can=t separate that connection.
Saul knows he=s doing something wrong! Notice, you can be moral; Saul was moral. You can be sincere; Saul was sincere. You can be religious; Saul was more religious than all of them. You can be all this and more and still be stained with sin. You don=t become a follower of Christ with your chest out and telling Him you=re a good person; you fall down on your face, because you know you=re a sinner in need.
26. Verses 5-6 say, A 5"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. 6"Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.@ Why do you think Saul called Him Lord? It=s the middle of the day, sun is bright and a brighter light actually knocks you down, what are going to think? He knows it=s from God, but he doesn=t understand what this is all about, or what he=s doing wrong.
He knew this was from God, but until Jesus introduces Himself, I don=t think he knew it was Jesus. When he heard those words, the thunder on the outside didn=t even begin to compare to the thunder on the inside of his heart. How do I tell you how big this must have felt? All your life you think something is absolutely right and in a split second you now know it was dead wrong! You are the one who has been wrong for so long, how does that feel?
He can=t be the Messiah because He=s dead and in the flash of a light, He is alive! Let me tell you something folks, there=s all kinds of people today who are wrong about many long held beliefs they believe are absolute truth and need to see a flash of light and see they are wrong and always have been. The second quality of discipleship is recognition of Jesus.
People need to see Jesus alive, He is Lord, and He is who claimed to be. Therefore, if anything is absolutely right, our only absolute truth must reveal it to us. He is the truth, there is none anywhere else, and He will guide you into all the truth. I don=t care how long you have believed certain things, if He doesn=t endorse it as absolute truth, it isn=t! He is our Lord, not tradition, or religion, etc.
I=m not sure I know how to communicate this so you=ll really understand me. I think factually you understand Jesus was raised from the dead; it=s one of our bedrock doctrines. We sing about it, we talk about it allot, even quiz ourselves with the question is Jesus raised from the dead. You see when the light flashed in Saul=s life that Jesus is alive; he knows he will have to alter his entire life. It changes everything!
That=s the recognition of Jesus I=m talking about; when I say it=s a quality of a disciple. A disciple is someone who totally restructures their life when they find out who Jesus really is. Life doesn=t go back to normal, what you once were. This revelation changes everything in your life.
You never look at anything the same again, you don=t think of it the same, and you now take your marching orders in all your life from your new Lord. Jesus is everything!
27. Verses 7-9 say, A7The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.@ Why did he do that? Why Damascus, why no eating, or drinking? Jesus told him to go to the city and wait until I tell you what to do.
The third quality of discipleship is a resolution of obedience! In Acts 22:10 we see Saul asked Jesus something not recorded here, A10"'What shall I do, Lord?' I asked. "'Get up,' the Lord said, 'and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.@ What do you want me to do? This becomes the new language of the disciple, what am I to do Lord.
He didn=t say, hey what about my sight, I can=t even see? He didn=t say, you do something about my eyes and I=ll do what you say. For three days all he thought about was, what does Jesus want me to do? He couldn=t eat or drink, because it all came flooding in what he believed, what he did, and now, what does He want me to do?
People come to us today all the time and say things like; I am going to quit doing this or that if he=ll let me be His disciple. I=ll give up smoking, or drinking, maybe fishing on Sunday so I can go to church, when I become His disciple. First off, often time what we promise in those settings is stuff we have thought about quitting already anyway.
If you want to be a disciple, you only promise AONE@ thing, just one; you promise Him, you=ll do whatever He wants. I promise you, if you do that and mean it, if the light has flashed and you know He is Lord of your life, He will get the message to you of what He wants you to do! Promise to do whatever He asks you to do, is how a disciple talks. Surrender to His Lordship!
Listen, I have people come to me allot almost in tears saying, how come I can=t quit doing this or that, nothing seems to change when I say I believe, I don=t feel anything different, I just keep doing things the same as before, how come; isn=t it supposed to be different?
I=ve even known those who have gone through the motions of Christianity for a long time and finally get so frustrated because they feel it=s just a game they have been playing and basically they just talked themselves into doing this religious thing, but there was no real change, no big difference, so they end up leaving the church, and live some sort of numb to life, others have turned to atheism.
I feel for those who come with those frustrations of feeling there=s nothing there, why don=t I change?
Folks, who are you following, who are you listening to, who is your Lord? Do you believe He is alive and if so, are you asking, what do AYou@ want me to do Jesus, not what does my church say, or what do my parents say, or friends; have you surrendered your will to His?
That=s what Saul does here! He doesn=t ask for any conditions, he simply obeys and tells these men to take him to the city. When he left he thought he was going to conquer this city from the disciples, instead he is conquered and becomes a disciple. He gave the order to kill Steven and now, God is going to tell him, you take up where Steven left off. You=re going to be my voice to the Gentiles.
It=s kind of funny how God does this. He killed someone who was preaching to the Gentiles and now God says, you take his place. We don=t know where God may send us in our lives, but I think often it=s to places we didn=t want to be in when we were there. I didn=t want the life I was living when I met Jesus on my road to Damascus. I didn=t want the life of drugs, promiscuity, and rock and roll I was neck deep in. I had enough of where it was taking me, I saw the dark hellish side of it all, and the emptiness and destruction it brought, not only to my life, but everyone around me.
I knew there had to be more to life than this, because I saw where that all ended. When I finally said no more, I want Jesus, He sent me to those very people I wanted to be free from. Now, don=t misunderstand, he didn=t send me there right away. I needed to get my new sea legs, just as Paul did. Jesus spent some time training Paul and He did me too. I needed time to grow up in Jesus before He said, talk to this one and that one.
At first I didn=t want to talk to drug users, drunks, people whose god really was their music, and those who were involved in every sexual perversion that kind of life leads to. I grew to hate those sins, because of what it had done to me and others I have known, and even my own father who was an alcoholic all my life. But Jesus said, you can talk to them; you certainly know how they think and how they live, go talk to them. I didn=t want to, but how can I say no to my Lord?
I think of Saul, soon to be Paul, go talk to the church about what I have told you to do, Jesus told him. Paul, but Lord, I treated these people ugly, I even killed some of them, tortured them, you know what I did, how can I go tell them anything? You know he struggled with that, but he eventually went as he was commanded to. Was he treated well? Not at first, they were afraid of him, I=m sure he got some looks and words, lots emotions swirling around you could cut with a knife, but he went and experienced it all.
Same here, I would go and talk to people who were being influenced by that whole lifestyle and they didn=t accept me openly, many words and emotions expressed. Even though I wasn=t able to convince many of the ones I grew up with to come to Jesus, they now accept that I have and know this is who I am now.
When I see them now, they know I=m different and still want to know what=s going on in my life, where has my belief taken me? It usually doesn=t last too long, but it=s there.
I have been able to speak into some folk=s lives that I didn=t grow up with though about many of these things. I have helped people battle some of these addictions to a dark lifestyle that ends badly.
Today, I can relate to many who come saying I do this or that and I can say I understand that enslavement, it doesn=t shock me or scare me away, I can talk about it and Jesus wants me to talk to folks about all these things.
Conclusion: Do you begin to see how all this relates to us today?
28. Great cost demands a great Christ! Do you think you gave up allot when you became a follower of Christ? Think about what Saul of Tarsus gave up! Why would he make such a change? He decides that what he has to give up doesn=t compare to what he=s going to gain.
Phil. 3:4-8 tells us what Paul gave up, A4though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. 7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more; I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ.@
What did he give up? He was as high as you can get in the Jewish order. He was a Pharisee, member of the Sanhedrin, the highest council in the Israel. No one was recognized as more zealous, no one came close; he was the one in that nation. Money, prestige, power and influence, what more could you want?
Paul says I gave it all up, for the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ. Paul says, when I get to thinking about it, all that stuff is rubbish. So, let me ask you, what is keeping you from becoming a wholehearted disciple of Jesus? It=s exactly the same issue that Saul is deciding about.
Too many of our people in our churches are still struggling to see the resurrected Christ and surrender their lives to Him. They still haven=t had a life-changing encounter with Jesus and so they still won=t let go of those things that Jesus would have told them long ago to come away from it. When you really see who Jesus is, all this other stuff we think is so important, we now see is rubbish!
A great cost demands a great Christ. I=m not saying there is no cost, neither is Paul. What I=m saying is the gain of Christ is so much greater. Whatever it is that=s keeping you from surrendering your life and obeying him as lord; maybe it=s your career, lots of money and recognition, and certain lifestyle, everybody looking up to you?
You=ve got the best kids, great grades, and athletes, on every league around, becoming stars, so you must make sure they are on the best programs and best training available, which takes a huge priority from you, money and time, but it all looks so good.
I talk about these things because how can we make a strong argument that we need to quit our addictions to drugs, booze, or perversions, and other sins, while we hang to the Lord=s of our lives? Saul had to give up being the biggest mover a shaker in the nation and when he looked at it seriously in view of Christ, he said you know what? It=s all rubbish; it=s dung! Jesus changes everything!
29. Great deliverance demands a great perseverance! We talk allot about the perseverance of the saints, but we don=t talk nearly enough about the perseverance of God. Can=t you see how great a deliverance it was for Saul? Everybody else had given up on Saul. There were no Christians knocking on his door trying to tell him the gospel.
God had not given up on Saul! We underestimate the patience of God all the time. He doesn=t give up on people as quickly as we do. There are people in your church who if you knew them 5 years ago, 10 years ago, you would have said, there was no way they would be a follower today.
We just don=t know that much about the perseverance of God. When God wants a man or woman, He is relentless! God specializes in making change! Paul says this about his conversion in 1 Tim. 1:15-16, A15Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinnersCof whom I am the worst. 16But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.@
Jesus came to save sinners and I was the biggest one of all, and why did God show mercy to me? = So that you could see the example of Gods= patience. He also, wants us to see He wants even me, He wants you too and He is very patiently working to bring you to receiving Him unto eternal life.
I think God is saying in all this, there are many, even among the religious churchgoers, how long until you see the light? You could be sitting in church every week, faithfully attending, but you still haven=t surrendered to Him as Lord. But, He is calling and He is patient with you. Of course He calling those who don=t know Him and is patient with them, but I see in Saul, how patient God is with many of us who think we have been so right for so long and He is saying it=s time for you to surrender and make Him Lord of your life.
You=ve come some of the way, but it=s time to give it all away in view of the surpassing value of Christ and see where He will take you. You can only go so far on your own, by your own strength and might. You can clean up some of your life, progress in society, become reputable, a good person in the eyes of most, but still be shackled by many plaguing sins and inside you a frustrated about it all and can=t understand how come you can=t get rid of that stuff.
God is patient. He=s waiting and working for you to see Jesus for who He really is and become a disciple that surrenders his will to saying, what do you want me to do Jesus! He=s waiting patiently for us all.
From Brother To Brother Acts 9:10-17
Now, remember Luke is telling the story to Theophilus of how this tiny movement of 120 people in Israel became such a worldwide movement in 4 short decades that, it came to the attention of the Caesars. How can such a phenomenal thing happen?
Of course, it=s all by Gods= power and specifically as we=re seeing, it is God behind some dynamic leadership. Particularly it is God working through 2 men, Peter and Paul. Luke is showing how God through these 2 men accepted this worldwide call of God to go into the entire world with the message of Jesus. Here, we=re seeing how God went from Israel to the Gentiles. How did a Jewish movement with Jewish leadership, go into a worldwide movement?
We have talked quite a bit about Peter and Paul, but not much about Ananias. It=s interesting how God does things; how big is Ananias= role? Would there have been a Paul without him? His name means, AGod is gracious.@ Is that a coincidence? There=s no greater example of Gods= grace than in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus the persecutor of Christians.
Saul is sitting there thinking, praying, fasting and someone comes and says, someone is here to see you and his name is God is gracious, that had to say something. You may not know Ananias much, but we need to look at a fella who went from obscurity to changing the life of a man who would go on to change a church that would change the world. God reached down into his life just for a few moments and big things happened.
Acts 9:10-17, A10In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, "Ananias!" "Yes, Lord," he answered. 11The Lord told him "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight." 13"Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name." 15But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. 16I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." 17Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the LordCJesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming hereChas sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.@
Let=s talk about this notion of transformation. Can people really change? Really? This change here is so radical; that it=s hard to find it=s equal. Paul said of himself, I am the worst of sinners! Nobody you know has changed as much as this guy did. I believe only the power of God can change a life like this, but many don=t agree.
There are many in our world today that tell us we don=t need God to change our lives. Allot of folks say, education can change a person. If you can just educate many who can=t get it where they are, they will live more powerful and successful lives. The truth is, too many times all education does is make us smarter wicked people. Education is no guarantee their life will really change, maybe circumstance, but not the life.
Many folks believe the reason we have prisons, is to reform people who are criminals, bad folks, who just need a break. Yet, our stats say the majority of those who go there, upon leaving they end up back there.
I big industry today is these seminars where these folks teach others to think positively about themselves and this changes your life. If you just pay $500 and hear someone tell you to say over and over I can do it, I can do it, I can do it; this will radically change your life. I=m all for positive thinking by the way and so is God, we beat on ourselves way too much and he is busy lifting us allot. Allot of space in scripture is given to tell us who we are and what He has done for us to lift us out of the darkness of this world!
But, just disciplining yourself to say positive things isn=t going to change you if you haven=t really changed. A basketball player who goes home and doesn=t shower after practice can tell himself over and over he doesn=t stink and will that work? No, he still stinks! Thinking positively isn=t going to change him; he needs a shower.
Our whole system of consumerism is based on this notion that if you just did this, or have that; you will change. If you become a part of this company, or buy into what they offer, or just buy this toothpaste, then your life will change. I=ve attended sales seminars and I heard what they say to get folks to go out and sell, sell, sell. Amazing, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it, they pump themselves up to generate enough momentum to get out there and talk to the next guy. You can convince the next one that they need this thing to live better. Well, I never got it and that=s no doubt why I=m not in sales.
How many things do we present to ourselves with the underlying notion, that if we just have this, AIT Will Change You Life!@ Here I am 56+ years old now, and I=ve spent countless hours study Gods= Word thinking it would change my life and others, and all I really need was to buy some cologne and my life would change. Now, I=m a big supporter of capitalism, I do know folks who need to buy some cologne, maybe some nicer cloths, etc., but what I=m getting at is we need to see folks really do need to change!
Changing our externals is not what really changes us. These are just trying to treat symptoms, but man=s problem is much bigger than that. Our fundamental problem is that we are born with a nature corrupted by sin. We are twisted up inside and if we don=t do something about that, we just mask symptoms.
Jesus told Nicodemus, AYou have to be born again!@ He went on to say, AYou shouldn=t be surprised that I said, you must be born again!@ Look at all the stuff we try doing; they don=t work! Why does it surprise us for God to say, what you really need is a new nature? Jeremiah said, can an Ethiopian change his skin, can a leper change his spots? How can you who are accustomed to doing these things become good?@ You can=t do this on your own! You can=t change the color of your skin, and you can=t remove the spots.
Paul will go on to say, Aif anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation!@ Only God can really change a person. This isn=t just a doctrine he presents, it=s his life, and he knew it. He knew what being born again was.
Now, we=re all probably there with this, we believe that. But, what we struggle with is did you really know God uses human agents to change people=s lives and always has? He maybe could have chosen another way to change folks, but that is not what He chose. He chose you to change someone else=s life. Jesus knocked Saul down to the ground on the road to Damascus, why couldn=t He just continue to do the job that way? He goes to Ananias and says you have to go to Saul. Why, you were doing good, why me?
God needed a man to go to help change Saul=s life, that=s what God does. 2 Cor. 5:17-20, A17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.@
You are a new creation in Him and guess what now? God did the changing through Jesus, but now God is giving you the message that reconciles people to God, God is making His appeal to man to change through His new creation; You! You take the message that in Jesus God is removing sins and you go out and implore folks, literally, beg them to let Him change you and that is Gods= plan to change people=s lives!
The problem is not that God doesn=t have the power to change folks, the problem is too many of us don=t see ourselves as His mouth pieces, His ambassadors, people that God is using as indispensable parts of the plan to bring change to the world. He can=t and won=t do it another way. It=s His plan! You are the change agent! It isn=t going to get done if not through you.
Why are we so silent about this news that people can change? Maybe, it=s because we=ve talked about it as though it was some kind of penalty for being saved? A negative side affect of becoming a Christian is you have to talk about Jesus to others. I=ve got some good news and I have some bad news. The goods news is forgiveness of sins and heaven, but the bad news is, until you die you have to be an ambassador. You ever heard us talk like this, or is it just me?
Did Paul speak of it as a negative a penalty? Paul calls it a gift! God has given us this huge gift. He later says God didn=t even entrust this job to His angels! He gave it to me, to us. The honor of helping God change lives. That=s what Ananias was and even though a bit hesitant at first, he was willing to be Gods= man. God uses people to change lives.
Notice 3 three about Ananias that he realizes; Let=s be like him:
30. He realizes he was available! He was living his life and all of a sudden he hears God say his name. You=re there alone, nobody else hears, just you. What do you do? He said, yes, lord! He didn=t start an inquiry into who could be speaking to him. Most of us would wouldn=t we? We=d be so surprised God was talking to us, we would say, it can=t be. This says something about Ananias.
We get so caught up in our everyday lives and maybe even what we have committed ourselves to, He would be the last one we would expect to hear from. Yet, it seems that=s when God shows up most of the time. We say, I know I should being doing more for the Lord, but I=m so busy, and that=s right when He calls us, but we have trouble hearing Him, because we=re wrapped up in other things.
God doesn=t call folks who aren=t busy. Did you notice this every time He called someone? Moses was tending sheep, the disciples were mending nets, Luke was a physician and on and on, everyone had lives and stuff that needed to be done. God calls busy people. God doesn=t call folks who have nothing to do, so when He calls they say, well, I=ve nothing else to do, so I guess I=ll do something for God.
Yes, they are busy, but not so busy they can=t hear Him when He calls. I=m telling you, even as busy as we are, if you pray God show me who you want me to touch today, speak to today, minister to today, I promise, He=ll do it. He will make it clear to you, however He does it, it will be there in you, between Him and you, if you would just be available to Him He=ll call. You can still be available, even though you=re busy; be ready for His call.
31. He realized he was acceptable! I hear you Lord, I=ll do whatever you ask. Are you sure you will do what I ask? Yes, lord! Okay, do you know where Straight Street is? Sure do Lord. You know where Judas lives on that street? Sure do Lord, I know him, good man. I want you to go visit with someone at his house for me, will ya? Sure will Lord! He=s from Tarsus. Okay, I=m with you. His name is Saul.
Oh, wow Lord, you probably haven=t heard about this guy yet. Lord, he has caused allot of harm to your church. In fact Lord, did you know, he=s coming here to capture disciples and drag them off to jail and who knows what?
Isn=t funny how we feel compelled to tell God things as though He doesn=t know it? What=s cool about all this is, even though Ananias is fearful, nervous at the request of God, God still accepts him. Oh man, Lord, this talking to others about Jesus thing is scary stuff. Oh, yeah, join the club! God can still use you in your fear. Being afraid of what God calls us to, doesn=t disqualify us from doing it. We can talk allot about how to conquer our fears and that=s not all bad, but this disciple goes in spite of his fear.
He will be Gods= ambassador even with his fear. Some of Gods= best soldiers were drafted, still are. Just because when the message came and you didn=t volunteer for it, and God taps you on your shoulder and says go here and you were afraid, doesn=t mean you are unacceptable. Obedience to the call of God shows us something. Real obedience to the Lord is seen when; we hear the call and then go do what we really don=t want to do.
Let me show you how obedient my kids are, Hey, Johnny I know it=s past your bed time, but I want you to go to the fridge and get a big bowl of ice cream and go watch cartoons way past your bed time and he goes and does it.
What does that really tell us? Do you think maybe he wanted to do that already anyway? Now, if he=s watching cartoons already and then you say, time to go to bed now and he did it without fussing, now that=s obedience. I would be impressed if I saw that. I would probably believe that miracles really are alive and well on planet earth. That=s what obedience really is, do what at first you didn=t want to do.
You remember Jesus came to these harden fishermen and even after they had beaten themselves up all night trying to catch fish, when Jesus said, I want you to go out there and drop those nets again, and they went. Oh, they didn=t want to at first, but they did it anyway, because of who asked them to. Peter explains to God what he thought He didn=t know, Lord I was born on this sea, fished it all my life, and I=ve been at it all night and I=m whipped, I didn=t even catch one fish, BUT! But, because you asked to, I will!
Peter didn=t say, oh boy, I=m glad you asked me to this Lord, glad I got the chance to serve you today Lord. No, I really don=t want to, but you said so, so I will. That=s obedience! Jesus told a parable once saying, there were 2 sons and the father went to the first and said, son I want you to go into my vineyard and work there today. The son said, wow! Am I glad you asked me to do that father, I will gladly go and then he said, the son didn=t go even after he said he would.
The father goes to the second son and says, son I want you to go into the vineyard and work today and the son says, no, I don=t want to go, find someone else to do that work, I don=t want to. Then after a little time went by the son began to feel remorse for speaking to his daddy that way and he felt so bad he went and worked in the vineyard. Jesus said, which one did the will of the father?
You don=t measure obedience by talking about it allot and thanking people for the opportunity, you measure by who does it, even if they don=t want to. Jesus says, go and be my ambassadors, will you help me change people lives and what=s our response? Oh we talk about it, we pray about it, and we sing songs about it, but when it comes down to doing it, somehow we don=t find our way to the vineyard.
A good ambassador is not somebody who is never afraid. You=re good when you obey in spite of your fears. He accepts Ananias and He needs you too.
32. He realized he was accountable! He didn=t say, I know you want me to do this Lord and the first time my business takes me to straight street, or that side of town, I will have to go and see Saul. No, this text shows us he immediately went and did what God asked. Notice also, God always sends the ambassador to the sinner!
He does not say, I want the leaders to build a building and get the word out we=ll be here for any who come this many times a week and somehow they will come to us. No, God always sends us to the sinners.
Think about this from where Ananias is now. God has just asked you to go see the man, you hate. He=s the man who arrested some of your friends and you haven=t heard from them since. Maybe, he=s even reached some of your own family and tortured them. You know he=s in your town to find you and drag you off to who knows where, or what. God says, help me change this man.
What do you think Ananias is thinking as he=s walking down that street? You ever heard the story of the capture of Ikeman, the Nazi headman who was the mastermind behind the killing of over 6 million Jews? Through many sources, they finally tracked him down after the war and found him in Argentina. The Israeli secret forces went in and captured him to bring him back to stand trial for his war crimes. You know what was the hardest part of the whole mission for these men? It was not all they had to do to go kidnap him; it was how they had to keep him alive for over a week, before they could get him out of Argentina. All they wanted to do was kill him, but they were told to keep him alive!
That was a hard job and they didn=t love him one second. The hardest part was to just not kill him. The story needs to be told, the world needs to know, and you must keep him alive so it can be told. Here=s Ananias, and God says, when you see him he will be blind. That means he is totally vulnerable! He can=t see what=s coming and there won=t be anything he can do about it. He hears the footsteps come into the room and someone comes and puts his hands on him!
He hears 2 words, Brother Saul! What=s that say to you? That tells me that Saul was not the only one who changed that day. Ananias changed big time that day. This story tells me that if you have unkind people in your life, people who have treated you poorly and you have grown to hate even the mention of their name; don=t tell me you can=t help them to change, not if you say He is your Lord and I will obey Him. This story says, we can and must be willing to help whoever God calls us to.
Are you ministering to the Saul=s of the world?
Conclusion: Application
33. We must see what our enemy can be! Ananias hasn=t done that yet. He said, but, but, he=s a murderer! He=s evil lord. We don=t want to reach him; we want to hurt him. God says, Ananias, I have chosen this man! He=s going to be a messenger for me; he=ll go to the Gentiles and to kings, and even the people of Israel. He=s going to be so important to the church, but Ananias hadn=t seen that.
We=re all the same! All we see is the bad can=t see past it. We never stop to think, what if God changes this person? We have to learn to get ourselves to see, what can they be if God changes them? Could they too become an ambassador for Christ? How exciting would that be?
34. Be what your enemy can see! Saul couldn=t see with his eyes, but he saw with his heart. When the very man Saul had come to hurt, put his hands on him and said, brother; Saul didn=t need to see him to see how good a man he was.
Maybe this is why God uses people to be his ambassadors? How better to show the world He really does have transforming power, than to send someone who has been transformed? The strongest argument for God is not to win debates and arguments; it=s to see someone who has really changed.
Have you really changed? Have you only dealt with symptoms, or have you let Gods= power reshape your life? Let me tell you something. You can=t preach what you=re not living. Have you allowed Him to transform your mind and your life? Ananias was willing and what a result. Saul is no more Saul, but now the name we know almost as precious as our Lord=s name, Paul! He still wants to change the world and He just may do it through you. Are you willing?
Burying the Past Acts 9: 18
I enjoy watching a good game, by good I mean, where the teams are going to challenge each other and are not dominating one over the other. I know coaches want to win and win big, but as someone who does love to watch a good game I love the right down to the wire kind of game. You just don=t know who is going to hold on to the end. Blowouts are not very enjoyable to me, even if I am for one team more than the other; it=s kind of boring. There may be highlight scenes out of them, but if one team is so much superior to the other, it shouldn=t surprise or dazzle anyone that highlights occur.
I enjoy a good game, but in the end, it=s just fun to watch, in the grand scheme of things folks, it=s just a game and really doesn=t matter much. But, there are areas of our lives where we don=t want or enjoy not being sure where we stand, because the stakes are much higher and the outcome matters a great deal. In our marriages for example, we want to know where we stand. If we=re away from each other, we want to know the trust is real and we have confidence in that trust. If not our marriages will struggle.
Pastors in churches often time wonder; is the church behind me this week or not? Does the leadership of this church support what I do and me? If you are a preacher you want the church to be behind you and not having that brings trouble to a church. If your pastor or other leaders in key roles are going to meetings to discuss where you stand and maybe you have made mistakes, everyone makes them! But, do you go to that meeting wondering, are they behind me or not, it=s tough to lead in such a church. Most people don=t minister well with that kind of pressure.
When it comes to big-ticket items in our life marriages, jobs, homes, health we don=t want tension, we want security. What about the most important question of all? Where do you stand with God? Do you have peace with God? Do you feel secure? Are you saved for sure?
Too many of us have adopted a strange theology and live with it that, we can=t be sure and we can=t know and we live our whole lives wondering, am I saved today, or not, secure or not; we will just never know until the final gun sounds. Maybe I=m ahead, or maybe I=m behind, but I just hope I=m kind of hanging in there. I absolutely refuse to live my Life as a Christ follower with that kind of tension!
I don=t believe Gods= Word teaches any of us should have this kind of tension. The most important question ever asked is, how can I have peace with God? How can I rid myself of this nagging doubt and turmoil and have peace with God?
The only reason in scripture given for why there is no peace between you and God is because of your sin. Now, we know that we couldn=t do anything to fix our problem of sin, that=s why God did it by sending His Son to fix the problem.
Jesus came for the specific purpose of dealing with the barrier between you and God, all so we could have peace with God. We know that=s what scripture teaches and we know that=s what is taught by those who have become Christ followers, but the question is, how do I get that to be so real in me and I can have confidence and KNOW I have peace with God? How do I get to where I=m not in doubt about it?
What can I do to know that? At the end of the very first sermon preached in the church back in Acts chapter 2, the folks simply said, what shall we do? It=s the best response you=ll ever hear if you present the gospel to anyone. If you believe in the message of the Gospel, your response is, How do I appropriate this, how do I get this into my life, so that it is good news, so that I can know without doubt that I have the benefit it promises? Where=s the good news if it doesn=t deliver?
I think it is so important for us not to just know the plan of salvation, the Gospel, but I believe it=s vital for each us to know when I was saved! The specific moment in Gods= word, where God says; there is a time and you can be sure of it, when you went from one kingdom to the other kingdom, when you left darkness and you entered light. When you started your relationship with Christ and there is no doubt about it.
Those who teach otherwise, that aren=t as sure about this specific moment cause allot of pain and worry in brethren that is so needless. It causes this constant state in so many, especially the young in faith that we can=t really believe we=re saved and secure. Too many say, I can=t feel it, how do I know, I don=t feel any different than before, my sin didn=t vanish and go away like I thought it would, I still struggle with my old sins, how can I know?
We=ve been starting to look at Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of the church, who is being transformed before our very eyes. This no doubt is the most dramatic transformation ever recorded in history. He meets Jesus on the road to Damascus and Jesus tells him to go and wait in the city and Jesus sends Ananias to him.
Acts 9:17-19, A17Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the LordCJesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming hereChas sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit." 18Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19and after taking some food, he regained his strength.@
When were Saul=s sins forgiven? When did He sign the peace treaty between him and God? Note clearly His condition as seen here; 2 things specifically:
35. He recognized the Christ! In one great glorious moment on the road in a blinding light, Myth became Messiah! Suddenly Saul now knows Jesus is everything He claimed He was. This is an indispensable element if you are going to have peace with God.
If you get into a discussion with anyone in this world about how do I find peace in this life and you don=t bring them to face this truth about Jesus is the only way to peace between you and God, then you are misleading them and doing a horrible injustice to them. They must face the truth that Jesus is the Son of God, He is the Messiah, the Christ prophesied by the prophets that God promised He would send, He is exactly who He claimed to be.
Saul came to realize this. On the road and into the city and waiting there, He recognizes, he realizes who Jesus is, but he is still in his sins. Transformation is more than just knowing who Jesus is!
Go into any church, the greater majority of them anyway, high 90 percentile of them, maybe a couple exceptions out there, but I would dare say, if I asked the question, who is Jesus, they again in the high 90 percentile would tell me who He is. Most people in most churches know this and we probably wouldn=t be in church if we didn=t believe that.
But Jesus said it will take more for you to be a part of the kingdom than just saying, Lord, Lord! Just knowing who He is, is not all there is to it! It=s vital, but not all! Recognition demands a response! Jesus said clearly, just saying Lord is not enough, but you must do the will of my Father. (Matt. 7:21-27)
36. He responded to the Christ! How did he respond? One, he repented of his sin. His repentance is probably seen more clearly than was ours. He goes and prays, fasts from eating and even refuses to drink, verse 9 for 3 days. He was serious about his sin problem and did all he could do to beg God to forgive him and show he meant it.
It=s a big blow to a man/woman when they suddenly realize they have been so wrong for so long. You now know you have grieved and hurt God! He had no idea of what he was going to be doing after this, but he knew exactly what he was going to stop doing and he repented of it.
He knew he was not going to be persecuting the church anymore, arresting men and women and taking them jail, just because they believed in Jesus. He knew what he was going to stop! I think we need to give people more credit at this point, for knowing what=s wrong. Scripture says, God has written His law on men=s hearts. He will judge people fairly, because folks will know their sins, they know they are sinners; they know what=s wrong.
You=ll be amazed at how well people understand sin, if you give them a chance. Folks may not understand all that has to be done once you become a Christian, but they understand most often better than we do what they must stop doing. Saul knows all the wrong and it=s flooding in and doing all he can to show he knows what this all means.
It=s a vital step, by the way. If you don=t come to realize your sin, your sin, has separated you from God, then you can=t come to know the solution for it all. If you can=t see your sin, if you don=t know why you don=t have peace, but all this turmoil and tension exits in your life, then you can=t know what=s wrong, or see what to do about it. Repentance is necessary, but is that all?
We see he knows, who Jesus is and he=s repentant, but can he now say he=s saved? He is still in his sins. How do I know this? Is he at peace yet? Saul turned Paul in Rom. 5:1 says, when you are justified by faith in Jesus, you have peace with God! He is still on his knees and still in agony over all this, no peace and no joy of your salvation, not yet! He still knows he=s a sinner and needs something.
This is all good, by the way. If God wanted to, He could have had Ananias meet Saul at the gate of the city, but God waited 3 days; why? You and I have trouble doing what God does here. We somehow think, we can=t let this run its course, we=ve got them thinking, now don=t let any time go by; we have to deal with it now. We don=t want people to think about this too long and I think we make a mistake here.
We=re afraid to let people spend one night thinking about their sins, but God wasn=t. God wants us to spend time recognizing we have done wrong. God wants us to see we have built this barrier between Him and ourselves. What happens too often when we don=t let people have time to think about their sins, when it=s all hurried by, we don=t want to talk about sin too long, we just touch on it lightly; what happens is, if they have a light view of their sin, they have a small appreciation for their salvation.
How can anybody come to truly love the light of the world, when we don=t want to even give those 30 minutes to think about darkness? God let Saul feel the darkness for 3 days. No hypothetical stories of what if he doesn=t live long enough, etc., God gives Him 3 days.
Not only is he not saved because we see no peace yet, but he doesn=t have the gift of the Spirit yet. Ananias told him, God sent me so you could regain your site and be filled with the Holy Spirit. That=s why he doesn=t have peace yet; you can=t have peace without Gods= Spirit. You can=t have peace when your flesh dominates you.
Now, you can be religious folks don=t get me wrong. I see thousands of religious folks everyday, who do not know the Spirit of God; they are not filled with the Spirit. These folks don=t have much peace either. This man Saul is going to go on to write, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. He can=t make it clearer. Saul at this moment doesn=t have the Spirit, that=s why Ananias is there.
So he=s not saved yet? What=s the problem? Why is he still in his sins? Now, we see how it=s stated here, but look at a more complete statement in chapter 22. You know there must have been something very special about Saul=s conversion because, we have 3 accounts of it recorded in the book of Acts.
Paul has been arrested in chapter 22 and is going to be killed by the Jews for preaching Jesus and the Romans soldiers actually come and protect Paul from being killed. Paul would like nothing better than to tell someone why he has changed so dramatically and this chapter gives us allot more detail about what happened when Ananias came than does chapter 9.
Acts 22: 6-16, A6"About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, 'Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?' 8" 'Who are you, Lord?' I asked. A>I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. 9My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. 10"'What shall I do, Lord?' I asked." 'Get up,' the Lord said, 'and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.' 11My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me. 12"A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. 13He stood beside me and said, 'Brother Saul, receive your sight!' And at that very moment I was able to see him. 14"Then he said: 'The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. 15You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. 16And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.@
Do you see? Ananias approached a man who had recognized Christ, he approached a man who was repenting of his sins, but he approached a man still in his sins. It=s so important for us to see this. Even as far as he has come, the barrier between him and God is still there. You can be moral, you be believing, you can be penitent, you can be religious, but you can still be stained with sin; in your sins. What=s the problem?
Saul has not buried his past yet! How do you bury your past? Ananias says, what are you waiting for, get up and be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on His name. As I=ve said before, baptism wasn=t that controversial in the first century as it is in our day. Even when we read the documents of the early church fathers, of all the controversy they had, there was none on baptism. If you were going to be in Christ and have your sins washed away, you had to bury your past!
It really was that simple. No argument about it. Yet, over time, we have come to argue over its significance and importance, its necessary place in the telling of the Good News. Even among people who emphasize the essential nature of baptism, I have found few know why it is essential. They demand it is necessary to be saved, but when I ask why, they stumble.
There are only 2 states a person can be in according to scripture. You can either be in sin, or in Christ. These are the only 2 states mentioned in scripture. Darkness or light, in sin, or in Christ and that=s it! The only answer for sin is Christ! In sin, or in Him and that=s it. The question is how can I know which I=m in? How can I know, be absolutely sure if I=m in Him, or in sin? Is there a moment in time where God says, that I can know this happens?
Gal. 3:26-27, A26You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.@ How do you put on Christ, or become united with Him?
Now, we in our day have twisted the text a bit and made it say something it doesn=t. Many today want to say, what you=re saying then is that, we are saved by a work we do? That is not what this text says. It says we are all sons through faith in Jesus. When we all were baptized we put Him on; it all happened by faith in Jesus. When Paul wrote this he wasn=t thinking about works, he was talking about how faith shows itself, how faith responds to the will of God.
Paul says our faith put on Christ at a specific moment; we identified ourselves with Christ, when we put Him on at a specific moment. It takes faith for anyone see immersion in water brings about the beginning of a new life, a new identity, the coming of the Spirit as promised.
Don=t say that because I=m teaching you what I believe scripture teaches us, that baptism is the moment we can see our sins removed, that I=m saying water is what takes away sin. The only element, the only detergent that washes away sin is the blood of Jesus Christ. Yet, God wants us to know at what specific moment, at what act, does that blood come and do what it was promised to do? How are we covered in His blood?
Physically this is impossible, so how did Jesus shed his blood? He literally died on a cross. That=s where the offering of blood for forgiveness took place. How do I get it into me? God commands you to die too!
Rom. 6:1-7, A1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Where was the blood shed? = In His death. What were you baptized into? Into His death.4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Isn=t this what it=s all about? Didn=t Paul say on another occasion, the old is gone, the only thing that counts now is the new, and you are a new creation! How do we become new? 5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves to sinC 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.@
How do you die, yet go on to live a new life? We were baptized into His death, the old self was crucified with Him and that old body of sin was done away with and we can no longer be slaves to sin, because we died with Him! If you have died with him, you have been freed from sin and the only place we can pinpoint where this death takes place is right here at baptism. The closest thing to being at the literal cross of Jesus you will ever get and that is how God looks at it.
You were baptized into the likeness of His death, so we could be raised in the likeness of his resurrection! What a picture, what a blessing to see exactly and be able to point to the specific moment in time, when we now belong to Him and His Spirit has come.
Conclusion: Direct relevance to today
37. Baptism is more than a symbol! These texts that we have been looking at don=t say anything about baptism being a symbol of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. It says very clearly and specifically that it is a participation in the death burial and resurrection of Jesus. We are baptized into His death; we are buried with Him into His death, and just as Christ was raised, so too we are raised.
We were baptized into His death, into his burial, and into His resurrection. Have you ever thought about going to Jerusalem some day? I think I would love it, to walk some of those places, to actually go into the tomb they say was the tomb of Jesus. Some have related their story of going there and say it=s a rich experience. I=d like to if I could.
But, let me tell you something. I have already gone to the tomb of Jesus in a way more real than even that would be when I was baptized into his death. It wasn=t just symbolic says the text; I participated in it. I was buried with Jesus! If we reduce it to just a symbol, we take some of what God is actually doing here in baptism.
I=m not being denominationally exclusive to say, if you want to be in the kingdom, you have to be united with the king!
38. Christianity is more than a ceremony! Baptism is not the end all; it=s only the beginning! Realize that baptism itself is not the gospel. If that becomes your predominate message and goal for those you share the gospel with, then you haven=t presented the gospel to them. Jesus didn=t say go into the world and baptize folks of all nations and that=s it!
He said make disciples of them too. It=s indispensable too! How do we make disciples out of them? Jesus said, you teach them to do all I have commanded you. Everything I said to you guys when I was with you, all about my life, my teachings and my commands all the way to my death and resurrection and lo I am still with you and forever will be.
Baptism is a response to the message of the gospel, not the gospel itself. This is what you do once you=ve heard the gospel. When the heart is convicted of sin and believes Jesus is who He said He was and ask then what shall I do, and then you tell them to be baptized. If you can=t lead someone to total submission to Jesus, you haven=t taught the gospel, or they aren=t ready to become a Christian.
People are baptized all the time and never go on to live for Jesus; just because you=re baptized doesn=t mean you=re saved. You are only a Christian when the gospel leads you to know Jesus and you are ready to obey Him as Lord. If you aren=t ready to obey in baptism, you won=t be ready to follow Him in all he has commanded and therefore you haven=t responded to the gospel.
Marriage is a good example to explain. Sad to say, but most of the time, we put high premium on how to get started in marriage, but little priority on how to keep it alive! I=ve talked to folks who want to get married who don=t even know each other. They have spent countless hours planning to marry, planning a wedding, but little time asking each other the big questions about relationship and how it works.
Weddings are important; they are how we start our new life in marriage. You can have the greatest wedding ever, but if you don=t have a real relationship with the one you marry, it spells disaster. Marriage isn=t a wedding; it is a relationship.
Christianity is not baptism. Christianity is a relationship! = A relationship with Christ. You can=t start your new relationship in Christ without baptism, it=s how it starts, but if it=s going to go the duration, you better have a relationship or it won=t last. You have got to get to know about all Jesus talked about to the disciples. When He said, teach them to do everything you heard me say, or learned from me, or I commanded, He was saying get to know me, all about me and grow in that relationship. Teach them to do that.
Don=t spend too much time talking about being buried in water; spend your time talking about being buried with Christ! Jesus doesn=t want to offer anybody just a new beginning; He is offering a new life! Not just offering a burial of your past, but power for the future. Baptism is not what brings peace; only the prince of peace can do that. So if you haven=t been united with Him, give serious thought to it now and begin your walk in Him and know you are His forever!
Conclusion applications: Ever been in what seemed like an impossible situation there was no way out of? Peter=s situation sure seems impossible to get out of.
39. An impossible dilemma cannot escape Gods= notice. There is no prison or situation that is out of His sight! Too many times we think we are in an impossible situation and god doesn=t see us, because we pray and pray and pray and we don=t get the answer we are looking for. When James was arrested, don=t you think they prayed for James?
James however, was killed. When Peter was in jail, don=t you know they prayed everyday for his release, but for several days, the answer came back, he=s still in jail? Too many times when we are faced with overwhelming pressure due to the situation we face and we pray and others pray, over and over and the answer is either no, or you will have to wait for this one, we just think God doesn=t know the mess we=re in, or he doesn=t care, or He=s given up on me for whatever reasons we can think of.
Listen, God knew when James was in jail. We don=t like this, because we have a notion God will always give us what we ask for, but He doesn=t, James was killed. God does say no, not this time and sometimes the answer is, later. The answer is never, I didn=t know you were in a bad situation.
Yes, God can and does deliver in mighty and wonderful ways, but He does choose not to more times than we=re comfortable with. Why not me Lord, why not this one Lord, and often times our loved ones die, or they experience allot of pain, for prolonged periods of time, the trouble doesn=t go away immediately, even though He has the power to make it go. He told Paul once, not this time, this time the pain remains, you will suffer this pain, and I will not remove it.
Yeah, but I could serve you more, or better without it Lord. No, I know you don=t understand, but my grace is sufficient for you. People need to see you suffer well; this shows my glory more than my delivering you at this time. In Paul case He says, Paul you need this to keep you humble. Maybe, you=re a Paul who needs to be kept humble, or maybe there=s another reason he chooses you to bare this burden at this time for all to see, even if it does hurt. He knows you.
40. An impossible dilemma does not limit Gods= options. Do you think the thought might have come to the church, if God couldn=t help James, then there=s no way He can help Peter either? We too often let human judgments decide what God can and cannot do. You ever done that?
What about when the doctor comes out and tells you there=s nothing more we can do, don=t we lean in that direction and say, well that=s it then and assume nothing can be done? We too often let people, who are suppose to be the professionals, the educated ones who know, that God can=t do anything because they have said nothing can be done.
I don=t find anywhere in scripture where God is limited because our experts say it=s a done deal, no matter we=re facing. I=ve had people tell me that professional counselors have said, there is nothing we can do to save this marriage. There is good counseling out there, but let me tell you there is a power more powerful than counseling!
How many times have we heard that things are so bad in this world, in this country, there is no way out, we are headed for horrible hard times, destruction even, and there=s no way out? The experts tell us so, so hang on it=s coming, we=re sure of it. I=m sure there were experts here, who said, there is no way Peter=s getting out of this mess. You might just as well accept it church, Peter will be gone soon.
The story is told of a bishop who went on a mission into our colleges to challenge them to certain things that the church thought needed to happen to keep our schools in a proper direction. He went to one college and started talking to the officials as he had in all the other schools. He started by saying, I don=t think it=s good that we have all this new technology, inventing all these new things that get people thinking they can do impossible things, solve all our problems, etc.
The president of the school says, I have to disagree I think it=s amazing and wonderful to explore these new inventions and it will be a great blessing for us in the future, I even think we will one day fly like the birds of the sky. The bishop responded by saying he thought that was a destructive way to guide our schools and would write this guy up on blasphemy charges against the church. You may not have heard of this bishop before, but I bet you have heard of his sons, His name was Bishop Wright.
Don=t you know Paul Harvey loves that story? That truly is the rest of the story. But, seriously, we too often are like that bishop, where we decide what God is and isn=t going to do. We limit our God! He doesn=t always give the answer we want, but He still does deliver people and there is not a gate in your life God doesn=t have the power to open. Impossible dilemmas don=t limit His options.
41. An impossible dilemma shouldn=t worry Gods= people. How many of us would change the course of our day today, if we knew tomorrow we die? Most of us know to a degree the plan for what we=re going to do today, would it change, if tomorrow we knew we would die?
There are some in scripture who know their time is short and it intrigues me to see that knowing that, they don=t try to change their lives as though they were going to try to make that last day right. What would I do if I knew? I tell you I think I would get up, do some bible study, as is my custom, get ready for work, go ask Sheila if there=s anything I can do for her before I go, say bye for know, go to work, maybe spend a little more time with the ones I have come to love the most, maybe go online and say hi to others I often communicate with anyway online by e-mail, or live online.
I might make a point to contact some family and just tell them I love them, maybe a few others who have made a difference in my life and just briefly meet with them online or by phone and just let them know how I feel, I don=t believe I would speak anything about not being here tomorrow. At the end of the day I would go home, fix some supper with Sheila, help her out with some things that have been our routine, maybe watch some bad TV and go to sleep.
What I=m saying is, God is not looking for a last day that is somehow going to be more special than all the rest and maybe we think we=re making up for something with a flurry of activity. God wants a whole life, not just a last day. We live our lives before Him every day and at the end we say, God receive my life; not the last day. I think we ought to be able to go to sleep in comfort and peace, just like Peter.
Because we live with the truth, that if we live we live to the Lord, if we die, we die to the Lord. We belong to Him, whether we live or die. It=s hard to rest without trust.
We too often worry about this life, what will we eat, or wear, or where will we live, will we live, to the point we can=t sleep without taking a pill. We too often are more worried about what belongs to us, rather than who we belong to.
Psalm 127:1-2 speaks loudly to the people of our time, A1-2 If GOD doesn't build the house, the builders only build shacks. If GOD doesn't guard the city, the night watchman might as well nap. It's useless to rise early and go to bed late, and work your worried fingers to the bone. Don't you know he enjoys giving rest to those he loves?@
Do you see the difference in a life lived worrying about life, frantically scratching for security of food, etc., and then the man who belongs to God, who rises and goes to work, does his job, goes home to his family and goes to bed? No matter what your life consists of literally, it belongs to God, your whole day, your whole life and God is working in your life through it all.
He grants peace and sleep to those who love Him! How have you been sleeping? Maybe restlessness is a sign that your life is not right with the one you belong to? You can live trusting in Him to the point where whether we live or die, we belong to Him.
A Man Without a Congregation Acts 9:19-31
The greatest transformation in history was just seen, now what? Paul would later write to Timothy and say, AI have finished the race.@ The Christian journey is a race! For some it=s a sprint and for others it=s a marathon; we have no idea how long the Lord wants us to run.
Saul, was probably somewhere in between there. Maybe, a hurdler? As soon as he is out of the blocks, he has to start hurdling obstacles, one right after the other. He really never stops running that way to the very end. Jesus told him that=s the way it would be when he sent Ananias to him and Jesus said, AI must tell him how much he must suffer for my name.@ Immediately, when the gun went off, Saul knows being a Christian involves suffering.
The title is descriptive because that=s where he was in his early walk with Jesus; he had no church to call his own, his home church. Maybe, some of you know what that=s like; maybe you even feel it now.
There=s a famous book called Aa man without a country,@ written by Edward Hale, son of Nathan Hale, a famous statesmen of the early days of our country. He wrote about a young army LT. Named Phillip Nolan. At his court marshal, Nolan says, I wish that I would never hear of the United Sates again. The judge sentenced Nolan to spend the rest of his life on a ship. Transferred from ship to ship, always out of sight of his country, never gets news of his country, nor was anyone allowed to tell him anything about his country.
He died on ship. Hale wrote the story so well and movingly that; most think it=s a true story. It=s not it was a fictitious story. Saul=s is not. Saul really did live the first steps of his Christian walk without a church home.
Acts 9:19-26, A19and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. 20At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. 21All those who heard him were astonished and asked, "Isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?" 22Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. 23After many days had gone by, the Jews conspired to kill him, 24but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. 26When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple.@
These are the early days of Saul the Christian. This takes about a 3-year time span to live all this and he goes to 4 places. He starts in Damascus says verse 19-20. Now, the Jews aren=t surprised he showed up in the synagogues, they weren=t even surprised he spoke, no; they knew he was coming and had orders from the chief priests to come and arrest Christians. The Jews would not be surprised on the first Sabbath he arrived that he would show up and they would give the invitation for any brother to be heard and they would recognize Brother Saul the great scholar and teacher and he would speak.
So, it happens just as they all expected, but when he stands to speak, he starts preaching Jesus is the Messiah! They are shocked because he got new orders from a higher court than the one in Jerusalem. He preaches Jesus is the Son of God; He is the Messiah. His message was Jesus; he did not talk about himself, but Jesus.
I think I would be tempted to, wouldn=t you? If I could tell the story that I saw a light on the road, struck blind, fasted 3 days and Jesus spoke to me, etc. I think I=d be tempted to bring that up. There is a place for personal testimony in the church and that is a good thing, so don=t get me wrong. What we need to know however is; our faith is not built on personal experiences. Our faith is not built on subjective feelings, all the great cults of the world that ever have been can match us feeling for feeling.
The text says he was proving Jesus was the Christ! That word means he was putting the case altogether! He took the scriptures, Old Testament and put them together with the prophesies of Jesus and showed they were the same man. We must see there is a place for us to talk about how Jesus has changed our lives, but our faith is built on the historical facts of Jesus of Nazareth and how He redeemed the world to Himself, and He must be the focus of what we preach if people will believe in the gospel.
After these early days Saul went off to Arabia. Well, the text didn=t say that, how do you know that? Well, Paul told us in Galatians chapter 1. Paul says some things about these early days as a Christian that Luke didn=t say.
Gal. 1:13-20, A13For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 15But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased 16to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, 17nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. 18Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. 19I saw none of the other apostlesConly James, the Lord's brother.@
That=s just some more background to what we=re looking at in Acts. So he goes to Damascus, for a short time then off to Arabia for a short time, then back to Damascus and three years later he goes to Jerusalem for a couple weeks and off he goes again. Why Arabia? We really don=t know! Most think he had to go there to get his mind right as to this new way of looking at things?
You know, he=s spent his whole life looking at things of the Law and the Messiah, the prophets and all of it and now he sees Jesus is the fulfillment of all this and he needs time to put it all together. Makes sense, he doesn=t say. I=m not totally sure of anything, but one other interesting twist to me is what Paul says in 2 Cor. 11:30-33, A30If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. 31The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying. 32In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. 33But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands.@
Why would the king of the Arabs want to arrest Paul? We know the Jews wanted him, as it says here in Acts, but why does the king of Arabia want him? Anytime in history you see Jews and Arabs wanting the same thing, it=s significant, was then is today. Why? I can only guess, but what I think makes sense is when he went to Arabia, he did there what he did in Damascus, which was preach of Jesus, but now it was to Arabs and this has never been accepted by the Arabs ever. I think he=s in as much trouble from the Arabs as he is from the Jews and they both want him.
So I think he went there to get his message together and he Apracticed@ it on the Arabs. He=s going to preach to Gentiles Jesus told him, so these are surely Gentiles, let=s see how it works here, and it causes all kinds of problems for the King, so he=s after Paul. The best we can do is piece it and takes some leap here, but it does teach an important lesson to me and even if it isn=t happening exactly like this here, I believe it is an important lesson non-the-less.
You want to be a missionary to the world in some way, a disciple maker to folks in all the world; learn that the best place to learn how to do this is not in a classroom, but out there among the people. You take all the courses you want and I have nothing against it, unless you think what you learn in the class is where you have learned to be affected in the world. The only place for you to learn the real skill of presenting the gospel to someone and honing that gospel message to be affective in changing lives is by going out and doing it.
Paul doesn=t go to preaching school, he doesn=t go learn it from the apostles before him, even when he finally goes to meet Peter and James, and he=s only there 15 days, so unless this is the best crash course the world has ever seen, he didn=t learn how to preach from them. He got out there and did it. One of the biggest mistakes of Christianity is believing that we can learn how to be truly Christian in a classroom. You can get multiple P.H.D.=s, spend decades in universities learning, but until you go out there and live Christianity among the folks and take what you=ve learned in class to the folks, you haven=t got a Christian education.
All pastors learn this quickly upon leaving the universities and start working with real people. We never learned this in school. Christianity is a life lived among people and you can=t substitute that with anything. Ministry is really learned when you do it with people; that=s how we learn to be what God has called us to be. So I think he takes it to Arabia and learns a great deal about being what Jesus calls him to be there and stirs things up there, which is Paul=s result from here on as he takes the gospel to the world.
He then goes back to Damascus. Now, that=s not easy is it? It would have been easier to stay out there where the people don=t know you. Stay away from your past, but God doesn=t want Paul to do that. He went right back where it was tough and they are out to get you. The first thing Paul does, is go back to the folks who knew about his old life and he goes back there and tells them what has happened to him. Is there a message there for us?
Don=t run away from those folks God says, you go tell them. Then it says the Jews conspired to kill him because of it. They are so original aren=t they? They are consistent; you have to give them that. They didn=t know what to do with Jesus, so they said, let=s kill Him! They had no clue what to do with Stephen, so they said, let=s kill him! They don=t know what to do with Paul, so they say, let=s kill him! If we can=t silence him by threats and torture, etc., we=ll just have to kill him.
This is fundamentally what Martyrdom is. It=s the world=s way of destroying the evidence. The world has no stand against a Christian life that knows what it=s talking about! So, they destroy the evidence. They wanted him dead, so the hunter now becomes the hunted; must have been a strange feeling. He knew what hunting for Christians was like, but now he knows what it=s like to be chased.
Sometimes God does miraculous things to help His people get away. We read about earthquakes and angles helping His people go free and get away. But, sometimes He says, get in a basket tie a rope to it and sneak out at night. Which is the better way? Listen, faith is not waiting for a miracle to happen. Faith is trusting God and using what He gives you and do what you can do. God provides a rope and a basket and a Christian with a window on the wall and the folks say, let=s get you out of here and Paul says, sounds good!
Get the picture! Paul is escaping from the only church he=s ever known, he has no church home now, so what do you do? When you have to leave a place you know and love, for whatever reasons and go somewhere else? They tell him to go to Jerusalem, great church down there besides, even the Apostles are there and they can be a help to you. But, when he gets there, they aren=t even sure he=s a Christian at first, they are skeptical of everything.
They have heard rumors, but they still aren=t sure about him. This just tells us what kind of guy he was before and it=s not easy to just accept him, no matter what you=ve heard. Nobody wanted to even associate with him when he first went there. They thought he was play-acting so he could get them. He=s a man without a church. The Jews didn=t want him and he didn=t want them. The Arabs didn=t want him and he didn=t want them. Now, the Christian=s don=t want him, but he wants them!
Have you ever had this feeling? You had to move for whatever reasons and went to the church in that town and you came away feeling, these people really don=t want me? You know what the world offers and you don=t want to go back there. But, where you want to go, you don=t feel wanted. This can and does happen. I know folks who have felt this way and I have myself. So what do you do?
Acts 9:27-31, A27But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. 28So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29He talked and debated with the Grecian Jews, but they tried to kill him. 30When the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.
31Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit; it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.@
What do you do, you keep working at it until a Barnabas finds you. How thankful are we for the Barnabas=? We may have lost a good brother if it weren=t for Barnabas. He took Paul to the Apostles and all the disciples and basically, he put his credibility on the line so that Paul would get some for himself. This happens in our churches folks, even at Lifechurch.Tv. We get cliquish and it=s hard for folks to feel wanted. Allot of times, we get to thinking, we just don=t want any more friends in our lives, we=ve got enough.
We can get very lonely coming to church sometimes. Then a brother, or sister who is respected in the church, goes and reaches out to the new comer and brings them in to the church and suddenly others start treating the new one, as it should be, why? It=s because of the respect of the Barnabas that took them in the first place. That=s how we save people allot of times, by being a Barnabas.
He takes Paul to the Apostles, the pastors, the leaders and it all gets going and there=s mutual respect and fellowship developing, sharing in the love of Jesus between everyone and it all builds. I=m sure there were stories exchanged about lessons Peter experienced from Jesus and James experienced and Paul later goes on to write in 1 Cor. 15:5-8 that after the resurrection Jesus first appeared to Peter, then to the twelve, then to the 500, then he goes to James and then the apostles and lastly to Paul.
How did he find out about such detailed order, maybe from these sharing=s of Jesus in their lives? It could have been just revelation, but it=s interesting how he meets with these two and singles them out in his writing. There=s fellowship here now, all because of Barnabas. These are the only ones in scripture that are singled out like this when referring to seeing Jesus in this special way after the resurrection. They share a special bond. Wouldn=t have happened without Barnabas.
But, even that is not the end, because remember, it=s not enough to just trade stories and teachings about Jesus, you need to go out there and preach it among the people and that is exactly what Paul does. He not only speaks to Jewish Christians, but also vs. 29 says he speaks to the Greek Jews. When was the last time we heard about these guys? These were the folks Stephen worked with. Paul wants to preach to the folks Stephen used to preach to. I wonder why, do you suppose?
Maybe this group of folks have been neglected altogether since the last time someone tried preaching to them, remember? What happened the last time someone preached the gospel to these folks? They got stoned and even now, they threaten Paul. Paul remembers all too well what happened and feels compelled to go there. He=s not the kind of guy to choose an easy pulpit, for sure. Here=s the toughest place in town to preach, I want to go there, says Paul.
It says he debated these folks and that=s an interesting word here. It=s only used one other time in describing bringing the gospel to folks and do you know where? It was used for Stephen and his time with these folks.
Acts 6:9 says, Stephen debated them and they couldn=t respond in return. Imagine the scene here in this synagogue. This is all still fresh enough so folks would remember only 3 years earlier, how Stephen came preaching Jesus was the Messiah and no one knew how to respond to his debate.
I know, we=ll go get this young scholar everyone is excited about named Saul. If anybody can respond it will be Saul and he couldn=t do it. They had no idea what to do, so they killed him. Saul then became the champion of all those who thought the thing to do was kill Christians. A few short years later here comes Saul again and he gets up and pulls out one of Stephens old sermons and preaches on. It drove them crazy!
So, what are you going to do? They try to kill him! So original again, right? He=s only been a Christian 3 years and already twice people have tried to kill him. Some brethren rescue him again; those who want to see him go on. By the way, if you are preaching Gods= word to folks and persecution comes, it=s tough to deal with, but think, the devil must think I=m affective if he=s going to try this to shut me up. You must matter or he wouldn=t waste his time or energy on you.
People have tried to trick wolves by painting a picture of a sheep and sticking it in the field trying to lure the wolf. The wolves won=t respond, because they know the difference between a sheep that is only one on the outside, but not inside and so does the devil! He knows the difference between a real disciple and someone with paint on the outside. He goes after the real disciples, or those he knows could be.
Acts 22:17-21 is interesting here, A 17"When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance 18and saw the Lord speaking. 'Quick!' he said to me. 'Leave Jerusalem immediately, because they will not accept your testimony about me.' 19" 'Lord,' I replied, 'these men know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. 20And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.' 21"Then the Lord said to me, 'Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.'@
Stephen=s memory is burning bright in Paul here. Why did the Lord feel it necessary to tell Paul to get out of here? I think maybe he was willing to do die, because of what he had done? But, Jesus says, they won=t listen, you won=t make a difference here and I have a much bigger plan in mind for you. He tells the Lord he is not afraid to die, they all know me well and I them and what I did and I owe it to Stephen to tell them what Stephen did and I don=t want to run from them.
In some weird way, he may think dying himself, would somehow make up for what he did to Stephen. But, Jesus says, no, I=ll show you how to make up for it. Jesus didn=t say, Paul I don=t want you to die, because He planned for that to happen someday, but not in Jerusalem and not by these folks. He wanted the Gentiles to kill Paul and they did.
So, even though he doesn=t want to, the brethren send him to Tarsus, his hometown. Isn=t it interesting, to see where God sends him? He gets converted and goes to Damascus, then leaves for a time and goes right back to Damascus, where they all knew him, then he goes to Jerusalem to the same places they knew him, where Stephen preached, and now, they send him to his hometown. Don=t think God wants you to run away from the people who know what you used to be. That=s not God talking to you, if you can=t face those folks and tell them what has happened to you.
God wants us to face it and deal with, because it measures your commitment to Him. It=s going to be a while before we see Paul again, about 9 years later in time, before Luke brings him back onto the scene. But let=s note some things before we look at some other history we need to know.
42. Our expectations for new brothers or sisters are too low! My Bible says, at once, immediately, he began to preach! He was ready the very moment he made the decision to make Christ his Lord. Should we encourage our new believers that they have a responsibility to share their new faith? Where did we get the idea we shouldn=t encourage them to tell others what has happened to them?
There are too many churches that give the impression until you=ve been here for some years, or go to school, maybe get a degree, or something like that, that you don=t have to say anything! Is that the impression we get from scripture? How do we know what God has prepared for those whom he has called? Maybe, he will take someone who is just a babe in his walk and do a work none of us have even thought about doing.
Are we jealous that God would use the young in the faith to reach more than we have? Is it that we think that unless we indoctrinate them in all the Aright@ ways of thinking, that they aren=t ready? What if God has called them to do a specific thing that only He can prepare them for, no matter what we think?
Do you realize that this whole church we=re looking at is young in years of devotion to Jesus, say nothing of just Paul? It=s all new and young and look what God is doing that all our schools could never do and have never done. Too many times we think that until you know Aeverything@, you can=t say anything, or you shouldn=t. The text actually says that the more Paul preached the more powerful he became. He didn=t start out powerful, he started like we all do; ordinary and he grew more powerful as he obeyed Gods= call on his life.
Paul never had the idea he couldn=t say anything until he learns it all! He learned the more he did it and grew in power the more he did it. The greatest way to learn about God and the gospel, about Jesus, is to talk about Him, never stop telling others and then it comes clearer as you study the word and put it all together and your power grows as you do.
A silent disciple is a contradiction in terms! Maybe, I should just reword my original statement, instead of just new believers, our biggest problem in the church is, our expectation of all believers is too low. Young and old alike! Too many in our church buildings are considered, by our leaders to be members in good standing if we just show up for church on the weekends a couple times a month. That=s the average in most churches. That=s what we expect and that=s what we are getting!
In this church, all the members were called to be witnesses to the world upon becoming a Christ follower. It was an expectation within the gospel message that we would be and do all the Christ was and did. Jesus said go and teach all to do everything I commanded you from the word GO! We must bring back in full force the expectations of this church if we are going to be what God has designed us to be as His church.
43. Our casualties among new believers are too high! We lose allot of brethren, because we haven=t been diligent in accepting them. If you look closely you see the brethren in Damascus first accepted him and then he started preaching, in Jerusalem the same, they accepted him and then he started preaching. Fellowship precedes preaching. Nobody has the courage to preach until they have the encouragement of their brethren to speak.
This why we lose so many. We have no courage because we have little encouragement. Have you ever had trouble being accepted by the church? Some of our churches have invisible steel bars around them that only let certain ones in. We can sing all our songs of love over and over, but let=s talk to someone who has a past to live down like Saul had.
Talk to the fellow who just spent 3 years in a mental institution, when he comes back to us, will we immediately accept him? Those who were prisoners for whatever reason, do we accept them? Someone who was a devil worshipper for years, maybe even wanted to kill someone like Craig, because of who he is; do we accept them if they come to us? If someone among us goes bankrupt, is the first time back to church and easy one for him, encouraging?
What about the sister with the broken marriage? The adulterer; is having a tough past quickly forgotten and you are accepted among the brethren? It=s not always easy to get into churches as you think. I don=t mean into buildings, I mean into churches.
We maybe haven=t spent much time thinking about it, but you may have a pretty small circle of close friends in the church and feel you don=t have enough room for any others to get in.
The story is told as the black family is walking by this small town church going home one day. One of the kids say, Daddy what=s it like to go to a white church? Well says the Father, I went there once a long time ago and sat on the back seat and people started looking at me with all kinds of hate and disgust and even came and told me, boy you better get out of here, we don=t have room for your kind here.
Well, I left, but I prayed to God, and said, AFather why does it have to be this way and I can=t get into that church? You know what, the Father answered me and said, don=t you worry about that anymore son, because I=ve been trying to get into that church for last 200 years and they won=t let me in either.@
What does a brother do, when he comes out of the world through the call of Christ, but the church doesn=t want him either? What I pray for is that we raise up more and more Barnabas= among us! I pray that you become a Barnabas, because there are more and more in this church, coming here, online and in physical locations that need to meet you so you can encourage them to be another Paul.
Some Peter Principles Acts 9:32-43
Let=s talk about the importance of personal ministry. Now, I=m not talking about the, what we might call the flashy, public stuff that everyone sees, just coming to our churches. Now, Luke sure enough sets certain figures as key figures of these historic moves of the church, but if we look closer, we will see the growth of the church was really happening because of folks like you and me, who never get the Alime light.@
Everyday people who were being pushed out of their homes and towns and going to other ordinary homes and towns witnessing of Jesus. Even in the beginning in Jerusalem, the lion=s share of the ministry was being done by the many unnamed believers who went from house to house, etc.
Now, this doesn=t mean we aren=t grateful for God giving us those who do the public stuff, like Peter and John and Paul, and some us are called to such positions in the church and we praise God for that. But, the truth is, if you see a church that has grown significantly in numbers and Spirit, you will note that a small part of the church is actually being done in a public context. Most of the time the person who had the biggest impact and influence in your life in the church, didn=t do it from a pulpit, but through a personal experience with them.
Now, I know we=ve said it, but until it is reality we need to keep saying it; everybody in the church needs to be ministering personally; we are all ministers. Many of our church have no calling and no business in public ministry and that=s a good thing; it is as God designed it. But, each one has a calling and responsibility to be a minister. In fact, those involved in the public side, ought to also be involved on a more personal level in some way. I don=t think you have a right, or will do it well, to be in front of people, if you=re never among them.
Now, Peter had a public side, as we have already noted, but Peter didn=t leave it there, he went out personally among the people. Acts 9:32-43, A32As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the saints in Lydda. 33There he found a man named Aeneas, a paralytic who had been bedridden for eight years. 34"Aeneas," Peter said to him, "Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and take care of your mat." Immediately Aeneas got up. 35All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord. 36In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which, when translated, is Dorcas, who was always doing good and helping the poor. 37About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. 38Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, "Please come at once!" 39Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. 40Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, "Tabitha, get up." She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. 41He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called the believers and the widows and presented her to them alive. 42This became known all over Joppa and many people believed in the Lord. 43Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon.@
Well, it says, he went to visit saints in Lydda. I have no idea how they got there specifically, because Acts doesn=t tell us. Never be surprised to find saints somewhere you may travel.
Maybe, it happened due to persecution and some folks went there, or Philip preached here, or whatever, but never be surprised when God shows up in a place you have no idea how He got there. Peter is doing what Jesus taught him, which was going from town to town and he found some saints. He comes across a man named Aeneas who had been bedridden 8 years. Think about this for a second. Do you remember what you were doing 8 years ago?
I was still working at OCU fixing stuff students break, mostly repairing walls and building walls, and finishing them out, painting them, etc. I was very involved in a local church, hadn=t been compelled to go to LifeChurch.Tv yet. I taught a bible class now and then and got asked to help motivate some leadership there. I was involved in taking worship to the local nursing homes, with some others. We had a small group going on, which we looked forward to. Shelia hadn=t lost her kidney function yet and was still working and we were doing okay in general.
I didn=t know it at the time, but I was being prepared to leave that church and come to LifeChurch, by a series of events, that really weren=t that pleasant to go through, but I was learning some necessary things that pushed me on. I was learning the hard lessons of what do you do when you know the church you=re with must take some risks, must get out of a long held rut it had been stuck in for way too long and start going through some growing pains of trying to do things we had never done before, so we might really be a church that makes a difference in people=s lives. The lord was telling me even if this church doesn=t take the risks, you must and he brought me to Lifechurch, which even after almost 4 years is still risky business for me in many ways.
Okay, let=s stop in our stories and ask this, each of us has had a past we can tell, but what if a simple thing had changed all that and it has in many people=s lives. What if I got in a car wreck, or fell down and hit my head and was rushed to the hospital and the doctor says; where does it hurt? You say, I really don=t hurt Doc, and he says, Tony, you=ll never walk again. You are totally paralyzed; you=ll be bedridden for the rest of your life; do you think that would have changed your life just a little?
Would I be working at OCU in this capacity, being considered for leadership in churches, doing worship music, etc.? Some years back I was actually pastoring churches; can you imagine a church hiring a bedridden pulpit preacher, wheeling him in on a bed every Sunday? Our lives can be changed on a dime, we never know, so what if it does? We will have to do what no doubt Aeneas did, which was resolve the fact he will never walk again and learn how to deal with that. Everything you ever dreamed you might do, or plans you made, you would just forget about them.
Then Peter comes along! Peter does what I can=t do; it=s a miracle for sure. I know God has not given me this gift, because I have tried on many occasions to do like things as Peter. Peter tells him to get up and make his bed; actually the original language is more like; you make that bed with the mindset of never having to get back in it. Peter tells him, Jesus Christ is healing you, all glory to Him; I have nothing at all to do with this, this Jesus healing you.
This, of course is why a number of people turned, not to Peter, but to the Lord! They didn=t start a little Peter church there, like they tried to do in Corinth. You see, Luke wants us to know the best part of the story is not the miracle; we get lost in that, but Luke says, the best part is many turned to Jesus!
In Joppa, a town nearby, there is another something happening to a lady named Dorcas. What a way to be recognized, by the way. She was always doing good and helping the poor. Every one of us will be remembered for something. Some of us will get sick and die, before we ever thought we would. You=re going to be remembered for something. She had a personal ministry of helping destitute widows. A woman often time would live for quite some time without a husband in these days and this made her very needy.
Especially if she=s a Christian, because she=s been kicked off the Jewish welfare list and so, if her husband dies, she=s in trouble. Dorcas didn=t care about limelight, she just said, I can help these ladies and she did it. She made cloths and shared the wealth. It=s a touching scene, where the ladies she had helped were there telling the story of Tabitha and modeling the cloths she had made at her memorial before Peter. The love and care of these ladies to share the life of Dorcas, is modeling love that they had for her.
They take such good care of her, placing her here, cleaned, etc., and then they go get Peter. Why did they do that? Why go get Peter? Did they want him to raise her? As far as we know, it=s never been done by an Apostle before; so why? What did they want Peter to do? I have no idea what they thought, but we can see what Peter thinks. He thinks it=s time to raise her from the dead.
How did he know what to do, he=s never done it before? There are no handbooks on how to do this ministry, 10 ways to raise someone from the dead. You know how he knew what to do, don=t you? He had seen Jesus do this! There=s an interesting little story in Mark 5:22-42, A22Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet 23and pleaded earnestly with him, "My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live." 24So Jesus went with him.@ Jump down to verse 35-42, A35While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler.@Your daughter is dead," they said. "Why bother the teacher anymore?" 36Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe." 37He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39He went in and said to them, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep." 40But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum!" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!@). 42Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.@
These stories are very similar in nature. First thing Jesus does, is get everyone out of the room, and so does Peter. Second thing he does, is he took her hand and said get up, and Peter does the same, he prays and says, get up! Then Jesus took her and brought her out to the people and Peter does likewise. The only real difference is, Peter prayed and Jesus didn=t. The reason is simply because, Peter knew who the Life was and he needed the life, but Jesus was the life! Peter had to ask for it and Jesus was it.
All I=m trying to get us to see is; Luke is showing it is Jesus who is at work here, not Peter. As a result, many believed in Jesus! Peter is very careful in how he does all this that the people say; we want to know more about Jesus, not you Peter.
So, let us talk some more about this thing called miracles. Specifically, do we need the ability to do miracles to reach people today with the gospel? First of all it=s good to look at just how much the Bible records miracles. Some get the idea that from Genesis to Revelation is just a story of one miracle after another. The truth is; there are only 3 significant periods of Biblical history where people do miracles and we see many miracles.
The first time period is the time period of Moses. Moses was the first biblical figure that did allot of miracles. There was activity from God before this, but no people were doing them. The second historical time period was the time of Elijah and Elisha. This is when Israel was steeped in apostasy and worshipping Baal. Through these two men, God turned some back to Him.
The third time in history where men performed significant amounts of miracles was the time of Jesus and the early days of the Apostles. Other than these 3 time periods, you don=t read about folks doing miracles much. There are times when God does certain things to people, or he gives them a certain task they otherwise couldn=t do if He didn=t enable them, but actually doing miracles themselves, these are it. That=s allot of years historically and when you put it together a relatively short period of time when men did miracles.
Now, everybody has an opinion on miracles today; many churches with differing views. Some will say adamantly we still do them and must, others not. No matter what anyone says, one thing I have noticed is, nobody is doing the miracles we are studying here and saw in Jesus. Many say they still do miracles, but nobody is raising anyone from the dead and nobody is taking folks totally paralyzed for 8 years and raising them out of their beds! If they were, the same result would happen then as happened to Jesus, crowded!
My biggest understanding of all this comes from looking at it historically and asking, what was Gods= purpose for doing miracles during this time period, through these men? One very significant reason was to mark an Apostle! Paul showed this was important in 2 Cor. 12:12, A12The things that mark an apostleCsigns, wonders and miraclesCwere done among you with great perseverance.@ This was very important because folks would ask and rightly so, how do we know we should listen to you and follow you?
Paul says there were things an Apostle could do, that were authenticated by God with particular miracles. God has always used foundational type men in key historical time periods and Jesus= Apostles were these men at this time. These were the men that had the authority to point people to the truth and say this is it! How, do you know if a certain man was in deed an Apostle? There were certain signs to show it and only these men could do them.
The second purpose was to confirm divine revelation! Heb. 2:3-4, A3how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. 4God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.@ God testified to Ait@, not them, but to the message they preached, which was the message of salvation. These miracles were signs that people need to hear a new message and respond.
Specifically, I see that miracles were Gods= way of communicating especially to the Jews of the first century. Both Jesus and Paul stated that Jews seek for miraculous signs. Think about that. The Jews had a centuries old belief system and they weren=t going to drop it, just because someone came along with a new idea. You had to show you were of God and so was your message! Jews demanded signs for proof. That=s why you don=t read of many more miracles after chapter 10 of Acts.
After we go from preaching mainly to Jews, to preaching to Gentiles miracles get less prominent, they just don=t play as big a part in the history. Why do you think that is? Paul said of the Greeks, they don=t seek miraculous signs they seek what? = Wisdom! So, they didn=t use miracles nearly as much.
Why did Peter heal Dorcas, but not Stephen? What we would reason is, Dorcas was a great lady, but really she just made clothes and helped some widows, but Stephen was one of the most powerful young preachers in the church, who could have gone on to preach to many more. Why didn=t Peter rush to him and heal him? He could have done it, why not? Would the healing of Stephen made a difference to Stephen=s audience and brought salvation to many? The answer is no, his message was hated by those who heard it and they just wanted him dead, they didn=t want it no matter what.
To raise him would not have confirmed the work of an Apostle to them, nor would it have testified to his message, because they were that set against him. This type wouldn=t listen when Jesus was raised from the dead. Now, Dorcas was a lady that the whole town loved. Peter knows that if he raises Dorcas the door to preach to this town will be opened wide and they will listen. After these miracles, in both Lydda and Joppa many people believed in the Lord.
Now, I don=t want you to misunderstand me, so I must say that you understand that although I see the text telling us these specific miraculous powers and abilities are no longer with the church today, nor practiced among us that, that means God is not working among His people today in supernatural ways. I=m not saying He isn=t doing miracles today. I pray that God works miracles in people=s lives and I believe He has and does. I=ve seen it and believe it in others experiences.
What I=m specifically saying is what is happening in the early church is, for a specific purpose to determine that those who are speaking and those doing miracles are indeed from God and so is their message. We today only need to go to Gods= word to judge if someone is speaking for God, or not. As church history moves on, we see the need for affirming a believer=s word is from God, is less dependent on miracles and more dependent on the Word of God itself.
They just couldn=t do that when the church was in its beginning days. God hadn=t worked in the men who wrote all this down in time yet, so we could go and see this is God=s will, His message, now does what I preach match up to what they preached? Paul hadn=t begun writing all the things we rely on today, as well as Luke and all the others. That=s why when we get to one of the last writers of scripture John, and he says if you don=t believe the message we preached and wrote down in these books, may all the plagues written in this book be upon you.
He wrote somewhere around A.D. 90, give or take a couple years, the best we can pinpoint it and he just hammers that whole thing through. You must believe the message of who Jesus is; He is God in the flesh and He did save us from our sins on the cross, and He will come again to judge the world and to gather all those who believe in Him and believing in that is imperative! The message doesn=t change with the passing of time, Jesus is still the only way, the only truth, and the only life and you can=t get to the Father any other way! If you change that message, well, you have been warned.
So if you want to know if what I preach or anyone preaches is Gods= word, go to the word to find out today, don=t expect signs to prove God is endorsing a new message. God still works in wonderful and awesome ways, but He isn=t authenticating new prophets or messages with signs and wonders. Now, if you and I will examine what a man says and it lines up with truth, then we can say God is speaking through this person. God has helped this man with the gift of being relevant and insightful, a gifted speaker of His word.
I=ll give you what I think are some guidelines pointed out in scripture that describe the difference between what we see from the Apostles and early disciples of Jesus and folks today who promote they can do miracles on command.
44. The Lord is always glorified in scripture. I am suspicious of any ministry that speaks mostly about themselves and their church; about the preacher/pastor and his church.
45. No showmanship is involved! I think some of the stuff we see today, whether on TV or Internet, even if you attend some of these events, would totally disgust the Apostles and early disciples. They were not interested in causing commotion among the people, in fact, most of the time we read they put people out of the room. They weren=t about performing for crowds and getting lots of applause for doing miracles.
Not only were they not interested in attracting crowds, they never called for a gathering of any kind to draw a crowd by holding a healing event! You can=t read anywhere in scripture where they did that. No call among churches, or towns to meet Peter, or Paul at such and such a place and you will be healed.
Instead, what we see is Peter went out to the people and went from place to place as God directed and so did Paul. They didn=t call the people to come to them and expect something spectacular.
If the folks saying they have the same gift of Peter and Paul, would just come to folks like me, I could take them to folks who are paralyzed, suffering serious diseases, and if they truly had their gift, they could heal them, right then, no audience, no conditions placed on the ones being healed, nothing, just heal them and then they go on. Why don=t those who claim they can heal like Peter and Paul, just go find folks like that and do it, they=re not hard to find, and you don=t have to call a crowd to do it.
I see too much showmanship in the name of Jesus today and you don=t see it in scripture. I think that=s a big problem.
46. An impression was always made on the unsaved! In fact, if you look closely at scripture there is no direct evidence that the gift of healing was ever used on a believer. It was something we see allot in looking at Paul especially, where he did not heal his brethren. Again, it=s not the purpose of miracles to help the believing, but it was to attract unbelievers to the gospel.
So, when we read that Timothy had some kind of stomach problem that wouldn=t go away, Paul says, take a little wine for it. He did not heal him. Could he have healed him if he wanted to? Not sure, I just know he didn=t. When Epaphroditus was so sick Paul said he almost died, why didn=t you just heal him Paul? He said God spared him so that Paul wouldn=t be sorrowful, nor would the Philippians be. God chose to bring him out of it so they didn=t have to experience grief at that time. Why didn=t Paul just heal him?
It just wasn=t the purpose of gifts, to heal believers, it was a sign to unbelievers, not believers, to bring folks to the gospel, not to be a benefit to believers others don=t have. Paul speaks of his loneliness when in Rome and he says he had to leave Trophimus in Miletus sick. Paul was hoping he was with him, but he=s not because he was sick and had to leave him behind. Paul, if you need a companion and he=s sick; why don=t you just heal him? Not what the gifts were for? They didn=t go around healing just anybody they wanted to, just to prove they could do it. The impression was made to the unsaved!
I am suspect of these calls to meetings that are mostly for Christians to gather and be healed. That=s just not what the gift was for.
47. No one ever asked for money! The whole notion that you would give money so that you might be healed, or even to pay so others might be healed, was absolutely distasteful to the Apostles and early church. None of the biblical characters we read of ever ask for money in connection with their gifts.
48. Faith on the part of the one being healed was not a requirement! We saw in chapter 3, Peter healed a lame man before he believed in Jesus. This isn=t even discussed in the early church, but today, it is the favorite out of those today who can=t heal someone when they call for healing and they aren=t healed. They say, you weren=t healed because you had no faith and you know they say that.
The only reason they are there is because they have faith that it=s possible to be healed and then you say the reason they weren=t is because they don=t have any faith. You take away the only thing they do have, which is faith. Aeneas is someone Peter found, he went looking and found him and healed him. We have no mention of him believing anything, or even looking to be healed. Dorcas is already dead, so where=s the faith there?
Peter remembered times when Jesus healed people, who didn=t even know who Jesus was, say nothing about having faith in Him. Faith in Jesus wasn=t a prerequisite to being healed by the Apostles and early disciples. In fact, it was a call to unbelievers to come to belief in the gospel, in Jesus!
Now, remember again, God is doing wonderful things today that can=t be explained any way but that God has intervened supernaturally. I am saying we have charlatans among us, claiming they can do what the Apostles did do, but cannot do what they did. I believe allot of harm has been done by those who seek for a following of people based on false promises.
Conclusion: let=s make it even more relevant today.
49. I want us to reconsider the ministries we have emphasized today! Why do we get all worked up over miracles today anyway? Part of it is our nature. We love the dramatic we are drawn to it! We are impressed with flashy things; we are more impressed with public things. There are scores of folks who want to be the one in front of many people, but don=t really want to do anything to just go among the people and minister to them personally.
The church would be so much better off and growing if fewer of us wanted to be up front before everybody, and more of us just wanted to go help some widows find some cloths. Thank God for those who aren=t looking to get credit, or recognition, but just want to go help people!
Do you have a ministry, where you are just out helping folks? You=re not getting any publicity for it, but do you have one? Anyone who doesn=t have one of these kinds of ministries doesn=t deserve a public ministry. Then, immediately the question comes, how do I get a personal ministry? This is our problem today. We think we can just sit in our churches and God will just drop people in our laps!
Do just like the Apostle Peter did, if you really want a personal ministry, go walk down your street and find somebody in need and do something about it. It is not hard to find people with needs, but you have to go and of course, you have to be willing to do what it takes to help them. I promise you, if you go, God will show you more needs than you can take of.
This is what really makes an impression folks. This is what people remember!
They don=t remember the sermons, or the things you write, but they will remember if you made them some cloths. They will remember if you cooked them some meals when they couldn=t. The times you sat up with them, or kept the kids, or when you gave them transport when they didn=t have any. And, when you=re gone, that=s what they will talk about.
Let=s reconsider the emphasis we put on ministries. Maybe, we should give more praise to the Dorcas= and less to the preachers?
50. Let=s reconsider the miracles we recognize! I think God is doing wonderful things, but we don=t recognize them, because we=re looking for the physical miracles. God is doing marvelous supernatural miracles in people=s lives today, but they are more on our spirits than on our flesh.
If I asked you, what was the incredible thing that happened in the book of Jonah, what would you say? He got swallowed by a fish of some kind and spit back out 3 days later! I contend to you that is not the most incredible thing about the book of Jonah! He went to a city of 120,000 wicked people and the whole city repented!!!!!
That=s a miracle! I=m telling you if he got only 20 people to repent that would have been a miracle, but a whole city of 120,000, what would you call that? We get so distracted by the fish we missed the whole city! We have trouble noticing the best things God does, because we are looking at the flesh, the physical things all the time. What are the 2 big things that happen here in our text today? It was not that one was healed and another was raised. It was that many people came to believe in the Lord!
We have placed so much emphasis on the physical stuff, we don=t even see the magnitude of the spiritual that is happening and how much more impactful it is. I cannot do physical miracles, but he has used me to do spiritual miracles in the lives of folks and I believe this is greater.
Even if you can heal the sick, they will still get sick again. If you could raise the dead, they will still die later. But, if God uses you to do work in someone to change their life, that=s eternal, that=s so much more important than the other. I have never healed someone of physical paralysis, but God has used me to heal some folks of spiritual paralysis. People who couldn=t walk with God are now walking with Him! What do you think is more important?
I=ve never raised the dead and never will, but God has used me to raise some folks dead in their sins, to walk raised in Christ! I have worked to resurrect some marriages that the world said would die, but God had other plans. I have seen some truly amazing wonderful things, things this world can=t explain with fleshy explanations. They truly are miraculous folks. You are sitting beside some miracles of God. In fact, you are one! All fully devoted followers of Christ are a wonder of God!
An Officer and A Gentle Man Acts 10:1-8
Luke has been preparing us for the emergence of a missionary church. He states it in chapter one and then records how it went to first Jerusalem, then Judea and then to Samaria, big transition there, and from that modest beginning to the rest of the world. Luke is now saying the church is ready to go to the ends of the earth. It=s such a major change he doesn=t just put it out there like it=s just a quick knee jerk thing, this is a huge change for the church.
His preparation up to it is seen in chapter 9 by showing us who is being prepared to do this work. Saul of Tarsus will be the man to take the gospel into all the earth. Here in chapter 10 Luke is showing how God gets this message to the Jerusalem church that the gospel is indeed for all people, for the Gentiles. God chooses Peter of the Jerusalem church to get this message across to the whole church.
Now, if taking the gospel to the ends of the earth doesn=t appeal to you, or you don=t think it=s a message for us today, then the rest of the book of Acts will mean little to you. You can=t look at the rest of this book, without talking about or looking at world missions.
Too many times in the church today we make mission work into just another category of church work that is for some and not others. People say, that=s just not my thing, like teaching a class is not my thing, or serving in some other function of the church. I=m not a good visitor, so I wouldn=t be good at welcoming new comers, etc. I like the shepherding group though, so I get involved there. We tend to look at most things as just pieces of the pie and some of us like one or the other and that=s okay we say.
It=s very important for the church to look at what our basic reason for existing is; our primary mission. What is the top priority of the church? You see if there is a priority then we need to look at all of our works, our programs and see if they actually promote and build-up our main mission. It took some doing by God to get this across to the early church, but as we read on we read that this church really understood what its mission really was.
Acts 10:1-8, A1At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. 2He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. 3One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, "Cornelius!" 4Cornelius stared at him in fear. "What is it, Lord?" he asked. The angel answered, "Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. 5Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. 6He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea." 7When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. 8He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa.@
I=m going to do what may be disturbing to some by asking the question, where do good God-fearing people like Cornelius stand before God? He=s a devout, God-fearing man, who gives generously and prays regularly to the one true God. He has allot going for him, but where does he stand before God?
51. He had respect professionally. He was a centurion. He was in one of the great battalions of the Roman army, a leader in high standing. Just to be a centurion was to be the backbone of the Roman army. He was also known for his character as a leader in that army. It=s interesting as you look at the word centurion in the bible, that every time the word is used, it=s used positively to note a noble and good man.
A classic passage as an example is seen in Matt. 8, where Jesus goes to Capernaum and a centurion comes to Him, He=s a Gentile, a Roman and he tells Jesus he has a sick servant who lives in another town and wants Jesus to come with him for his servant=s sake. Jesus said let=s go, and the centurion says, no, you don=t have to do that. Just give the word right here and he will healed the centurion says, because he understood how authority works.
Jesus was astounded! That should get our attention. Jesus was surprised by this man. Jesus says I haven=t seen this great a faith in all Israel! This roman centurion has a faith that puts you all to shame. Remember it was at the foot of the cross that a centurion said, after all the miracles that took place at the cross, he looked at Jesus and said, surely this is the Son of God. Some centurions actually show up and save Paul=s life later on when some Jews start beating on him. When they take him before the counsel, they order Paul to be flogged, but a centurion says, no you can=t do that; he=s a Roman citizen. Many would have said, yeah but he=s a Jew so go ahead, but not a centurion, they are noble people.
Other examples that show you can trust a centurion to do the right thing in a given situation. Toward the end of Acts we=ll see a centurion showing kindness to Paul. Also, the same centurion does a noble thing when the ship Paul is on gets shipwrecked. The usual thing to do in those situations was for the officers to kill all the prisoners, but for the sake of Paul, the centurion lets them live. If a centurion moved into your neighborhood, you would expect them to be pillars in your community, because you didn=t get to be a centurion if you weren=t a good and noble person.
You say, well that=s allot, if he has that he has enough then. Well, that=s not all he has.
52. He has reverence for God. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing. He wasn=t raised do be a worshipper of God, but he was raised as a pagan, like everyone was. But, somehow when he went to this place he became acquainted with Judaism and he and his family believed. They were drawn into the worship of the one God and worshipped Him alone.
He saw the ethical standards of the 10 commandments and they appealed to him because they were the highest standards he had seen anywhere. So he was devout in following the commands of God and became a God-fearer.
What does that mean? Well, the Jews had calcifications of Gentiles. One was your ordinary everyday Gentile, who was considered a dog by the Jew. The Jews hated Gentiles and would not do anything for them or with them if they could possibly help it. They looked at them like dogs, not wanted or welcomed. Another group was the proselytes, who actually were converted to Judaism in every way. They were circumcised and every other custom that was required for them to be considered followers of Judaism.
The other category was God-fearers. These are those who came to believe in the God of Israel, but they did not become proselytes, they weren=t circumcised, nor did they go to temple and do the other things required by a good Jew. Cornelius was a God-fearer. These folks actually take on a significant place in the rest of Acts in that, when Paul goes into these other places he first seeks out God-fearers to preach to. Gentiles who weren=t Jews, but knew something about the God of Israel and were attracted to Him in various degrees.
53. He had spiritual leadership. He was able to lead his whole family to belief in the God of Israel. Not only that but, he sent his aid to go get Peter and it says he was a devout man. How did that happen? Cornelius had great spiritual influence on the people around him; he converted people to the one true God of Israel.
Now, this is really notable, because, I don=t know about you, but my experience tells me that, just because you have professional leadership with someone doesn=t necessarily mean you have spiritual leadership with them. He could be a guy who leads many in a big company, or organization of some kind, but if you get him into church; he may not be able to lead 2 people.
Just because a man has a deep personal faith doesn=t mean it=s easy for him to transmit that to his own household, his own children, or spouse, friends, etc. Cornelius can reach his family and the people who work for him. He is a spiritual leader.
54. He has concern for his fellow man. This guy almost sounds too good to be true, doesn=t he? He was a generous man, to the poor and Jewish folks. Giving alms to the poor wasn=t a part of pagan religion. When Cornelius found God he also found his wallet and some Christians can=t get that one right. He helps the poor, even poor Jewish people! He=s not a Jew, nor does he plan on becoming one, yet he helps them.
55. He has an active prayer life! He prayed to God continually. He kept the three times a day regular prayer time, just like the Jews did, when the angel came, it was during one of those set times. This guy is too good to be true, what in the world else does he need?
The one word answer to that question is salvation! He is not saved! How do we know that? Peter has to explain to the Jerusalem church about why he is spending time with Cornelius and this is what he says, Acts 11:13-14 A13He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, 'Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.@ Everything is not recorded in chapter 10, but here we see Peter is specific about why he has to go to Cornelius, he has to bring words of salvation to Cornelius and his household.
He wasn=t saved yet! Does God hear the prayers of sinners who are not saved yet? Many people have said, no He doesn=t it says so; when the blind man was healed remember? The blind man told the Pharisees that God didn=t hear the prayers of sinners, but did God say that? All the blind man was doing is quoting what the scribes and religious leaders of his time always said. This was a common belief of the Jewish people, handed down by the rabbi=s for years, but does God teach that? We know these leaders taught things that became accepted as truth that really wasn=t the truth.
Here we see proof that God hears unsaved folk=s prayers. He hears the prayers of those who are honestly seeking Him, even though they are not saved yet. Now, seeking Him is not the same as having your sins forgiven, so he needs more than that. What He shows us here is; God provides more light to come to ones who truly seek Him.
So, we must know, that what is being said is, all men who have not come to the Christ and had their sins washed by his blood, are still lost in their sins, no matter how good they are. Anybody without Christ is lost. Now, this speaks to our mission and whether or not we take it seriously or not. We either don=t know this basic simple truth that anyone without Christ is lost, or we don=t care that they are. If we don=t care about it, then I don=t know why we spend our time in Christianity, going to church, or group, etc. It is our main purpose for existing as His people in the earth.
I guess I=m glad folks come to church and group, etc., but I don=t know why they do, if they don=t care deeply about the lost. Now, it is possible that many are ignorant. They have never thought about it seriously, what about all the good people in the world who don=t know about Jesus? Why then haven=t we thought about this so that it moves us to action? Is it because our enemy has deceived us? Maybe, he has worked to bring us to believe something else is more important than your neighbor who hasn=t heard the truth. It=s important for us to ask the question, where is our zeal, if we have none.
We need to face these questions and answer them honestly. What do we believe?
56. Is goodness enough for salvation? Is all we have to do to be saved is be a good person? Everybody says it of you, and of many you know; is it enough? The majority of our world and allot of Christians say yes to that question. I hear folks say of those who have died, they weren=t a Christian, but they were such good people, I have to leave it to God to sort out now. Here we see Cornelius, with all this moral excellence and he=s not qualified for salvation.
This is a very unpopular teaching in our day and time. The majority of people in the world and even many in the church think I=m narrow and bigoted to say this. We simply do not understand the difference between man=s goodness and God=s holiness! We compare ourselves to each other and say; of everybody around me I look pretty good, maybe even better than most. We don=t compare ourselves to God and His standard of holiness.
Paul goes on to say in Romans 3 that of Jews and Gentiles, there is No One righteous! No, not one! For we have all sinned and fallen short of God=s glory. It doesn=t matter what you=re good at in life; maybe it=s sports, you=re a world class athlete, or maybe you=re a musician at the top of your talent, winning every award there is, or maybe a corporate executive and you got the machine humming better than all competitors.
Sooner or later someone comes along and does it better than you did, went just a little further than you did. If we compare ourselves to others we may look pretty good, but try comparing yourselves to God and no matter how good you are in comparison to others, you still fall way short. Some people seem to reach a little higher in their walking with God than we do, but even though they may get a little further ahead than us, they still fall short of God=s holiness.
If we look at our goodness in terms of what it takes to save us, then God says, our righteousness can only be compared to filthy rags, no matter what we=ve done. Compared to our standards, we may be good people, better than many, but not compared to God. Our good deeds will become holy deeds when we do them to glorify God and not to try to save ourselves with them. When it comes to salvation we can=t do enough to cleanse our sin.
The Christ must cover your sins, or you cannot fellowship the holiness of God. If goodness were enough then why did God have to send His Son and watch Him bleed to death on a cross for us? If goodness were enough, many do not need Jesus; do not need a savior, but that is not the truth. It may be unpopular to say, but it is the truth.
57. Are we saying that a person has to believe in Jesus to be saved? Okay, goodness isn=t enough, but do you have to become a Christian? Does he have to have Jesus in his life? What do most people say? Ann Landers was asked this question not long ago and she put it in her dear Abby section of the newspapers. The scenario was, I am a Christian and so is my son who is marrying a Jewish girl. We like the girl and don=t object to the marriage, nor do his folks, but our religion states that a person who doesn=t believe in Jesus will not be saved. What would you say?
What would most people say? That=s a really bigoted position to take, right? Ann tells her to broaden her view to, eternal life is offered to all people who keep God=s laws. Isn=t that what the majority believes? You don=t really need Jesus to be saved, as long as you obey God=s law the way you understand it, that=s enough. What do you believe? The answer to this question will determine whether reaching the world with the truth of the Gospel is more of a charitable mission, or a divine necessity!
If people have to have Jesus to be saved, our mission is a divine necessity! If they don=t have to have Him, why go anywhere? Oh, we want to build hospitals, and food centers, and generally improve people=s lives, but we really don=t have to, it just makes us feel good to do so. What do we believe? Acts 4:12, mark it down, memorize it, let it sink deep, A12Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.@
Paul said it plainly as well, 1 Tim. 2:5, A5For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.@ Only one person can get you to stand before God and that is Jesus. John records this to drive it home in 1 John 5:11-12, A11And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.@
Jesus himself said in John 14:6, A6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.@ Is it hard to see what God=s Word says, so clearly? Do we fall back on man=s opinion when the Word says that which is unpopular and unpalatable to the majority? Do we work at our own view when it says what we say, it just can=t be? Why do people insist on speculating what it takes to be saved when He has been so clear on what will save us? Why do we fight against the clear truth of it all?
Luke has shown us in chapter 8 the Ethiopian eunuch, then in chapter 9 Saul of Tarsus, and now Cornelius, all good, moral, zealous religious men. All of them needed Jesus to be saved! Allot of people don=t like this, it sounds exclusive, narrow-minded, and bigoted. When God saw that the world was so wicked He had to do something, He called a man named Noah and he built an ark, because a flood was coming. He built only one ark, with one door. Some say that=s narrow-minded, seems to me He was being gracious to build an ark at all. He didn=t have to.
God has sent his Son and has been clear, He is the door, if you come through Him you can be saved, you will enter in. Is God narrow-minded? He didn=t have to send His Son, but He loved us enough to do it. That leads us to maybe the hardest of all these questions that we must face.
58. Is man entitled to salvation? I think we think deep down He is, and that=s why we aren=t zealous about our main mission, as we ought to be. Deep down we believe good people are entitled to be saved, God must save the good folks. So, it=s not really our responsibility to bring the message to people, it=s God=s.
Men aren=t condemned because of ignorance! How can God condemn people who have never heard about Jesus? We ask this allot. People are not condemned because of ignorance, but because of their sin. Man=s basic problem is not that he hasn=t got the light, but it=s because he really doesn=t want more light. The Cornelius= of this world are rare.
ALight has come into this world and man chose darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil,@ says Jesus. Most folks want to live like they are and stay in that darkness. Is that Gods= fault?
Is it Gods= fault that we like darkness? In the first place, who left whom to begin with? Did God leave us, or did we leave Him? When Jesus hung on that cross, He was not paying off His debt; He was paying off our debt! Sometimes, I think we lose that. God made this world and we got into this big mess and the least he could do is send His Son to die for us. He owed it to us somehow! He is not indebted to us, to you. You were in debt and he paid off your debt, not His.
The only motive to explain the Gospel, to explain the cross is Grace! God did what He did not have to do, you were not entitled to, you did not deserve, just simply because He loves us. He loves us more than we know how to say, but He loves us enough to send His Son to die for us, is as close as we can get to explain it.
All our attempts to try to come up with answers to what is God going to do with all these people that don=t know Him yet, are nothing but us abdicating our responsibility to tell them. We want to sooth our conscience by saying, it wasn=t really our job any way it was Gods=, so He needs to figure out how to do it. God has already done more than He had to do.
Conclusion:
59. It is Gods= responsibility to decide and He will be fair! Judgment is His job. We say, what about this person or that one, I=m not their judge. Everyone will give an account of their life and God will judge and it will be fair and just and no one will be able to say that is not fair.
Now, I know that I have struggled with this and you have too, no doubt. How, can it be fair that millions of people in our time won=t hear the name of Jesus so as to be saved? I am not the judge. The scriptures show clearly these folks are lost, but I am not their judge.
I know Jesus said, that those who knew the Masters will but did not do it would receive many lashes, but those who didn=t will receive fewer lashes. It still says, they will be punished, even if they don=t know Him. I don=t know how that all works out; I am not the judge. I don=t get lost in trying to understand things that God hasn=t told us we need to know.
What I know is, everyone must come to Jesus to be saved and that any man who truly seeks God will find Jesus, he will find what he=s looking for. Cornelius teaches us God will see to it that the true seeker will find God and salvation. God will find a way to bring the light to such men! We=ll be surprised at the end of it all, when we see those we had no idea about, which was maybe closer to us than we know. It=s all because of His work in their lives.
I don=t think anyone in America can say standing before God; I never had a chance to know the light. But, that is Gods= job, not mine, so I=ll leave it to Him.
60. We must do the declaring! We must be faithful! God does the deciding, we do the declaring! Why didn=t God just have the angel tell Cornelius the plan of salvation? You know he would have had God given that order; angels live to do the will of the Father. Heaven would be emptied if God gave that order and there would not be any one person who wouldn=t have heard the Gospel by the end of this day if He gave the order to the angels.
God never gives instructions for angels to preach the Gospel. It=s incredible, here is man with this huge need and God with these incredible resources to meet that need, and how is God going to get the job done? God commands the church to bridge the gap! That is Gods= plan to save man!
Not going to do it with angels, they are not ready in wait in case we don=t step up. Instead He says I will call the church to account for it, because I don=t have a plan B. This is why we have to keep asking ourselves, not just on occasion, but every day if need be, are we still aware of what our basic reason for being is?
It=s so easy for us to drift away from the main thing. We get wrapped up in ministries and programs that take over all our time, efforts, and resources of the church. There=s a story told of a real place called God=s grill. The name of the place intrigued this one preacher so much he had to ask, how did you come to this name for your restaurant? Well, we started out as a missionary to this part of town and a key part of what we did was offer chicken dinners after our worship to everyone who came.
After a while we couldn=t afford it anymore, so we started charging folks for it and one thing led to another and we closed down the church and became just a restaurant. Hey, before we judge too harshly, haven=t allot of churches closed down? We may have huge buildings, great facilities, meet regularly, but we have stopped doing what we were called to do first and foremost. We do allot of things, but what our primary task should be.
Taking the Gospel to folks who haven=t heard; missions, is not a piece of the pie, it is the whole pie! Now, you are supposed to have a piece of it, but it is what we are all about.
Pride and Prejudice Acts 10:9-35
Have you ever been in a situation that if two days earlier you knew it before it happened that you would say, no way possible I would have ever dreamed of that happening to me? You know, sickness of a loved one can happen instantaneously and you find yourself going through that, but never thought about it a couple days earlier. Ever found yourself working at a job that two days before, you didn=t even know about that job? Some folks have stopped working at a place they never thought of leaving, let alone think of a couple days before.
I have been all the way across the country and in a short time found myself taking a trip I hadn=t even thought of taking. You get the idea and if you start to think along these lines then maybe you get the idea of what Peter is going through as he finds himself walking down a road on his way to meet with some Gentiles and wondering if he is even going in or not. This is the last thing he would have ever done on his own, never would have come to his mind.
What do you think he would have thought if you had told him two days earlier, you=re going to be with a house full of Gentiles preaching the gospel in a couple days? That was not on his day planner or agenda anywhere, but it was on Gods= agenda. Jesus told him in chapter one, you will start in Jerusalem and then you will go to Samaria, and then you will go to the ends of the earth. Jesus told Peter a long time ago that He would give Peter the keys to the kingdom, meaning Peter I=m going to use you to unlock the doors of my kingdom in the world, so Peter should have known something by that, but he forgot and God is going to have to remind him.
He opened the door to Jerusalem and Judea in Acts 2 on Pentecost day, and then he is called to Samaria after Philip preaches to them and he goes and endorses it all and brings the Spirit in a special way and the door is opened there, and now he is being called to open the door to the rest of the world. As hard as all the other doors were, this door is the hardest for Peter to unlock, because the man with the key wasn=t willing to turn it. But thank God for Peter=s obedience, because he did open the door and he first brings in Cornelius, who is the spiritual ancestor of all those who are not genetically Jewish.
What we=re looking at here has to cause us to praise God and honor Cornelius and Peter, because what we see here is what God has to do to get one man to accept another man. Acts 10:9-35, A9About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. 13Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat." 14"Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." 15The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." 16This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. 17While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon's house was and stopped at the gate. 18They called out, asking if Simon who was known as Peter was staying there. 19While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, "Simon, three men are looking for you. 20So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them." 21Peter went down and said to the men, "I'm the one you're looking for.
Why have you come?" 22The men replied, "We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say." 23Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests. The next day Peter started out with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa went along. 24The following day he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. 25As Peter entered the house; Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. 26But Peter made him get up. "Stand up," he said, "I am only a man myself." 27Talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. 28He said to them: "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. 29So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?" 30Cornelius answered: "Four days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me 31and said, 'Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor. 32Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner, who lives by the sea.' 33So I sent for you immediately and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us." 34Then Peter began to speak: "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism 35but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.@
This is such an incredible thing that Peter is saying here and we have kind of lost it through the passing of time, but mark it as a titanic change in the history of man. Before us is unfolding what Paul would go to write in Ephesians 3:6, that is the mystery revealed, A6This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.@ Mystery for ages now revealed. It had always been in Gods= mind to include the Gentiles in receiving the gospel.
Heirs together, sharers together, to be in one body together and the chosen of Israel, the Jews never saw it; it was a mystery God had all along been preparing to unfold. Now, it would all come flooding in as it happened here, Jesus talked about it, when He called himself the good shepherd and he told them I have sheep that are not of this fold that I must gather as well. Jesus spoke of the Gentiles being in His kingdom. I think they had it in them, kind of knew it, but it just wasn=t coming to the light of day, so to speak.
Jesus= last words to them were, you are to go and make disciples of every nation. The word used there is our word ethnic. He didn=t say go into every country, He literally says, go and make disciples of every ethnic group of people in the world. Now, you can=t do that as a Jew unless you reach out to Gentiles. They had the kind of knowledge that was more of a feeling that the kingdom was going to be more than just Jews, but it needs to be fully revealed and not just in the back of their mind somewhere.
In fact, what we see here is an exception to the rule. Peter actually preaches what he wasn=t living. You ever heard of preachers preaching what they aren=t living? Got news for you, they do it all the time and by the way, it makes me feel better about myself too. Peter preached on Pentecost day that they should repent and be baptized and receive the Spirit and the promise was not only for you but also for all those who are far off! Well who is far off? = The Gentiles. The first sermon he preached he said that salvation was for both Jew and Gentile, but he never did it until now.
He repeated the fulfillment of the prophecies that the Messiah would be for all peoples of the earth in chapter 3, his second recorded sermon. In fact he used the same words Jesus used in the great commission, unto the ends of the earth. So, don=t be shocked or surprised when your preacher preaches above himself, or on a higher level of commitment than he himself has reached. We wouldn=t be able to preach Gods= Word, if the case was we had to first live it in full before we can teach it to anyone.
How many times do we preach or teach something, but never really expect any of us to go do what we just said? Go tell your neighbors and friends the good news, but do we really believe you will literally go do it? It=s one thing to look at Gods= Word and put it together to present it and another to actually go out and do it. It=s one thing to announce the truth, it=s another whole new thing to go out and practice what you just said.
God at this time of the church=s history has a church that is preaching the Gospel is for the whole world, but they aren=t preaching it to the world. He has a church that is not even thinking about doing it and He must do something about that. Up until now, it has been the focus of the church to think and preach to a Jewish movement. There were those who had gone off and preached to Gentiles as we have seen, but it still wasn=t seen by the church, as something the church should do. They heard about it going on in far off mission areas, but that=s okay for them, that=s not really for us.
The church hadn=t got the message yet, even though some individuals had. The issue really isn=t can the gospel be preached to Gentiles and can they be saved. The issue is closer to home, do I have to preach to them and be personally involved in saving them? Chapter 11 tells us what the problem really is, A1The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3and said, "You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.@
They didn=t say, Peter you preached to them and baptized them how could you? No, the problem is, maybe we can preach to them, but man we sure don=t have to eat with them, fellowship with them! You see we get insight into the sin of the early church that must be addressed before God can bless it from here on. The early church was prejudice! They didn=t mind if someone up in some mission country preached to the Gentiles, but we=re not going to do it. We don=t like those people.
The problem wasn=t how are we going to get Cornelius saved. If that was it all God had to do was tell a great preacher who already lived in Caesarea, Philip. He=s in town; he lives there with his family, no problem, job done in a heartbeat if that=s all that needs to be done. The thing that must be done is for the Jerusalem church, Peter being the key to unlock the gospel to the Gentile world, so that the whole church is now practicing what it preaches.
Until the Jerusalem church endorses and does the work of bringing the gospel to the whole world, the work of God going out into the whole world is hindered and many Christians will say that=s not something we can do.
God has to work with the leader of the church to change the hearts of all the church. God has to work on getting the sin of prejudice out of Peter=s heart, before He can convince the whole church to do the same.
In this text we actually see clues as to why we accept prejudice in the church. Do we have a problem in the church with prejudice today, or is this just an academic exercise? I can remember being a very young preacher and trying to get funds to do some missions work from a big well known, respected church by all who knew it and being very impressed by this church in my meeting with the leaders. It was an impression that hasn=t left me ever. I was in the meeting with the elders of this church and I was a bit intimidated by them. I was used to small churches and not much leadership, I had only heard of them and how all churches should strive for this kind of leadership and size, etc.
Elders, shepherds of the flock, not having met many, but having studied them, I had a vision of a level of holiness and spirituality above the norm. In my mind I had them on a high level, but in our conversation of trying to explain why our struggling little church needed help from them, they began speaking of something I had no idea why it even came up in the conversation. They started talking about how they supported financially this local church in the community that was a part of their church, but separate from them.
They started using language I was not used to hearing coming from my part of the Country. They first said they were a black congregation and that they really liked being on their own separate from the bigger all white groups. Then they started to go deeper into their explanation of them by calling them names that frankly shocked me, I had no idea how to respond. They prefaced it by saying they call themselves things like coon-ass and niggers, I guess they must have seen a look on my face, so they quickly said, it=s okay to say that they use that all the time.
To tell you the truth, I have no idea what else we talked about after that; it was all a blur. I couldn=t get out of my mind what I had just heard from these men I had placed on a pretty high pedestal. You see, for me coming from the hills of VT, where black on white prejudice was rarely even heard of, simply because we had so few blacks we never lived with it really. To hear people speak of prejudice when there just wasn=t any real reason to seemed silly and we just scoffed at it mostly. To say the least these men left a huge impression on me about sin in the church and putting folks too high up in our minds.
Do we have a problem of prejudice today? Certainly, not Jew and Gentile, but in many places we still do have black on white in our churches. But, you know there are other kinds as well, I was in a church once that had red on white prejudice. What about college educated and non-college folks, ever see that kind of prejudice? It forms clicks where only these kinds of folks are allowed in. What about prejudice based on wealth, ever witness that? What about old verses the young prejudice? The older don=t think the young have any good ideas, because all they want to do is change everything and the young never even try to love the old. Can you name the older members you truly love and respect and seek out their counsel and wisdom?
Anytime you don=t have time for people who aren=t just like you, you have a problem with prejudice. If you had asked Peter if he was prejudice, what do you think he=d say? Show me any Jew I=ll like them. Show me someone who went to this school or that one and I=ll like them. We=re not prejudice, we like all upper middle class folks who come to church here. Let=s see 3 reasons why we struggle with prejudice:
1. Tradition! Peter specifically tells Cornelius that you know that it is not lawful for me to visit Gentiles. That has always been the tradition of our heritage you know that. Yeah, that=s true Peter but you=re wrong about that, the Law never said anything about it being wrong to visit Gentiles. In fact, God told them to love the alien, because He loves the alien and you once were aliens in the land of Egypt.
You see, their interpretation of the Law was skewed by their tradition that told them to view folks not like them differently. They developed all kinds of rules for behavior among Gentiles God never spoke of. This is exactly why we are prejudice toward certain people, because our traditions handed down to us by our forefathers about how to view certain people. What about folks on drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, homosexuals, Democrats, or Republicans, the homeless and poor, do we view them as lesser or the same? Tradition is a huge influence and stays with us for a long time; they are hard to break.
2. Isolation! We don=t spend any time being with folks who aren=t just like us. Young hang with the young, old hang with the old, white hang with the white, black hang with the black, and the Jews hang with the Jews and Gentiles with the Gentiles. Even after he had seen the vision 3 times the Spirit had to tell Peter not to hesitate to go with these men. If he hadn=t told Peter to go, he wouldn=t have gone. I don=t hang out with Gentiles!
Peter knew nothing about Gentiles, because all his life he had been in isolation from them. This is what keeps us from folks today. We don=t know anything about those folks, so we decide we don=t like them. You see I grew up in a place where I never really had to deal with black on white prejudice. I never really had to face that question personally when I was growing up, that=s why it shocked me to see it in the church when I came south. But, I tell you allot about class prejudice, who lives on what side of the tracks, who is more educated than the other and young verse old prejudice.
Did you know the most segregated time in our country is on Sunday morning? Most often, some exceptions, but mostly, we go to church with folks who are just like us. We isolate ourselves from others not like us, we seek out folks just like us, or something=s wrong with church, so we go find one that is more to our liking. Sometimes we know in just a short time if this church is not like us, so we move on. We isolate ourselves on Sundays, from folks not like us by and large.
61. Pride! The reason there is prejudice is because of pride. When Peter sees the vision of all those animals and God says eat, Peter dripping with pride says, I have never eaten anything unclean and I don=t intend to start now. He is proud of this!
I=ve never done such a thing, I=m above it, I=m pure of that sin for sure and I will never do that one. We do that with some sins don=t we? He has enough pride to say, No Lord, I have never and won=t now.
I=m not going to do it Lord! Did you know saying No Lord is a contradiction in terms? If He is Lord you can=t say no, you can only say, yes Lord Your will be done. So much pride that he is above this sin, that he can say I don=t do that sort of thing Lord even if You say so. The Jews had been told for so long they were chosen that they thought that meant you were superior.
Tradition is part of it, isolation is part of it, but bottom-line, the reason you are prejudice against anybody about anything is because deep down you think you are better than they are! This is exactly how the Jews felt about the Gentiles. We are the chosen; you are not, so you are the outcasts, the unwanted, and the lesser ones.
Gods= job is big here. He has got to get Peter to view Gentiles differently than he has not just Peter, but all Jews. His views are starting to crumble when he is called to go to speak to the Samaritans in chapter 8, people who are partly Jew, but not completely Jew. He went and stayed at Simon the tanner=s house. Why was that helping in crumbling his views? Because, tanners had to deal with dead animals and Jews were never to do anything with dead animals, so Simon the tanner is something Peter must accept.
As far as Jews were concerned, if you touched unclean things, you were unclean and so, tanners stayed unclean. Tanners had to live 50 yards outside of the city. To say you will live with a tanner means, Peter had to say, I don=t care what kind of Jew he is, he is good enough for me. This step probably made Peter think he wasn=t prejudice, because he could live with any Jew. God is working on Peter, but he still has a huge mountain of a step to make.
He probably has thought about this question of the Gentiles, because he has preached about it and he did hear Jesus talk about it, he heard others were doing it, but he wasn=t doing it. God takes the hunger in Peter=s stomach and in Peter=s head and puts them together in a vision with all these animals on a sheet. Think about how God is working here. He is working on Cornelius to get him ready and at the same time working on Peter to get him ready.
That=s how you got saved by the way. God was working on you to get you to listen and God was working on someone else to get them ready to talk to you. In this case God has allot more work to do on Peter than Cornelius. Cornelius was much more open to listen than Peter was to preach. I think that is still true most of the time that it is harder for God to get His church to talk, than it is to get people willing to hear.
So Peter gets this vision and as soon as it=s over some folks come and the Spirit tells him, don=t hesitate to go with these men.
He must make a decision and that=s what many of these verses are about. He has to decide whether or not he is going to entertain and be entertained by Gentiles, when all his life he has been told he cannot do that. So, what to do?
Well, he starts by saying; it=s too late to go tonight so you guys need to stay with me tonight. He invited Gentiles into his house! What do you think his neighbors were talking about? You know it=s one thing for Peter to stay with a tanner, but now he has gone over the cliff, he=s got Gentiles in there. The neighborhood is gone now, it=s dirt, way worse than before, and we=ll never recover from this. Next thing you know Gentiles will be living on the whole street. We=re going to have to move to a more respectable place.
Sounds a little funny doesn=t it, but you know it=s a big deal in most towns, isn=t it. Certain parts of town get a reputation and it=s hard to change it, right? Now, this is a big deal, but not as big as what Peter is about to do the next few days. It=s one thing to take someone in, you may be able to explain that away, but to go into someone=s house and stay is as low as you can go, there=s no need for that. You have now made yourself unclean!
Now, Cornelius has all these people doing all this work for him, accompanying Peter and when they get there, Cornelius doesn=t meet him outside, he waits for him inside as folks meet him to bring him in. Cornelius is probably wondering is Peter going to come into my house? Well, Peter went in the house. Peter says, I have never done this before in my life, but God has shown me I should not consider other men unclean. Cornelius falls at Peter=s feet, he is so overwhelmed!
He starts paying homage to Peter, it=s not worship, but homage for what you represent and have done by coming in. If things hadn=t changed, then this would have been a good opportunity for Peter to be condescending. Don=t think that there wasn=t a moment of temptation where it at least went across the mind, where the idea that you should be paying homage for all I=ve done to come here and talk to you. It=s fleeting, Satan is working on folks in all this, or it never would have been a problem to begin with, but it=s fleeting and Peter chooses to obey God rather than all the voices he had been listening all his life.
What about us, do we talk to folks in such a way as to make them feel they should be more than grateful we took the time to be with them and help them? Peter=s prejudices are coming down. How does God reward Peter for this, He gives him an audience ready to hear the gospel! Peter not only preaches to Cornelius, but his whole household and neighbors he had invited. Interesting, do we invite our neighbors to come hear the gospel preached?
Another thing, it takes 2 people to make a good sermon. I can work hours on end to preach to you, but if you don=t come with the right spirit it won=t be a good sermon. What should be our spirit when we come to listen to Gods= Word, just like these folks?
They were gathered to hear all the things God wanted to say to them through this man. We are all here, all our neighbors and friends, relatives, and we are here in the sight of God. We=re not here to show off our new dress, or car, we are here to listen to everything!
We=re not here to be amused or entertained, but to listen to everything God has to say. Not here to listen to opinion, or psychology, but a word from God. If folks start looking forward to hearing from God when we gather together as his people, whether it=s in a building or here in these chat rooms, or wherever, it will be amazing how I will become a better preacher/teacher than I really am. It takes 2 to make a good sermon folks.
They are ready to hear from God all He has to say, so Peter starts by saying, I now know God does not show favoritism to any people, but honors all people who fear Him and does what is right. This is so huge to say and Peter says it. I now realize God is not a respecter of persons. The word used for realized means it took a process for it to happen, but now I get it. The light has dawned, revelation has come, enlightenment, epiphany time, now I understand what I=ve been preaching for so long and what God is trying to teach me even now.
By the way, that happens to us all the time too. I have taught many things years ago I=m just now really starting to understand fully. God is always working on us folks. You may have thought you understood something at the time, but as time goes by, now you really get it.
Peter had been told all his life from childhood that God is a respecter of persons, looks more favorably at him and other Jews than everybody else in the world. He didn=t hear this from bad people, these are religious people, good people, but they taught it anyway. He now knows that what he had believed all his life is wrong and must been thrown aside. God doesn=t look on people this way, but He accepts all who fear Him and does what=s right.
Peter goes on to write a letter where he enforces this whole teaching by saying God judges all men impartially. It=s the same word he uses here. Peter learns it big time and he will remind folks to remember what God taught me.
Question church, when is it going to dawn on us? How many years will it take? If you=re an American, it doesn=t mean you=re closer to heaven than those who aren=t. If you=re white, it doesn=t mean you=re closer to God than a black, brown, yellow or red man. If you have money, or education, it doesn=t mean you are more ready to lead in the church than the one who doesn=t. God looks at your heart, your character, not the outside.
Look what it takes for Peter to get the revelation and God had been trying way before this to speak to him about it. Peter heard it from Jesus and even preached it himself, but didn=t get it. What will it take for the church of our day to get it?
Will one lesson cure the problem of prejudice that exists in the church today? I think we need Gods= help to at least get started in the right direction.
Conclusion: A couple things we need to lose prejudice today: Let=s be honest, I struggle with it and so do you:
62. We need a new vision of humanity! Most of us have been raised in an environment to look at certain people in a way that is completely wrong. It was prejudice that was taught us, even though we may not have seen it. The whole idea that some folks are better than others and maybe even God will show favor for some over others.
Christianity isn=t an American religion; in fact, God doesn=t show favoritism toward any nationality over another. It=s not white, it=s not a rich religion, it=s not an educated religion, it=s not an old religion, or a young one, it is a who-so-ever-will religion! We have to learn to see people like this! Nobody is written off from the gospel.
We need to go home and get our own sheets out and write on them our own prejudices and beg God to help you deal with them. Until we do, our mission in the world will be hurt, just like it hurt the church=s mission in the beginning.
The truth is God only sees 2 kinds of people in the world = People who are in Christ and those who aren=t. The only question He has is how are you in Christ? This is our new vision of humanity. Not, that we look at those inside of Christ as better than those not, but how do we get them inside.
63. We need a new measure of humility! It=s one thing to talk about this and we=ll probably all say amen to it when we talk about it, but what will it take for us to do it? We are so proud; we don=t even want to admit we have this problem! I=m not prejudice! Peter probably never would have admitted it before either. Peter had worked to like all Jews, Samaritan Jews, poor Jews, rich ones, even a Jewish tanner.
We say I like all those folks at church. There=s a reason for that, they=re mostly like you. But, the truth is some folks don=t come to our church, because they know if they do, some folks won=t like them. We have to get more humble and admit there=s a problem and deal with it. The reason we don=t see some folks like we should is because we don=t see ourselves as we should. Our view of ourselves is warped.
You know who is prejudice? Anyone in any setting who says, Lord I=m so thankful I am not like that other person. That=s a very prideful statement. Lord, I thank you I was born here and not there. I thank you my skin is this color and not that.
I thank you I went to college and I don=t have to do what they do for a living. I=m better because I have more money, more stuff, better home, car, cloths, food, better schools, better pets, and on and on we think.
Let me tell you what gets that out of our minds; Lord be merciful to me a sinner! If that is our prayer each and every day, then our view of others will improve.
When that is our true prayer, we don=t have room for thinking about looking down on someone else; because we are praying God does not look down on us. Peter was willing to listen to His God and say yes Lord, when most of what was in him said no. He would not say no to God, in the end. Our prejudices today are no different, it will take us obeying our Lord just as did Peter, or our task, our reason for being His church will suffer loss.
I warn us all, we must repent and change our ways, for God will deal with us if we do not listen to Him and admit we have been wrong and begin to view all people as He does. It won=t matter if we were wronged at one time and treated poorly by others, if we act to return the favor; we must by the power of the Gospel reach out to all with no partiality. Human history changed starting with this moment and it needs to continue to change today.
The Spirit Had To Clear It Acts 10:36-48
Now remember Luke wrote a book, not a bunch of little topics and we go there are look at each one. It is a whole story; in fact he called his book The History of Christian Origins in the beginning. We know them as the Gospel of Luke and Acts, but he was trying to compile a complete history of Jesus= life and what He built.
If you understand this and realize he is trying to present Christianity to a Roman ruler as the true Israel, then we won=t tend to look at these books as just a bunch of pieces, but a whole story. Rome had made a law as they went out to conquer new places and that was the religion that was there could continue to practice their religion, but no new ones could be started. The fear was, new ones would be anti-Roman.
Christianity comes along and of course the Jews were very willing to tell Rome, Christianity is a new religion, so it needs to be stopped according to your own law. Luke writes and is presenting the case that Christianity is the true Judaism and therefore should be legal. Gods= plan all along was to take the old Israel and make it the church; the new Israel. Luke goes on to show that God is leading them to include Gentiles and all others into this new Israel.
Luke is showing the power of Israel has changed from the power of the priests and rabbi=s to the individual folks in the church. The power is in the Spirit and not in just a few, but in all those who are being saved.
After Peter sees that God is not a respecter of persons, but is bringing in all peoples including Gentiles, we see God working to open this wide open. We may be familiar with this story, but you must remember Peter has never read this. He didn=t read Acts 10 when he does all this, he doesn=t know any of this before he does it. He has no idea what is going to happen at the end of his sermon. By the way, none of us ever really do.
This is all brand new to Peter; it helps to remember that when we read this. Acts 10:36-48, A36You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. 37You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preachedC 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. 39"We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, 40but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosenCby us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. 43All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name." 44While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. 46For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, 47"Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have." 48So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.@
This is Peter=s first sermon to a Gentile audience. This is so big because of the prejudice that existed with Jews for so long, like we looked at last time. Peter is like Jonah, he didn=t want to preach to the pagans and have them believe and neither does Peter. To be the one chosen to open this door was not what any Jew would have wanted. The prejudice did what it always does and that is set in a belief of superiority, God chose us because we=re the best person, which of course wasn=t true, but it is what they believed.
The only reason the Jews were special had nothing to do with them, but because God chose them to be special, in fact He made them special, not themselves, or where they were from. It was totally Gods= grace that made them special, nothing else. God needed a people to bring His Son into this world and so, He brought this people together, and He chose these people, as well as the land. God never had in mind a people who would be better than all others in the world, but only that He would bring His Son who would bring all people together.
Paul goes on to write in Eph. 2 that Jesus took down the dividing wall between the Jews and Gentiles, the barrier of hostility between the 2 and made them one people. What that meant to the folks back then was a flash to the temple! There literally was a wall, a dividing wall in the temple. It was called the outer court and it was called the court of the Gentiles. That is the only place you can go when you=re there. The wall kept you from going further. The next court was for Jewish women and they could go there, but that was it. So, not only could the Jew get closer to God than Gentiles, but men could get closer to God than women. That was all built into the temple and their belief.
They had a court just for men and then one for the priests and then one for just the high priest, the holy of holies. Paul states that God has torn down all the walls that divide us and made us one in Jesus. All Christian=s are priests in the church. Every one of us gets to go to the holy of holies and commune with God. That is what Jesus did to make peace in the church, no more divisions between us. The church didn=t understand that right away, they were building the same walls they had always built and it took divine intervention for the church t knock down the walls.
We=ve already seen all the things God has done to get Peter here and now he is in front of these Gentiles and realizes through all Gods= working on him that God does not show favoritism, but wants people from every nation, so what does he decide to do with this knowledge; he preaches. He says he preaches that peace comes through Jesus and that He is Lord of all! Peter says we need a new message about peace with all in Jesus and I=m going to preach it. He=s still the good Jew and reminded them God did it first to Jews, but then he goes on to preach Jesus is Lord of all.
The body of his sermon is preaching about Jesus, baptized by John and anointed with the Holy Spirit and power, we know this because of what He did, and signs followed Him everywhere. I know He did it because God chose special witnesses and I=m one of them. This man was then killed by the Jews. They put Him on a cross and killed Him. But God raised Him from the dead on the third day and we are all witnesses of this.
Not everybody saw Him raised, but Gods= appointed ones did and we saw Him and ate with Him and drank with Him, He was no vision or ghost, He was raised bodily from the grave.
That is the Gospel message! He doesn=t talk about what Jesus said, but what Jesus did. What Jesus says is important, vital even, but we are not saved by what He said, we are saved by what He did! How He lived leading up to His death on the cross and how He was raised from the grave; that=s the gospel! This is important for us to get! Jesus was not the only one to tell us to love God, to make Him Lord of your life, love your enemies, etc., He said allot of things others had said already, but He was the only one to ever live a sinless life, offer Himself as a sin offering for us, and He was the only one to come up out of the grave bodily on the third day.
It is these things that our faith rests on! Our faith is grounded on historic truths, on some things that actually happened. The things He did are what we put our hope in. Now that=s a good sermon there, he=s got his introduction in and he has a great body to his sermon, but if you=re going to have a good sermon you have to have an invitation right? But, Peter doesn=t get to give an invitation because the Holy Spirit cuts it short. Some of us wished the Spirit still did this today with some preachers who don=t seem to know how to end, but it says while he was still speaking the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and his whole household.
Why? When Peter gets out the gospel and comes to the point where it says He was raised, they believed it! They don=t need to hear more and Peter needs to know they believe; he has to be shown they believe, God is working and they don=t need more sermon, they need Peter to tell them what to do about their belief. All the circumcised believers were astonished that God shows up here. He gives the Spirit in a special way and yes He gives it to Gentiles, so they will learn what God is doing. God doesn=t show a distinction between Gentiles and Jews, He comes to them the same.
The response is the same too, they exalt God, praise God, isn=t that what we all did when we first came to believe the gospel so as to be saved from our sins? Did we forget the praise that comes when we first heard the gospel? Sometimes we hear it so often we forget what happens the first time someone gets it, it erupts in praise and joy for what God has done. Try preaching it to those who haven=t yet accepted and see what happens when they believe and don=t forget how glorious it is.
Now some folks want to say what=s happening here is normal for today and it ought to be happening in our churches all the time today. The Spirit comes and what happens? = Tongues! Why? If this had happened with no external demonstration the Jews would never have believed it. In their minds the Gentiles can=t receive the Spirit. If all they did was tell Peter they had been filled with the Spirit, the Jews would have said, no he didn=t; God wouldn=t do that. So, when they began speaking in other languages praising God, they couldn=t deny God had filled them.
We know they were languages because, Peter goes on to say they received the Spirit just as we did, so how can we deny them entrance into the kingdom? What happened when they had received the Spirit, remember back in Acts 2? They began speaking in tongues, languages and it amazed everyone.
It was big deal, a big sign to all the folks in Acts 2 that they could hear the disciples speaking in these languages they knew they couldn=t have learned from their backgrounds. As Peter has to recount this event in chapter 11 we see he makes it clear what the gift of tongues is, Acts 11:15-17, A15"As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16Then I remembered what the Lord had said: 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' 17So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?"
What happens in Chapter 10 to those folks was the exact same thing that happened in Acts 2 and that was languages. Note also, this gift was not produced or manipulated by Peter. Peter says nothing about speaking in tongues, he didn=t try to get them to, and it was the last thing he would have expected from them. Not only that, but Cornelius and his household were not seeking the gift, they weren=t trying to speak in tongues, they didn=t even know about speaking in tongues. It happened to them!
This was a corporate experience, that is, everybody in his household began doing it. This is how it happens in Acts every time, everybody this happens to happens all at the same time, not just one here and one there. I think this is important for us today, because from those who claim this today, we hear, they don=t speak languages, the preacher is trying to get the people to do it, the people are seeking to do it, and it is always, one does it here and maybe another over there and never the whole bunch at the same time. Whatever is happening in Acts 10 is very different than what is happening today, no matter what we think.
We know God has to do something to make believers out of the Jews that God wants the Gentiles in, but why does He chose tongues out of all the other things He could have done? What was the purpose of tongues again? Tongues at the beginning were to convince unbelieving Jews of Gods= purposes. Remember 1 Cor. 14:21-22? A21In the Law it is written: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me," says the Lord. 22Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers;@
Now remember what he is doing, He is quoting Isa. 28 and saying, I sent the prophets who spoke the same language as the people of Israel and warned them, but they didn=t listen to me, says God. So what I=m going to do is send a people, who speak a different language to get their attention, I=ll send the Assyrians. Judgment is coming! The Apostle says that also speaks of our day. God sends people speaking differing languages to the Jews today to tell them a new message has come and they must listen to it. That was the purpose of tongues.
Every time tongues are seen in Acts, the Jews are being convicted they must change their minds about something says God. Here in Acts 10 the circumcised believers, Jews were astonished they heard this.
God didn=t send the gift of tongues for Cornelius and his household, but He sent it for the Jews who were with Peter. They are the ones who needed to be convinced that Gentiles must be accepted in the church. Why did God send the Spirit before they were baptized? This is the only place in scripture where folks received the gift of the Spirit before they were baptized.
What is God doing here? He is trying to bring Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles all together as one in the church, all united together. We see the Spirit come to certain ones at different times for special reasons, as we saw with the Samaritans. These two hated each other! So, we saw they were baptized, but hadn=t received the Spirit yet. Like all the Christians did before them. If they had, they would never have come to join the Jewish Christians. Never would have submitted to the leadership of the Apostles, they would have continued to say you didn=t want us all this time, so we don=t want you.
You would have had 2 churches at the beginning, if God didn=t stepped in. The Holy Spirit doesn=t want 2 churches but only 1, so he gets their attention. They didn=t receive the Spirit until Peter and John, Jewish leaders came and the Spirit is given through them. God made His point. Is that the way it happens every time? No, after this all Samaritans received the Spirit when baptized just like all others who believed so as to be saved.
When we come to Acts 10 we see God working again. The Gentiles want to be accepted by the Jews, but the Jews don=t want to accept them. So what does God do? He gives them the Spirit before they are baptized to get the message across that Gentiles are to be accepted and they are not second class Christians. If it had happened the other way around and the Gentiles came into the church, the Jews would have said, just you guys remember if it wasn=t for us you wouldn=t have the Holy Spirit. They would have been relegated second class in the church.
God didn=t let that happen. God accepts them in such a way that all know, there aren=t any inferior Christians in my church. Once God makes His point, He doesn=t have to make it again. After Acts 10 all Gentiles receive the Spirit when they are baptized just like everybody else. This is a history making moment! It would be like if you heard the gospel for the first time and everybody in the church was a different color than you. Would you wonder if you were going to be accepted, do you suppose? That=s the question here in Acts 10. God steps in and says don=t treat these folks any different.
The conclusion to all this is, can any of you keep these from being baptized? After all we have seen God do here, can we say they can=t be Christians too just like us? Even after they had received the Spirit we see Peter says they must be baptized, it=s still important and he orders it. The only time in history God gives the gift before baptism and He still orders them to be baptized. How can we say baptism isn=t important enough to command folks do it? Baptism is absolutely important and essential here according to Peter. This is not a debate moment, it is a command moment.
Can I, should I, do I have too? These kind of debates weren=t apart of this church. You baptize them in the name of Jesus! Not the name of an Apostle, or a church, or a denomination, some preacher or leader, but in the name of Jesus! All are saved through Him and no one else.
He stays a few days, why do you suppose? He must make disciples out of the Gentiles who he just baptized. He already kept part of the great commission to go and baptize, but that is not all there is to fulfilling our mission. We must make disciples out of those who call on His name. How do we do that?
One, you must baptize them and two you teach them all the things Jesus commanded them to do. Our job is not through when we baptize someone; we must stay with them long enough so we can teach them what Jesus commanded so they will be His disciples.
So a monumental hurdle for the church is made here. The church is now becoming a world religion for all. How does this all relate to us today? We don=t have Gentile Jew problems like that today, so how does relate? To answer that I ask this, how does the Holy Spirit work in the church today? He doesn=t have to do what He did here anymore, but does He still work and how? He is still working to promote these things in the church today, look:
64. The centrality of Christ! The Holy Spirit always promotes the centrality of Christ. Too many today are concerned about how the Spirit comes instead of why He comes. Acts 1:8 gives us our answer; He tells us why He comes. You will be filled with power when the Spirit comes and you will do what?
You will be my witnesses! That is why the Spirit is needed and He comes. He comes to empower you with the conviction and courage and boldness, to testify about Jesus the Christ. The Spirit always exalts Jesus and not Himself. If our center is to preach about the Spirit, pray about the Spirit, and promote the Spirit, we are not a Spirit filled church! If the Spirit has filled us we will exalt Jesus! Jesus said the Spirit will speak of me, bring glory to me, and testify of me. That=s why Peter preaches Jesus, not the Spirit.
Do you know when you are most close to the Spirit? It is not when we talk about or preach about the Spirit, but it is when we preach about Jesus. When we talk to each other about Jesus, share Jesus with each other, that=s when we are being moved by the Spirit. Paul said, you can=t even say Jesus is your Lord without the Holy Spirit working in you. You are baptized in the name of Jesus; it says here, He is the center of it all.
65. The Spirit brings about the universality of the call. The Spirit is still active today in the church to break down any barriers that would keep us from going into all the world with the gospel. God has a missionary heart! Gods= heart beats for the world! God wants all our sermons to end like Peter=s when he says; everyone who believes on Him will be saved.
Everyone, not just Jews, not just Samaritans, and not just Gentiles, but everyone! Any church that is exclusive is not a Spirit filled church. Any church that builds a wall and says this kind of people stay on that side of the wall and the others are over here is not a Spirit filled church. The Holy Spirit will always break down any walls and be universal in preaching Jesus.
66. The Holy Spirit always promotes the unity of the church. He brought all of them into one church, not 3. He does by exalting Jesus, because Jesus is one language.
It doesn=t matter where you=re from; if we=re in Jesus we speak the same language. When He gets us to love Jesus, He can get us to love each other. Paul said we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body. That=s why he goes on to tell us we must make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Scripture tells us we can quench the Spirit. How do we do that? We looked at 3 ways to do it here. If we live a life that doesn=t exalt Jesus, we quench Him. The Spirit only exalts Jesus. If you live a life that exalts money, or exalts sex, or power, or anything but Jesus; we are quenching the Spirit in our lives.
Another way to grieve Him is to be an exclusive, prejudice, bigoted person. The Spirit will always lead you to love all people. And the other way to quench as we have seen is to do things that don=t promote unity in the church. You want to grieve the Spirit? You know that disagreement you have between you and that other brother or sister, you just refuse to solve it and let it fester and come between you, so that you divide and separate.
Instead of making it right, forgiving, or whatever needs to be done to be united, that is how we quench the Spirit. A Spirit filled person exalts Jesus, Loves all people, and works to keep the church united. That is the work of the Spirit first and foremost in the church and always has been. The Spirit is very personal and practical in what He does, He is not a mystical theory that we all have different views about, but He is very really working in us to reach the world For Jesus.
The Conversion Of A Congregation Acts 11:1-18
You bring Gods= Word to folks on a number of occasions, to however many at the time, is something that should cause anybody to think about and pray about allot. It=s not just humbling to think God would use us this way, it=s a little intimidating. You are doing what God has prepared you to do, but you are there in His stead, trying to get folks to see what He has said and is saying, so you need allot of reflection time to do it often.
One of the things that happens if you take the challenge to do this, is you will be held accountable by those you speak to sooner or later. You will be asked to defend your statements and the beliefs you put out there, which is good, but some are good at receiving this inevitable occurrence and some aren=t. Many times, in fact most of the time the challenge is put in such a way that they will tell you they don=t believe what you=re presenting, but they will tell you what they think you should believe.
It=s a common kind of criticism and you must condition yourself for it, because if you do it long enough and people will put you in the position to do it more and will gain the courage to tell you they don=t believe what you just said. It doesn=t matter how long you studied the thing, or prayed about it, or any other credentials you bring to the table, they will challenge you, maybe even reject you if you don=t change your mind to their way of thinking. A more polite response is, we will just have to agree to disagree on this one, in other words, I=m not changing my view no matter what you say, and I know what=s right.
This is exactly what we=re going to read about here today in Acts 11. You=ve heard the story of the lady who wanted a pet and goes to the pet store to get one? She really wants a parrot that talks, but she didn=t know if she could afford it or not. So, she goes in and sees one on sale for $15 and says can I have that? The owner says, well the reason this bird is on sale is because it was previously owned by a sailor and it only knows real bad language a fine Christian woman like yourself wouldn=t like. Oh, but I think I can retrain it so it won=t talk that way, so I would like it. He says okay and she takes it home and all is good for a bit and then she jostles the cage a bit by running into it and here comes this string of words, foul stuff. She takes the bird and puts him in the freezer for 5 minutes!
She gets him out and says; now we=ll have no such language here, do you understand and the parrot says yes, no more. So another day goes by and no such words, but then the kids come by and hit the cage and here it comes again. She takes the bird and puts him in the freezer for 10 minutes, beak starts getting blue and stiff feathers; she takes him out and says we can=t have that language any more do you understand? Yes, never again, says the bird. Well, a week goes by and all is well, then the cat tries to get the bird by hitting the cage and here it comes. She puts him in for 15 minutes this time and that is almost too long, but she says we just can=t have it, do you understand? The bird says yes, but can I ask a question? Sure she says, what did that turkey in there say?
I think allot of us have left church, or a study group etc. saying, what did that turkey say.
It=s not fun to be challenged in what you teach or preach, even if you are very sure you are right. This is exactly what this scripture is about. It=s all about getting called out by your fellow church brethren for what you have done and or taught. Now, when this happens to you, you must choose your words carefully in return.
Basically what Acts 11 is, is a retelling of Acts 10, you have to account for what happened there Peter. This is rare in scripture that a story is told twice back to back, but it=s not that rare in life, so it shouldn=t surprise us too much that God thinks it=s important for us to see how to deal with such moments in the church.
One of the reasons this is so significant is the history of it. By telling it back to back like this, Luke is saying, church you must understand the conversion of Cornelius! This is one of the most significant times in the history of the church. I=m not sure we understand much today just how close, Christianity came to being just another brand of Judaism? The first 10 years of the church was just a Jewish movement. There were a couple outreaches by some rogue types in foreign places, but the church, including the Apostles were just preaching to Jews.
God had to do something in a bold and grand way to get the church to reach out to all nations. That=s Acts 10. There are really 3 conversions that happen in Acts 10. Yes, Cornelius is converted, but so is Peter. Acts 11 goes on to tell us about the conversion of the church. We need to see all 3 to understand how important this all is.
Now, we saw a huge thing in Acts 10 when we saw that being good is not enough to get right with God. Cornelius is devout, God fearing, and a good man to all around him, but verse 14 points out clearly that God says to Cornelius you send for Peter so that he can tell you all you must do to be saved! It=s extremely important for all of us to see, just being good doesn=t mean you are saved. In fact, when Peter got there Cornelius understood, by saying, Peter tell us what we need to hear.
They still need to hear something, they were still lacking. That tells us we don=t have to be extremely immoral or evil, to still need the grace of God. The grace of God is not just for the really wicked ones, it=s for all of us, we all need it, it doesn=t matter who we are. Everyone must surrender to and obey Jesus Christ to be saved. Cornelius and his whole household are saved; don=t lose that wonder, by looking at what all that means. This is the first uncircumcised person Peter knows! He probably new some who had become Jews, therefore circumcised, but not this one.
Peter has to come to accept something he has never accepted before; do you see how big this is? Jesus told Peter he would be the one to open this door up in the kingdom to all people; I=ll give you the key to the kingdom Peter, Jesus told him. You=re going to open the gates to all the world to come into my kingdom. We saw Peter was the one who opened the kingdom to the Jews in Acts 2, then to Samaritans in Acts 8 and now to the ends of the earth, just like Jesus said back in Acts 1.
The first 2 keys were not that hard for Peter, but this third key is a hard one to turn.
It was easier to get Cornelius ready to listen for God, than it was to get Peter ready to preach. All He to do was tell Cornelius one thing go get Peter, He had to work on Peter 3 times to get him to preach. It was harder for Peter than Cornelius. Peter had to change something he had always believed was the truth, to something else he never believed possible. That=s not easy for us to do, is it?
I believe it is still Gods= will for preachers, teachers of the Word, leaders in the church, and for all members of the church to be converted. It=s so easy for us, maybe especially for leaders and pastors to want to play it safe. To just say the easy things, popular things and stay comfortable; don=t put your job or position on the line, so you say things that won=t be challenged and you=re held accountable to. If we dare to stand in the place of God as His voice to the church, we must be willing to challenge assumptions, question traditions, to risk our reputations, to willing to do all we must to cross any barrier to get the gospel out there to the ends of the earth.
Are we willing to put all our security on the line for the sake of the gospel? That=s what Peter is faced with here. I think there is still conversion needed in our church today. Peter was converted. After he baptizes the folks, he stays with them for a few days. This is all new to him; he=d never done it before in his life. Never spent one night in a Gentiles home. All his life he was told, whatever else you might do Peter, never eat a ham sandwich! He never even smelled it before this.
He gets up in the morning and breakfast is eggs and ham. Never before in his life had he done such a thing. When he goes back to Jerusalem with ham sandwich on his breath, he had no idea what he was in for. So, Acts 11 is the story of the conversion of the church. The folks in this church are upset and not afraid to say so!
A1The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3and said, "You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them."
Now, my first thought upon reading this is, it=s good to see the church then operates much the same way it does today. They had a grapevine just like us! You know, when something controversial happens, something troubling, everybody hears about it. You can preach 20 years almost in obscurity, but if you get up and say one thing that=s controversial, the whole church everywhere in the world knows about it by the end of the week, if not sooner. Before Peter even makes it back to Jerusalem the word was out, Peter ate with Gentiles and the brethren want to know why.
Notice however who were willing to step up here. The circumcised believers criticized him. Note the Jewish Christians, the ones who had been proselytized before becoming Christians. These folks are later called the circumcision party. They are the ones who insist, you have to be a Jew in order to be a Christian. You can become a Christian Gentile, but you must become a Jew first. You can go to mount Calvary as long as you go to Mt. Sinai first.
These folks did not see Christianity as Judaism=s transformation, but rather more as a reformer. They believed and taught Jesus came to reform Judaism. They did not see Jesus wanted to tear down the Old and replace it with a New system all together. These folks believed so strongly in this they are willing to call Peter out on the carpet to explain himself. Think about that now, we=re not talking about some preacher who lives out in some town you have never heard of, who=s only been ministering to a 50 member church. We=re talking about the Apostle Peter, noted as the leader of them all by most, so what does that tell you about some issues in the church? This one is so hot, no one gets off.
The apostles were not doing the criticizing, but they couldn=t stop it. No matter what the established leaders for the last 10 years mean to the church, this is so hot an issue, they can=t stop the criticism. Remember now, back in Acts 2 and 4 we are so impressed how this church is One in heart and mind! Had all things in common, of one accord, but now this church is facing a split of big proportions over this issue.
Now, more history, because this isn=t just some silly issue, this has long roots in their history. This whole idea of bringing in Gentiles without becoming Jews means big trouble for these folks. It starts back in Acts 6 when we read about the Hellenistic Jews being left out of being cared for. These are Greek speaking Jews, they grew up in a Gentile place and moved here and they become converted to Jesus and start preaching. They are right away considered the more Aliberal@ preachers in the church.
Steven started it all, when he started preaching radical ideas like, now that Jesus has come, we don=t have to worship in the temple anymore. Now, that we have Jesus, the law isn=t the most important thing anymore. Jesus is greater than Moses! That sent shock waves through the church, not just among the Jews. Before this the church hadn=t received any severe persecution, but this changed everything. When Steven and Philip and these other deacons preached that Christianity takes the place of the Jewish tradition, Jerusalem and the whole city rose up against the church and persecuted it.
They drove people out of town over this. They didn=t drive out the Apostles or those who had lived there all their lives; they drove the liberal Christians out. They killed Stephen and drove out Philip and all the deacons mentioned earlier and any of their followers. Now, if that is the reaction to those, what do you think is going to happen when you say Gentiles are now allowed in without becoming Jews? That=s what the church is worried about here. In Acts 12, we see the result of this is the church gets persecuted again! It=s not an empty concern, it=s real.
I want us to see there is a difference between some issues and others. Some are just silly and should be treated as such, but this one has real consequences if allowed to go forward. Are we going to risk serious persecution by allowing this to happen? So they are upset with Peter in a big way and it=s time for him to choose his words carefully.
4Peter began and explained everything to them precisely as it had happened: 5"I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7Then I heard a voice telling me, 'Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.' 8"I replied, 'Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.@
9"The voice spoke from heaven a second time, 'Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.' 10This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again. 11"Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. 12The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man's house. 13He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, 'Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.' 15"As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16Then I remembered what the Lord had said: 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' 17So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?" 18When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, "So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life."
This is interesting how Peter does this. He simply puts before them what had happened, just stated the facts as they happened and leaves it to them to decide what they think he should have done. He does this in a very humble way. Meaning this; he doesn=t lean on his authority as an Apostle to tell them what to do, but he leans on Gods= own decisive actions. Now, he could have asserted authority and said something like how dare you talk to one of Gods= Apostle=s this way and especially to me. I walked with Jesus and was chosen to preach the sermon you all were converted to and got baptized to. I have been the one Jesus put in this high place of authority in his church. How dare you tell me anything, let alone this?
That is what he could have done and that is what has been done by allot of preachers and leaders in the church. That is not what he does. Ten times in his speech he directly refers to divine actions as the reason he did what he did. He defers to Gods= authority and basically says if you don=t like this, call on God to answer it.
He points out 4 things that God does and shows it is not Peter who acts out on his own.
67. The Vision! I was on a roof, and hear it comes, a vision. I wasn=t looking for it, asking for it, it wasn=t my idea; God gave this vision to me and told me to go eat these unclean things. I said, no! I said, what all of you would have said. But God said, don=t consider these unclean anymore. He did this three times, not once. If it were only once, maybe I could have questioned myself, I didn=t hear it or see it right, but God did this to me 3 times!
Doesn=t that mean something? My mind wasn=t playing tricks on me, not 3 times and so that=s the first thing that happened to get me to do what I did.
68. The Witnesses! Verse 12 Peter says, these 6 brothers went with me. Now it doesn=t say specifically why he brought these guys, God doesn=t specifically tell him to, but God does allow it. This actually turns out to be one of the best decisions Peter made. People tend to be suspicious of isolated experiences, right? If you hear someone say, I was out in the woods, or wherever and I had a vision from God and He said do this. We aren=t as quick to accept such claims. But, when 7 people you know say God said and did this, then it gets our attention.
Does the number 7 mean anything? Or, is it just a coincidence? What is the Jewish number that represents perfection, or completeness?
To be able to present to an all Jewish crowd that 7 witnesses, witnessed the same things, is a powerful argument. He said, when we got there Awe@ entered the house, not just me, but we! All 7 of us went in that house and it was these men that baptized Cornelius= household, not Peter. There=s wisdom here if you=re trying to bring in something new, it seems radical and controversial, don=t do it on your own, bring people into it with you, going it alone is asking for trouble.
69. The Baptism of the Spirit! When I started to speak, the Spirit came on them, the way he did to us at the beginning. How do I know it was the Spirit, He came the same way as He did to us. They started speaking in other languages, just like we did at Pentecost. We could see God had sent the Spirit in the same way, we saw it outwardly. So, we concluded, how could we keep them out of the same church?
70. The Words of Jesus! Then I remembered what Jesus had said, AJohn baptized in water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit.@ So if God gave them the Spirit, just like He did to us, who am I to oppose God? This was always a part of Jesus= agenda, it just now has come to light to me, I never got it until now. He said it would happen! How can I erect a barrier where God says there is none?
How can I build a wall God had torn down? How after all this, can I refuse to do what God so clearly was telling me to do?
Notice too, that Peter left out in his explanation something that would have been a good argument. He left out trying to tell them about the devoutness of Cornelius. He is a devout man, he gives alms, prays, reads scripture every day, he is a good man. How can we turn away such a good man? He doesn=t try to go there. The reason is, because that is not part of this equation. It doesn=t matter how devout and good he is. You can=t say the good are welcome, but the bad aren=t. The issue is about what God wants, not what we want.
God is clearly saying He wants us to quit calling unclean what was once called unclean, they are now clean. Gentiles are clean and how can I stand in Gods= way of saying so? He=s not trying to convert Cornelius anymore; he=s trying to convert the church in Jerusalem.
Are they as willing to convert to God as the Gentile soldier is? Verse 18 says, When they heard this they quieted down. They were very loud and mad folks, this was not a quiet meeting and discussion, tension was high. They quieted down and said, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life! How about that; Gentiles are souls too. Can you believe it; God loves Gentiles.
This is one of the greatest days of the church ever in history! This was a hard thing to say and do for the church. They are admitting that there is no unique national destiny for the Jews, but Christians are now accepted from everywhere in the world. They are admitting that just being born a Jew doesn=t make you anymore special than anyone else in the world.
They are admitting that all the prophecies of the kingdom of God being restored to prominence in the world, isn=t talking about the nation, it=s talking about the church. They are admitting that what they once thought about Israel=s future is wrong; God was talking about spiritual Israel, not physical Israel. This is not an easy thing for them to come to and admit.
It would be really cool to tell you that all it takes to convert the church is one sermon by Peter, but it didn=t happen that easily did it? It took care of the problem for this event, but it will come back again. It was almost easy to accept Cornelius, he was practically Jewish, with all the things he did. But, when Paul goes out and starts preaching to people that make Cornelius look like a Jew; they are so pagan this thing comes back big time.
In fact these same people, in this same church, are going to argue again that it is not right to let these people in the church. They are a tough crowd and they still exist today in many places.
Note as well, how the Spirit works here. This is ten years after the church began before the Spirit gets to working on the Apostles to go to the Gentiles. Some folks take Jesus= words that the Spirit will come on you and you will immediately know all He wants you to know right then and there and that is not how He works. It took 10 years for Peter to get this message that Gentiles are to be in Gods= church.
Why do you think God waits 10 years to teach this? Change doesn=t come easy, does it folks? He gave the church time to grow and mature in Jesus. They had to be prepared by the Spirit for this, before they would be ready for such a radical change. Change, especially big change doesn=t come easy. It is hard to convert a Cornelius in the world, but there is someone even harder to convert and that is leaders, pastors and preachers of Gods= Word.
You=ve been preaching one way for a long time and God says you need to change your message. Something even harder to convert than the leaders; it=s even harder to convert the whole church. If change doesn=t come we don=t meet the needs of our day:
71. The church must change to meet the challenges of our future. Too often the view of the church, not just to the world, but even to us in the church is we look like an organization. Because we have this structure and places to meet and leadership and we basically do things the same way all the time, we look like an organization. The church however is not an organization.
It is an organism! It is a body! Organizations are rigid and structured and don=t like flexibility, creativity is not welcomed because it upsets the organization. Organisms in contrast are born to be flexible and adaptable so they can handle any different environment they are placed in.
Your body changes and adapts since the day it was born, so that it can survive any environment it is put in. God did not make the church to be a structure, He made to be a body, so that no matter where we put it, whatever culture we put it in, in the world, it can adapt and work.
This doesn=t change our message at all, the gospel doesn=t change, but the church must! The problem, we don=t like change. Some folks think that change means we are heretics, we have forsaken truth. If we don=t rubber stamp ourselves so we all look the same, same responses, same activities, then something is very wrong and we must bring it back to the truth.
I can hear those in Peter=s day saying, Peter I don=t care who you are, or what you=re saying, it isn=t what we have been doing and never have, so I=m against it and that is that. We do the same thing today in too many places. The issue has never and is never what have we always done, the issue is, what is God leading His church to do today?
The church of the 21st century cannot be like the church of the 20th century and grow. It must meet the needs of today, not the needs of yesterday. The issue is not what brethren who have been in the church for a long time may or may not be offended by either. Scriptures teach us that our concern for causing folks to stumble is not focused on the mature members who have been here for a long time, but on the new ones coming in.
We don=t make the argument, well brother or sister so and so is offended because we=re changing this or that, so we shouldn=t. The only argument for not causing brethren to stumble is causing the immature, those who are just coming in to not stumble. So if your actions cause the young in faith to lose their faith, don=t do it, they don=t know better, so it=s not about what offends you who are mature and should know better.
The scriptures teach we don=t cause weak in the faith to leave Jesus by our actions, it doesn=t say don=t do something because it offends those who don=t like change. If it upsets you because it=s different is not what scripture says we shouldn=t do. This was upsetting for folks to accept back then, but they must change.
People don=t like the idea that you can do church using video preaching, and even more radical, online church. It=s a huge adjustment for many and it is totally unlike anything they have ever done. Craig has mentioned it was an adjustment even for him, to think video preaching broadcasting to many locations would work. The same things are being argued about online church, you just can=t do real church online and on and on the argument goes.
We are seeing it all work before our eyes with great success. What will be tried in the future? What new approach to reaching more people and growing them will the church try? Will we immediately scoff at it, or will see if God is trying to show us something?
We are dealing with a different world today than even the 80=s. Things have changed in our world dramatically, in a few short decades. What we did in the fifties won=t meet the needs of many today, in the culture of today. To fight change because we never did it that way, could find you fighting against God. It=s a sin to allow the church to become irrelevant to today=s needs.
72. Any change in the church must meet the guidelines of scripture. We=re not looking for change for change sake. We=re not saying it=s really spiritual to change things; no it=s not. Test your change against the words of Jesus. Just like Peter does, we do. If it=s a good idea, it will help us do something Jesus talked about. We=re not changing just to change.
We need to look at our scriptures to see what they did, what Jesus did and believe we miss allot of things. We need to be open to change that God has spoken about, just like Peter was. It took him years to see it, but he did and we need to reach the same conclusion he did when it happens to us. If we oppose change because of tradition, or we just have never done it that way, we could be standing in Gods= way of doing what He wants done.
Opposing God is not something I want to be a part of. It=s a dangerous place to be. Am I upset about the changes in the church today? I got to tell you, when it comes to the church, I=m more optimistic today than ever before. It=s because I believe in the grace of God. The grace of God can liberate anybody, even Christians! We all need some liberation.
A Church Called Christian Acts 11:19-30
This text gets at the heart of what we=re all about. It is arguably one of the most important sections of the book.
I have been attracted to churches whose basic plea has been, let=s go back to the bible and be what we read there, especially in that beginning church, for a very long time now. Closing in on 4 decades now of being among churches with that plea as a foundation. I used to call myself a restorationist. Meaning, I wanted to restore the church to what we read here, but after thinking about it for some time and experiencing what we called restoration, I came to the conclusion, I=m not sure we ever really got there to begin with, so how could we restore what we never were?
I have came to realize that what we were focused on was restoring the church of the 1860=s, maybe 1910=s, or even the church of the 1950=s, but we really weren=t very focused on being the church we read about in the beginning, that we=re reading here in Acts. It=s important to understand what church we want to be. Do I want to be like the church of Corinth? No, there=s a whole bunch of things about that church I don=t want to be. When Paul starts writing to churches, most of the time it=s to bring churches back on course, because they drifted away from the original model.
Even when you look close at different local churches in Acts, you see some of them, almost from the beginning had problems that needed to be fixed, yet they did respond well and fixed most problems by following Gods= direction, so they are good models to follow. By the time we get to the church at Antioch here in chapter 11, we see something that is a model to behold, we should all be drawn to and do everything we can to be.
This is the first church that was actually called Christian and that=s significant. Let=s read about this church: A19Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. 20Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. 22News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. 25Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. 27During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) 29The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. 30This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.@
They were first called Christian here at Antioch. It was new and not common like today. This word is actually only used 3 times in our Bible=s, did you know that? In fact, it was many years after the church started that this term was actually used for the church and it didn=t come from the church. The world started calling followers of Christ this.
Even today it probably is one of the vaguest words in our language. We hear things like Christian militia destroyed this Muslim stronghold, or that one in such and such a place. We read in history that Christians civilized this nation or that, this religious region or that; how Christian=s began nations, like our own. We still speak in terms that because we began that way, we still are a Christian nation, no matter what we look like now.
If you ask a person on the street are you a Christian and you>ll get all kinds of responses. Well, I=m not a Buddhist, I=m not Jewish, but I do believe in God, so I guess I am a Christian. It really has not just lost its meaning, but actually has changed altogether from what it was in the beginning. I=m not sure we can be the church we read about in Acts without knowing what the definition of Christian really is.
Let=s look at the city here first. This is a special city. It=s located in the north part of Syria, 15 miles from the sea, so it was an important city location wise. It was a major trade route and part of highways connecting to the rest of the world. Started by the Greeks about 300 years earlier, in that relatively short time by world standards it had become the 3rd largest city in the world. Only Rome and Alexandria in Egypt were bigger. Antioch had about 500,000 people at this time.
Big cities then, as well as now, become market places for ideas. You=ve got Greeks, because they founded the place, Romans because they own it, the Syrians live there and also Jews were there, so all these views coming together with many ideas. It stood out in the world mostly because of its reputation. It was considered the most lewd, immoral, decadent city in the world. Even today if we mentioned certain cities you would immediately get an impression and allot of the times they would be negative. Las Vegas, Hollywood, or Atlantic City, have reputations just by mentioning their names.
Your mind might say, they have things I don=t want in my town and if I said Antioch back then that is what would come to mind with the folks. Antioch was one of the gambling centers of the world. Sports were very popular, especially chariot races and betting was big. It was known more for its sexual immorality though. Here is where the temple to Daphne was. It began in Greek mythology and that=s how it evolved in practice. This temple had many priestesses, who were really temple prostitutes and the thing was you went there and chased these girls until you caught them, much like the god Appolos did with the original Daphne.
It was so wicked; the Romans put Antioch off limits for their armies when they went through that area. The saying in Rome was, the reason Rome is having troubles is because the sewage from the river in Antioch is coming into the river in Rome. Very peculiar, because Rome wasn=t very pure as you know, but even they thought negative about Antioch=s morals.
I say all that to make this point, if you were going to start a church in all the world, where would you do it? The last place you would do it, if asked back then, was Antioch. Today people might say Las Vegas, or somewhere similar. Isn=t it interesting how God works? He chose Antioch as the place the church would go on to reach the rest of the world!
It became the most influential church in the world at this time period. All of Paul=s missionary journeys were launched from here. It became even more important in many ways than Jerusalem. When the Jews wanted to stop the movement of the church from going out into the world, they went to Antioch, because if you could stop Antioch, you could stop the church. Why didn=t He choose Jerusalem to reach the world, it was a much bigger church?
One reason is because it was a market place of ideas in the world. If you could present the gospel in Antioch, you could do it anywhere in the world. Antioch is also free of Jewish influence as the primary influence. Jerusalem had too much Jewish baggage to overcome to go out to the whole world. Also the caliber of the discipleship of this church is note worthy. These folks were sold out to the mission God had for the world. The reason God chose them to reach the world is because they wanted to reach it.
The text says the church started here because of the persecution after Steven. When they first came here, they told the message only to Jews. They did what they had always done under the Apostles; the apostles only preached to Jews. But some others came there and started to preach to Greeks and that changed everything. That is a hugely important verse right there. Don=t forget they hadn=t read Acts 10, they don=t know about Cornelius and the whole conference to decide it was all okay to preach to Gentiles. They did it anyway, largely because they were from Cyprus and Cyrene.
These are the places the men came from who Steven preached to when they went to Jerusalem. The temple in Jerusalem that was full of Jewish Greek folks and he preached these very Aliberal= sermons about if you believe and trust in Jesus, all these things like the temple, the national heritage of Israel, and all those Jewish regulations aren=t what=s important anymore. Steven was killed for his message and all these guys were driven out of town including the folks from Cyrene.
They were a little more Aopen-minded@ than the Jewish Christians and that=s why they got run out of town. They didn=t take the Jewish baggage with them that the folks in Jerusalem had all their lives. So, it wasn=t hard for them to reason, if what was preached to us was true then why don=t we preach to Gentiles? They went to Antioch and started the first Gentile church in the world. We don=t even know their names, Gods= first no-name offense.
We don=t know who they were, but we do know they drove the devil out of Antioch in many ways. Verse 20 says they told the good news about the Lord Jesus. What=s significant about that? They didn=t preach Christ Jesus; How come? They weren=t preaching to Jews! Jews cared about Messiah, but Greeks just wanted to know who the Lord was. They wanted to know who could give them immortality and the answer was Jesus the Lord.
This shows us the message doesn=t change. No matter where we go in the world the message is Jesus! But, we do have the freedom to present Him to every culture in the way that culture can understand. Sometimes He=s the Christ and sometimes He=s the Lord.
You can present Jesus to anyone anywhere. Many believed and then it is here they were first called Christians. So, I think it is good to follow the model we see here today. I=m not talking about just some form of how we do things. We have done allot of that in different churches. We take the Lord=s Supper. We still baptize folks as they did back then, just as Jesus commanded us to. Allot of churches see that local leadership in the church is necessary, not just some group far away calling all the shots and all the churches follow lock step. These are all good things, but is not what I mean when I say follow their model.
Form is not enough; we need to create the zeal, the fellowship, and the Spirit of that church. It is not wrong for us to think and compare us with them and ask, are we there yet? There really are 2 things that make this church stand out as our model today:
73. They had an integrated fellowship! They were integrated locally and universally. This was the first church where Jews and Gentiles came together as one body to worship the Lord. If you looked in the phone book for a church to go to, you didn=t see church J, meaning Jew and church G, meaning Gentile. Which, of course we see all kinds of divisions of churches in our phone books today. You just found, church!
Today if we go to any city and ask, tell me about the church in your city, they have trouble telling the story. What church, what do you mean? We have many denominations, and of course then there are churches who do things certain ways others don=t, you know, like some don=t do Bible classes, some don=t use instruments others do, some take the Lord=s Supper some don=t. Others are black mostly, or Mexican, or Asian, etc.
I think God hates that sort of thing, in my view. I think He meant us to be one church and all this stuff that divides should have been worked out, just like the church in the beginning worked it out and stayed one. In Antioch there was one church and you came together learning how to fellowship people you didn=t know how to fellowship with. No clue how to do it, but you stayed and did it. You didn=t even think about going and starting your own, with folks just like you.
This church carried it even further. They loved people from every city that weren=t like them. Agabus prophesies about a famine in all the world. This church as a whole decided to help the brethren in Judea. I believe this famine relief project did more to expel prejudice in the early church than 1,000 sermons on it could have. It=s one thing to have a lectureship on integrating Mexicans into our church and another to take up money to send to the ones devastated by earthquakes, or some other kind of disaster.
The giving of our means improves our relationships much more than many sermons. What if you=re gathered around the dinner table and you pray for the widow lady next door who is having real trouble making ends meet and you pray that God will bless her.
The son looks up and says, dad can we go ask her to eat with us, or can we go give her some money to help her. Why can=t we help her dad? We can be the answer to the prayer can=t we? Don=t we have some learning to do today? It=s one thing to pray about unity and another to do things to help brethren you want to be unified with.
These folks in Antioch didn=t wait to see how bad the folks in Jerusalem were going to be before they chose to help them. That=s impressive! No, let=s wait and see how bad it gets here and if we have any left, then we=ll give it to Jerusalem. They decided that no matter how bad it got there, it would be worse there, so we=re going to help. They knew that being where they were, meant no losing of benefits because you were a Christian.
Even if you were a Christian there, the Greeks didn=t care or hold it against you, you wouldn=t lose your job because you were a Christian; in Jerusalem you did. So, no matter how hard it gets here, our brethren there are going to have it worse, so we will help them. No matter how bad, you think you have it right now; there are brethren in this world, maybe even close by who are much worse off than you. So, this church was very integrated in spirit, mind, and action.
74. They had a consecrated membership! 4 things stand out about their consecration:
75. Verse 21 says they turned to the Lord. Many believed and turned to the Lord. That is what believing is. If I ask do you believe in Jesus many say yes. But, if I ask, have you turned from the things of the world to the things of the Lord, what am I going to hear? To turn to one thing means you=re turning from another.
If I turn in this direction, my back is facing what I turned from. When you turn to the Lord, you must turn from something. There are too many in our churches that haven=t turned from what dominated their lives when they came to believe in Jesus. He is to dominate you now, not whatever used to. He anointed this church because they turned and that is why some churches aren=t anointed today.
We are trying to believe without turning to the Lord! This church did.
76. They were devoted to instruction, vs. 26. To be what God calls us to be, demands we see and hear Gods= word; hear Him. We must devote ourselves to Gods= instruction, or we will never be what He designed us to be. This was the thing that they devoted themselves to first when the church was first born in Acts 2:42. They devoted themselves to the Apostles teaching and that means public teaching, formal study from the leaders of the church.
They gathered as an assembly to get this word. Too many today say, we don=t need to study in church today, in public settings, we can do it ourselves. In the beginning they didn=t devote themselves to figure it out on their own; they devoted themselves to be together and hear from the leaders.
When Paul or Barnabas got together to study Gods= word, the folks gathered to hear it. What about us today, when our leaders gather to study and teach Gods= Word, where are we as His church? Too many don=t have this spirit in our church today and never did and we wonder why we have trouble following Jesus. How do we create a love for the teaching of Gods= Word today, so that we are hungry for it and seek it out, we wouldn=t miss it? The folks in Antioch had it!
77. Living by faith! When the prophecy came there was going to be a famine, they started collecting money before it even got there. They believed what God said. What about speaking to folks today? Do we believe when God says He will give us words to say? I don=t know what to say, I can=t speak to folks. Faith says, I believe that God will come through and I will be able to say something to help that person see God, even if I have no clue what it is right now. Faith believes and goes. Living by faith.
78. They were mocked by outsiders! They were first called Christians at Antioch! Where did the name Christian come from? It didn=t come from the Jews. The last thing that Jews would admit was that Jesus was the Christ. They called them many things, but not followers of Christ. It didn=t come from Christians either. They called themselves saints, or disciples, brethren, followers of the way; they had many names among them.
It came from the world. The suffix, Aian,@ has 2 meanings. It first meant being a slave to someone, but it went on to mean belonging to a party. We read of Herodians, meaning the followers of, supporters of Herod. So, the Antochians started calling the followers of Christ, Christians. These are the folks who are obsessed with this Christ fellow they always talk about.
You could spot them easily, because if you were around them for 3 minutes they would bring up this Christ fellow. It probably started out more as a slur than a compliment. I remember the day when people used to call some of us, Jesus freaks. In the beginning it wasn=t used as a compliment as it is sometimes today. They tried to put us down with that title and that was what we see here in Acts 11.
It was more of an insult, or way to make fun of them, just a bunch of Christians. We don=t like being mocked or made fun of. Don=t call me a fanatic, or a freak. Back then, some probably said, don=t call us that, that=s not good. The word is not used that way anymore, most of the time. Most of the time when we call ourselves Christians we don=t mean any insult today.
If the folks in Antioch were here today, what would they call us? Would they use a name to describe us because we=re so different than everybody else in the world? Would the call us churchians? What about doctrinians? Would they call us successians? They will call us what we=re devoted to. Are we moneyians?
What about partyians? How about a selfian? Or, would they call us a Christian? Maybe we should think about the word a little before using it? It ought to describe a very special kind of person. They stand out so clearly because of their devotion to Christ they need a special name. We need to be like the church in Antioch. How? Two things:
79. Broaden our vision of the church. The faith in Antioch saw past themselves. Their outlook of the church was not directed just locally, or to just their congregation, but universally. When they said church they thought about the whole world. How are we going to get the church to every part of the world?
When they thought church, they would think of the church in Jerusalem and say how can we help them? They didn=t just think about their town and their building, they thought about people everywhere. They sent the best where the need was the greatest. They didn=t think, what about what we need, let=s take care of us first. No, we will send the best to where the need is the greatest.
Why aren=t we making a bigger impact on the world today? Do we send our best to where the need is the greatest? We need to care for THE church, not just this church. I think God is still looking for churches He can bless the world through. = Just like He did through Antioch; if we broaden our view of the church.
80. Let=s narrow the mission of the church! I=m not sure we have churches anywhere today like Antioch, because we=re so different. Some churches are focused on politics. Some churches are all about keeping traditions. This is not the task of the church. The task of the church is to speak the good news to as many folks as we possibly can.
That=s the mission God has given us. If we have a focus, other than this, we need to know it is not Gods= church. His dictate was and still is, to go and to make disciples of everybody everywhere in the world. If we=re going to be what God created in the beginning, we are going to have to be Anticohian type Christians.
We have too many of the 20th and 21st century version of Christians, we need to get the 1st century version of Christian up and running in our day. I=m sick to death of the 21st century type. We need to be the kind of follower that somebody has to give us a new name to describe us. If we can get these kinds of Christians up and running we can bless the world like they did in the beginning.
A Man To Model Acts 11:19-30
Again I note that this chapter is the pivotal chapter of the book of Acts. It serves as sort of a launching pad for all that comes in the future, so it=s a big moment in our church=s history. If we want to pattern ourselves after a church, the church here in Acts 11 is a good one to model, but in order to do that we need to first pattern our individuals after a model. To be the church of the first century we need to be the kind of Christian they were.
We want to model people who made the church what it was back then. I want to talk a bit about Barnabas. We need desperately some Barnabas= in the church today. Now, he didn=t write any books or letters for the church that make it to scripture, nor do we have any of his sermons recorded, but he is one of the most important characters of that first century church.
Acts 11:19-30, A19Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. 20Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. 22News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. 25Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. 27During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) 29The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. 30This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.@
Let=s look first at the task he is asked to do and how important it is for the development of the first church. This is anything but insignificant. If you were alive at this time you would know this is one of the most important things the church did at this time. The word had got to the church in Jerusalem how the church in Antioch was going and growing. They were reaching great numbers of people, both Jews and Gentiles.
It=s always interesting to me to hear how one church responds and reacts to the news that another church is growing fast and leaps out way in front of all the rest. The text said they heard the news in verse 22. What made this news? Jerusalem had planted allot of churches and they had seen growth, all of them were growing. The news of course is, it=s Gentile growth.
These folks who were persecuted were scattered and went to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and to Antioch. Now, the church in Jerusalem didn=t send anybody to Phoenicia to check out that church, or to Cyprus to check out those brothers. Why do they send Barnabas to Antioch? These others were Jews only and Antioch was speaking the Word to Gentiles.
These others were playing it safe, being traditional and nobody in Jerusalem got nervous about it. But, when word gets back to Jerusalem that they are preaching to any and all Gentiles they meet, now that gets their attention. You know if AWE@ more mature ones down here don=t get involved this could get way out of hand. That church up there hasn=t been around long and we=re sure they don=t know how to handle Gentiles in the church.
We had better go up there and make sure they aren=t making a mess of things in Antioch. You can=t trust them to do it right, so we better go supervise this whole thing. This why this is so important that they sent Barnabas! Why is it so important that Barnabas was sent? If they had sent the wrong man, the church would have split and history would look allot different than it does now.
You see, there was no way that this church would have accepted someone from Jerusalem if they had come and put all kinds of restrictions on them. You know there were many in Jerusalem that would have done so, but God sees to it that they send Barnabas, who is respected by all. The way he handles this, which is full of potential to be a full blown church crisis is truly a God thing. Whether we know it or not, this first church to the Gentiles of the world, is responsible for our being a church today.
So what kind of man is Barnabas? The Holy Spirit says he=s a good man. That=s significant because, did you know he=s the only man in the New testament the Holy Spirit says is a good man? We see allot of good people in there, but for scripture to specifically point out he is a good man is something. I=m not even sure I know all that means, but it=s something for sure.
The first time we met him was back in chapter 4 when the Apostles nicknamed him Barnabas, which meant encourager, because that=s what he was to the church. We saw him sell a piece of land so the poor folks could be taken care of, so he stands out. The next time we meet him is in Jerusalem when Saul comes there and wants to meet the church, but they=re all afraid of him, because they don=t think he=s a real convert, but Barnabas risks his reputation and takes Saul to meet the Apostles. The Apostles are convinced by Barnabas that Saul is a good man and they say anyone who is a friend of Barnabas= is a friend of ours.
Later on in Acts 15 we see they introduce him as Aour beloved Barnabas;@ they loved this man. The only negative thing we see about Barnabas in scripture is recorded in Gal. 2 when Paul talks about a time where legalism reared its ugly head in the church again and Peter is the leader of it. Peter was fellowshipping Gentiles until some guys from Jerusalem showed up and as a reaction he withdrew from the Gentiles and this caused all who were with Peter to withdraw from the Gentiles and Paul says, even Barnabas was fooled by this deception. Kind of a compliment within a negative given by Paul.
It=s kind of backhanded compliment in that Paul is saying, this thing got so bad, even someone like Barnabas was fooled to go astray. He didn=t say that of Peter, but even Barnabas. Paul thinks highly of Barnabas. They couldn=t have picked a better man to send to Antioch.
They couldn=t have found a man with better credibility to send. Why was he the most credible? First, the folks at Antioch were from Cyrene and Cyprus; where was Barnabas from? He was a Levite from Cyprus. This means when those who followed Steven, who were Greek speaking Jews, were run out of town after Steven is killed, because they too are considered too liberal to be in the church, they end up at Antioch. Barnabas is also a Greek speaking Jew from Cyprus.
He may have known allot of these folks, since allot of them came from Cyprus. The leaders in Jerusalem have been given enough wisdom from God not to send a stranger up there, so they send Barnabas. This is a ticklish situation we=re nervous about and so is everyone else, so we=ll send someone they know.
There is also a spiritual reason why they sent him. The scripture notes he is full of the Holy Spirit and faith. There was another fella in Acts given this affirmation by the scripture, do you remember who? Acts 6, this same notation is made of Steven. These two are described by the Holy Spirit in the exact same way; why is this important? Because Steven was one of these folks in Antioch, who they all loved and upon his death they got pushed out of Jerusalem and now Barnabas is the exact same kind of man.
When they looked at Barnabas they could see Steven too. Steven was their hero in the faith, more so than Peter or James or the others. The character deep down to the spirit of these men, were the same and those folks knew it. When he got there he saw the evidence of the grace of God and it made him glad! That right there tells you allot about him. He didn=t go there close-minded did he? He went looking for evidence that God was there and he saw it.
He saw God working in the lives of these Gentiles, which says God is not limited to racial barriers, or ethnic barriers and that makes him glad. Does that make you glad? Does it make you glad that Gods= grace cannot be limited by barriers? Does it make us glad that God loves people of a different color, just as much as He does you? Does it make us glad He loves folks in other countries just as much as He does you? Does it make us glad that folks with different religious traditions than ours are just as loved by God as you?
This makes Barnabas glad! Gods= grace is not limited to one kind of people or one kind of culture. He is truly a good man. What kind of an impact does he have?
There are two ways leaders affect a church:
81. Exhortation: This applies to all leaders in the church. It says he encouraged them to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. The natural thing for us to do is tell these folks to slow down because they are making people nervous. Today we would say something like, it=s great to see this grow, you=re moving big, but brethren you have got allot of people in the church scared to death about how you=re doing it.
You risk getting a reputation that you=re too open, too liberal, and all you have to do is just slow down a bit. Just put Gentile conversion on the back burner for a few months and let this all settle down and then you can go for it again. Sound familiar to you at all?
Barnabas doesn=t have anything to do with such talk, in fact he encourages them by saying in other words, brethren, God loves what you=re doing, so keep on doing it! This encouragement is blessed as in the next verse it says as a result a great many were brought to the Lord.
82. Example: This had great impact on the church. A man cannot exhort what he does not exhibit! When Barnabas spoke people listened. Why? Because he had credibility. This is the first integrated church and Barnabas comes and will encourage now you Jews love the Gentiles and vice versa. Love people you may find hard to love. He had credibility with that message, because they knew he had done it with Saul. Nobody wanted to, but Barnabas built a bridge and did it when no one else would.
He did not just preach about it, he did it. The prophets of Jerusalem come and Agabus says there will be a famine. Barnabas encourages these folks here about how tough it is in Judea and this church should help them out and they listen to him. Why? Because they remember when they were in Jerusalem and the poor suffered, he sold a piece of land to help the poor.
He encouraged by word and deed. You won=t be a very effective leader in the church, or anywhere else for that matter, if you don=t walk like you talk.
This influence is passed on to Saul. Barnabas is working hard here. So many new Christians needing to be encouraged to live like Christ, there=s no time for sleep or rest and he=s getting burnt out, so what do you do? He admits it, I need some help here. Who would be a good helper here? I need a Greek speaking guy, who knows the scriptures, and has lived in a big city and understands the ways of big city life. I need Saul!
He goes looking for him in Tarsus.
Now, we left Saul in Tarsus a couple chapters ago and we sometimes think this all happens real fast, but folks this is ten years later. What=s he been doing in Tarsus for 10 years? We know he was preaching, his writings tell us so, but he was also being persecuted for it too, because he tells us this happened everywhere he goes. We may not know everything he did when he was there, but those two things are a part of his life now.
He goes to look for him. The word means he had to be diligent, because he went to where he thought he was, but he wasn=t there, so he had to keep looking. It probably meant the usual scenario, he got kicked out of his house by his family, so he wasn=t there, excommunicated from the temple, so he wasn=t there and he=s been run out of all his old schools because he=s a Christian. It wasn=t real easy to find him, but he did.
Saul probably thought a time or two, when is what Ananias told me going to happen? He told me I would be an instrument of Jesus= to the Gentiles, now when? One day everything is going as it had been and a knock comes on his door and in walks Barnabas and says, Saul is that you? Barney is that you? Listen, we need to put some realness on this, these are real people and they aren=t much different than you and I.
You know we probably want to put sort of high and holy tone to all this and everything is always got halo=s around it, yes Barnabas praise be the Lord, with that sort of low toned holy sound to it. Good to see you Saul and praise His holy name. There=s some joy and excitement here, I=m telling you. Wow, how long has it been brother, I can=t tell you how good it is to see you. Brother, you need to see what=s going on in Antioch!
We=re kicking the devil all over town, but Saul I need some help! The excitement leaps in Saul, man I have been waiting for 10 years for someone to tell me this. God has been preparing me to go work with Gentiles, but I just couldn=t see how He was going to do it, and now here you are the voice of God! Well, what are we waiting for, I need help big time, let=s go!
Think with me now! Where did those first Christians from Antioch come from? Jerusalem, and why did they leave Jerusalem? Persecution and who lead that persecution? Saul of Tarsus! Now, can you imagine that first Sunday when Barnabas gets up and says, brothers I want you to meet my right hand man, my pick for the co-minister of this church! Meet Saul of Tarsus; do any of you remember him?
Isn=t God something? The very first church God chooses to get Saul started in preaching to the Gentile world, is the church made up of those he once drove out of town.
Doesn=t that give you a better understanding of what is really meant when the Bible uses the word encourager? Barnabas was so much more than we think today when we think of this word.
What do we usually think of when we think of someone who is an encourager? Someone who just shakes your hand and says welcome, good to see you? It really means you find people and encourage them to do what you know they can do. You believe in people and lift them up to do all God has prepared them to do. Seeing what they can be.
All you can see is what he used be, Barnabas says, all I can see is what he can be if I just take him to Antioch. They work together here for a year and all the while, they don=t know it yet, but God is preparing them. They are getting used to working side by side and God is getting ready to send them out on many journeys.
Before long Barnabas actually becomes the second fiddle in all that God has in mind here. Barnabas is a great man, but when it comes to preaching and teaching Gentiles, nobody can compete with Saul. In fact, before too long the wording changes from Barnabas and Saul to Paul and Barnabas. I think maybe Barnabas knew this from the start and loved the whole idea.
This is all the more reason he is the man to model! If we are ever going to be this church, we need to get the spirit that says it doesn=t matter who gets the credit, whatever is good for the kingdom is good for me, and I want it.
Conclusion: Application!
83. Don=t criticize until you know what is going on! As I said in the beginning, it=s interesting to me how I hear others react when they hear about other brethren; churches are growing. The Christ like thing to do would be to praise the Lord and rejoice with those brethren! But, you know that=s not always how we react, is it?
Sometimes we get upset to hear another church is doing well, or maybe even more growth than we are. Sometimes we=ll even start to criticize the other church without even going and finding out how they=re doing it. They start saying things like, yeah they=re growing but they aren=t standing for the truth, that=s why they grow. They just use gimmicks and programs, glitz and marketing, and other stuff like that.
They=re growing because they don=t preach the gospel like we do. I=ve never understood the argument some churches make, that the reason our church isn=t growing is because we preach the gospel.
It may be true some churches grow for all the wrong reasons, but it also may be true that they are growing because the evidence of Gods= grace is all over the place!
I do know this, what I have seen too many times is the churches who do allot of criticizing do little to no growing; that I can tell you first hand. They never grow and if you look closely you can see if they continue as they are, they will just grow themselves out of existence, if you get my meaning. Maybe the thing that=s really going on is, the criticism is to hide the fact that they aren=t growing and haven=t been for quite some time?
Maybe, the criticism is to cover up the fact they aren=t being faithful to their first and primary call of God and that=s to go tell others the gospel so they will grow? Unless we know firsthand, we=ve got a Barnabas there and they can tell us there=s something wrong, we should never criticize another church for growing. If we don=t have such a person, then when we hear of church growth anywhere, we should rejoice and praise God for it.
84. Match the man with the mission! Of all the people they could have sent to Antioch, they sent Barnabas, this is wisdom from God, I=m telling ya! Too many times our churches pick the wrong people for the task. You know of churches who picked the wrong people to be elders, or other leaders, preachers, etc., of the church, don=t you?
Wrong teachers; it may be a good task, but they pick the wrong people. It hurts the church in some cases for long periods of time and some they never recover from the damage done. You need to put the physical attributes together with the spiritual ones and ask can he do the job we=re looking to accomplish? Can he do the job there, if you=re sending him somewhere? He might be able to do a job here, but what about there? You have to ask specific special questions when you have a situation you know is delicate.
You need to put a premium on open-mindedness and credibility. Are these brethren we=re sending him to going to be perceived as someone worth listening to? Match the man with the mission. Any leaders in the church match the man with the mission. We need to take our time and maybe listen more and pray more, rather than think we need to just fill this whole as fast as we can. Many mistakes are made when we hurry.
85. Never underestimate the value of encouragement! I=m all for us wishing each other well and the like, but that=s not what I mean. I=m not even talking about being an optimist; you know handing out smiley faces to everyone.
Like Barnabas you see someone and you see the good there and do whatever you have to get that good to rise to the top and come out.
Don=t you love to be around folks who see the good in others, when so many can see the bad? Folks it doesn=t take any wisdom or intelligence to criticize. I think some folks think criticism is a gift of the Spirit, I do. It doesn=t take any education to learn how to do that. No, prompting of the Spirit. Complaining and criticizing preachers, teachers, worship leaders, etc.; it takes no gift to do any of that.
I can find more faults in any teaching I give than you can. It takes something special to see good, when everyone else sees bad. Maybe the thing that=s really wrong with us is, we always ask what=s wrong and we never ask what=s right! For all of our faults, I would rather be with God=s people when they meet than anywhere else and I mean Gods= people anywhere, not just here. Never underestimate the power of encouragement.
86. I admit it didn=t come from Barnabas, it came from Saul, and so I=m throwing it in for free. You can=t spend the rest of your life preparing to do the Lord=s work! What if Barnabas goes to Tarsus and finds Saul and says, let=s go to the Gentiles and Saul says I=m not ready yet? I got a few more Bible classes I need to take, and polish my preaching up some, and my mom is weak and I need to stay with her, call me next time this year and maybe I=ll be ready.
Would that have slowed down Gods= agenda? No, God will have still have done the job, He just wouldn=t have used Saul to do it. He would continue to bless the church in Antioch and all the other journeys would have happened, just would have had to use someone other than Saul and Saul would have taken himself out of being the significant figure he became to the church.
Some of you have been in Tarsus long enough! How long is school going to be the reason you can=t do ministry? How long will your job keep you from getting more involved in the church? How long are you going to use your kids as an excuse for not being able to do any work for God? How long is your land/house you have to take care of going to keep you from heeding the call of God to tell others what you know, so they can hear the truth so as to be saved?
The Lord doesn=t keep asking forever for you to go to a place He has prepared for you. You tell God no long enough, He=ll send someone else and keep you on the shelf. The key to being a Christian as we read here in our Bibles is to start with the person sitting in your seat.
A Dream Come True Acts 12:1-11
Do dreams really come true? Did you ever have a dream seem so real that you actually were awake for a minute more or less, before you realized it was just a dream? My wife has had allot of those and she really believes they were real and it takes some time for her to realize, it didn=t really happen. Sometimes, I have had to convince her, it didn=t happen and even gotten into a little trouble with her because she was so sure it happened.
I haven=t, had that happen to me much, I have to say, I usually don=t remember most of the dreams I have, for whatever reasons. Maybe that=s a good thing; it might be too big a shock on me if I did? What does happen from time to time is I=ll get a feeling coming out of my sleep, not remembering the dream, but a feeling that something is wrong, I did something wrong, or something bad has happened and it=s just a feeling I have and it takes some time for me to realize, I have no real reason to feel that way; I still lead the same old boring life I always do and nothing happened.
Now, the thing I really don=t like about that is, I never remember waking up feeling like something really good happened and I=ve got real good reason to believe it=s time for rejoicing and celebrating, even if I come to realize it didn=t happen either. I might be a little disappointed it didn=t happen, but at least it would be positive.
If you were in prison chained to 2 men waiting to be executed in the morning and had a dream of being released and getting away, man it would be a bummer big time to wake up and still be chained wouldn=t it? Peter thought he was dreaming about his jail break! But, it wasn=t a dream, but God working in his life. There are some humorous things in this story and some powerful things here.
Acts 12:1-11, A1It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 4After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover. 5So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.@
Think about these first 5 verses before we go on. Who is our main antagonist here? He goes on to be someone we=re going to hear about throughout the rest of the book and his name is King Herod. Every time we see the name king Herod, we know we=re going to read some bad news. The interesting thing about this name is it was almost a title as much as a name.
There were allot of Herods that ruled during these times. You could equate it to if someone talks about our history and says the president did such and such a thing. If you want to be specific you have to name a name, but president just won=t do, it=s just a title. Herod was a title in those days. This particular one is Herod Agrippa the first. The first one we read about is back in Jesus= day and his name was Herod the great. He is this guy=s grandfather.
That Herod is the one who was warned by the magi about Jesus= birth and Herod murders all the babies born at that time, trying to get to Jesus. That Herod has a son who takes over later on in the gospel accounts. This one beheads John the Baptist, because John speaks so boldly against him for taking his father=s wife for himself. So now, we=re dealing with the grandson of Herod the great. Later on in Acts this one has a son who is known as Agrippa the second and Paul preaches to him later on.
Well, this is Agrippa the first and he takes James, John=s brother and puts him to death with a sword. This is the James who along with John his brother asked Jesus, can we sit at your right hand and left hand when you come into power? Jesus= answer was, do you think you can drink the cup I=m about to drink? They said yes! They didn=t even have a clue what they were saying, but Jesus says, you will drink the same cup I=m going to drink, but as far as having power to sit in certain places of authority is not mine to give but the Father=s. Jesus was telling them though that they would share the same destiny.
Jesus was talking about suffering and death and these guys didn=t know that, but now it=s getting clear. James is put to death as a direct result of persecution of Christians. This is the fifth time the church has been specifically persecuted since its beginning in Acts 2.
It=s interesting how Luke does all this. He=s been working on getting us to see how the church is going to take the gospel to the world. He=s told us the story of Saul and he has been appointed to do the main job, then the story of Peter opening up the door for it to begin and then how Saul is brought back into the picture, but now he is going back to Jerusalem and the church there; why?
As I look at it more, I think what we see is, after this, it does go totally into the Gentile world, but he takes us back to Jerusalem so we can see that the Jews have totally rejected the gospel, which is why the gospel is taken into all the world. God is turning His back on the Jews and going to the rest of the world.
This doesn=t mean God is turning His back on Jewish Christians; He still is concerned about the church there and cares for them. Don=t forget who James is; he is an Apostle and he is killed. The church is at the most 15 years old now, but the church can survive and move on even without one of its Apostle=s. This is a big moment in church history.
This is how the church in the beginning is growing. The church has been busy raising up new leaders, a whole new generation of leaders to carry on into the future. If the church couldn=t handle the death of an Apostle, I believe God wouldn=t have let it happen, but it is maturing, which it needed to do. It is strong enough to move on without one of its key men. I think this speaks to us even today about how we should be maturing new leaders and getting folks to rely not on any one person, or persons, but the church is to mature to handle anything looking to the future.
Will there be some shock, grief, even a time of mourning? Of course, but if the church is the church of the scriptures, our leader is not any one of us, but the eternal Lord and Savior of us all and His Spirit is still working in all of us, not just one or a few. The church will push forward and even the gates of hell itself won=t stop us!
Now, why does Herod want to persecute the church? What we need to know about this guy is he is not so much anti-Christian as he is pro-Herod. This fella was raised in Rome and became close friends of Rome, that=s how he ends up in this position. He knew how to live like a Roman and when back in Israel he knew how to live like a Jew, he was a political machine. The female side of his family was Jewish and his male side was Roman. So, the Jews thought, at least he=s got some Jewish blood in him, he=s better than what we could have.
Israel was a hard place for a Roman to govern, because of the Jews, but Herod knew how to cater to Jews. Herod knew how to get the Jews to like him. He built a wall around their city, helped them build their temple better, and other things that weren=t so moral, but got the favor of the Jews anyway. Looking the other way when certain laws were being broken, or corruption was being done by the Jewish leaders to the rest of the people.
Now, he wants to make the Jews happy, so he persecutes the church and kills James by beheading him. The Jewish religion taught to cut off the head of an apostate and I think that=s exactly why they beheaded James. He=s trying to show the Jews, I agree with these guys; they=re nothing but apostates, worshipping false gods, and it=s a new religion anyway, so let=s get rid of it.
This gets the exact response he was looking for says the text, this pleased the Jews. I think about this too, even though the Jews hate the Apostles, they haven=t made a move on them for quite some time. I=m not entirely sure why, except maybe every time they tried it never turned out like they expected. It always brought more preaching and converts. Every time they arrested these guys they would have to listen to gospel preaching all night long, so they left them alone for quite a while.
Herod now, is able to do what they weren=t able to do and get away with it. They arrest and not only hold James they kill him and the Jews love it! Their hatred is rekindled and it always is every time there is a new outreach. When the church preached to Samaritans it was persecuted and now when the church reaches out to the Gentiles here comes persecution. The gospel is now going to be spread to Gentiles and Peter and James are the leaders of this move and when Herod says, I=ll go after Peter and James, the Jews are loving it.
Think about how he does this. He does it during the feast of unleavened bread. This means Jews from all over the world are in Jerusalem. That=s maximum coverage for Herod. So that=s good, but the problem is you can=t kill anybody during Passover. The Jews are kind of particular about that. They don=t mind murder, just not during Passover. That=s when we need to be religious, that=s why they wanted Jesus done with before the Passover started.
So he has to keep Peter during the Passover so he can execute him after the Passover. So he holds Peter with four squads of 4 soldiers each. Now, that is 4 times the number of guards you usually use to keep a prisoner. You assign 4 guards to watch the prisoner, one guard for 4 different times of the night. The guard would chain themselves to the prisoner and when the next one came to relieve him, he would chain himself to the prisoner and so on. Herod had heard that Peter was arrested a time before this and got out of jail somehow and it couldn=t be explained, so Herod says; I=ll show you how to keep a prisoner.
At every watch I want 2 soldiers on each arm and 2 soldiers at the door. He can=t get out of my prison. I gotta tell you it seems like a pretty good way to keep someone. But, Herod either uses too many or too few, depending on how you look at it. If Peter is just a man following a false religion then you don=t need 4 soldiers like this. But, if Peter has God on his side, then it won=t matter how many soldiers you surround him with it won=t be enough.
Herod can=t close the most important door of all and that is the door to Gods= throne room. The church was earnestly praying for Peter! The prayers of the church are many times stronger than any amount of soldiers. Let=s read what happens.
A6The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. "Quick, get up!" he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists. 8Then the angel said to him "Put on your clothes and sandals." And Peter did so. "Wrap your cloak around you and follow me," the angel told him. 9Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10They passed the first and second guards and came to the Iron Gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. 11Then Peter came to himself and said, "Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.@
What=s the most amazing thing in this text to you? The most amazing thing to me is Peter is sleeping! You got 2 big old soldiers in all their gear chained to you, sitting on some old cold dungeon floor, and you know you=re going to be executed in the morning! What about you, seriously, could you sleep tonight knowing you would die in the morning? Even if I put you on the finest bed in town, could you sleep?
Don=t make these guys more than they were, they are men and he believed he was going to die. Yet, he could still sleep. James had died, why not Peter? He had been in jail for a few nights during the Passover and nothing had happened to get him out yet. The text tells that even when it was happening he didn=t believe it; this can=t be happening; I=ve got to be dreaming.
Reminds me of Jesus on the boat with these guys, remember? This big storm comes and all these experienced fisherman, been doing it all their lives were sure this storm was going to kill them it was so bad and what was Jesus doing through it all? = sleeping! It actually bugged them that He could be sleeping and not worried like they were. Here=s Peter doing the same thing.
You and I can=t sleep allot of times when we aren=t even faced with anything close to this. We spend multi-millions of dollars a year in this country on sleeping pills. We can=t sleep when we want to and these guys sleep when we think they shouldn=t. Peter had come to know what you and I need to know, that when we sleep, God is still awake and God will do His thing whatever that is.
This is not an escape, it is deliverance! Some folks actually try to tell us not to see a miracle in this. I mean commentators of scripture. They come up with other ways Peter escaped prison and I say no, he is delivered by God. I mean if you=re planning an escape do you shine a bright light on the place to break someone out? It says the chains fell off his arms, now we=ll not mention how that happened, but when they fall where do they go? They hit a hard old stone floor and that is quite noisy as I=m sure you know. Not how you would plan it yourself, I=m sure.
The angel tells him to get dressed. What, if you=re breaking someone out of jail do want to give him time to get dressed? The angel doesn=t want Peter going through town with his Hebrew fruit of the looms, so he tells him to get his cloak on and your sandals on. By the way, you had 3 kinds of shoes back then, the rich folk shoes, fancy leather things, middle class shoes, made of leather too, but not quite so high brow as the rich folks, then what most folk wore was a wooden board with a strap on it, what the poor folks wore. Now, what kind of noise does a wooden board make on a stone floor?
Now, I don=t get it, I=m sorry; these guys get P.H.D.=s and try to tell us this is how you do a jail break, turn on a bright light, talk allot, put on shoes that clomp all over and this is how you break someone out of jail. You can sneak pass people this way. How do you go past these guards? I know how! This is deliverance not an escape! Then they get to this big old Iron Gate and it Aautomatically@ opens up. The Greek word is the word we get automatic from. It opened up with no help from anybody.
After they had walked for a ways, the angel disappears, why? There is no need for the supernatural any more, the job is done. He didn=t need directions to Mary=s house, he already knew that. Peter concludes, now I realize God has delivered me from everything Herod and the Jews thought they were going to do to me.
Conclusion: Application, have you been in situations or dilemmas we thought were impossible? This is a hopeless situation Peter is in, guards, chains, gates, etc. You have been in situations you thought impossible to get out of.
87. An impossible dilemma cannot escape Gods= notice. You can=t be in any kind of prison out of His sight. Sometimes we think it=s impossible because we pray and pray and pray, but we don=t get the answer we want. Don=t you think they prayed for James when he got arrested? But James was killed. When Peter was arrested, they prayed day after day and every day, he=s still in jail.
We start thinking, when God doesn=t answer us that God just doesn=t know what a tough situation this is. Yes He does. God knew James was in jail and Peter was in jail. Sometimes when we pray the answer is no, like it was with James and he was killed. Sometimes the answer is later, like it was with Peter. When we pray the answer is never, I didn=t know you were in such a bad way. Your situation doesn=t escape Gods= notice.
88. An impossible dilemma doesn=t limit Gods= options. Do you think maybe some of the brethren thought, if God couldn=t help James, then there is no way he can help Peter? We let human judgment decide what God can and cannot do in allot of predicaments. Other people often tell us what can=t happen and we let them.
The doctor comes out and says our loved one=s condition is too far gone and we can=t do anything else. So, we immediately assume nothing can be done. We have let the world tell us that God can=t do anything if the doctors can=t. I don=t see those verses in my Bible. Gods= word never says Gods= power is limited by the conclusions of the medical profession.
The counselor comes out and says, I don=t think there is any way to save this marriage and we start to say, that must be it then. There is a power more powerful than counseling, no matter who=s doing it. It=s just like I=m sure that the professionals would say there is no way Peter can get out of jail. You might just as well accept it church.
One year a Bishop was commissioned to go to colleges all over and assess our colleges. He goes into the president=s office and say, I don=t like all these new ways of doing things and thinking things, it=s very dangerous and I don=t believe God would approve. The president said, I totally disagree, I think we should think big and creative, I think someday man will fly like birds. The bishop responded, brother God has restricted flight strictly for the angels and if you don=t stop that sort of talk you could be found guilty of blasphemy!
God will never let man fly. You probably never heard of that bishop, his name was Milton Wright. I know you have heard of his sons Orville and Wilber Wright. We are too often like the bishop in deciding what God is and isn=t going to do. What God will let happen and what God won=t let happen. We are always limiting our God. I can=t say God will give us whatever we want, but I can say God is not limited by our decisions and conclusions.
I can still say, God is in the delivery business. There=s not one gate in your life God doesn=t have the power to open. No matter how impossible it may say, we can=t limit Gods= options.
89. Impossible dilemmas should worry Gods= people. If you knew tonight that tomorrow was going to be your last day, would change the routine you had planned for the day? Most of you know kind of, we=ve got a rough map of how we will spend our day. How many of us would change if tomorrow you died?
When you look at certain biblical characters who knew they were going to die within a day what you will find is a sense of calmness and serenity and they don=t change how they had lived all their lives trying to make their last day right. If I knew tomorrow was the end, I decided what I would do is, to spend some time with Sheila, maybe eat together, maybe watch some bad TV for a bit, I might call some family and tell them I love them, then I would study for tonight=s lifegroup as I always do, come here to lifegroup with you all, spend a little more time with Sheila, then I=d go to bed and sleep.
God is not looking for a last day that=s all fired up to try to impress, He wants our life. We live our lives before Him and we can feel good that we have and confident that we can say, God receive my life, not just my last day. I believe you ought to be able to go to sleep. Peter could go to sleep, why? He knew like Paul wrote, if we live we live unto the Lord, if we die, we die unto the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
Too often we can=t rest, because we don=t trust that word. We get so wrapped up in the things of this world, what will we eat, or drink, what will we wear, where will we live and we get so worked up over it, we buy more sleeping pills than anybody else. We want to so desperately rest. We are way more concerned about what belongs to us than who we belong to.
In vain you rise up early and stay up late toiling for what you eat, but God grants sleep to those who love Him, says Solomon, Ps. 127:2. The idea is fretting about it, worried about it, but Gods= man gets up does his job and goes home and he is able to go to sleep. He knows his life is hidden in God, whether he is awake or not. God is God and he belongs to Him.
How have you been sleeping lately? Do you know restlessness can be a spiritual problem? There is a life that is lived that you can rest assured that whether you live or die, you can rest because you know either way, you belong to Him.
Intercessory Prayer Acts 12:12-17
Let=s talk about praying on behalf of someone else. We do this often and scripture tells us Jesus always intercedes for us in prayer. The Holy Spirit is said to intercede for us, especially when we don=t know how to pray. We try to do intercessory at times, but I think it=s one of the hardest kinds of praying to do, so we need to look at it more.
It=s not always easy, sometimes it comes more smoothly than others, but we can relate to when it often times is a struggle. You can relate to the story of the grandmother who is in the hospital and had multiple procedures done over time and the doctor comes in and says, we=ve done all we can, now we just have to wait and see. The family asks, is there anything else we can do and the doctor says, well, you can pray. The little old grandma heard this and says, oh dear, has it come to that?
How often does this happen to us and we say something to the affect, oh dear, has it come to the point where all there is prayer? Oh my, if that=s all there is, then it really is bad, isn=t it? We=re not that good at intercessory prayer, because too often we wait until the report comes that there=s nothing else we can do. This is not a new problem for us, because the church in the beginning found it difficult as well.
The story of what happened to James being killed and Peter being arrested waiting to be killed leads up to this response. Peter is miraculously delivered and says I know now God has delivered me and what follows is what we look at now.
Acts 12:12-17, A12When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13Peter knocked at the outer entrance and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, "Peter is at the door!" 15"You're out of your mind," they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, "It must be his angel." 16But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. 17Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. "Tell James and the brothers about this," he said, and then he left for another place.@
Let=s look at the history of the church when it comes to what it needs to try to see all that=s happening here. The church from the beginning is faced with some real big needs. Even from the beginning the church struggled with poverty, which is not hard for us to see why. If you=re in Jerusalem and you become a Christian, you=re livelihood is threatened, if not taken away from you. It is always a problem and even needed special planning to handle in chapter 6.
We also see starting in chapter 7 that the churches young preachers are threatened and even worse as real persecution begins against the church. Steven, one of the best and promising young preachers is killed. Philip, another very powerful preacher with lots of promise for the church was driven out of town and never came back. Then we come to Acts 10-11 and we hear of a famine that is coming and the one place that will be hit the worst of all is Jerusalem. They already have a poverty problem before this, but it comes.
Things have been tough for the church, times are hard and the one thing that has been a constant that has served to keep the church together is the leadership of the Apostles. They held them together with their great faith and power to motivate these young Christians and keep them strong. Now, imagine what it must have been like to have leaned so heavily on someone like James and to see him killed. How, could God allow such a thing to happen? He was a pillar and now he=s gone; this is huge.
But, to add to it, now, probably the most influential one in the church, Peter is arrested and is on death row; how do you think you would feel now? Concern doesn=t even begin to describe what you=re going through. That is shock and Awe! So what do you do? You get on your knees! The church is earnestly praying to God for Peter. What were they praying for? I=m sure they were praying he would get out of jail. Maybe even praying, Lord if it=s not your will he be released, cause James wasn=t, then keep him strong in the faith to the end.
Whatever they prayed the text shows they had prayed for an extended period of time. In Peter=s case he was arrested before the Passover, but he wasn=t killed during it, but they were waiting until it was over to kill him. Passover is a 7 day feast, so he was in there for up to a week. So, this church gets together from the time he is arrested until he is released and starts praying. This is no prayer service we decide to call for on some night, this isn=t even a one day set aside for something big, we=re talking gathering together day after day for a week. They are praying for one thing, God please deliver Peter.
If you think this is easy, you have never tried it! One of the most difficult things for us to do is to pray for an extended period of time for another person. Paul on a later occasion told the Christians at Rome to Astrive together with me in prayer for me.@ It=s an interesting word in the Greek. We get our English word agony from this one. Agonize your way through prayer for me, Paul is saying. That=s what it takes sometimes, but the church would rather organize than agonize.
We want to set up a committee or group of some kind to see how we can handle this problem. Paul says, there=s a time to agonize in prayer for each other, for extended periods of time. James says the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Sometimes to be effective you need to agonize for a time together.
Why is it so hard for us today? We can see 3 things that tell us why it=s so difficult. The first question facing these folks and most of us today is:
90. Why didn=t God rescue James? Here we are night after night praying for Peter, but we did the same for James and He didn=t do it for James. The truth is we have to learn to deal with denial. The last time we did this, Peter was with us praying for James and look what happened. Now, just maybe they weren=t quite as fervent for James as they are for Peter?
The experience of an Apostle in jail wasn=t all that new for them, they had been arrested before, so it wasn=t without precedent, it had happened before.
But, before God got them out of jail every time. So maybe it didn=t seem as critical in James= case? We are like this sometimes aren=t we? Maybe until something major happens like James dying we don=t take things that seriously. How many times have we heard a marriage is struggling, or someone is in the hospital and we don=t get serious about doing anything until we here, it is critical!
I=m sure they had gathered to pray for James and you know James prayed for James. The answer came back, no! One of the main reasons intercessory prayer is so difficult is because of past experience, dealing with denial. Is there anyone listening to me now that hasn=t received a no from God to a request? Every one of you could tell me a story of someone you prayed for, maybe even fervently and the answer came back no, not this time.
You prayed for healing, the surgery would be successful, the marriage would find a way to continue, or the job would be saved, or found, and the answer comes and it was no. So, the next time such a situation arises, it=s so hard to ask God to do what He already said no to once before, isn=t it?
You see, to the dismay and even to the point of offending some of my fellow Christ followers, God isn=t like a vending machine! We so much want Him to be. We have learned the formula and we put in our coins and pull the lever and God just gives us whatever we ask. I mean doesn=t the scripture say that if we pray in faith that God will give us whatever we ask for? We can go to that scripture that says that just as plain as day can=t we? But, in time we learn God doesn=t always work that way, does He? So, what does it mean then and we struggle to understand.
Listen folks, this is not as easy as we want it to be, is it? It is hard to explain easily the permissive will of God. I have come to learn that I have to quit trying to explain God. I=ve been a pastor and even now I lead in several areas and teach often, but I don=t twist in the wind anymore trying to explain God. If you want me to tell you what I think from a human point of view, it makes more sense to me to let James live than to die. It seems like James could help the church more if he was delivered than executed, but not so with God.
I=m sure God had a purpose for this execution, but I don=t see it. There was a time in my life, where I felt like I had to see it, but now I just see I have to trust God. Why does God answer yes to some of our prayers on behalf of others and no to others, how do you explain it? It says, if you ask, He=ll do it, but sometimes He doesn=t, why not? Many times the miracle doesn=t come, why not?
You remember the old Chinese proverb that goes, a fella had a prize horse and all his friends thought he was blessed to have such an animal, but one day the stallion broke out of its pen and took off. His friends gathered and mourned saying, how bad this was and the old man said, how do I know it=s bad?
A few days later the horse comes back leading several others prize horses with him and now the man has many prize animals and his friends come and rejoice over his good fortune. The old man says, how do I know this is good? His son tries breaking one of these horses and breaks his leg severely and his friends come and morn over it and he says, how do I know this is bad? A few days later a war breaks out and his son can=t go to battle, which would have more than likely killed him, as most died.
This could go on and on; how do we know? Really now, how do we know His will? Maybe, we=re learning that intercessory prayer is more about a discovery than an answer we want, or ask for; maybe it=s about finding His will? That=s why I=m uncomfortable hearing when someone is so sure they know God will heal this one at this time, or deliver this one at this time, etc. All, I=m saying is it isn=t always easy to see what God is doing, to see His will.
91. We need to know that Gods= No=s are not always a sign of judgment. We are quick to say if God says no, then it=s because He is angry with us for something. Yet, many times in scripture God says, no to good people, God fearing followers of God. Of course the most classic example of all is when Jesus asked for another way to save us and the answer He got was no, this is it.
Just because He writes off the request doesn=t mean He writes off the person. Just because God said no the last time you asked for help for someone, doesn=t mean He was writing you off. You still have bold access to the Father to ask for another. It=s not easy. Getting a no is not easy to deal with. Sheila and I are dealing with a 3 year no right now and it is not easy to keep praying for the same thing.
Too often we let one no block out all these yes= we have been given, or will get. So, the question, does God have something against me if the answer is no, is something we must come to terms with. No, doesn=t necessarily mean He has something against you.
92. Why hasn=t He rescued Peter yet? Verse 6 says God waits until the night before Herod would have ended up killing him the next day. Why wait until the last moment God? Does God just have to wait for the best time and there is no other time He can do it? God could have done this at any time just as easily as when He did do it. Why does God make us worry this whole time, when He could have done it earlier?
We have to learn to deal with delay. This makes fervent intercessory prayer difficult; delay. We often fail in prayer, not because we don=t have the right idea, but because we don=t have the right idea long enough. I=m not even sure I know how to explain this all that clear. I just know that scripture does seem to indicate that sometimes God causes us to wait to test our trust level.
We read in James that it hadn=t rained for 3 years in Israel and Elijah prayed and it rained and we read it and it seems like that=s how it happened; he prayed and it rained boom! If you go back to 2nd Samuel we see it didn=t happen quite that way. Elijah goes to a mountain to pray and sends his servant to look out on top of the mountain and come tell him if he sees anything coming. The servant goes and looks after Elijah prays and sees nothing out over all the land.
Elijah prays again; send the servant out to look and nothing. Again, and the same. Again, and the same. He does this 7 times and then he says, I see a little cloud, but it doesn=t look like much. That=s all Elijah needed and he tells the servant go tell Ahab to get off this mountain, because a big rain is coming. Elijah the great miracle worker does not pray and instantly God is at his beck and call. Why, not? He did it before and will again, why wait? Who is God? The one praying or the one we pray too? Sometimes it=s hard to explain God.
Do you remember the parable Jesus told of the persistent widow? Do you remember how He ended that story? He said, I wonder when the Son of man comes, will He find faith on the earth? One thing persistent prayer says is do we have faith? The purpose of prayer is not to inform God. He didn=t encourage us to pray for each other so we could go to Him and update Him on how we are doing. He already knows all that.
The purpose of prayer is to develop dependency upon God. Do you remember the story of the time some fellas went swimming and really only one of them knew how to swim? Well they jump in and go for it and soon, one boy starts to struggle mightily, he=s in the process of drowning. The boy who knew how to swim sees him and sits on a rock watching him thrash about. The boy goes under and fights to get back up and the swimmer sits on the rock, just watching. The other boy watching begins screaming at him to help. He watches the boy go down again and fight to come up. The other boy begins to hate with anger the swimmer. Finally the swimmer goes in with a strong stroke and reaches the drowning boy and saves him.
Later, the boy who was angry with the swimmer asked, why did you wait so long to save him? If I had gone to save him when he first was struggling he would have been strong enough to drown us both, so I waited until he had little strength and had given up and could struggle no more.
Maybe, God waits sometimes, to see if we will give up trying to do it ourselves, until we can=t struggle in ourselves anymore and have no more strength of our own anymore and just give up trying to save ourselves or others? Maybe if God saves us when we are so sure of ourselves and the prayer is strong and confident, maybe we get to thinking our work is what saved us or others? Prayer is to develop dependency upon God.
93. Why are we asking for the impossible? Now, we=re dealing with doubt.
You see I think this group at Mary=s house was praying without expectation. They are meeting every day and night, pleading for Peter=s release, Lord we lost James if we lose Peter we don=t know what we will do. Knock, knock, knock, she goes to the door, she=s so excited just to hear him she doesn=t even open the door, so she goes and says, Peter=s at the door, you crazy kid, don=t bother us, we=re praying for Peter.
The word they use is the word we get our word maniac from. How could he be at the door, we=re still praying for him to get out? Then, someone says, well maybe it=s his angel. Where in the world did that come from? Maybe there was a bit of nuttiness going around? All they had to do was answer the door and all the debate would have ended. The empirical evidence is at the door. They finally open the door and they were all astonished.
Peter what are you doing here, you=re supposed to be in jail? It was easier to get Peter out of jail than it was to get him into this house. Everything God had done to get Peter out of jail was being negated by a church that wouldn=t open the door because it didn=t believe their prayer could be answered. Doubt is another obstacle to fervent intercessory prayer.
Let=s be honest, how many times have we prayed for someone not really believing God would do what we asked? How many times do we pray because we know this is just what we ought to do? We need to give the appearance that we pray for each other right? Be honest do we pray without expectation, ever? Yet, another reason why it=s hard to pray fervently in an intercessory way.
There is good news though. Gods= answers aren=t limited by the limitations of his people. If Gods= answers were limited by our limitations, this would be one limited movement wouldn=t it? God will answer prayers of zeal as much as prayers of faith. There are times when we pray that we really don=t feel like praying.
We=re doubting and struggling and feel with everything in us like not praying. In such cases we need to obey and pray anyway. You=ll either pray your way out of doubting or you=ll doubt your way out of praying.
Conclusion, a couple thoughts to work through the obstacles:
94. Intercessory prayer is not used to excuse God! Why are we so often afraid to be specific with God? Why are we afraid to pray boldly and ask God to do something big on behalf of somebody else? Could it be that we don=t want to have to make excuses for God if the answer is no? We act too often as though the purpose of prayer is to protect Gods= reputation.
So we pray petty little prayers and ask for little so we can say, see God does answer prayer. God doesn=t need to be defended nearly as much as He needs to be trusted by His church. Failure to ask boldly says much more about the failure of our faith than it does about our God. We act often like the saints at Mary=s house; we get caught up in praying way more than we do believing.
If I could take out all the general stuff, the traditional stuff, and all the same old phrases you have used and heard all your life, what would you have left in your prayers to God? How high do you think you are going to get if you rely on your prayers to get you there? If all you do is repeat dull old, bland prayers, what kind of a follower of Christ do you think you are going to be? = Just another dull old bland, no life, no fire, no heart, no action type follower?
You can ask God for anything and stop worrying about defending Him if His answer is no. Stop defending and start trusting. The point is He answers, even if it is no and all answers have a purpose, His purpose and we should welcome His purpose in our lives even if we don=t know how it benefits us in anyway. Pray boldly!
95. Intercessory prayer is not a way to excuse yourself. It=s interesting that when Peter went into the house he didn=t shout at them, he told them all to be quiet, he explained what God did and then he went off and hid. We don=t know where he went and neither did anybody else. Is that a lack of faith? Peter if you are a man of faith, what are doing going off and hiding?
Listen, in scripture all over we see faith and wisdom go together. Peter has enough sense to know that if God delivers him so, he doesn=t have to make it easy to be caught by them again. Listen pray boldly for God to do what only He can do, but why do pray for people that God will do what we can do for them, but we just don=t do it for whatever reasons?
It took the work of God to get Peter out of jail! But, Peter can hide and they could help him do so. Jesus turned a little bread into allot of bread, as well as a couple fish into a whole lot, only God can do that. But, somebody needed to pass it out and collect it at the end and we can do that! What I mean is, too often our prayers are sort of shot gun type prayers. We pray short general stuff, theoretical in nature type prayers, you know what I mean?
Lord, heal the sick, save the lost of the world, bless your church Lord, your followers everywhere, and help us all to grow up in You. There=s nothing there we need to act upon in those prayers. They prayed Lord get Peter out of jail, well was does that mean? The very first place they will look for him is at Mary=s house. It has specific ramifications! That=s why Peter can=t stay there.
How do we pray for folks; just generally? When you pray specifically you place specific responsibility upon yourself, as well as the other. Someone comes to me and starts telling me she thinks her marriage is over, her husband will never change and it=s real bad. I ask, how much time do you spend in prayer asking God to change your husband? If she is specific in telling what needs to change, I=ll get specific; do you pray that God will change this specifically?
Often time, I have heard something like, I don=t want to do that, I=ve done enough. You see if God changes her husband, she will need to change her thought about her husband, but she=s already made her mind up about the marriage and wants out, so don=t ask me to pray specifically or at all really.
What about the young boy or girl who comes and says, I don=t know about my friend, it=s going too far and they want to do more and I know God doesn=t want us to do that, but it=s very hard not to. I say, what about praying to God that He change your friend and make them more spiritual, or if they don=t that God would lead you to another who will be more spiritually strong? Oh my, I don=t want that. I like her or him too much, I may have to give up this beauty, or this hunk, and I don=t want that.
One time a group came and asked, we don=t know about our preacher, he doesn=t seem like he=s much of an evangelist, or preacher for that matter. How many times have the lot of you gotten together, even called others in your church to join you to pray for your preacher to be a great evangelist in your city and a more dynamic preacher? Oh, we don=t have time for that; we=ve been screening others to take his place.
How many times have you and your church prayed, Lord I pray all the lost in our city be saved and come to know You? Now that=s a nice prayer isn=t it? Let me challenge to pray this; Lord tomorrow at 2:00, please put in front of me the one You want to hear the gospel. Then whoever is the closest one to you tomorrow at 2:00, you tell them about Jesus! See how specific changes everything?
True intercession can=t replace involvement and that=s the biggest obstacle to doing it. It=s not delay, not denial, and it=s not doubt; the biggest obstacle to real fervent intercessory prayer is; I have to get involved. So we pray lazy prayers and remain lazy followers. It=s time to get serious about how we talk to God at all times, but especially on behalf of others. It=s time to face our faith, what=s it made of? Is it just talk, or do I really depend on Him? No matter what the outcome, who do I trust?
Death Without Dignity Acts 12:18-25
When you=re in Bible school of any kind, you are encouraged to debate several topics and some of that is definitely a learning experience. One such subject that generates allot of interesting discussion is euthanasia. One of the phrases that you hear with this topic that stands out and maybe the first time you ever here the phrase is, death with dignity.
Now, we could say allot about this subject and even take our whole time going here and there with ease, I think. It=s just that kind of topic, but we=re not going to do that. What I do want us think about is, out of this topic I was convicted of a certain thing quite clearly. Dignity in death was not something one person can confer to another person. In other words, if you are going to die with dignity, you first must have lived it.
To think you can cause someone to die with dignity based on your decision to pull the plug, when they hadn=t lived their lives with dignity is at least presumptuous. Dying with dignity doesn=t have anything to do with how much your hospital room costs, or how famous your doctor is, or how much money you have, how many people you have with you and are concerned about you, how well dressed you are, or where you live; you can be very rich and famous and still die with great indignity.
No greater example can be seen in scripture than here with Herod. We have seen the story that leads to this, with James being killed and Peter being arrested and waiting his execution, but the Lord frees Peter from jail and he goes to inform the saints there who were praying for his release and then Peter goes and hides from Herod. This is where our text begins, because Herod doesn=t know any of this and so we see how he responds.
Acts 12:18-25, A18In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him; he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed. Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there a while. 20He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. Having secured the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace, because they depended on the king's country for their food supply. 21On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22They shouted, "This is the voice of a god, not of a man." 23Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. 24But the word of God continued to increase and spread. 25When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark.@
Every time you hear the name Herod in your New Testaments, you know there=s bad news coming. As I mentioned before and want to go over again, when this name appears we are looking at a number of different people. It helps us to be acquainted with the Herod=s to understand why this is a big deal.
There was Herod the great. He was an Edomite. He had a little Jewish blood in him and his father first impressed Julius Caesar, then this one impressed Octavian and Mark Antony and they made him ruler of the Jewish world. He is the first one to be called King of the Jews. He was a crazy man. He was jealous, suspicious, conniving, and crazy. He had many wives and children. He married a woman who belonged to the Maccabaeus family just to make the Jews happy.
He had 2 children with her and then many several other women and had kids with them. He sent Arastobulos and Alexander off to Rome to study. While there his oldest son, Antipater got very jealous, because these were the sons of the most famous wife of them all and this made him think they would be the next king because of it. He was able to get Herod to turn against them and Herod killed these 2 boys. A little later he decided Antipater wanted the throne too quickly so he had him killed. He also had the mother killed, because this is how he was to anybody he even suspected had designs against his throne.
I tell you this to help you appreciate what we read in Mathew 2, when it says the Magi came from the east and went to Herod and said, we are looking for the one who is King of the Jews. This helps us to see why Herod would order the slaughter of all the babies up to age 2 of an entire village, to wipe out anybody He thought was a threat to his throne. He would kill his own family to protect his throne. That=s the kind of man he was.
When he dies the Romans had to decide what to do about his kingdom and he had 3 sons named Antipas, Archelaeus and Philip. So they divided up the kingdom and gave all 3 a part of it. Archelaeus had Judea and when Joseph is in Egypt to escape Herod and goes back to Israel, he gets a dream telling him not to go to Judea; Archelaeus is as mean as his father. He=s so mean the Jews went to Rome and said you better get him out of there or there will be a revolt on your hands, and the Romans got rid of him.
Philip is mentioned in Luke 3:1, but we don=t know much about him, nothing of great consequence there. But, his third son, Antipas is important in our bible record. Antipas is the one Jesus calls, AThat fox.@ He=s the one who questioned Jesus the day before He died. He mocked and treated Jesus with contempt. The only thing we know about Philip does connect us with Antipas, because Philip married a gal named Herodias. Antipas decided he like her more than his other wife, so he got rid of her and convinced Herodias to ditch her husband and come be with him.
This caused John the Baptist to speak up and of course she didn=t like that and you know the rest of that story with John. She had John arrested and eventually by using her daughter she had John beheaded. This is one strange family, like all our soap operas haven=t even begun to duplicate yet.
Now, back to Herod the great, who killed his famous wife, but before he died, she had 2 kids, one named Agrippa and the other Herodias. Crazy, I=m telling you, Antipas not only married his brother=s wife, she was his niece.
We go on to meet Agrippa here in Acts 12. He is just as ruthless as all the others, even if they played Jew for a time, they would always come back to me first. Agrippa had 3 kids, one Agrippa the second, who Paul deals with later on in Acts. Drusilla marries Felix, who we will meet later on as well, he=s a Roman governor. Bernice is the other daughter who lives in an incestuous relationship with her brother Agrippa. This is a sick family by any standards. To add to the picture, Salome, who was the daughter of Herodias, who got John killed, marries her uncle Philip, who Herodias left to be with Herod the great.
So you get a glimpse of the kind of people we=re dealing with here in our bibles. 11 different members of this family play a part in the New Testament story of the church. Let=s now talk specifically about Agrippa of chapter 12. He was born in Rome grew up as a playboy, extravagant, gambler, so much so he had to leave Rome because he owed so many people money he feared for his life. So he leaves penniless. His sister Herodias is living with Antipas and she persuades him to help Agrippa by giving him a job.
Antipas makes fun of him all the time, so Agrippa goes back to Rome and runs into a fella named Gaius Caligula, who lives in the emperors family. At a party one time, Agrippa is overheard suggesting Gaius would be a better emperor than Tiberius, because Tiberius is too stupid. Well, someone told Tiberius and he had Agrippa put in jail. Six months later, it just so happens Tiberius dies and guess who they make emperor?
Caligula, and the first thing he does is let Agrippa out of jail and gives him a gold chain equal to the chain used to imprison him with. Well, sense they are so close, Agrippa asks him if could go back to his father=s country and be king. So, no problem, he sets him up as a king. The first thing he wants to do is get back at his uncle. This is how Antipas gets exiled, the one who is so mean to Jesus and John the Baptist. He gets Antipas kicked out and Gaius gives his kingdom to Agrippa and later Philip dies and all that kingdom is given to Agrippa, so now Agrippa is ruler of all Israel, just like his grandfather was.
Outside of his grandfather Herod the great, Agrippa is the most powerful of all the Herod=s and he was just like his grandfather in many ways, certainly as ruthless and mean. As a ruler he is always looking for a way to appease the Jews. He would observe Jewish customs, build buildings for them, and help with the temple and the like. This is primarily why he starts persecuting the church. He wasn=t threatened by Christians; he was only looking for ways to please the Jews.
He murdered James and we he found out it pleased the Jews, he had Peter arrested also. That=s his motivation! He really wanted to show the Jews how to deal with Peter, because they had tried and failed a couple times and each time he got out. He puts Peter in jail and wants to kill him, just like he did James. But, Agrippa soon finds out being a friend of Caesar is no match for being a friend of the King of Kings! Peter is able to escape.
So look at the response he makes to Peter=s deliverance. He makes 2 wrong responses recorded in verses 18-19, A18In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him; he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed.@
When it says commotion they mean it. If you were assigned to guard someone and they got away under your watch, you would receive the penalty given to that prisoner. There was pandemonium with these guards to try to find him. Pulling hair, we have got to find him, or you know what. Herod cross examines his guards and then has them executed. Think about this!
There are only 2 conclusions you can make about what happened to Peter. 1. God rescued him with a miracle. 2. The soldiers in a conspiracy let him get away. There was no real possibility that the Christians could have overpowered the soldiers and took him and the guards then lied about that. So, the question is, why would the soldiers form a conspiracy of any kind to spring Peter, knowing full well it would cost them their lives? It doesn=t make any sense and Agrippa knows there is only one sensible explanation to this, but he is not honest in his trying to find the answer.
The only explanation that makes sense is the soldiers have no idea how it could have happened, it must be a miracle. Herod wants no such talk, because unbelief refuses to believe in the supernatural in spite of the evidence. We saw this over and over in Jesus life and the many miracles He performed and the leaders couldn=t live with that conclusion. It would mean they too had to believe He was who He said He was and they can=t handle that. Even after Jesus had risen and a great search had been made to find the body and they couldn=t find it, and believe me they left no one or no place unturned to find it. The Pharisees end up bribing the guards to lie about what happened to the body in spite of the evidence to the contrary.
This is what unbelief does and always has. Spread a rumor that his followers stole the body. There=s no way these guys would have allowed such a thing to be, if it were true, they would have found the body if His followers had it no matter where it was. Herod is the same way; he cares way more about his image than how Peter actually escapes. He runs away to Caesarea to avoid any embarrassing questions after this. When you press unbelief it will do everything it can to escape, rather than admit the truth.
They can=t answer the questions, so they just dismiss them. Sometimes we get all intimidated by unbelievers spewing all their theories and dogma and all we believers have is our faith. Never forget the unbelievers have way more questions they can=t answer than we do. I=ll guarantee you they have many questions they refuse to have a real answer to than we do. They will hide under, statements like, we can=t know what we don=t know, we weren=t there and the like, and when we tell them there is an answer, you just don=t like the answer so you hide behind a response designed only to deflect the question.
If unbelief can=t answer a question they find a way to dismiss the question and avoid facing it. They will leave the conversation if they have to, just like Agrippa. Just because he escapes the Jews, does that mean he escapes the accountability of God? He has a chance to come to faith according to the evidence and he blows it off. That was wrong response 1.
Wrong response number 2 is seen in verse 20, where we get some history of things happening then. The folks up in Tyre and Sidon had a beef with Herod, as they realized they were relying too much on him and he had done some things that didn=t set well. Knowing Herod, he probably taxed them too high or some such thing, but one things sure, they were getting almost all their grain from Herod. Now, he was cutting off the grain supply until he got whatever he was looking for from them. Well, they had an inside ear from a man named Blastus and convinced him to get an audience with Herod to work this out.
These kinds of things go on all the time between countries, even countries that don=t like each other much. We=ll have a country we=ll be squabbling with about any number of things, but if the grain supply goes short one year, then we come together and make nice, sign a treaty and give something to each other, then after a while we go back to fighting again. A good old case of going hungry can bring folks together in a hurry. Tyre and Sidon want to do this very thing with Herod, because they=re hungry.
Herod though, he=s one of those kind of leaders, who is always thinking of himself first, conniving, and scheming for the upper hand to promote himself. So, he sends his robes out to the cleaners and has his speech writers make this great speech about how wonderful he is and how he should be exalted for his generosity. What was the response of the folks to all this? = AThe voice of a god and not of a man!@ Now, do you really think they believed that? You know why they went along with this; basic economic and physical need is what motivated this response.
They would say whatever they needed to say to get more food for their people. The real problem is Herod actually believes in this adulation and starts to gloat in it. The text says, immediately an angel of Lord struck him down. Why? Because he did not give praise to God and so worms are fed well and Herod dies. Can you imagine a more undignified way to die? This is not the kind of a death a king wants to be remembered for. Jesus was the one who told us, hell is a place where the worms never die. I believe the church saw this death as divine retribution for what Herod had done to the church.
I don=t think they gloated when they heard he was gone, but I=m sure they were able to say, he should have known better than to mess with God. Now, what lessons can we learn from the life of this pompous fellow?
96. His life displays the stupidity of ignoring the evidence! It never was that Herod could not learn the truth; it=s that he didn=t want to. That=s true even today. So many today look to dismiss what they can=t explain and rather than look for evidence they spend their lives looking for flaws and weaknesses to the truth. It=s not that they can=t discover the truth; it=s that they don=t want to. They don=t want to be faced with the conclusion they must change.
Do you think they will escape being held accountable for not honestly looking at the claims of Jesus? Even God is very clear about how stupid it is to ignore the evidence, He calls such activity foolish and it will catch up to them.
John was clear when he said, if you will look at the signs I have recorded you will come to believe Jesus is the Son of God. Our God has supplied much evidence and it=s utter foolishness not to honestly investigate it.
97. His life displays the calamity of desiring preeminence! Herod only cared about one throne and he was on it. Now, maybe none of us will ever be in a place where folks will for some reason actually say we are God, but haven=t we all been in a place where we want the praise rather than God? Don=t we sometimes struggle with giving all the praise to God?
Do we not see the danger of ego tripping in the name of religion? Have you ever run across folks in the church with Herod personalities? People who are willing to do just about anything to remain in power? They want position in the church for the praise they receive, not for the praise they can give. Gods= view of pride has never changed, no matter how our times have changed.
It is a dangerous place to be in the church to not give all the glory to God.
98. His life displays the futility of opposing God. The last 2 verses are not postscripts, but pointed, 24But the word of God continued to increase and spread. 25When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark.@
Herod is doing everything he can to stop the work of the church but the Word continues to increase and spread. Gods= task in this world cannot be stopped by pompous men. They may think they are going to slow it down or stomp it out, but all they will actually do is promote it! Most of the acts of growth recorded follow acts of persecution. It is futile to oppose God.
Where was John, also called Mark at in Jerusalem when all this with Peter took place? Back in verse 12 it says it=s his house Peter came to. So if you follow the time line here, Paul and Barnabas are sent to Jerusalem by the church at Antioch to deliver the money for the coming famine and while they are there all this stuff with Peter is going on, probably James being killed too and they end up at John Mark=s house. They very likely could have been at the house when Peter was released from jail by the angel. At any rate they end up there sometime along and then take Mark with them as they continue on.
They are all together when the news of Herod=s death comes and when they return to Antioch and they have no idea what they are going to do, but the road to being the great missionaries of the early church is now set. One thing they have learned is God protects His witnesses! God is mightier than the kings of men. God is stronger than all the rulers of other countries and if you=re going to go to other countries for God you have got to believe that. James teaches the important lesson that God doesn=t deliver every time, it does cost some of us everything we=ve got to follow Him, but there is still plenty to show us, He protects witnesses who go for Him.
We can still see the ruins of the Roman coliseum and much of the places where many decisions of this time of history were made. What about our halls of power today? It=s been recorded that when our men go into some of the Ahallowed@ rooms in our places of decisions today that, many times it=s been said that Athe decisions we make here today will affect the course of human history.@ Just like the kings in Rome said all those years ago, but I wonder, will our ruins still be around in 200 years, let alone 2,000 years.
It is true that the decisions of men do affect history and therefore it is important who makes those decisions, but to make too much of that, when our scriptures clearly tell us it is God who raises up kings and takes them down is a dangerous place to be.
I wonder how our newspapers today would report this news back then? What would the headline be of chapter 12? Herod the king is dead and who will take His place? Or do you think verses 24 and 25 would be the headline? The word of God continued to increase and spread and Barnabas and Saul are on their way back to Antioch. That would hardly make the back page, if it did at all.
But, I want you to know, what the world would call news, isn=t the real news of Acts 12. The real news is, God is still working and something bigger than all the kings is about to happen. This news won=t be stopped by the rulers of men! Lots of times people ask questions of us, will it ever matter if we lived? Now, it=s probably pretty likely we won=t make headlines, most of us won=t be written up as affecting political history, or the course of human history, But if you serve the REAL King, it matters that you lived.
The things we do in following our king have eternal consequences and our world will never think them headline stuff, but long after all the rubble of all the Herods of this world will have been forgotten, living for the king of kings will be remembered forever.
The Genesis of Christian Exodus Acts 13:1-3
I=m not sure if you=re one who likes to move or not, but I have to say moving is tough, isn=t it? One preacher liked to tell the story of a move he made once, by reminding everyone how absent minded he was. He was a well known preacher, but he had a trait of forgetting the little things, when he got caught up in all the things of the day.
Well, one day the day arrived and his wife told him when he left the house in the morning, honey, now don=t come back here at the end of the day, because everything is packed and we=re moving to our new house today; the movers are coming and this is it. Okay, no problem, but then he goes to work at church and gets going on some important study and meeting folks, etc. and at the end of the day he forgets all about moving and ends up back at the old house.
He goes in and everything is gone and says, oh yeah, we moved; now where did we move to? He spots a kid on the street and asks, hey kid do you know where these people moved to? The boy answers, yeah dad mom knew you were going to forget. Now, that=s how he tells the story.
But, really, we don=t like to move, most of us anyway, they are unsettling. Even though we don=t like them much, still as a culture, America is the most mobile country that has ever been. Those who keep stats say the average American moves once every 3 years. Why in the world do we move so much? These same stat folks say it=s for 2 reasons, first to take a better job. The second is to move to a better neighborhood, schools, or whatever we think is better.
Now, I have thought about this, do we ever see Gods= hand in the move we make in our lives? We can see in this first century church, God is very much behind the moves that this church makes. They understood early on that Gods= people need to have very shallow tent pegs! When Jesus began His ministry, He never had a place He called His permanent home. This is what Christianity is!
Christianity is not the study of an ideology, or philosophy, or theology; it is a study of a movement. This whole book of Acts is the story of a movement and all about that movement. For years preachers have said, Ayou can=t get the word Go out of Gospel.@ Guess what, you can=t get the word Go out of God either. Acts 13 is the beginning of the Christian exodus. The rest of the way in this book is all about a church on the move.
Acts 13:1-3, A1In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." 3So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.@
Consider this task. What was the Holy Spirit calling them to do? There is a major shift taking place here in the book. In the first half we see the church in Jerusalem is the center and Peter is the main character. In the second half we see the church in Antioch and Paul is the center. The first half showed the gospel to one nation and now we go to all nations.
Jesus is the one who dictated this is the way it would be all the way back in chapter 1 when he said, you will be my witnesses first to Jerusalem, Judea, and then to Samaria and then to the ends of the earth. Paul actually preaches that in a sermon here in chapter 13:47, A47For this is what the Lord has commanded us: 'I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth."
Notice two things that stand out in Jesus= strategy here. One, it was simple! We tend to complicate things today, but Jesus just said, first take it to this city, then into all your country and then take it everywhere else.
Second, it is very personal, isn=t it? He said, you are My witnesses! The church needs to take this very personally and maybe even more so now in chapter 13. This first church who does this is Antioch. This begins the first missionary journey of the church and it all begins with a little 70 mile boat trip to Cyprus, a little island in the sea.
Think about it; I doubt it would have made any headlines, or history books. I=m convinced if you take all the Sir Francis Drakes all the Magellan=s and all the Columbus=, that have ever been and combine them all and they pale in significance to this first little boat trip Paul and Barnabas make. When we talk about what has changed the world, this is bigger than them all.
Let=s look at the text and notice 3 things about this church launching out in zeal to the whole world.
99. It was the right time! It=s been approx. 15 years since Pentecost and up until now it=s been almost an accidental growing of the kingdom. The church did not plan deliberately to evangelize where it did before this. A rogue man or two went to Samaria and even ended up in Antioch, but they hadn=t thought about it as a church.
Persecution came and the Christian fled for their lives and went to these places and when they did they preached. So, they are evangelistic to preach where they ran to, which is admirable, but there was no plan to do it, it was more or less accidental in their minds. God decides, now is the time to bring the church into His agenda. Why wait 15 years to do it?
One thing we have seen is, the Gentile issue had to be solved and it is just recently that this question has been determined. Until the church faced the question, can Gentiles be preached to and become members of Gods= church, the church couldn=t be evangelistic.
The second thing that had to take place was that the proper instruments to get the job done had to be prepared. God knew what He was doing when He called Saul of Tarsus to be the chosen instrument to bring the gospel to Gentiles, but that was 10 years ago. Apparently God saw, there needed to be 10 years of training and preparing in the kingdom, before Saul was prepared to what he was called to do.
The time was right and verse 2 says, A2While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.@ Notice specifically what they were called to; Afor the work@. They were not called to a place; they were called to a work. That=s important to see.
I think we have reversed this today and we hear way more about going to places, rather than called to a certain work. We want to first decide where we will go and then will decide what we=re going to do when we get there. God is looking for those who have a calling for a work and then they will be able to go any place and do that work.
How many of us have decided where we are going to live and maybe where we are going to live next and then we will decide what work for God we will do. God calls people to a work and then He sends them to places He wants them to do that work.
He says, a work to which I have called them, meaning past tense. I called them to this work in the past and it now has present implications. It=s not a secondary thought with God and He woke up one day and said, wouldn=t it be nice if we preached to Gentiles now. God said I called them a long time ago to this work. It took 10 years for God to finally send Paul, but he called him before this and so was Barnabas called.
Even though his story of being called isn=t recorded it happened he says here. Paul=s right hand man was called too; way before He sends them anywhere. So they have this work in them, it=s their burden deep within and they always wanted it, but they too wanted to know when and then to whom? When is He going to turn us loose and send us?
The word used for worship here is interesting too. Many translations say they were worshipping the Lord, but the word is a word that is more often used to mean ministering, or serving. Very few times is it ever used to mean worship and here it often is translated that way, but I=m not sure that=s what we see here. Instead of seeing them in a worship gathering, I tend to see it as these guys were doing what they were called to do, serving Gods= people there in Antioch.
They were serving God already right there in Antioch, even though they hadn=t been literally sent anywhere yet.
They still were serving them with the word and fasting and praying for them; being the leaders they would continue to be when they are sent to all these other places.
People ask those who have been called to preach and teach Gods= Word, what do you have to do to prepare to do this every week? Well, it=s told to them what kind of preparation and study, and searching is done, then praying and mediating to see if this is what God wants to say, etc. Then often times they will ask, do you think the folks know you have to do all that before you present to them, do you think they even notice? I=m not at all sure they ever notice, but I know God does.
You see, anything someone who is called to do a work does for you, is offering it to God and that is one of the ways worship is done. That=s what I see happening here with Paul and Barnabas at Antioch. We ask all the time, how does God call people? We too often think in terms like, we put on a back pack and fill it with granola mix and head up to the top of the mountain so we can hear from God.
That=s not how God calls us. He calls us in the very context of our ministering, our serving. If you=re looking for a call from God then roll up your sleeves and do the work God has put in you to do and keep doing it for however long He wants you to and if He wants you to go somewhere else and do it, He=ll let you know.
It disturbs me to run into those in the church who aren=t up to much and when you ask why, they say something like; I=m waiting for God to give me a sign. If you really want a sign from God, get to work doing what your heart burns for, He put it there, He called you to do it where you are, and if He wants to give you a sign to go elsewhere, He=ll give it to you.
That=s what Paul and Barnabas were doing and that=s when they heard from God about where He wanted them to go. This should not surprise us brethren, because God does not move the uninvolved. The time was right to move.
100. God had the right church! There is no better church in the brotherhood to be a sending church than the church at Antioch. One thing we=ve seen as a large city, with all these worldviews and ideas, if these men had been ministering in Antioch, they had come across anything they would encounter in the world.
It was free from Jewish influence and that=s important. This church didn=t have the kind of Jewish hang-ups the Jerusalem church had. If you=re going to go into the Gentile world, you have got to leave Jewish baggage behind.
The biggest reason they are the right church is that they are just a bunch of committed zealous disciples that are so committed they even get a new name for themselves. They were first called Christians here! A place where they first preach to Gentles and then are able to collect money to send to the Jewish church in Jerusalem; I mean this church doesn=t have Jewish hang-ups.
It=s note worthy also to see how they responded to Gods= direction. When He said, set these men apart to go do this, they responded with faith and obedience. No, hesitation, or asking questions like why do we have to be missionaries? We still have plenty of lost folk=s right here and why these guys, they are doing such a good work, why do we have to send them, etc.? Our budget won=t support this much work and we have all kinds of needs right here, why do we have to go all over the place?
Usually the ones who say this the loudest are the ones who have never spoken to anybody in their home town or even close. There is no such talk in Antioch, they simply place their hands on them and pray for them. Why place hands on them? They couldn=t give them any gifts they didn=t already have, so why lay hands on them? To confirm they are the ones this church is sending to do this work. To affirm them as their Apostles, messengers of the gospel, sent out by this church, which meant supporting them in every way possible.
The word apostles meant messengers sent out and after the original handpicked ones of Jesus, the church would send out many as apostles of the church. There were only 12 of those chosen by Jesus to found the church and were given special authority in building the church, but after them, the church would send out many handpicked men to build churches all over the world. There are a number of men named apostles in scripture that weren=t apart of the original 12, but they were sent out by a church to do a certain work.
The church would affirm these men as their representatives, their missionaries to these places and would support them to carry out the work in every way. I think in such important work the church should still do these kinds of things to let the ones we send know we are choosing them and we are with them in the work we calling them to do for us. Affirming we are in it with them all the way.
No church ever rises above its leadership! It=s amazing how the Holy Spirit brings this church together in such diversity and it works so well. Barnabas is a Hellenistic Jew raised up in Cyprus. You have a fella named Niger, who was Simeon, but they called him Niger, which was a word that meant black one. He was from North Africa. Another guy named Luscious from Cyrene, who was one of its founders. Manaean, who raised with Herod Antipas in the halls of roman government. Then of course Saul who was raised in Tarsus as a Pharisee.
What a group of men to bring together to lead a church. Everyone is from different backgrounds, countries and cultures, and even different colors. The Holy Spirit somehow brought these men together and unified them into a powerful example of Christianity. Is there a lesson for the church to learn here by bringing different people together to lead in the church? I don=t think it=s healthy for the churches to bring folks together that are all alike. We see this in the early church allot, where diversity gives balance and God does amazing work that might not be done otherwise.
It makes decision making broader and more balanced, if we work through different views from many directions of thought, rather than having a bunch that are all the same and think alike.
Now, the Holy Spirit calls, so who does He call, but the very best. Is this what we do today? The Holy Spirit chose Saul and Barnabas, the very best to do this work. Do churches usually look for the best to send, whoever they may be? More often churches today think we have to send those who aren=t the best on mission trips so they can get experience and learn and we leave the best here to do the preaching in the church here.
God doesn=t work that way, He always sends the best people for the jobs He wants done. Mission work in the mind of God is not a second place job in the church. Now, in this case, God not only calls one, He calls two. 2 of the very best! Jesus of course did it this way and they follow the example. No man is so good he can do it all himself and there is allot of wisdom there if we chose to follow it. It=s a huge mistake to send one person into mission work alone.
So they went, got in the boat and traveled 70 miles and that little trip started the change of the world. You see, many times I hear us talk today and most of the time it=s like, I could never do that mission stuff, sure am glad it=s not me. But, we need more of what these men did not less, and I mean all of us. You see, these men knew something you and I don=t and that=s the kind of faith that is working to go somewhere no one else has and know what it=s like to trust in God more than you ever knew possible.
God is so at the center of your will in all this and you=re so dependent upon Him for everything, to launch out like this and we need to know how to trust God like this. They also knew that what they were doing was what God had called them to do, so it matters more than whatever else they could be doing. To stay in a place that has all the comforts and security you can imagine and go to a place that you don=t really know what they have, but to stay in a place where you make little to no real difference, but now you will matter way more than you ever thought.
Now, God doesn=t call everyone to do this, but if you=re not willing to be moved, how will you know if He would chose you, or not?
If you are where God wants you, you will matter, really and truly, not just cause that=s where you like being, but you make a difference. Somehow we have to find the reality that to be affective in God=s work, you have to have shallow tent pegs, and you have to be open to His work, wherever He calls you.
Conclusion: Setting the tone for all that is to come.
101. We must decrease our indifference to world missions. Evangelism doesn=t happen accidentally! The kingdom has to be forcefully taken into the world, if it going to go anyplace. The leaders of the church must force the church to go, or it won=t go. We get set in our places and comfortable and we don=t want things to change, but God want us to move out for Him. We won=t even go out into our own communities if the leadership doesn=t push out there.
You say, but I am focusing on being everything God wants me to be, but He never has called me to go. Does that mean He hasn=t given us any role to play in going? You see, God has made some to be supporters of those He has called to go. You can fast, pray, and support financially all those God has called to send out and when you do, you are with them in that work.
We must take this work seriously as a church and make it part of all our work God has called us to do. If you have folks going locally, or into the world, too often we think like; it=s their work, no, it=s our work! Listen God is calling His church to go and He needs those He calls to go and He needs those not called to go, to send! The church is in it with them!
They can=t do it without us and we can=t do it without them. We=re united in the work, fellowshipping in the work, we are partners, joined at the hip, we=re all involved and doing all we can to get the job done. Whatever role you play, it is your work! We need to make it more conscious that it is our work.
102. We need to increase our involvement in local ministry. What kind of church has an impact on the world? Only one that is active at ministry in its own backyard. What are we doing where we are? What are we really doing to reach the lost, right in our own town? You won=t know what the church anywhere else in the world needs to reach the lost, if you=re not reaching them where you are.
We should ask our mission committees and pastors, whatever we call them, what are you doing in your home towns to reach the lost? Are we truly doing something that touches the lost where we are?
Actual going to places where there is lost folk and spending time with them all for the purpose of the opportunity to bring the good news to them. Not, talking about doing things, but actually out there where folks are, that don=t believe or are just lost in life and need direction and we have feet on the ground touching folks.
Leaving our comfort zones at home and going into people=s lives with Jesus in us and wanting to show them Jesus. However we do that, are we doing it? Name the works we are actually doing right here. We have allot of students thinking about being leaders in the church someday, what are you doing right now to touch the lost around you? How do we get the notion that we will have wisdom to go some place in the future for God, when we aren=t doing anything right now where we are?
The Spirit may not be leading and calling you today; because you aren=t doing anything He has called you do right where you are. If you want wisdom from God to do more, or go somewhere, minister where you are right now and He=ll lead you.
The kingdom of God is not about committees and reports and budgets, it is about reaching people wherever you are. Abraham Lincoln is known as a great speech maker, but too often people have missed what he said. It=s often quoted, AI put forth the proposition that the government is by the people, of the people, for the people and should not perish from the earth.@
Too often we use the right words, but give the wrong emphasis to what he said, thus changing his meaning. Most of the time people give the emphasis to the government, we need to keep this government going, no Lincoln emphasized the government is by the people, of the people, and for the people is what should not perish from the earth.
Lincoln was saying this whole business we are involved in, that has cost us so much, is all about people. The whole purpose of government is for people! Government is not about promoting more and more, bigger and bigger government, it is about promoting people, benefitting the people, protecting and lifting up the people.
God has forever declared His church is not about making more and more, bigger and bigger churches, it=s about promoting, benefitting, and lifting up people! People are the heart of His affection, not buildings, or staffs, or budgets, but souls. Wherever the church is, it is about the people there where you are and all of us have something to do to reach out to the people.
Is Missions Impossible? Acts 13:4-14a
We=re looking at the first missionary journey of the church. It took allot of commitment and faith, which we still need today, but they set out. Someone once asked the question what do you call yourselves in your church? Someone spoke up and said we=re Gods= by-standers. You see they tried to get me to be a witness, but I just didn=t want to get that involved. That=s a problem in the church we have had for much of our history.
To get involved in doing church as God designed and called us, involves supreme commitment, in spite of what many might say. There are too many giving the impression becoming a Christian is the beginning of health, wealth, and every day is sunshine and lollipops. If you are a disciple of Jesus you still carry a cross with you at the ready to crucify whatever gets in the way of you following Jesus. Is there joy and celebration? Yes, indescribable to most, unless you have experienced it yourself, because there is persecution, suffering, and sacrifice that is very real and present.
Someone once said, AChristianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried.@ The cross Jesus told us to keep at the ready every day is probably not heavier anywhere as on the mission field. So many forces at work screaming at us, to get out of there, go home, how is this worth it. That=s why I entitled this lesson, is missions impossible?
Acts 13:4-14, A4The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. 5When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper. 6They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, 7who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. 8But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. 9Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, 10"You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? 11Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind, and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun." Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. 12When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord. 13From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, where John left them to return to Jerusalem. 14From Perga they went on to Pisidian Antioch. On the Sabbath they entered the synagogue and sat down.@
Notice 2 changes that occurred because of the encounter with Sergius Paulus and this guy Bar-Jesus. First, a name is changed. Saul who is now called Paul also. Saul was the Hebrew name and Paul is the Roman name. I suspect when he met with rulers from Rome he would introduce himself as Paul. I think when it was impressed on him that he would be the missionary to the Gentiles, as God called him to be, he went by Paul way more than Saul. This would relate to them better and Paul was all about that.
From here on, the only time the name Saul comes up is when he refers to his former life.
The second change we see is the reference to Paul and his companions. Up till now it has been Saul and Barnabas, and now in this incident Paul takes a position change as the leader of the mission team. Barnabas has been in a role of mentor leading Paul to become all that God has called him to be, and now Paul is ready to be the leader. Not once does Barnabas complain about this.
Several quotes come to mind. AIt takes more grace than I can tell, to play the second fiddle well.@ I heard a song a while back that still gets me when I hear it, the title is, ANo one wants to play rhythm guitar behind Jesus.@ The verse goes on to say, everyone wants to be the lead singer in the band. We need more Barnabas in us and it will serve us all very well, where we can go from the place of preeminence to second place and not complain about it. This will prosper the kingdom greatly! Not easy, but important.
At first glance you might think all is going well on this journey, but look closely and you=ll see obstacles they had to climb. You and I must resolve within us that mission outreach will always meet satanic opposition! If it doesn=t happen there=s something wrong with your work, because it is as inevitable as darkness comes at the end of the day. It is as wrongheaded as anything you can think of, to think Satan will allow us to go into any unevangelized part of the world and take over his kingdom without opposition.
He opposes Paul and Barnabas from the very first day. There are four probable frustrations anyone on the mission field will experience. I want us better realize what folks who go on missions face when we send them and I want us to start thinking more of ourselves as missionaries. Do you work for some major company; that=s a mission field. Do you teach somewhere today; that=s a mission field. What about your neighborhood; it=s a mission field. The people you are with and around everyday are your mission field.
Four common frustrations wherever your mission field is:
103. Discouragement that slay beginnings. Mission work often is frustrated from the very beginning. At first look it seems like it was good, they went to Cyprus first. It was a natural choice for 2 reasons, first because this is where Barnabas is from. Of course he is the kind of guy who would love to evangelize his homeland. Also, as we have seen some of the folks who founded the church at Antioch are from Cyprus, so they too would love to see their homeland evangelized.
So, they go there, which by the way is kind of like being sent to do mission work in Hawaii. It was called the happy island by the Greeks. It was beautiful, pleasant climate, and if you could choose a place to go, this was it. Verse 4 says the Spirit sends them, so they are excited about it; we are going to do well for the Lord here.
Verse 5 says when they arrive there at Salamis they preach in the Jewish synagogues. That=s where it ends! Luke doesn=t mention anything about folks being converted there and they don=t stay very long. What happened?
The harvest wasn=t too good was it? If people had been reached there, Luke would have told us, he=s been telling us everywhere these guys go, people believe, often times many people. If there was a church to be planted there they would have stayed and seen to it, because that=s what they always did. They are excited about the place, they have contacts, you couldn=t ask for a better place to be, but nobody believes.
Slow beginnings or no response is one of the most discouraging things on a mission field. If you commit yourself to a certain place and not much happens for a time, you can easily get disheartened. I can remember going to a church in upstate NY where there had been trouble, hurt feelings, and people had left the church abandoned. There was a building, a small one, a house for the pastor to stay in, but nobody was meeting in that place.
For the first few months when my wife and I, and 2 kids met there, no one came to worship with us. No good records were kept so I only knew very few who had been from before, so maybe I could work to get them to come back. But, we open the place up and we did worship the best we could and studied some, not easy I=ll tell you. It was about 3 months before the first person came, who had been members from another place and moved there looking for a place in the same denomination.
Then it was a couple months before we had a handful of folks, maybe as many as 10. During that whole time I was trying to get to know the town and where the folks hung out so I could go there and involve myself in stuff they were doing, to get to know them and them me. We met this little band of folks maybe a dozen in all for a year and then we went out and tried to actively reach folks in their homes by giving out flyers and asking for bible study if they were interested, just letting them know we were there.
It was well over a year before we got our first convert and then after that we got a few more and a few more, by the second year we were approaching 50 folks meeting and they were growing as a church together looking for ways to reach the town. If we weren=t willing to go there and tough it out for a time, it wouldn=t have happened. It=s not easy, but the church is still there and still together and working to reach folks, after almost 30 years now.
How many would have looked at Barnabas and said, I don=t know man, something must be wrong, maybe we should go back to Antioch and train some more. They didn=t do that, verse 6 says they went through the whole island. Salamis wouldn=t listen, so we=ll go to the rest of the place. They went all the way to the other side of the island to place called Pathos.
Pathos is the capital city, where the Roman governor Sergius Paulus was. By the way there are ruins there with this guy=s name on them, so he=s a real guy.
104. The second discouragement that happens to missionaries is: Defamation by jealous antagonists. This is the radical, intense, and severe opposition of people opposed to the Christian gospel, or at least opposed to your bringing it. I=ve heard many stories of opposition by town folks to bringing the gospel in many parts of our world, but haven=t experienced that first hand. Sometimes the opposition is even violent, as well as humiliating.
It doesn=t happen too often here in this country, but you better be prepared a bit for it, if you go to other countries. What I have witnessed is 2 different oppositions, one from other denominations about a new church. We are taking care of the town good enough, we teach the gospel, so we don=t need anything new here, and sometimes the jealousy can be very discouraging to mission folks, sent there. Other times what I have seen is opposition from within the denomination itself.
I was opposed by a certain man who showed up at our little young fledgling church one day. He was a member of this denomination, but was very antagonistic to any approaches that he didn=t personally feel was the right way of doing things. He was very specific about what should and shouldn=t be done and even disrupted our worship gatherings to stir things up. It was a trying time and his barbs were thrown directly at me, because I wasn=t doing the exact things he thought I should be doing.
It was a very hard period of time for not just me, but the whole church and it could have gone much different. If I had chosen to let it get to me and drag me down, I could have said, that=s enough of this, who needs this, but I didn=t and stuck with it and the folks with me over time worked our way through it and even helped this man see his way more clearly and lighten up his very legalistic demands. We grew allot from sticking to it and working through it.
Now, this fella it says was an intelligent man and he sent for Paul and Barnabas because he wanted to hear the word about God. We know he=s a searcher of sorts because he=s got this sorcerer hanging out with him, so he believes in supernatural things and he wants to know more about what these men have to say. Well, Paul comes, because one thing we know about Paul is, he is not afraid of opinion leaders, intimidating men of repute who assert their views as truth.
We need some of this from Paul, because I think too often we in the church are afraid of this type of people. You know, those who have gained a following and some power to go with it as some kind of expert, that everyone gives credit to, but Paul is not impressed with such folks and often time even goes to them and takes them on head on.
He goes to the synagogue officials, Roman officials, city counselors, etc., because he knows if he can change these folks, he can take the city.
Now, Paul wasn=t afraid to go to these guys, but Sergius has a sorcerer who was afraid of Paul. One thing is, if Paul is successful in his talk that means the sorcerer is out of a job. So Elymas opposed him in some way and it says he tried to turn the pro-counsel from the faith. This becomes a common problem to any who presents the gospel in this day and time. Paul told the young evangelist Timothy that many would oppose the faith, just like those 2 that opposed Moses in his day. Get used to dealing with it.
Just like the 2 magicians that opposed Moses before Pharaoh, be ready because in the last day many will oppose the truth. Paul tells him to be ready for cultic and occultic forces, which will oppose the truth and dazzle many. One thing I can assure you is the opposition will be intense in trying to keep us from folks who may listen to our message and if those who believe in cultic type stuff are able they will force us to be isolated and kept away from those who might listen to us. They will stop at nothing to make sure we can=t speak our message.
How did Paul deal with this, well he was very direct. Now, remember he called himself Bar-Jesus, which meant son of salvation. Paul looked him straight in the eye and said you=re not the son of salvation; you=re the son of the devil! You oppose all that is right and are full of trickery and deceit. You oppose the Lord and he struck him blind. Now, of course it would help if we could do such things in facing such folks today, but I don=t see any able to do this today.
It wasn=t even that common in scripture where we see a miracle results in a negative, or a bad thing happening to someone. The only other place we see it is in Acts 5 with Ananias and Sapphira and here. So, they did miracles on rare occasions to stop folks from hurting the kingdom. Now, regardless of that, what we need to learn from this is, there are times in taking the message to folks, we will need to stand up to those who oppose the truth and call it what it is. Because opposition will come, so be ready.
105. Departure of key co-workers. Verse 13 tells us John left the mission work. Why? Some say he was homesick; his mother was still in Jerusalem as we saw back in chapter 12. Some say he got upset about Barnabas= demotion. Paul is now the leader of the team as we have seen. Barnabas was John marks= cousin, so some say he went home upset about it all.
Some suggest he went back because he was scared. One of the places they traveled was Pamphylia, one of the worst places to go. Allot of potential problems, from disease and horrible terrain, to robbers and thieves everywhere. Even Alexander the great wrote that of all the places he traveled none where as vicious as the terrain and people of Pamphylia.
So some say he just got scared. You start in Hawaii and then you go to hell on earth, which changes everything, you want to go home.
We don=t know if any of that is true or not, but it all could have played a part, we=re just not sure. I think you could throw into the mix, that being the good Jewish boy he was I=m not sure any not to mention John-Mark would be ready for how serious Paul is to preach to Gentiles. When Saul changes his name to Paul, John-Mark and everyone else comes to realize how serious he is.
Truth is I don=t not why he left. I do know this, why he left leaves a bad taste in Paul=s mouth. When we get to Acts 15 and Barnabas says he wants to go back and visit the churches they established and he wants to bring Mark, Paul says absolutely not, I will not go on another mission trip with him. Paul says he deserted us. Here it just says he leaves, Paul calls it desertion. There may not be any greater discouragement in mission work than the departure of key co-workers.
I=m telling you, many works, many mission fields have come to a halt, by certain key workers just giving up and going home. It can be the hardest thing to deal with to try to go on when key workers leave to go wherever, for whatever reasons, even if the reasons are good ones. If you launch out to do mission work, you had better know your God very well, because He is the only one who promises never to leave you.
106. Diseases from new surroundings. Did you notice that there is no mention of preaching in Pamphylia or Perga, but they went on to Pisidian Antioch? Why not? Well, you have to read ahead to know this, but when Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, which Pisidian Antioch is a part of Paul says, the reason he first went there was because of an illness. I was sick and that=s why I even went there.
I came there to get treatment for my health. What many think which probably isn=t too far off, in Pamphylia, it is known as the number one place to get Malaria, because it was a large marshy area. Allot of problems he describes the symptoms of, problems with his eyes as well as continued thorn in the flesh he called it, allot of folks think he is describing problems from malaria. It makes some sense to go to Pisidian Antioch, because it is up 3600 ft., cooler and away from the marshes below, so his chances of recovery is better up there. We can=t be 100% but whatever it is, he gets sick in Pamphylia and this moves him to Pisidian Antioch.
He didn=t go there to preach, but to heal and then of course as he gets well, he then preaches. Now, this is something you need to be ready for if you=re going to do mission work. There are numerous stories told of those on mission fields where they have to go through some struggles with health if they are going to do that work.
Even if you go to Mexico, you had better be prepared if you think it=s not far, so there=s no problems and it won=t affect you. There is stuff happening in different places that you will be affected by, don=t be naiveté. Allot of diseases that we here aren=t as aware of, we=ve taken care of many things that cause some of these, we have drugs, etc. that they don=t have, our water is cleaner, food, etc.
The greatest wonder to me is not that Mark left them, but the wonder to me is to see Paul pushing forward. He could have easily said lets go back to Antioch and try again another day. Allot of us would do so, and sad to say the reason is we haven=t learned what Paul had, that Christianity has a cross in it! We want nice and easy type mission and Christian walk, not a suffering one.
The story is told of this Passion play in Germany that=s done every 10 years or so, which has a great reputation and is supposed to be second to none, many look forward to going there and plan for years to do so, it=s so good. One fella and his wife from here go one time and they are so moved by it all they go backstage to meet all the folks who did it. While talking to the man who played Jesus the husband spots the cross they used in the play and he doesn=t say anything just goes over to it and says, honey take my picture with this cross. He gets under it and falls immediately under its weight. He=s sweating to pick this cross up to take the picture. He looks at the actor and says, I thought it would be hollow. The actor says, AI would not be able to act so well if I did not feel the full weight of it.@
Can you imitate the life of Jesus Christ and not feel the weight of it? 3 suggestions, to apply all this:
107. Keep the goals realistic. Walking in the Spirit, walking in Jesus doesn=t mean we will be preserved from trouble. We will meet satanic opposition or opposition of some kind. You=re not realistic if you think it won=t happen. We do not want to be unaware of his schemes and if you just don=t think he will have any effect on you, you are not being real.
108. Keep the method simplistic. Paul doesn=t change his strategy because of a slow start. He always starts by preaching in the synagogue. If they kick me out of there, I=ll go to the market place. If they kick me out of town, I=ll go to the next. What Paul believed was that there really was power in the Gospel, in the Word.
Sometimes we try to do everything we can, whatever marketing thing, or presentation approach, outside of preaching His Word. Now, at first glance you might think the proconsul believed because of what Paul did to the sorcerer, but that=s not what it says. It says, he believed because he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.
The method of Paul is simple. It=s the faith that believes there=s power in the message of Jesus when we share it with folks. Power beyond you or anything you can say or do. Don=t let slow starts or beginnings steal your faith away from that message and start trusting other things to do it.
109. Keep your dreams idealistic. How did he keep going after slow starts, opposition, departing co-workers, and after illness? Go and read all the stuff that worked against him, beatings, ship wrecks, and stoning, etc. He had a dream, a big one, but He knew if he just stayed true to it and didn=t give in to all the stuff against him, with Gods= power working in him, it will happen. He believed the vision God gave him to see an evangelized empire was possible.
It did happen. The greatest discouragement of all working against us is no vision of what could be. The next time you get frustrated about your work, start dreaming of what could be with God. What is idealistically possible with God? Sometimes folks get scared when Craig starts sharing his vision for this church in the future, even dares to say we=ll be doing this in 5 years?
Some say, too much money, too much work, etc., but he dives in and says we=re doing it anyway. Especially if he starts saying this is how many of you are going to be personally involved more than ever before, no more consumers, but you now are fully devoted followers, sleeves rolled up and in the work, carrying out the vision. You can=t give up the dream that God has given you, because it is what drives you!
Staying power is a must; we give up too quickly today. We get some trouble and we want to quit. I don=t care what your gifts are, or position in the body, what function God has given you, don=t let opposition stop you, or get you to quit when trouble comes and you want out. The quit mentality of our day is epidemic and it starts in the world and carries over into the church.
We=ll quit school, cause it=s not what we thought it would be, too tough, or whatever. We quit our marriages because it=s too tough, didn=t think it should be that hard. Our first thought when it gets intense is, I want out. Nobody wants to hang in there and be true to the vision. Christianity is not a sprint, but a long distance race! You won=t be a distance runner if you are afraid of dealing with some pain. We can=t play the part if we don=t feel the weight!
Food For Thought 13:14-43
We=re looking at a teaching here, about a sermon. We need to talk a bit about famine. Most of us probably haven=t been really hungry in this sense. We=ve had experiences where we missed meals, know how losing weight feels, maybe been sick and couldn=t eat and wish we could. But I=m talking about, where am I going to get my next meal, I haven=t eaten in days kind of hungry.
Yet, even today a big part of our world does live this way. There have been many groups spring up trying to do something about world hunger. We=ve even seen our kids take up money and even miss a meal, so we could feed some poor kids right here in our cities. There have been allot of charity concert events put on to raise money to feed the hungry of the world. Of course many churches have tried to do their part in feeding, many many millions of dollars have been raised and food sent to many places in our world.
I applaud all that and we must be concerned about this. However, I want to mention there is another kind of famine that receives very little attention and I think they are related. Amos 8:11 calls it a famine of hearing the Words of the Lord. It=s not a famine of food and water, but of hearing from God. This doesn=t mean we don=t have enough preachers or churches. There are some places where that may be true, but not most. Even in our nation and towns, there is a famine of hearing the Words of the lord.
Paul is very concerned about the hungry in Acts as we look at this. In Acts 11 he was involved in collecting funds to feed the needy. He does it again on another occasion, so he is involved in feeding the hungry. This however, is not his chief ministry. Paul=s main ministry was to give food for thought! His purpose was to fill men=s spirits with the bread of life. He does this through preaching, teaching and writing. So let=s look at what he says to the folks of Antioch Pisidian.
14From Perga they went on to Pisidian Antioch. On the Sabbath they entered the synagogue and sat down. 15After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the synagogue rulers sent word to them, saying, "Brothers, if you have a message of encouragement for the people, please speak." Now this is very consistent with how Paul does things. Paul goes to a town, finds the synagogue and on the Sabbath he starts first at the synagogue.
He likes to say, he is a minister to the Jew first and then also to the Greek. Why did he go here first? First of all, never forget he is a Jew and he loves Jews. He didn=t love them so much he couldn=t see how wrong they were, or see their faults, but he loved them anyway. He really wanted them to hear the gospel. Also, most times not only would Jews be there, but Gentiles interested in Judaism and familiar with the scriptures.
They only had the Old Testament remember and that is what they were familiar with and that is what Paul preached from. He could go to any synagogue in the world and have an audience of folks who knew those scriptures and he could build from that.
Another good reason to go here is, because synagogues always had the custom of asking visitors to speak, especially if they appeared to be a rabbi, or teacher of some kind and Paul and his company had that look as we can see they single them out and say, if you have something to say, then say it.
The order of things at the synagogue was to first have everyone repeat Dt. 6, where it says, AHear o= Israel the Lord our God is one God, you shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.@ That=s how they started every gathering in the synagogue. You taught this to your children at the earliest of ages, they knew this before anything else. You know we often like to beat up on traditions, and I know why, but just the same, some traditions actually are good and beneficial. To teach our children as the Jews did would be a very good tradition, even today.
The second thing they would do when gathered is to pray. There would traditionally be more than one, several and some of them would be written prayers of scriptures, such a Psalms, etc. The third thing they did was read from the Law of Moses. Then you would read something from the Prophets. Then finally, after the reading, the elders would invite someone to come and speak to the scriptures just read. Not totally unlike what we do today in form. Except of course, we don=t ask for preachers to speak, we usually just have our own do it. They all knew Paul and his company somehow, maybe it was clothing. A look, maybe they knew them, but they ask if they would speak.
This is all very interesting to say the least; we have no real way to relate to this part, we just don=t do this. You don=t ask someone to preach if you=re not willing to listen to his sermon. This is what they do, this is how they do things, and they stay with it until the end. Paul gives a sermon and, by the way this is the only full length sermon of Paul=s we have. It=s an amazing sermon.
So, indulge me a little more and let=s talk a bit about preaching and the role of sermons in our faith. I believe the greatest need in the church today is better preaching, across the board. I know we like to poke fun at preachers and even criticize them, I=ve heard it all. You know, if you can=t work all week, become a preacher and then of course over and over we hear the more negative like, I don=t want to be preached to, I would much more like to see a sermon than hear one; it is in vogue today to not appreciate preaching from very many.
Now, some of this is very deserved, because there=s allot of bad preaching going on, because frankly there are allot of lazy preachers. However, look into all of history from Jesus day on and tell me the time where there was a great revival, or movement of the church in the world that was not spearheaded by great preaching by someone one/s.
You can=t find one time where it happened, but check it out and let me know. Great preaching has always spurred on church growth any time it has happened. This is true, we know from Gods= own word. He says it is only the Word of God, the seed of God that causes growth.
The reasons we have lost an appreciation for scriptures in our time is first of all we have lost the belief in the authority of the scriptures. In too many seminaries today we are turning out preachers who question and doubt that the bible is truly the Word of God, inspired by God, you hear it all the time. Too many folks saying they aren=t sure or just out and out saying this book is not from God, or that one isn=t, etc. The problem this presents to preachers is, it=s impossible to speak with conviction if you don=t believe you have Gods= authority to back you up.
Some folks actually start saying it=s just Paul=s opinion or Peter=s and theirs isn=t any better than any others. Listen, if you don=t have Gods= authority you can=t preach. Another factor to take away our like for preaching today is professional pulpits. You know what I mean, the $2,000 suits who seek the camera and say Jesus loves you, but send your money to me and they go home to their huge homes and sailboats, etc. This has hurt preaching allot unfortunately.
Maybe the biggest reason for our lack of appreciation for preaching is the churches move toward the emphasis on social connection. We=re concerned in our churches about politics and finances, and other injustices in our world, more than we are about preaching the gospel. We should be concerned about injustices, don=t get me wrong, we should feed the hungry and thirsty, the orphans. etc., but if you do not restore his soul to the Lord, you have failed as His people. If you straighten out his politics, his economy, his physical needs, even his need for connection to other people and haven=t saved his soul, you have failed!
Man=s greatest need is to cure the famine for his need for hearing the Words of God. So, we=re in double jeopardy now, because we=re talking about preaching a sermon about a sermon that was preached in this text. Now, I want you to see this message and I=m not making it up, this sermon had an introduction a body with 3 main points and a conclusion. He introduces it in 16 then he goes on.
16Standing up, Paul motioned with his hand and said: "Men of Israel and you Gentiles, who worship God, listen to me! That=s the intro., short but powerful. He uses his hands! People make jokes about preachers using their hands, but what else do you do with them? Paul used them, so don=t feel bad, use them. He also knew his audience. He knew there were Jews there and God-fearers there. He also gets there attention by saying listen to me! It can be very affective to just say, listen, even in the middle sometimes, are you listening? Gods= Word should grab our total attention, no matter how well I can deliver it.
It=s a challenge for us today with so much use of video and the affects that go with it to get people=s attention, along with some being more charismatic than we are, but listen, we learn from scriptures Paul was not charismatic.
He was a much more powerful writer than speaker, in person you wanted more by way of how he came across. But, Paul could say, what I have to say is more important than how well I say it, so listen up. I believe we ought to listen to who=s preaching to us, not because of them, or me, but because of what we=re talking about. Paul then gives us the first point of the sermon in verses 17-25.
17The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers; he made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt, with mighty power he led them out of that country, 18he endured their conduct for about forty years in the desert, 19he overthrew seven nations in Canaan and gave their land to his people as their inheritance. 20All this took about 450 years. "After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. 21Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. 22After removing Saul, he made David their king. He testified concerning him: 'I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.' 23"From this man's descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as he promised. 24Before the coming of Jesus, John preached repentance and baptism to all the people of Israel. 25As John was completing his work, he said: 'Who do you think I am? I am not that one. No, but he is coming after me, whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.'
So he starts as any good communicator would by arresting the attention of his audience. You have to say stuff the folks are interested in. He starts by talking about the one thing the Jews were more interested in than anything else, which was what? = themselves! They were more proud of their history than anything else you could talk about. They had a marvelous history by the way, it was. The Jews unlike the Greeks believed history was on a very definite course. Greeks thought it was more fate and chance type stuff, not Jews.
God is the author of history and God is going to bring everything to culmination when He sends the Messiah. When God sends the Messiah he will be what everything in history has been looking to. Paul starts by telling them they are right. Everything God did through the great men we talk about David and all the rest, He did it all to get us ready for Jesus. The first point is clear; Jesus is the focus of history. He meets every legitimate promise God made to your fathers and your past, and to all history.
Even today, as Christians, Christ followers, we have a different conviction of history as well. Most folks think history is just going and who knows where? Tragedies of all kinds happen to throw us off of course and people think, God is not in control and you can=t trust anything, it=s all so out of control. Listen, Christian Hope is a real and living thing because; we know history is going somewhere! We know that history has a direction, just as all history before Jesus came pointed to Him, so now too, all history is pointing toward His coming again. This is what makes hope real, as many have said; history is indeed His story!
Now, Paul=s listeners believed every bit of what Paul says up until the word Jesus. They love and repeat the stories of all these he names and they love hearing it, until he says, they all pointed to Jesus and then they had problems. Of course, Paul knew they would that=s why he gives them a second point, to meet those objections. So read on in verse 26. His second point is: Jesus the fulfillment of prophecy!
26"Brothers, children of Abraham, and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this message of salvation has been sent. 27The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. 28Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. 29When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. 30But God raised him from the dead, 31and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people. 32"We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers 33he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: Ayou are my Son; today I have become your Father. 34The fact that God raised him from the dead, never to decay, is stated in these words: A>I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.' 35So it is stated elsewhere: A>you will not let your Holy One see decay.' 36"For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed. 37But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay.
So what does he do here? Did you notice how many times he said, as it is written and fulfilled? They would say, you say Jesus is the Messiah that brings up 2 big problems: One, why didn=t our leaders in Jerusalem recognize Him? Two: if they say they did recognize Him, they still killed Him anyway. So, wouldn=t that wipe out Gods= plan? Absolutely not, God prophesied it all would happen as written and even though they recognized they still killed Him, but He rose from the dead as God foretold the prophets.
Either deliberately, or not, they didn=t recognize Him as the Messiah and they lead Him to slaughter like a lamb. Well, if they killed Him, doesn=t that just wipe out Gods= plan? No, just as the scriptures said He would be rejected by the leaders, so too it says, He would be raised from the dead. That=s the good news, then as well as today! There is an answer for death! Such good news that Jesus conquered the grave, or do we just sing it, because it sounds good in a song, but we really don=t believe it?
He uses the same verses Peter used in Acts chapter 2 when the church was born that God would not allow His Son to undergo decay. Peter said, David underwent decay, but God prophesied His Son would not, so Peter says, he wasn=t talking about David, but someone else. He was saying He was going to raise someone, but it wasn=t David. Paul doesn=t treat questions to what he=s saying as problems, but as proof of additional witness to the Messiahship of Jesus!
He doesn=t try to make a sermon apart from the Word of God, the scriptures, but He builds a sermon upon the Word of God. So, that takes us to the third and biggest point. If he fulfills all history and fulfills all prophecy, then what does that mean for men and women today? Third: Jesus the forgiver of iniquity! Because He is the center of history and the fulfillment of it, therefore He can deal with sin; He has the answer for it.
38"Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. 39Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the Law of Moses.
Up until this point he has been showing the continuity between the Old covenant and the New covenant. He has said, the Old pointed to the New. The Old prophesied of the New and Jesus being the New covenant.
Now, it=s time to tell you the New covenant is superior to the Old! In Jesus you can be freed from all the things you couldn=t be freed from through the Law of Moses. To the Jew there was always something that was a huge problem, because all he could do for his sin was offer the blood of bulls and goats. He knows deep down that this just seems to fall short, not enough. There has got to be a better answer for sin than this! The whole sacrificial system that was in place was all to prepare the people for the perfect sacrifice!
Jesus was the goal of it all. Even all those sacrifices made under the Old, were dependent upon the shedding of the blood of Jesus the Messiah to have even the temporary affect they did. So, Paul is saying something way better has come now. In Jesus we can have our sin problem resolved totally by His perfect sacrifice, that we knew under the Old covenant it was never really resolved. Jesus offers forgiveness and freedom! This is what people want and need.
What is your official legal position in Jesus Christ? You are free! Some people have the mistaken idea Christians are on parole, no! Your crime is absolutely wiped away. The penalty has been paid, in fact the record shows, you haven=t even committed the crime to begin with. You are free before God positionally, never forget it. Anybody tells you different, it=s a devils lie, don=t believe it, believe God, and believe the Son who paid the price to free you.
Experientially, this brings joy, because the guilt is gone! The burden of sin is gone, you can start over again, and that is the good news of the gospel, nothing less! Listen, being religious won=t do all this for anyone. Some of the most burdened, guilt ridden people I know are in church buildings every week! It=s because we go there and never hear this good news! We never hear that Jesus solves our biggest problem in total, there is nothing you can do to add to it, and He paid it all; all you can do is believe it! But, that is some good news there.
Now, folks any good preacher who has just preached a good sermon like that has got to offer an invitation, a challenge to believe and that=s what Paul does here.
40Take care that what the prophets have said does not happen to you: 41" 'Look, you scoffers, wonder and perish, for I am going to do something in your days that you would never believe, even if someone told you.'
You see, they have never heard anything like this! To make his point he quotes Habakkuk, which is a stern warning. Habakkuk warns the people of Israel the Babylonians will come, because they had lived sinfully. God tells Habakkuk that if you warn them, they won=t believe. They just can=t believe I will judge them for their sin, but I=m going too says God. Paul is saying; don=t let that happen to you! I=m telling you people God will judge us for our sins, but we have a way of escape through Jesus the Christ!
So, you better hear and heed the warning. Some of you won=t believe God would do this and you=ll make the mistake of the past just like they did in Habakkuk=s day.
Those folks were judged and we will be too, if we reject Gods= plan for dealing with our sin. How did they react to all this? Any preacher or teacher wants to hear these words!
A42As Paul and Barnabas were leaving the synagogue, the people invited them to speak further about these things on the next Sabbath.
You ever preached a sermon or taught the gospel to someone who wanted to hear it again next time you meet?
43When the congregation was dismissed, many of the Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who talked with them and urged them to continue in the grace of God.
They liked what they heard and wanted more. We=re not sure how many came to believe, but next time they meet seems to indicate some did. They urged them to continue in Gods= grace, because they never heard of it before. All their lives all they heard was Law. You mean we=re saved by what another has done for us and not by what we do ourselves? Listen this isn=t easy for them to accept, it=s not that easy for us either, but we must grow in it, continue in it, until we come to live by it.
We know how hard it is for these folks, because Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, of which this place was one of them and he says, why did you dissert the grace of God so easily, to go back under slavery to law. How can you go back to a saved by works theology? Enslave yourselves to a system that only leaves you burdened and guilty, how can you do it? Some did, but others believed. Some knew they had heard the best news of their lives and never turned back.
Conclusion: What do we do with this sermon today? What do we do about the famine of so little hearing of Gods= Word today?
110. The Lord must be presented! People are hungry today, because in too many churches, people are preaching everything but, the good news of Jesus the Christ! Paul=s sermons, as well as the others, all focused on Jesus. Not, that they never taught about social injustices, or political problems, finances, etc. But, their emphasis was always Jesus.
When they stood to preach to the gathering of believers and non-believers they thought, this is a time to talk about Jesus, this is my ultimate priority. It=s not that they didn=t have strong opinions about all the stuff happening in the world, but they knew their call from God was to share the bread of life. They knew if folks got that, then they probably would be closer to the truth on all these other issues we have to live with. Brethren, we need this back in our preaching today across the board.
God told Isaiah and others, why do you chase after things, spend money on things that can=t fill your soul? You chase after sex, money, power, control, things and you=re never satisfied, never enough.
Your souls are empty and you put all the wrong things in them to try to fill it. God says, over and over, hear me, come to me, feed on what I give you and your soul will live. God has said so many times what we need to fill us is the Words of God, our necessary food.
Whatever else you try to fill yourselves with, it will leave you empty, but Gods Word will fill you up and satisfy. Otherwise you will be empty, so the Word must be presented.
111. The Word has been provided! You can=t live the faith, until you know the facts! Our religion is not built on a theology, or philosophy, or theory; it is built on salvation history! Our whole faith is built on things God did, that folks saw and they wrote it down. It=s history and if we don=t know our history, our lives will be weak.
Jesus said, you search the scriptures looking for something and don=t realize these are what testify about Me! God has given us His Word, so we can know Him and present Him to others well. If you are ignorant of the written Word of God, you will be ignorant of the living Word. Gods= written Word is the tool that points us to the living Word.
112. The food should be prepared! I think we fail here most often to meet the famine of our day. Communicating Jesus should be interesting folks. It should be exciting and attracting, drawing, and captivating, so when we close, folks want more. So, many places where folks come and the message is boring and dull and no one seems excited about what brought us here. These folks here beg Paul to come back with more!
Paul you see knows what we all need to know and that is what all people need. Ultimately, he knew all people need to feel free and forgiven; all else falls in comparison. So, he built his message around bringing this freedom and forgiveness.
You know some meals can be nutritious, but not well prepared, right? You mothers know, it=s bigger than just making it, but does your families want to eat it? You could, just start taking stuff out and put it in a blender, some meat and veggies and jello, etc., but are you going to get them to eat it? All the right nutrition is there, but nobody wants it. Sometimes that=s how we share the gospel. Take some of this doctrine and that, some of this and put it all together and throw it out there and say, you should all know this stuff.
Maybe they should, but who wants to? We didn=t prepare it well, so our folks go hungry and wanting. We didn=t think about the questions we here from our folks all the time, there big needs and fears and concerns and take Gods= Word and prepare it for them in a way that speaks to them in exciting ways.
You mothers listen to your families, you know when something is liked that you prepare, you get to know the hits and misses and plan and prepare accordingly. People need to be eager for the next meal and that largely depends on the one preparing it.
You say I don=t know how? Listen, nobody does at first. How do you learn, you got to go the kitchen over and over, listen to other cooks and learn what works, then add this ingredient and then that one, if that doesn=t work take it out next time and put in what does. Keep listening to those you are presenting it to and learn what speaks to them, what they want more of and need; add those things and soon you will be one folks will come to for more and more food.
We don=t all need to be the top chefs for folks to want what we present, we=re not trying to win a contest, we=re just trying to get folks to eat and want to eat more. You can do it, because God wants us to and has called us to and He will bring it about, but we must give attention to our preparation.
All folks of the world can help with the famine of food in our world, whether they are believers or not. But, the famine of the Words of God, only we can fill. If we don=t people will starve. Too many are good at going and giving them the milk of the Word and they come to believe and that=s vital and absolutely imperative, but He tells us to keep giving them the Words of God, get them used to eating meat and keep them coming back for more and more, so they will be filed and able to go and feed others. Let=s learn to be top chefs, every one of us and with Gods= power we will, for this is what He desires!
Addition Through Division Acts 13:44-52
Now the title sounds like a contradiction in terms right? We know if you divide something into something, the sum we end up with is smaller than we started with. That=s what division does, it makes things smaller. This is true not just in math, but in life. Our history tells us when churches divide the sum of what we=ve got it always smaller. That=s why division in church is to be hated not encouraged.
It would be a very special and unique time where division actually meant addition. This text shows us such a time and we have to conclude it is Adivine division.@ God wants it, plans it, and prompts it. As we saw last time Paul preached a sermon to these folks in Antioch Presidia, which simply amazed these folks. He talked of the coming Messiah who was promised of God, who would deliver the people from their sins and they all looked for all their lives. Paul makes a powerful case that Jesus is that Messiah.
They were so intrigued with his message that they begged him to come back and tell them more. Well, let=s see what happens the next Sabbath:
A44On the next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. 45When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul was saying. 46Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: "We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. 47For this is what the Lord has commanded us: "I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth." 48When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. 49The word of the Lord spread through the whole region. 50But the Jews incited the God-fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. 51So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium. 52And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.@
Several times in Acts and now several times right here in this chapter we see the phrase, Athe Word of the Lord.@ You see now these guys really know what the work they were called to is. Back in verse 2 it says, A2While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.@ They know now they are to go everywhere and proclaim the Word of God.
Something we must face and learn to live with and deal with. The Word of God always, gets mixed reviews! It did then and it still does and it doesn=t matter who proclaiming it. These may seem contradictory to you, yet they are both true: On one hand the Gospel unites! There is nothing in this world that can and does bring folks together like oneness in Jesus Christ can. Paul will later declare in writing to the Galatian churches, A27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.@
The first century was a very bigoted, biased, segregated society. The church came into this century and did something totally unbelievable in the true sense of the word. It brought Jews and Gentiles together in one family and they called each other brothers! The world had never seen the like of it at any time before.
That=s not all; the church brought women together and started calling them women of God, sisters, one in Christ! Do you have any idea how titanic a thing this is? The world had never seen it before. They brought slaves and masters together as brothers and brought them all under the heading of brethren. The world had never thought about it, or dreamed it, definitely never seen it.
It was possible for the slave to be under the master during the week and when gathered with the church, the master could actually be under the spiritual supervision of the slave. It did bring folks of different colors together as well, as we saw already. One of the leaders of this church was black. Women went on to be co-workers and leaders within the church. The church brought rich and poor folks together as one. Unheard of anywhere! If you were rich, you had nothing to do with the poor. Yet, we read in our bibles where rich and poor worship together in the church.
Now, that doesn=t mean they never had problems because of all this and friction how to sort it all out and live with it. You know better than that, but they did it anyway. What we know is, whether or not they had to struggle with their prejudices and bias, there was a power at work to bring them together and it is still at work in the church today. Nothing the world has ever seen has the ability to bring folks together like oneness in Jesus Christ!
There are still places in this world that are so segregated, for example in So. Africa the roots of division go back so far in their history they still designate folks, white, colored, and black and those designations determines where you go in society largely today. So, when the church goes there and see us whites walking along side of colored and blacks, going down the streets together, eating together, and doing church together, they stare at us like you would if you went to a leper colony and folks saw you hanging out with them. It=s not usual to see and it shocks and surprises them to see the church like this.
You see folks, even though they live in relative peace after years and years of war and trouble, you=ve all heard of it; you can=t legislate that all folks are now equal and one and everybody just starts getting together. It doesn=t work that way! Man=s laws don=t legislate love for your fellow man. You can make it a law that we must quit hurting each other, but that doesn=t mean we=ll love each other. The only thing that will make it happen, that we will go from hate to really loving each other is the power of Jesus Christ!
So, know that the world has never seen anything like how the power of the Gospel can and does unite people. But, on the other hand; the gospel also divides people in this world. One of the marks of Jesus when He went from place to place is when you found folks who wondered if He was to be believed, others thought He was an imposter and like it says in John 7:43, and you see this often where it says and the people were divided over Jesus. This has been and is always true even today. Any time the gospel is preached, Jesus is preached, people will divide over it.
The Gospel is a very divisive message folks. You see especially today, the call of the gospel is not toleration; in fact it is a call to separation! That=s not a contradiction.
If you think the call of the Gospel is that all good people will be okay with God, then you don=t know the gospel. That=s toleration, but it=s not the gospel. The gospel is very unwavering, very dogmatic, and there are no exceptions, no man comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ period. There are no negotiations on this point! This offends people and divides people like nothing else and always has. If we are going to take the gospel into all the world, we had better be prepared for division. You know what the most common definition of the word saint is? The number one most used word to describe followers of Christ in scripture is not Christians it is saint, what=s the most common definition of saint?=The separated ones, the set apart ones.
What does the word church means literally? =the called out ones. Those who have come out of the world, from one kingdom to the other, etc. This is mission work folks, be prepared. There=s no place you can go in this world where everybody is going to believe it when you bring it. Jesus didn=t want us to be naiveté folks, when He said, don=t think I came to bring peace, but I came to bring a sword. Often time Jesus= coming to folks didn=t bring peace, but division, a war between folks about what truth is. A war as horrible as any you have ever seen, where friends and family will turn on one another over truth. History has shown it can get so bad, even blood is spilled over it.
You think His first coming was dividing wait until His second coming. It says he will come with His angels and He will separate the good sheep from the goats and folks that will be the ultimate division. So, these two things that seem to contradict are actually both very true. Two sides of a sword, the gospel unites like nothing we have seen, it also divides like nothing we have seen. Be prepared!
That=s what we see in this text. It=s seen between the Jews and Gentiles. Another thing that throws us sometimes is people=s first reactions to the preaching of the gospel, Last time we saw where the people kept begging him to return and speak to them again next time. Well, the next Sabbath comes and the whole city is assembled to hear the Word of God, but another thing you can be certain of is, every time the gospel is spoken and it gets positive results, I promise you it will not be long before Satan shows up!
Satan shows up on this Sabbath and he pulls out one of his favorite swords called prejudice. A45When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul was saying.@ So much different than how Jesus saw such crowds; instead of jealousy upon seeing such crowds He felt compassion. Part of their jealousy no doubt is they can=t draw crowds like this; the other part is these folks were listening to Paul. But, more the folks who are listening are Gentiles and Paul tells them they are as worthy to hear the gospel as the Jews are.
How can we allow a whole city full of gentiles to come and take over our nice little synagogue? Their pews were for Jews, not Gentiles. When you get down to it, they wouldn=t accept the takeover of their church building by gentiles. Are we much different today? I really wonder what would happen if our whole city showed up here and listened to the gospel and were responding, what would happen?
Next thing you know, there are more of them than us, they want to change this and that, and how many of us would be upset over that? How many would be upset that they are taking over my spot, my place, and my position here? This is what is going on here in this church. AI=ve been coming here to this church for 10 years and now look, one sermon and someone=s sitting in my seat, someone is getting a voice at the table and no one is listening to me much anymore.@ The gall of some people.
A46Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: "We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.@ We tried to talk to you, but you won=t listen so we are going to the Gentiles! A47For this is what the Lord has commanded us: "I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth." If you had listened to us you could have been a part of the evangelization of the world, the bringing in of the kingdom of God of the whole world, but they didn=t want to do that. They really didn=t change much and didn=t think gentiles worthy and we can see their hearts in this at the end.
But, they couldn=t keep the Gentiles from listening. So, what do they do instead, A49The word of the Lord spread through the whole region. 50But the Jews incited the God-fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region.@ Did you notice who got stirred up first here? What does that mean? What happened often time during this time was is that Roman women would go to synagogues, not to become Jews, but they went there because of the high standards of ethics toward women by the Jews. They became God-fearing because they saw the God of the Jews had a higher view of women than the Roman culture did.
So we have Greek-Roman rich women here at the synagogues and these Jewish leaders appealed to them by saying something like, do you want this local riff raff type folks coming in here and taking over our synagogue? So, tell your husbands, who are the leading men of the city to drive these people out of here. Remember Judaism is a legal religion and Christianity is not, so they no doubt used that as a way to drive them out. They are practicing a new religion and it=s illegal, so they must be banned. So, the power of the land literally banishes them from the whole district.
So, what do Paul and Barnabas do? A51So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium.@ This is pointed directly at the Jews and maybe you can see the significance of it now. You know the history behind this shaking the dust off your sandals right? Jews hated gentiles so much that when they would travel out of Israel and return, the second they would cross the border back into Israel, they would take their sandals off and shake them so that even the dust of the Gentiles would not entire Israel.
When Jesus taught his disciples to do that when He sent them out and they were rejected, He was telling them to treat them like they were heathens. The Jews knew when Paul and Barnabas did this, they were saying, we view you as the heathens now, not the Gentiles, but you. That=s a powerful thing. How did the people of Abraham, the chosen people become heathens in Gods= eyes?
Two important reasons: Since you reject it, literally push it away; God no longer looks at you as the chosen ones. He=s talking about the gospel and He=s saying you can=t earn it, but you don=t have to receive it either. You can=t earn grace, but you can turn it away and shun it.
Have you ever heard the story of a rejected pardon from the president? Under Andrew Jackson and man was tried and convicted and awaiting the death sentence to be carried out and Jackson pardoned him. The warden came to tell the man of the pardon and the man rejected it, said he didn=t want it. The attorney general was sent to tell the man of the pardon and still refused the pardon. So, he takes it to the Supreme Court and the attorney general says, isn=t there anything we can do to make this man accept the pardon? The Supreme Court said, until a pardon is accepted it is just a piece of paper with no power to it.
You have to accept the pardon or it doesn=t mean anything. Grace is the same, you can=t earn it, like the prisoner didn=t deserve it, it was given to him, but if you don=t receive it you don=t get it. The Jews were the same, they pushed it away. They said we don=t want the gospel under these terms. Why would people do that?
It=s not because the sit down and intelligently study the gospel and pursue all the facts and they make a logical decision they decide not to believe in it. That=s not why people reject the gospel. They reject the gospel because they want to keep their sin! In this case the sin of prejudice and ego and control. If you want grace, you must face your sin and be willing to give it up; you can=t have both grace and your sin. These folks were bigoted and wanted to stay that way, even if it meant pushing away the Word of God.
Everyone else is the same, the sin may be different, but the reason is the same. You repudiate, reject the truth of the gospel. Atheist reject the truth of the gospel, because they want to keep their arrogance, their ego, their all superior so-called knowledge and rationale and refuse to let go of it to take hold of the truth of Gods= Word!
Not only that, but he says they also, judge themselves as unworthy of eternal life. They repudiated it and judged themselves unworthy of eternal life, what does that mean? They made it clear they want no part of this gospel message and what it offers and they make it clear they have no taste for or inclination toward receiving this gift promised through the gospel, the gift through Jesus. Think about that! You know why folks go to hell? Most skeptics= say things like, how can you follow a God who sends people to hell; God sends people to hell. Show me anywhere in scripture it says God sends people to hell?
Well, why did God create hell then? God prepared hell for the devil and his angels. God has made it clear he doesn=t want anybody to perish; he doesn=t want any to go to hell. How do folks end up going there? They judge themselves unworthy of eternal life! How do you judge yourself unworthy of eternal life? When you disagree with God about what the good news is, about the beauty and grace of the only way God has made eternal life possible. When you refuse His way to eternal life, you judge yourselves unworthy for it.
If you hear the gospel and then you truly think it over and see what God has done and is offering in it and then you say no, it=s not for me, you judge yourselves unworthy to receive the blessings of it. Your sin has already made you a candidate for hell and God is giving you a way out, that=s what He holds out to the world, that=s the choice He wants for you to make; He has provided eternal life for any who come, what=s your choice? Paul says that is what you people have done and the result of their decision is divine division!
So, let=s look at the other side of this division; the Gentiles! Well, they thought so highly of the gospel message it says the whole city came out on that Sabbath to hear it! This news spread around that city like nothing ever had, you have got to come hear this message and they wanted to hear it. Paul stood at such a place in adjacent to the temple, so the Jews could hear and respond first, but the Gentiles in the streets could hear it too, the whole city heard it. I am telling you folks, when you preach good news people will want to hear it and they will keep coming back for more.
I mean he turns to the Gentiles and says, the Jews have turned their backs on the God of Israel and are no longer part of Gods= purposes because they reject Him and His commands and so we now follow His commands by proclaiming the good news to you that he wants you for eternal life. How do you think they will respond to that message? God wants you, God has chosen you, salvation has come to you, receive it now! All their lives all they every heard was they have no place in Gods= plans, we are the chosen ones, not you, we are His and you=re not.
Comes one day and Paul stands and says, I must turn to you, because they have rejected Gods= message and therefore they have made themselves unworthy of Gods= plans anymore and you now are worthy of all God has planned for His kingdom. How did it make them feel to hear that? A48When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. 49And the word of the Lord was being spread through the whole region.@
A48-49When the non-Jewish outsiders heard this; they could hardly believe their good fortune. All who were marked out for real life put their trust in GodCthey honored God's Word by receiving that life. And this Message of salvation spread like wildfire all through the region.@ (The Message) Now, to understand the specifics here, stay here and let the text determine what this means. He is showing there are 2 sides to the gospel, one that divides, the other unites.
Jesus said it clearly; you can=t come to the Father, but through me. No eternal life unless you come through me, it is a gift from God and you receive it every bit of it, God did it all. It is the height of arrogance to say God had nothing to do with it, or little it was all what I have done. This is the real problem of the Jews at its core. They believed they were worthy by what they had done all their lives and in history, not so much what God had done. By trusting in their works of law, obeying the Law and believing they were the chosen ones, this made them Gods= chosen people.
They had forgotten it has always been Gods= work, not theirs. God chose them, not because they was anything special about them, but He simply chose them and He offered a way to be in right standing with Him, not because they were so deserving of it, but because of His mercy and faithfulness. They had largely removed God from the equation, but even now He is offering them a way to get in on this salvation He is offering through Jesus, but they are refusing to accept it. This would take salvation and all of what God had made them, out of their hands and put it solely in Gods= hands and they chose they didn=t want that plan.
Paul does show there is a personal responsibility part for us to play in all this, we must choose who we will follow, who we will obey! WE do matter in whether or not we will be saved, the choice is ours. Look at the words used to describe the 2 groups here. One side is jealous, the other is joyous, could hardly contain the joy. One side rejected the Word of God the other honored the Word of God and received it unto life. One side hurls abusive talk at it, some translations say they blasphemed this message; the other side receives and believes the gospel message. You must see the differences in these 2 sides to understand what Paul is showing us here.
He is not teaching us that God picks people and they make no choice about it. Choices are being made and God is announcing who His chosen are based on their choices, God has appointed folks for salvation based on their choices upon hearing His Word! Those who Hear and choose to obey, are His chosen ones. God has ordained that those who receive and glory in His Word will be saved. He has determined that all those who reject His word, blaspheme it, refuse to hear and obey, judge themselves unworthy of eternal life.
God knows who is inclined to hear and believe and can say He has marked them; all those who are prone to follow His Word when they hear it have been determined by God to be saved. He has appointed that all who accept His Word, His gospel message of salvation in Jesus, will have eternal life. An absolutely incredible thing happened here! The Gentiles took over the pews of the Jews in the kingdom of God. Paul would also be included along with them, as he was a Jew, but He accepted Gods= Word and chose to accept it and now preaches this good news. He then is numbered along with them and all who heed the call of the gospel.
Conclusion: What does all this have to do with us today? I=m glad you asked that question! The disciple of today:
113. The disciple of today must never promote divisiveness! The purpose of what is being taught to us here is not to glorify division. I hate division and I believe God hates it too. We aren=t the judges here, it=s not our place, our place is to preach the gospel and as men hear they will judge themselves.
Most preaching that causes division today and has for centuries now, is not the preaching of the gospel! There is nothing here that tells us it=s okay to go out there and make divisions among Gods= people.
The sole message here is, when we preach the gospel message of salvation in Jesus, it will divide some folks from God. Preaching about Jesus and what He has done and provided and is found nowhere else but in Him, will cause men to divide themselves. So, if you think you can come here and say God says we should take our strong views and opinions on any number of issues we feel strongly about and make divisions if folks don=t see it like we say they should, you are in a dangerous place my friend, for God has spoken loudly about those who divide His church. Paul took his stand with the gospel message and if it divided folks, that was on them, not him. He worked out all the other stuff we fight today and so should we.
114. The disciple of today should never permit exclusiveness! If folks dispute who is within Gods= plan because they don=t like who is deciding to come to Him, find themselves fighting against God! God has made it clear, the gospel is for all who come, who call on His name and that won=t change no matter how much you don=t like.
On Christopher Columbus= grave stone is a picture of a lion eating some words. The words were in Latin, but in English they said, No more beyond. You see for centuries everyone believed that Spain was on the outer most of their western world and there was no more beyond. Columbus proved that not to be true by sailing the ocean blue; there was more beyond. Paul is doing the same thing with the gospel showing that what you once thought is not all there is to it; God has more beyond what you have always believed.
He wants more people, more nations of people, than you have every even dreamed of. Paul is the lion eating away at the cemented bigotries of the Jews. They didn=t want to let go of their bigotries and we need some lions in the church today, willing to eat some of that stuff up. How much room is there on your pews for folks you never even considered telling the gospel to?
Is there exclusiveness at your church? Some folks are welcome; others aren=t, so we never even think of proclaiming the message to certain ones. Do you accept all who come and make them feel welcome, no matter who they are? Have you built these walls around you and just your same old click and pretty much just ignore the rest, oh you might say hi, but do you have room for them in your life? Folk=s exclusivity is wrong on any level.
Young and old, rich or poor, leaders or non-leaders, whatever divides us, is not from the gospel. You see exclusion is a permeating thing and when it gets so bad no one can get in, the only thing left is to divide and this is not what God has called us to in the body. Paul had to try to stop it and when he couldn=t he divided and went to those who accepted all who would come. We can rationalize our exclusiveness so easily, but it=s not of God. I don=t care what excuse you give for only accepting certain ones in your circle, or in the church, it=s not of God. We must take on the heart of God for all people who hear and obey His Word.
An Apostolic Workaholic Acts 14:1-7
Billy Graham tells a story of how a certain church asked a missionary to come join them in a work and the young man thought about it for a bit, but turned the offer down. The church replied, what=s the problem, was our offer too low, or what? The young man said, you offered plenty of money, but the job was too small. You see, I=m a missionary! I must be about finding lost souls.
Being a true missionary has got to be one of the greatest works of the church. Finding that one more soul out there who is lost, first where you are and then doing everything you can to reach out beyond your own little world. You see, most us of don=t know what it=s like to have missions as a primary focus of our churches, in some cases we hardly ever hear about reaching out anywhere; not even locally say nothing about going beyond our own place.
Something changes in you when you come to a church that emphasizes mission work, especially if you have never really been in one before. Of course actually getting involved in doing mission work for the first time changes you too. You see we can call ourselves churches like the one we read about in scripture all we want, but how can we be honest with ourselves when we look at especially this early church and not see the church yearns to reach out, it must go on from where it is, it must grow out into the world? It starts where you are, but then it must move out and that=s the church. It doesn=t know how to be church any other way.
Now, you can=t look at the rest of Acts and not talk about mission work, that=s what it=s all about, taking the gospel to the whole world. But, I don=t want us to romanticize mission work the way some have. You know, our churches want reports from the works we do in other places and the folks come with glowing reports and stories of how wonderful and blessed it is to be here doing all this. What would happen if our missionaries gave us some honest reports that say, I want you to know how hard it is to do this work, to do what we=re doing where we=re doing it, takes suffering and endurance. We get lonely, discouragement is almost too much to bear, and frustration levels are pressing in on us all the time.
What do you think would be our response of such a report? Would we think their attitude is bad; do we want that kind of honesty from our missionaries? That=s the kind of honesty Luke gives us when he records Paul=s journeys in Acts. If we=re going to present scripture honestly, we are compelled to tell the truth that missionaries do not live happily ever after. But too, Paul would tell us, if it doesn=t cost you anything, it=s not worth anything.
I don=t mind us trying to recreate some of the patterns of how these folks did church in the early days. You know, how they conducted their worship and leadership, stuff like that. No problem using their examples to do church like that. But what I believe is more important is, that we have their same spirit and commitment as a church.
The type of church we see that was practiced by the men who took the gospel into all the world is the emphasis in scripture; Apostolic type church. Here in Acts we see many such examples and surely we see it here in Acts 14:1-7:
A1 At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed.2 But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.3 So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders.4 The people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles.5 There was a plot afoot among the Gentiles and Jews, together with their leaders, to mistreat them and stone them.6 But they found out about it and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding country, 7 where they continued to preach the good news.@
Luke gives us the honest assessment when reporting what they had to do to get the Gospel out there to the folks where they went. He is definitely telling us that missionaries don=t live happy ever after they make the decision to be a missionary as God called them to be. Now, this doesn=t mean God doesn=t confirm what they are doing, that He is with them, it=s just the honest truth, things aren=t always sunshine a lollipops for missionaries.
Now, verse one says they went to Iconium and as usual they went to the synagogue. Paul always first went to the synagogues in every town he went to. Now, even though the last time he said, I=m going to the gentiles because you Jews just won=t listen, didn=t mean he would never try preaching to His people again. He wasn=t saying he was giving up on them, but that he could no longer spend his focus on them because they just won=t listen to the gospel. But, he always gave them first chance everywhere he went. He still loves his people and he wants them to have a chance to hear the truth.
Now, think about this, we have here Paul=s strategy for getting the word out in a town when he got there. Where=s the best place to start when you go to a town with the mission to reach people with the gospel? Paul believed the best place to start was the synagogues in his day. Now, synagogues weren=t like the temple, where you gave sacrifices, etc. The purpose of the synagogues was to teach the Jewish religion everywhere Jews would go in the world. Meeting places to teach, is what they were. They were mostly for adults, because the belief was, the Jews would teach the adults and the parents would then go home and teach their kids.
So, no Sunday school type classes for the kids here. They were set up for Jews, but the Jews would invite and let interested gentiles come in and sit in the balcony. We have read of the God-fearers here in Acts. These are those who weren=t looking to become Jews, but were very interested in the teachings of Judaism and the God of the scriptures and would follow the teachings of those scriptures for their lives, short of becoming a Jew. Now, Paul is a Jew and a Pharisee, so if he came in they would let him speak, even ask him too, that was their custom.
Now, he knows that if he goes to the gentiles first and then comes to synagogue, they=ll never let him in. If he goes there first they will listen, because he knows he will have one chance to preach to them.
He would go there and preach to the Jews, but also he would look to the balcony at those God-fearing Gentiles, because he knew they were his gateway into that city. He believed he could convert some of those folks and then they would take him to others who were prepared by God in the city and that=s how he would reach the city. Now, usually what happened is he would preach one Sabbath and maybe 2 sometimes and then the Jews would kick him out of the synagogues. But, it was the best beginning place because now he has some friends in that town who would take him to others and then you just couldn=t stop him.
Now our history of what we do in our meetings comes allot from what went on in these synagogues. We don=t do things much like they did in the temple, but we do allot like these synagogues, where they would pray together, recite scripture together, and listen to teaching and preaching together. We read of singing being done and that=s a form we are very familiar with. The only thing that=s much different is the Christians took the Lords= supper, that made it different from their synagogues.
When the early church came together there was no rule book to tell them what to do when they came together to do church. So, what would they do? Largely what they were accustomed to doing before becoming Christians, which was synagogues type worship and fellowship. They sang, prayed, read scripture, and preached. So, when we get together today, whether we realize it or not, we are synagoging together. We do it for the same reasons it=s been going on for thousands of years, so that we can pass on our heritage to the next generation and so on.
So, that=s what Paul did and verse 3 says God was working at the same time by enabling them to do signs and wonders. Again we note that the reason for miracles is seen clearly. First of all they were to mark an Apostle. Paul spoke many times to folks proving his apostleship by the signs and wonders God was doing; these proved he was an apostle. There was something different about these men from others in the church and folks could witness it.
The second purpose we have seen is to confirm that the message they spoke was from God. People needed to know God was behind this new message and God showed His approval by doing signs and wonders. It was a confirmation by God to what they were saying.
A key aspect we have seen that went with this is that these miracles were designed to attract unbelievers. They would come to hear the message and God would perform these things and they could see God at work in these men and the message and they would come to believe.
This is so different from what we see today when we see those claiming to do miracles and they call for people to come to them for miracles. The purpose of those today who claim to do what we read here is different than the purpose we see scripture shows. The call of the new testament church was not to come and be healed, but come and hear the truth, the good news of what God has done for you and during that God would show up and confirm all that was being done.
Phil. 2:25-29 teaches us an important thing about miraculous gifts, even among the apostles. A25-27But for right now, I'm dispatching Epaphroditus, my good friend and companion in my work. You sent him to help me out; now I'm sending him to help you out. He has been wanting in the worst way to get back with you. Especially since recovering from the illness you heard about, he's been wanting to get back and reassure you that he is just fine. He nearly died, as you know, but God had mercy on him. And not only on himChe had mercy on me, too. His death would have been one huge grief piled on top of all the others. 28-30So you can see why I'm so delighted to send him on to you. When you see him again, hale and hearty, how you'll rejoice and how relieved I'll be. Give him a grand welcome, a joyful embrace! People like him deserve the best you can give. Remember the ministry to me that you started but weren't able to complete? Well, in the process of finishing up that work, he put his life on the line and nearly died doing it.@
We don=t hear this much, that=s why I take time to bring it up, because it helps us understand why maybe we don=t see miracles when we think we ought to. There was a purpose for miracles in the church and if that purpose is not being done, why do we think God would do them? The early church never called a healing service for the purpose of healing believers of their illnesses, because they knew that was not the purpose of those gifts. Paul doesn=t heal Epaphroditus here, because that was not why God gave the gifts. The gifts were to bring in unbelievers and confirm to them these men chosen of God should be listened too and their message is the truth.
The young evangelist Timothy was told by Paul to take wine for his stomach sake and his frequent ailments. Well, that=s strange, why don=t you just go hook up with him and heal him Paul. You don=t see Paul going among believers and healing them in their churches anywhere. Paul knew the purpose of his gifts and that=s why it wasn=t done then. Even Paul, who asked 3 times for sickness to leave him, was told no, I have given you this thorn for a reason and my grace will be enough for you.
He had to leave Trophimus in Miletus he told one time and Paul said he was so lonely it hurt and wanted his friend to come to him, but he was sick and had to leave him behind. Paul, why don=t you just heal him and be done with it and get what you want? It was not the purpose of the gifts.
The purpose of these gifts was to authenticate the message wherever they took it in the world and that=s why when you see these things happening it is being done as Paul and others would press forward in their mission to bring the gospel to the world.
That=s why most of the time when we see this happening, the word signs is used. Signs always pointed to something and that=s the focus. The focus was never the miracle, but what the sign pointed to is what was all important.
The miracle always pointed to the message, to the Christ and what He has done for us all. Confirming the message of His grace as verse 3 points out is what it=s all about. Of course God knows, that the Jews would demand a miraculous sign. Paul said that in 1 Cor. 1: 22 and so God does give them signs when the word is preached, so now they have no excuse.
Paul knows when he preaches to Jews this new message; the first thing they will say is, what=s your sign to prove it=s from God? They have been this way all the way back to Moses. Moses asked God what will I do to prove this message is from You? God gave him a couple signs to show them. They have always been this way.
Yet, even then we can see the miracles are not the norm for biblical history, they weren=t as common as some have made them out to be. The 3 major times of history we see miracles present in any kind of frequency was first during Moses time, then during Elijah and Elisha=s time, and finally during the lives of Jesus and His apostle=s. There are thousands of years of biblical history where God doesn=t do any miracles through people, with the exception of these relatively short periods of time. Now, God does things directly Himself at other times, but even then they aren=t frequent and He doesn=t do them through people.
By the time we get to the end of the book of Acts and then as we read the books of our New Testaments written after this time period, about 70 AD and onward, we don=t read much at all about miracles. Why is that? If they are so important for church growth and carrying on Gods= work, as many are saying today, then why don=t we see the importance of them in these later writings?
I believe the church does not need miracles today to be everything God has called us to be. Why?=because we no longer need to show the purpose of those things to begin with. Do we need to mark apostles today? No. Do we need to confirm our message is from God today, are we giving a new message that needs confirming? No, it=s already been confirmed and there=s no new message, the gospel is the message. The message hasn=t changed.
If someone comes preaching a different message than we have already received and believed we know he=s not from God, we don=t need a miracle to tell us so, because it is written. We don=t ask someone to prove it by doing miracles, because if it contradicts what is written, we know it=s not from God.
Let me be clear with you again about something before moving on from this. I am not saying God does not move in the lives of people to do supernatural things among us. All of us can tell stories where we have prayed and God answered and the only way to explain it was to say God said yes; it was a miracle, He intervened. So, do I believe God is working among us supernaturally, absolutely! All I=m trying to get us to see is, God is not doing what He did here in Acts among us today, because He isn=t authenticating apostle=s or His message anymore.
I am saying, I don=t believe God is calling His church today to hold healing services, or workshops, etc. He didn=t do it then and doesn=t do it now. The purpose of these miracles was pointed to confirm the works of his grace. Why do I make a big deal of this? Because, I believe we need to have the apostolic Christianity we see here in Acts and to do that we don=t need to do miracles, like they did. The thing that moved that church onward into the world was not the ability to do miracles, because as I said, later on the church didn=t do miracles like we see here. They were able to move out and into the world because of their faith and the vision and the commitment of those Christians to do what they were called to do no matter what.
They were called to be His witnesses into all the world, not to be miracle workers and they knew it, that=s why they don=t go around preaching come to us for miracles, they preach Jesus and Him crucified. Once this got out past the Jews and Gentiles began believing in greater numbers than Jews, they didn=t need miracles to confirm it, because gentiles didn=t demand miracles like the Jews did. Now, the church is faced with handling the problem the Gentiles wanted solved and that was wisdom says Paul and not proof it=s from God by doing miracles.
When Paul preaches to Gentile audiences, His message appeals to their background, their demands and not the Jews demand, which was the miraculous. So, you then use Gods= wisdom to dumbfound the so-called wise of the world. Same message different needs of the hearers are met. Today we need to present the message intelligently, with reason and logic, so people don=t think we=re just being silly or foolish.
Notice the difference in our text. The Jews response was to poison the minds of the Gentiles to what Paul was saying. They not only didn=t like what he said they thought it was heresy. The big thing was, Paul was treating Gentiles as equals to Jews and they just couldn=t take that. This a problem we must deal with even today when we do mission work. Often time when we go from here to the rest of the world, America to the world, we face a prejudice. Most of the time it comes from here. When we start treating others in the world as equals, prejudice folks don=t like that.
Paul taught you could be a Christian without becoming a Jew first and they never like that. Sometimes today we have trouble because we want to Americanize folks to be Christians. The Jews were the same way and everywhere Paul goes they try to hinder Paul from preaching to the gentiles a salvation apart from them. These places Paul is going to here make up the churches of Galatia and the Jews will finally make the church decide about this and demand that gentiles be circumcised to be saved.
They have to keep Jewish customs and traditions to be right with God and the church must decide on the matter going forward.
Today we try to demand folks do life like us if they want to be a good Christian. They should keep our customs and traditions, look like us and behave exactly like us, or they won=t be able to be good Christians. The Book of Galatians was written by Paul to address this whole mind set and he is hotter and fiercer than in any other letter he writes about this matter.
Paul pronounces curses upon anyone who preaches a different gospel than what was delivered at first. He goes on to say that if you accept a different gospel then Christ died for nothing; don=t compromise for a second on this.
You can=t be saved by keeping the Law, by your own works or righteous, it is all by grace through Jesus and you cannot compromise that message. This makes the Jews mad and they go around trying to teach Paul is a heretic. Now, that=s what the Jews thought the problem was, but Luke says the problem is something else all together and that is, they are jealous. When they see the crowds going to hear Paul, they are filled with jealousy. We see this all the time.
People were coming to hear Paul and they had long since stopped coming to hear them. The sheer numbers infuriated them! The balcony used to be filled with gentiles, but after Paul preaches and they kick him out, the balcony is emptied, because they all go to hear Brother Paul preach. Jesus had this problem with the religious in His time and so there=s nothing new here. I mean, religious people can be the most jealous folks around. Any church has a bigger crowd than you and you get upset and try to criticize it somehow, must be something wrong with them.
That was the real problem says Luke, not heresy, but jealousy. This is a principle that most always proves true folks, write it down. AWhen the charge is heresy, the motive is most often jealousy!@ Times haven=t changed this much either. We have all kinds of folks in Christianity today who believe it is their God given duty to criticize other brothers and sisters for not teaching truth. Most often what you see in their critique is, the so-called unsound doctrine they criticize is doctrine they don=t agree with. The real motive is jealousy.
Often time if you listen to what these folks say you=ll get to the heart of the matter. They make the charge that the reason this church is growing is because they don=t teach the truth, but then they go to say, we must preach to if the church is going to grow. What? How can you say we must preach truth to grow, but the reason they are growing is because they teach false doctrine, you can=t have it both ways. They will even say the reason our church isn=t growing like theirs is because we are teaching the truth and people don=t want to hear the truth. You can=t demand that the church will only grow if you preach the truth and then say theirs grows because they preach false doctrine.
They give themselves away; their real motive is jealousy; they don=t want to hear what I am saying the truth is. Don=t be quick to accept the charge of false doctrine until you investigate and hear the message and then look at the motives of the one giving the charge. This has been going on for a very long time, nothing new here.
Their plot was to first poison the minds of the folks against Paul and Barnabas. That didn=t work, so the plot thickens as they mistreat them and try to stone them. This is amazing to me. You know sometimes you can=t get folks to agree with anything until you talk about someone=s sin. Jews and gentiles wouldn=t agree about anything until this. This sounds like something we can join forces in, let=s do it.
We=ll argue all day long about things until we come to someone we agree is sinning then we=ll agree to go after that one together.
Verse 6 says, they get wind of it and flee. What does this mean? Is Paul a chicken, afraid to die for the faith? We know better, he pays for his faith over and over and is stoned and thought dead for sure one an occasion, so Paul is more than willing to bear in his body the brand marks of Jesus. Here this is just a wise decision, for this is basically mob rule here, not much law and order, very few Roman soldiers even, so they aren=t afraid to die, but they aren=t looking to get killed either.
They have done well, they planted the gospel, and the church and they are going to continue on, so they move on and do it again in all these places. They could have stayed and faced what was coming to them there in I conium, or we can move on and preach in these other places and plant churches there and that is what he does. It was the wise thing to do and it was the victorious thing to do, he conquered that town and now he can move on to change another one. He is no coward for sure and verse 7 shows they continued on preaching no matter what they went through.
You could have told him if he goes to this place or that, you will face trouble, or worse, he would have said, I=m for going on, because some haven=t heard the gospel yet. What does all this have to do with us today? Well, it does have allot to do with building churches that want to be after the mold of apostolic churches like the ones Paul planted. These make up the kind of Christianity that conquers the world! 3 principles to build such churches today:
115. Hostility should not lead to passivity! What happens, let=s be honest, when people get hostile toward us when we speak up for Jesus and the gospel, what do we tend to do? We get real shy all of a sudden don=t we? That=s our natural reaction when it first comes, but look at verse 3, ATherefore, they spent considerable time there speaking boldly for the Lord!@ What=s the therefore, there for? It=s there because of what was happening in verse 2.
They were poisoning the minds of the Gentiles and stirring them up against them, therefore, they spoke more boldly and stayed longer. That=s the response to opposition by example of Paul and Barnabas.
That=s how the church grew in that day and that=s how it grows in our day; we don=t run at opposition we stay longer and get bolder. Paul writes in Ephesians 6:19-20 that the folks pray that he speaks fearlessly for the gospel, even though he is in chains, he wants prayers to declare it fearlessly, which is also translated as boldly.
When we preach the gospel we need to do it fearlessly, boldly, that=s how it ought to be. So, if we=re going to be bold about it, maybe we need to do for each other what Paul asks for in his day; let=s pray that we might be bold.
Someone says, AI=ve been trying to talk this person for a long time and every time I start they intimidate me and I back off,
would you pray for me that God would give me courage.@ AI=ve got someone in my class in need to talk to and each time I think I should speak to them I get scared and don=t follow through, please pray for me.@
Whatever the situation, you know what I=m talking about don=t you? Your setting may be different but the same feelings come, God help us, pray for one another specifically that God would grant boldness. Do any of you right now need such a prayer that God please give me boldness that I might share the gospel with someone as I ought to? We must be praying for each other if we want to be as they were back then. Hostility should not lead us to passivity, but to greater boldness.
116. Faithfulness should not lead to foolishness! Sometimes people do foolish things in the name of faith. Faith doesn=t mean an absence of thought. Paul was a brave man, as brave a preacher as you=ll ever meet, but he knew the best thing to do, the wisest thing to do sometimes is to move on from that town to another. We often think that our faith is measured by some big one time event we do and we=re all looking for some major thing. Faithfulness is measured by your commitment over the long haul and staying with the gospel to the end. Often time being wise in our actions is what gets us there.
Wherever you go, however many you speak to, over the years from place to place, house to house, you stick with it to the end, that=s faithfulness and every one of those you speak to is precious in the sight of the Lord. God looks for the one lost one as much as He does for speaking to the whole town at once. He is not willing that ANY perish, so be faithful all the way and be wise.
117. Discouragement should not lead to abandonment! Am I alone here in experiencing discouragement? Seems like every time I try to do something good for the Lord, something bad happens, something to discourage it; am I alone? Any of you ever felt that way? I think there were times when Paul and the others felt that way. So what keeps us going?
Brethren, we have got to face it, happily ever after type Christianity is mythical, and it is not biblical. There is no where God promises us happily ever after lives.
He did promise that He would be with us when the trouble comes and never leave us when they come. Christianity is not absent from struggles, it is reliant upon the Lord as we go through them.
Paul and the others didn=t quit in the face of fierce opposition, he moved on to the next place because He learned to live, Gods= grace is enough even if the pain is not removed. He would boast in his weakness, so he could learn to lean on Gods= grace. If we can learn to do that, we too will not be conquered by this world, but like him we will conquer the world!
Do we believe we can reach every soul who needs to hear the gospel today in our time? Not just give mental accent to it, but do we really believe we can reach all of them with the gospel? Every soul in every nation in our life time, just like they did back then. We won=t do it if we are living bland stagnant lives we see so much today in Christianity. It will only happen when we believe to the point of giving our lives to it like they did back then. We=ll give our lives to other things, but what about the only hope for the world?
Anybody ever been to NASA, down in Houston? Anybody can tour the place, got lots of stuff you can look at starting with the first ships designed to go into space and every other little thing you can think of and more.
I learned of a place that isn=t on the tour by someone who had a friend that worked at NASA take him on a special tour. If you are into the whole space travel thing the whole place is more than impressive. But this fella I became acquainted with told me as he was going along the NASA worker asked him do you see that dirty looking grey old building over there, what do you think that is? Well, it didn=t look impressive at all, in fact it looked out of place compared to everything else, like nothing but maybe junk would have been in there.
Turns out he told a story we don=t hear and didn=t hear when it happened. This building housed what would have been the living quarters for the first men on the moon. The plan was, if these men coming back from the moon could be determined that they brought back any kind of contaminate that could be detected, they would have been brought to this place and could have spent the rest of their lives in that place if we couldn=t figure out how to deal with it. Not only that, but the building was set up to house a bunch of other folks who would have had to take care of the needs of these men and they too would have to stay there for the rest of their lives if need be.
Wow, how did you get people to want to do that job, I bet you had to draw straws or something. No said the man, we volunteered. Think about this. These folks were so serious about getting to the moon and back they volunteered to give their lives for it, if need be and you and I never heard about it. That=s how it got done, with that kind of commitment. They said, no way in 10 years can you get a man on the moon. With that kind of dedication you can!
Today we say there=s no way in one generation we can reach the world with the Gospel. Yes, you can if we have people willing to give their lives for it. When we became Christian, God didn=t ask us for the rest of our Sundays, He asked for the rest of your lives.
You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down Acts 14:8-20
Churches today claim we are doing church as we read in our Bibles, especially the very first church we are reading about here in Acts, so we are investigating to see if we are doing things like they did in that first century church. We=re not just trying to gain information on an academic level, where we just know some stuff we didn’t before, but we are looking to see what God would have to put in our lives.
I’m not sure the quest of being what God called us be as His church ever ends. The more we seriously look at this church He created and founded, the more we see we need to put more and more of these things in our lives. Let’s try to look at it this way by asking the question; what is the chief difference between God and Man? There’s probably no one answer to this question and maybe many will be right, but as I thought about having a little time to, I believe high up there on the list of the difference between us and God is as Samuel recorded, a man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.
The way God looks at all things really, but the way He looks at people definitely separates us from God. We are simply external oriented and God goes straight to the heart. One of the things about Jesus that stood out was He didn’t need man’s testimony about man, because He knew what was in the heart of man. This is a blessing folks, because when we all go to stand before our God, we don’t need each other to vouch for each other before God, because Jesus already knows you, you don’t have to explain anything, He knows your heart and where it is.
You don’t have to be all worried and tense over defending anything, He knows your heart and what it has been devoted too and Jesus will speak for you to His Father, this is one whose heart is mine, welcome them into the home I have prepared for them. What a valuable gift to have and how it might help us allot of times, to look past the outward straight into the heart. What if you were an employer and could see the heart, wouldn’t that be a helpful gift to have?
We have to do allot of work today and then we still aren’t sure if we got this one right. We do background checks, history checks, try to see how honest, and loyal someone has been, are they qualified and on and on. Wouldn’t be helpful to just see someone’s heart?
If you’re coach looking for a great athlete, what do you do? Stats, tell you some, but what separates the good ones from the great one’s; and a coach will always tell, they are looking for heart, that’s what separates. Stats can’t always give you that information.
Lifechurch in general, including the online church, is very concerned about marriages and the state of marriages in the church. How do we know when we have the potential for a good marriage or not? What do we teach and counsel in our churches about what makes a good marriage? I=ve got to tell you folks, most of what I see and hear coming from the church focuses on externals.
We need to ask those who say they want to marry, what is your focus, what are you looking at that drives you to want to say, you want to marry this person? Most of what I have heard through the years is a focus on externals. What emphasizes to us is the inner beauty, what is in the heart, but we think that what will make us happy is the outward stuff. I’m attracted, they are so hot, we say, they have a good job, or prospect of one, we like allot of the same activities, and we just don’t seem to be able to stop thinking about each other, we want each other!
I can tell you, I can promise you, that our marriages will only be as good as the hearts of those who have committed to it. First and foremost do you have a heart for God when it comes to marriage? Do you feel the way He does about marriage? The 2 become one, one who will do all he can to cherish his bride and the other will do all she can to help him love like God loves. She is going to love him into loving her as Jesus loves the church. He will sacrifice for her and she will devote herself to him and follow because of her love for him.
The heart toward our mates resembles the heart of our greatest love and that is, our love for God, who teaches us to love each other. We know that looks won’t get us through troubled times; we know money isn’t what truly makes us happy, because we never have enough. The hottest sex anyone can imagine won’t keep us together if we start throwing barbs at one another. What will carry us through those times when we let each other down, when we mess up royally toward each other, sin against each other and lose our cool altogether? Where’s your heart?
God knows how to love the unlovable, the pigheaded, stubborn, overbearing, impatient, intolerant, and the sinful rebel in us all, because He knows who you really are, He knows your heart. If our heart is right with God and we are driven to the heart of God above all else, our treasure is with God, then our heart is with Him, and then we will have good marriages. But, it’s all about where your heart is and what’s in it.
What about when it comes to choosing pastors and missionaries in the church; what do we look for? My experience tells me we focus on the outward appearance. Let me tell you what I think is what we look for all boiled down; I’ve seen it over and over and it’s not complicated. We look for someone who is relatively good looking and his wife is too. They have a couple kids who are relatively good looking and he has at least one good sermon.
We look at school history briefly, but it’s more about where he went to school than if he was a good student. If he has a doctorate, well that just looks impressive, so that a plus. Not really interested all that much what it’s in or if it will actually help him do the work we are looking for. If we’re looking to send them to a missionary field, just because he can preach a good sermon here to us, does that mean he can do a good job preaching to folks in an entirely different world and culture? What qualifies him to reach those folks?
These principles apply to both our local missions as well as foreign, in my view. The stats say one thing, but how do we know he will be able to connect with the folks here, or there? What do we look at to know we have someone who will be able to go where we send them and reach the folks there? I say all that and I know you’ve heard this, but I really wonder if there are any churches today that send the Apostle Paul anywhere to do mission work local or foreign?
He has some things that don’t fit with our model today of what we look for in a preacher. First, he was single. We have a problem against single being in these positions, we may not admit it, but we do. We think they can’t know how to advise married folks, or parents, or even kids that well, as well as other areas, so we don’t look to send singles.
He also, wasn’t a dynamic speaker. He was a great writer, but even he knew he wasn’t exactly eloquent. So with just these 2, how apt are we to take on someone who was single and when he preached he didn’t do all that good? Plus, through writings of historians, many say he wasn’t very good looking by their standards. These writings say, Paul was short, had a bent back, he was bald, had a big nose, bushy eyebrows and he was bowlegged. Is this the man we are going to promote on our big posters in our lobbies to get behind, and on our website so all can see and get pumped up about supporting? We run video of him so everyone can be reminded he is our man, and we run it over and over, so we get behind him with everything we can as a church.
Church online starts every experience by putting him up there so we are always reminded as a global church, this is someone we are going to give money to, spend lots of time in prayer for, maybe fast for, and go out of our way to encourage him. He’s our missionary, the one we chose church. You know and I know there never has been one with a better heart for the task than Paul, but you know and I know it’s highly unlikely we would choose him today.
The point is, we must learn and be trained by the mind of God, to look for more than the externals. We need to spend more time trying to find a person’s heart than trying to see what everyone else can see. How many great men and women of God have been overlooked by the church, because we can’t see past the paper and pretty exteriors?
I want to look at qualities to look for when seeking a pastor or missionary and we’ll list these and then line it up with our text and see how it looks.
1. Humility: Anywhere you look in your bibles; Paul only boasted about 2 things. He boasted about his weaknesses of all things. He says, I have learned to lift up my weakness and when I do, God makes me strong, only really it’s not me but God who gets all the glory, because it’s His grace that gives the strength. So, Paul says, I will boast in my weaknesses.
You remember all those things we said about him a minute ago, that most often we think disqualify him from the job, Paul would let God work through all those and bring glory to His name, even though I have all these weaknesses.
The only other time you see him willing to boast about anything was when he said I will boast in the cross of Christ. Let me remind you of how humble Paul is. He’s in a Roman prison when he writes to the Philippians and says there are preachers out there who are taking advantage of Paul all in the purpose of promoting themselves; they even are saying he is in prison because he is a criminal. Do you remember what Paul said about those men?
Phil. 1:18 Paul said what does it matter? Whether their motives are good or bad the thing that really counts is, Christ is being preached! Paul knew, it was not about Him and that is humility. There’s the heart for the task.
2. Adaptability: He can preach to a Greek, or to a Jew, and preach Christ to both equally as well. Paul could be in the home of the rich or the home of a slave and be comfortable in either place. Paul could talk to a Prince or a prisoner with the same heart and he did. He said I will become all things to all men that by all possible means I might save some.
He could put himself in any context and still preach Jesus. If you=re going to do affective pastoring whether locally or on a mission field you must learn to be adaptable in any setting with folks. The better you are at truly being comfortable with people in any circumstance of life, the more effective you’re ministry will be.
3. Tenacity: It’s truly inspiring to see. His absolute refusal to be defeated! 2 Cor.4: 9 says, I have been knocked down, but never knocked out, I always get back up and I like that. You cannot make Paul quit. He will take persecution, discouragement, any kind of attack, but he would not quit. That’s how to get mission work done effectively!
Now, how do we measure those things? They are indispensable for being the kind of missionary God looks for, so we need to develop the ability to see what God sees in people. Now, let’s look at the text and see all these qualities in action as he does this work for God.
They are on their first missionary journey and have gone to Cyprus and had to move on and now they are in an area we call Turkey today. Back then it was called Asia. He started at the coast and heads inland. The thing to know about this is, the further inland he goes the further from Roman rule he is getting. What that means is Rome hasn’t gone in and forced the folks to adhere to their laws and so Paul is running into more Greek and more pagan type folks.
That’s important because as long as Paul is in a city run by Romans he has law and order on his side. They may hate him there, but they can’t kill him, that must be done by the Romans. In Antioch Paul=s life is threatened, but all they could do is run him out of town, but the further inland he goes; he goes to Iconium and he learns of it and this time he has to run out of town.
So realize the further he goes inland the more dangerous it gets and he has to consider that as he goes, so keep that in mind as we look at these things.
Acts 14:8-20, 8In Lystra there sat a man crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked. 9He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed 10and called out, "Stand up on your feet!" At that, the man jumped up and began to walk.
Notice now a couple things, they are in a place called Lycaonian, which was a place, the pagans called wolf country, so it’s not civilized at all here. Another thing is, notice he doesn’t go to any synagogue like usual to preach there first. It takes at least 10 Jewish families to have a synagogue, so there aren’t enough to have one in Lystra. This changes his preaching, as we will see.
11When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" 12Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. 13The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them. 14But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: 15"Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. 16In the past, he let all nations go their own way. 17Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons;
he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy." 18Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them.
At first Paul and Barnabas had no idea what was happening; they didn’t speak the language, but once they realized what all the commotion and noise was about, they immediately ran into the crowd and tore their robes. Why did they do that? What do you do when you just hear blasphemy? Priests of any age before would do so if they new someone had blasphemed God. That you would dare worship them, men and not give glory to God could not be to Barnabas and Paul.
They immediately run into the crowd to stop this, which again speaks of their humility. They will not succumb to any temptation like men had done on numerous occasions; remember Herod in chapter 12? When some men have a chance to be called god, they let people call them a god. Someone could have tried to rationalize all this. They’ve brought us food and celebration, willing to give us whatever they can to please us, money, etc.; if we just play along for a bit maybe we could then change them all by preaching to them in a few days and they’ll all obey us. Why not do that?
Are we tempted to do such things today? How many think if they just do whatever it takes to get popular, or famous, so the folks will listen to me, then I’ll be able to set them all straight? Why won’t this work? If you start making these kinds of compromises with folks, soon you don’t have a credible testimony anymore, people won’t listen to you if you start allowing things you know you should never have from the beginning. Being popular in the world is no guarantee God can use you to change the world. Paul won’t even start the notion that he would take some glory for himself instead of God.
We see again Paul’s adaptability. He’s got this big problem and he rushes to fix it and begins preaching, but the problem is they don’t know the scriptures. There=s no synagogue in this town, so never read the Old Testament. Paul is preaching to folks with no Jewish roots. He runs into this another time in chapter 17, but he adjusts and so we should too. If you can’t appeal to the revelation of scripture what do you appeal to? Paul appeals to the revelation of nature.
Verse 15 says, we too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. In other words, you’re whole system of worship is messed up. That you make men into gods and build idols yourselves and worship them is all nuts, think about it. These are all worthless and vain things, it’s time for you to turn to a living God. You have to find a God big enough to explain the heavens and the earth and everything that’s been made. You listen to me, because I’m here to tell you about this God.
This God has given you testimony to His existence and goodness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their season. How do you communicate to folks who don’t know the Bible and never have? You start with what they know; you start with the world around them, nature itself. Look at how it all works so marvelously and how God has given all we need to sustain ourselves and help each other. When a people give honor and glory to God for all good things, the people are blessed, if not they will go through tough times sooner or later. He is the one that sustains us all. No God no blessings!
Too many look at the world of folks who live by reason and logic they say, and then there’s us Christians who live by faith and that means we turn our minds off. This totally against what scripture and our God has presented to us. God has shown the most reasonable conclusion to looking seriously at our universe and all that is in it, with all the evidence available to us, is to conclude there is a God of this universe who created it and sustains it. Put your faith in Him and not vain man-made things we either think up or make ourselves. That’s Paul’s reasoning and it’s powerful.
But, even with these words he had trouble restraining the people. Now, this is an amazing even strange thing we read here. It’s astonishing how fickle people can be about preachers, or pastors, etc. Look at the following verses:
19Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. 20But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe.
This is exciting folks! Do you see what’s happening here? One minute this crowd wants to worship Paul and Barnabas, the next the want to kill him. The Jews from the cities that chased Paul out of town came.
Paul used to be the one hunting Christians and now Jews are hunting him. How in the world did they change these people’s minds about Paul? We really don’t know, they lied about something we know that, because they always did that. Maybe they accused him of sorcery, called him evil and if you listen to him more evil will come to this town. He healed by using evil and if you let him continue you’re all in trouble and superstitious people will be afraid of such things.
Maybe they realized they had been to look foolish when they tried to worship men? People don’t like being made to look foolish. We also know when preachers say they are just men like them, allot of folks don’t like that. They want their preachers to be more, or above them. Whatever is working here, they end up wanting to kill the ones they were willing to worship a short time ago. In fact, they actually do stone Paul. Paul no doubt thought this was the end.
He probably had flash backs to Steven. He probably felt this is a proper end since this is how I took Steven’s life. They stoned him to unconsciousness and dragged him outside the city and everyone thought he was dead. They had killed folks before, so they knew what dead people looked like and they believed he was dead. The disciples come to bury him and Luke just says, sort of matter of fact, Paul got up and went back into the city. Was he dead, or not? Was he resurrected?
All we know for sure is, the words that are used. The word supposed dead is always used in scripture to show it was something people thought was true, but wasn’t. Also, the Holy Spirit of God doesn’t ever minimize resurrection. Every time it happens He talks about it and challenges folks because of it. Either way this is an extraordinary miracle! His body was just stoned and in bad shape, thought dead by everyone. All beat up, cut and whatever else being stoned does to a body and God raises his body enough to have the strength to rise and go back into the city.
The next day he travels 30 miles to the next town, we’re dealing with a God work for sure folks. So here again we see Paul=s tenacity. This guy doesn’t quit folks, no matter what! Lets go back into the town that just stoned me and then the next day, let’s take the gospel to the next town. He later writes to all these people in Galatia and says, let no man speak against me for I bear in my body the brand marks of Jesus.
They new very well about his marks, some of them had washed cleansed and even medicated some of those marks. He is tenacious!
You say, man that’s tough mission work, nothing much good happened there. You couldn’t be more wrong folks. This was one of the best mission works of his life. He may not have won as many numbers as other towns, but here’s so much more to some mission work than numbers. One thing we know from later writings is, he had reached a grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter’s son and his name just happened to be Timothy.
When he returns here years later Timothy is ready to be an apprentice missionary, mentored by one of the best ever. Just before Paul dies, he writes to Timothy and tells him to be strong and courageous, stand firm and keep on in all opposition, because the gospel didn’t come to you in the spirit of timidity did it? It came in a spirit of power and love and self-control. Timothy would remember the day Paul came and he knows how credible Paul is when he says the gospel came with great boldness and no timidity involved. Timothy knew of the power Paul spoke of first hand. This was not a bad day for Paul. This was one of his best days ever.
We all after all these years are being taught about how, as we go out with the same gospel, we go with humility in the forefront, adaptability, and most of all tenacity. He teaches us you can’t keep a good man down. Not when he lives for and works for the lord, because such a man never quits.
Conclusion: The devil is so subtle sometimes and in this text we see 2 ways he tries to stop us from being His faithful servants.
1. Worship doesn’t influence the man who has already bowed! This is impresses me of Paul how he reacts. Paul gets upset and even outraged at the folks, not when he is about to be stoned, but when he is about to be deified. Paul is teaching us, it is much more dangerous to be worshiped than it is to be killed. Counterfeit religion will always let the followers exult the leader/s. A true follower of Christ never will.
How do you exult a man you can’t get off his knees? He already has a Lord. We must go to the cross and once we have knelt at the cross, we know it is the cross that is the only thing worthy to be lifted up and none of us.
2. Persecution doesn’t intimidate the man who has already died! How do you stop Paul? You going to threaten to kill him; he has already died. That won’t even make him flinch. Later on he writes these folks and says, I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I live I live in Christ Jesus who died for me. How do you kill someone who has already been crucified?
When you and I say we are afraid to stand up, be witnesses, share the gospel, we are saying we are not dead yet. You can’t hurt a dead person. If the flesh has died, it can’t be intimidated by this world anymore. When you have been to the cross and bowed before it, you can’t keep such a man down. If your house is built on the Rock come what may, and you can’t hurt him anymore. Is your house built on Him?
Report Of The International Harvester Acts 14:21-28
Luke is concluding his report of the first missionary journey of Paul here in this section. Something we must face and know is true; when we are personally involved in something, it is at least very hard to be objective about it. We have to work hard to be less than optimistic about it. If there’s something not quite right with it, it’s hard for us to see when we’re attached to it.
Every coach has to convince himself he has a better talented team than maybe he really has. Have you ever tried to fix someone up on a date with someone you love they have never met before? Don’t you present maybe a much more optimistic view of your friend than is really true? How many of you who have to give a report about your work to the higher ups, paint a very rosy picture of what you have accomplished than maybe is totally true; don’t we usually find it hard to add any objective truth?
We are all this way and naturally so, all of us. Now, once again we do the same in church, especially when it comes to mission reports. If you have gone and done a work and worked hard and it cost you allot to do that work and you’re now called to report on that work, wouldn’t it be hard to be less than overly optimistic of your work? That’s what we want to do; we’re geared to it, because we are invested personally in it. I care so much about the work; I tend to say it’s going better than it really is.
So now, let’s look at the very first missionary report ever given to a church from the view of Paul. The set up is Paul goes to Lystra and at the end of his preaching there he gets stoned and everyone thinks he’s dead, but he gets back up and goes back into the city and the next day he goes to Derbe and that takes us here.
“21 They preached the good news in that city and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, 22 strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. 23 Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. 24 After going through Pisidia, they came into Pamphylia, 25 and when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia. 26 From Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed.
27 On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. 28 And they stayed there a long time with the disciples.”
Verse 21 says they made a large number of disciples, which is the goal of mission work. Almost every place they go they make disciples, just as Jesus commanded them to. In Lystra he converts Timothy who goes on to be a missionary and in Derbe he converts a fella named Gaius who also becomes a missionary we read of in Paul’s letters. So, Paul has some rich soil and fruit is born, but was it all easy?
Planting is always easier than harvesting! Reaping is always hard work. Now, don’t paint too rosy a picture over what it takes to plant either, because that takes some doing too. First off they went by boat to Cyprus and boat travel back then was always dangerous and there was no other way to view it. Traveling was not easy going pleasure cruises, even on land it was not easy, there were marshes to go through and apparently Paul gets sick in one on his way to Pamphylia. Mark gets discouraged for whatever reasons and leaves them and heads back home; it’s tough no matter how you present it.
There were mountains to climb in some places as well. He had to go through one town named Perga and head to Antioch-Pisidia because he was so sick he had to go there to get well. But, remember even sick, he went through some of the worst places on earth. Alexander the great said, this region is the worst anywhere, the terrain, full of robbers and crooks, and Paul wrote about how he felt the threat of these kinds of folks when he went on this trip.
He goes to each of these places and ends up getting slandered and treated viciously by the Jews and town folks, driven out of town and one time even stoned and left for dead. So even though many numbers were discipled he will not give the impression that mission work is easy. So, harvesting is tough work, but notice what he does after going through all this.
“Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, 22 strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. 23 Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. 24 After going through Pisidia, they came into Pamphylia, 25 and when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia.
26 From Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed.”
After all they went through, including a terrible illness and now they are ready to go home, job well done, or are they? If you want to go home to Antioch, you don’t have to go back the way you came, through all these places, so why do it? Why go back to places where you got nothing but abuse and opposition from the overwhelming majority of folks and especially the Jews in each of those places? Risk sickness and all the other hardship again, why?
Three reasons are given here, to go back to each place:
1. To emphasize the fight! “22 strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.” Fact, to enter the kingdom of God you must deal with tribulation! It’s a struggle to enter Gods’ kingdom; do you know that? Paul did and he returns to strengthen those he brought into the kingdom.
Paul saw not only a responsibility to plant the seed; he made sure the seed got watered too. I think this is a weakness of ours today too many times. We leave disciples right where we found them. We all know Jesus’ commission to us. “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, Son, and holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey whatsoever I have commanded you.”
The action verb there is to make a disciple, that’s our goal to fully obey Jesus. He uses 3 steps to accomplish this goal. =Go, Baptize, and teach. Now, notice Jesus’ order here. He says to Baptize and then teach and that’s interesting. He says to first go, go and do what? You see you can’t go without teaching and you can’t baptize without teaching, and then to emphasize what you’ve already been commissioned to do, do it again; teach!
Paul went back to teach again, encourage and strengthen them again. I know how hard it is to be a Christian in this world and it’s going to get tougher as we go, so he goes and teaches them more to stay strong in view of the struggle.
That’s how to make disciples, not leave them to figure it out for themselves, or hope someone will come along and do it after you.
New believers NEED to know Satan is coming and the struggle will be intense! To teach folks that becoming a Christian means your troubles will cease is a horrible disservice and just not the truth. The devil will put up a fight for you; he does not go quietly into the night after you choose to believe in Jesus. Too many leave the impression that what we are seeking is the keys to a BMW, instead of the keys to the kingdom.
Paul is upfront with those he has brought to Christ. He goes back and says it is through many hardships that we enter the kingdom of God. Don’t think for a second that if you have intense struggles all of a sudden, maybe shortly after you come to believe or maybe somewhere down the road things get severe in your life and you wonder why is this happening to me, where are you God, and many other questions that challenge our faith; remember what Paul is saying here, there is a reason it’s happening.
The word used for hardship here really is a word that describes a farming tool used to separate wheat from chafe. It’s a good word to describe the struggles we go through. The struggle separates the true fruit from the false fruit. Remember our faith is not on what we can see, but on what is not seen. Faith is not faith that only trusts what it sees, then you are trusting in yourself. It’s a struggle to hang on to Gods’ kingdom when Satan is pounding on us in his.
Jesus didn’t come into our world to make life easy; He came here to make us great; to make us strong. A new believer cannot escape the fight. What they need is an older believer who will teach him the truth. Someone who strengthens when it gets tough and even is the kind of example they can watch when times get hard on them. Tell them the truth and live it yourself and that’s why Paul goes back.
He wants to build them up so they can stand-alone and that’s one good reason to go back.
2. Organize the flock! 23 Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. Paul believed evangelizing a town meant appointing leaders and making sure that church was able to govern itself and survive as a church in every way.
You can’t have a church that will do well if it depends on another church thousands of miles away for how it will live on a day to day basis. It must be able to make decisions as a body and move as a whole, or many challenges that would arise would be too much for the church to overcome. The local church must also work together on how to evangelize there area and build their folks up, that is not best done by churches a long way away.
The local church must be able to support itself, be selfsustaining and not dependant on other churches to meet it’s material needs. For the church to grow it must be able to provide for the needs of it’s own people and others in the community, as well as launch out in other good works to bring glory to God.
The local church must also be able to reproduce, to spread out, and to itself become a missionary church. You have to be able to make it on your as a church and that’s how Paul evenagelized the world.
Notice what he does, he appoints leaders and through prayer and fasting he places his trust in others to lead. He doesn’t fall to the temptation of thinking he has to control it all anymore, but hands over his trust to those chosen to carry on. If you are going to become a missionary of the church, you must learn to trust the Head of the church to take care of His church like He promises He will, so you let go of the reigns of power and let others lead, you trust them.
He appoints elders, plural in each place it says. How do you find men ready to be elders in the church so soon after it begins? He’s only been in some of these places for a few months and he’s already appointing elders. He tells Timothy in his letters that a new convert shouldn’t be an elder, yet he is appointing elders who haven’t been Christians very long. They haven’t held any position in the church yet.
Remember Paul would always go to the synagogues first and there he would meet Jews and God-fearers who had been worshipping God and studying Gods’ word for a long time. He would convert a certain number of those folks and this proved to be very valuable to him. It doesn’t answer every town he went in, but it does explain many of them.
What about the towns without synagogues what did he do there? Well, he did what we aren’t very good at even today. He chose men who were ready culturally as well as spiritually in that place. They may not have been ready to lead the church of Jerusalem for instance, but in that town they could lead those folks. They could look at the folks of that town who were leaders and wise men, mature men, who had good reputations and were godly men, even before becoming Christians and Paul would work with those men specifically and it didn’t take years and years to develop them.
He didn’t have the problem of saying we have to appoint men who are as mature as Peter in Jerusalem, or Barnabas to be elders, or he probably never would have been able to find such men and they wouldn’t have leaders they needed to survive. If you look at the “qualifications” of elders Paul gave to Timothy, you’ll see much of those qualities were in these men before becoming Christians. They were good men of the community, strong moral values, and people respected them for it. He was a strong family man, good husband and father and everyone in town knew it.
Paul believed such attributes and living by men before believing the gospel was a work of God in their lives even before hearing the good news and believing it. He could work with such men and train them much quicker and easily and he did. Plus he would hand them over to the real head of the church and trust Jesus would lead His church. He would do this even in places that had Jewish and God-fearing Gentiles as well. He didn’t choose men just because they had worshipped God and studied scripture, but if they didn’t have good reputation with the town folk and were generally disliked by most, they wouldn’t appoint them.
In time you could work with reprobates and riff raff to change their hearts and minds and they would become honorable men in the town as well as the church, but that takes time for Jesus to work that work, so new converts with unrespectable backgrounds weren’t made leaders right away.
Paul believed each church had to have leadership to continue on and we must work toward that if our mission work will take wherever we do it.
The word for appoints men, or ordains as some translations say, or some even say elect is, literally “to raise the hand.” That’s what this word literally means, so what is Luke saying Paul did to put these men in leadership? He put the men before the church and they too would be a part of this decision. This is wisdom at work. You need some feedback from the church itself, before you appoint them to the position.
It’s not about being popular in the church, or maybe the richest or most prosperous among us; you could be those things and still not be qualified to lead the church. It’s not about being in some power click in the church; you know what I mean. Just keep appointing men from a certain circle in the church, no, you ask the church who they think the best ones are.
Paul combined his and Barnabas’ maturity, etc., with the church’s wisdom to determine who the best men were. So today we look to our most trusted mature leaders and the church where the leaders are to lead and ask them, put those two together and you have your leaders.
Don’t get so lost in the process we miss the big point here and that’s why he goes back to these places. He is going back to build community among the brethren. Paul believed all Christians should belong to the church. There is no such thing to Paul as a loner Christian out there doing it all by himself. Paul believed if you don’t plug believers together with other believers and they are together regularly, they would not make it.
Paul believed in the whole idea of believers being held accountable to the more mature ones who are looking out for them. You can change the title to mentors, or just leaders, or trainers, coaches, whatever, but there needs to be in every church a system where the more mature are looking out for the younger in the faith and people are held accountable for their walk in Jesus and that’s why he appointed these men. His job of evangelizing wasn’t done until he did this.
By the way, we Westernized folks are the ones who struggle the most with this today, because we teach independence so much we don’t want to be held accountable by anybody.
We start screaming, he’s judging me, or she’s condemning me, when what we’re doing is trying to help you see what you’re doing and hold you accountable before God, so that maybe you will repent and be what Jesus has called us to be. It is a biblical mandate from God and if we want to be His, we will submit to His design of how He built His church.
In some areas of our walk with Jesus, He doesn’t ask us to do something only if we like it. Whether you like it or not is not relevant, if He is Lord; are you submissive to God and His Word is what the biblical model demands. The whole idea of each us being held accountable by those appointed to lead us is Gods’ design for the church. So he returns to emphasize the fight and to organize the flock and also to:
3. To evangelize the field! 25 and when they had preached the word in Perga: Why is this the only town on the way back through he preaches the gospel? Remember he missed this one because he was sick.
He couldn’t stand having to go by this one without leaving the seed of the gospel there. He probably told Barnabas, we can’t leave here without preaching in Perga. Now, he’s ready to go home, so he gets on a boat and goes back home.
26 From Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. Great word completed there. They have been gone for about a year and a half and now they are headed home. What does complete mean? Just what is said here. He leaves self governing, self producing, self sustaining churches, who can go on without him.
27 On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. God gets all the glory folks. All the sacrifice and pain and sufferring, and work physically was Paul’s, but he comes home and says, let me tell you what God did. That’s a man who is not just humble, but he knows who is working in His life to do whatever he can accomplish.
I couldn’t do any of it if God wasn’t doing the work through me. Not just being humble, but he knows the truth and isn’t going to say anything but the truth.
I love it when folks tell me what God has been doing through them, especially when it has to do with how God is working to reach other souls through them. The stories you can hear where those folks know it was God, they wouldn’t have even gone there maybe, or thought of going there and speaking to that one or that crowd, if they hadn’t been listening and following the voice of the Lord.
Did you notice how Paul described it? He said God had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Did you see any open doors as we read this text? Look at all he went through, attacked, slandered, liabled, chased, threatened, stoned, and you come to report to your church and say, let me tell you brothers the door is wide open!
What does that tell you? It tells me that the door will always be closed if we have no courage and no commitment to follow the call of being His witnesses. If you are walking by faith and willing to pay the price, the harvest is plentiful and waiting. Neither Jesus nor Paul said it was easy, they said it’s waiting and ready to be harvested.
The door is open and we need to believe it just like Paul. There just needs to be more workers in the vineyard is all. People willing to do the work as God works through them. Do you really believe God won’t open the door to anyplace if we’re committed to go there? Do you think there’s a place God doesn’t want to reach those folks? God is not willing that one perish, but are we?
That church at Antioch went home that day from Paul’s report knowing they needed to be getting another team together soon to go out and reach some more in places no one had gone before. How is all this relevant today?
Conclusion: I’m not just being critical here, just challenging and honest.
1. Our fruit is watered too little! We have today in our churches way too many disciples who aren’t mature. We have baptized many, but we haven’t been so thorough as to teach them to obey all Jesus has commanded us. The consequence is they are not making disciples; they are not reproducing themselves.
If you grow fruit that can’t reproduce, you have unhealthy fruit and eventually you’ll see death. The goal is to make disciples who then can make disciples. I have known too many who have been in the church for 10, even 20 years and don’t reproduce and don’t even begin to know how. How does that happen in the church God has designed, that we read about in scripture?
It happens because we aren’t watering the fruit. We plant, but don’t water and fertilize and weed the garden. If you are not bringing people to Christ, if you are not nurturing people to Christ, then you are not a leader of any kind in Gods’ church. And if you bring them to the Christ you have a God given responsibility to nurture them, mature them. We water too little today.
2. Our focus has wavered too much! When I listen to those on TV and radio, many writers of books, I get the overwhelming view that we are spending way too much time in the barn, instead of out in the field. Christianity has become something you go get a dose of; a little shot of, instead of something we are, something we live.
I’m speaking to the leaders now. I mean when was the last time you were out in the field, instead of behind your desks and pulpits? Why was Paul so successful at reaching the lost and leading the church back then? He didn’t just talk about doing it folks he did it. Now, maybe it’s true that your gift is not to be the kind of evangelist Paul was, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something out there in that field you could be doing.
Barnabas wasn’t Paul and the others we read about that helped him weren’t him, but they made a huge difference and they didn’t stay home telling others to go. You want to be a good teacher, go teach the new converts, a better encourager, get out there and strength the young in faith, a good writer, get out there a see first hand what the church is and needs, a good servant, get out there and serve those coming in.
The leadership sets the tone of where the church will go. If the top isn’t out there preaching to the lost in their circles, if they aren’t teaching those they convert and teaching them to reproduce those they are bringing in, then the church will eventually slow down and eventually stop growing altogether.
What happens is we will look inward, want to stay in the barn and our focus is on making this the best barn possible, but the crops are left untended, new fields left desolate and the ground unplanted.
Whoever the sower is, he must go to the fields, or there won’t be a harvest. Paul couldn’t help but speak the gospel into the fields no matter what else he did. Even in prison, he would preach to the guards and mature them if they believed, while he would write to all the churches at the same time.
In order for there to be a harvest, there must be planting, there must be watering, there must be bringing in the Harvest and then we start it all over and do it again, as long as there is one soul to harvest, we go. We take those with us who need to mature and we show them as well as teach them and that’s how it was done in the beginning.
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