What Makes Jesus Unique? No one else made the claims that He did, He is alive...............
All the great religious leaders of history have one thing in common: they are dead. Only one man has risen from a grave never again to taste death. Jesus Christ died, was buried, remained in the grave for 3 days, then was raised to life again.
Jesus is unique. He is the only one proven to be the Son of God because God validated His Kingship and accepted His payment for our sins all with one incredible stroke: He raised Jesus from the dead!
Paul opens his letter to the Romans with this evidence about who Jesus is:
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. Romans 1:1-4
Because Jesus Christ is very much alive, five things are true right now that wouldn’t be true if He were just another dead religious leader like Confucius, Mohammed or Buddha.
Because Jesus was raised from the dead and is alive…Prayers are answered, We can talk to Jesus 24/7
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For Moses said, honor your father and your mother, and whoever speaks evil, a father or mother must be put to death. But you say, if anyone tells his father or mother, whatever benefit you might have received from me is corbyn. That is an offering devoted to God. You no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Let me explain.
The Law of God commanded men and women to care for their parents and honor their parents, including in their old age. But over the years, these religious leaders who didn't really want to do that had come up with and codified a concept called Corbin. Essentially, you could tag anything you owned furniture, money, property. As corbyn, you could give it this tag, and that would mean it had been dedicated to God and therefore couldn't be used for anything else, you didn't actually have to give it to the temple. You could just say, oh, this item is basically a memorial to God.
I've dedicated it to God. And so here's why they would do this because mothers and fathers would come to their kids in their old age and say, hey, I can't work, I've got no income, can you help? And these Jewish men were saying, I'd love to, but all my spare money and all my investments are corbin. They've all been dedicated to God. They would say, Well, I noticed you're still spending it.
Yes, for the Lord, it's corbin. And Jesus is turning the table on these Pharisees and scribes by saying, you're so concerned about my disciples not keeping your madeup laws, but you're not even keeping the laws that actually come from God. In fact, you invent new laws to help you avoid keeping the laws that God gave you and teach others to do the same. You're so worried about my disciples not washing their hands, but you're letting your own parents live in poverty. He says you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you've handed down, and you do many similar things.
Summoning the crowd again. He told them, listen to me, all of you, and understand nothing goes into a person from outside that can defile him. But the things that come out of a person are what defile him. So remember, the food laws God gave to Israel were for the purpose of making them distinct, reminding them and the nations around them that they were set apart for God. They were not to live like everyone else.
But somewhere along the line, the Israelites began to believe that the food laws were actually making them righteous. That by eating kosher food, I'm actually being made righteous. And Jesus says, don't be stupid. Sin doesn't come from what you eat. Although we should talk about fried Twinkies.
Sin is not a food. Jesus is saying, sin comes from evil desires within the heart of a person. Sin comes from within and makes its way, finds its expression in your actions, in your speech and your thoughts. Jesus point was that the Pharisees and scribes were keeping all the food laws religiously, but their treatment of their own parents showed that their heart was wicked. So if following food laws could have made their hearts righteous, then their hearts would have been righteous.
And that's exactly what he does when we turn and give our lives to Him. He gives us a new heart with new desires. It says when he went into the house, away from the crowd, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, are you also as lacking in understanding? Don't you realize that nothing going into a person from the outside can defile him, for it doesn't go into his heart, but into the stomach and is eliminated.
And then underlined this thus he declared all foods clean. Food doesn't defile a person. Jesus says food comes in and food goes out, but the heart remains. And the problem is that we're born with a heart that wants to sin. We're born with a heart that gravitates toward temporary pleasure at any cost, including harm and destruction to us and those around us.
That's our default condition. I want what's going to bring me pleasure right now or very, very soon. I don't care if it damages me in the long run. I don't care if it hurts other people in the long run. That's our default condition.
That's why we need a new heart. It's interesting that the Gospel of Mark was a collaboration between a disciple named John Mark and Peter. Peter provided the information and John Mark wrote it down and then edited it for a Roman audience. And by the time years later, peter's looking back on this event with Cornelius, he had realized that when Jesus was teaching this, Peter looks back and he goes, oh. That was the moment Jesus said, all foods are clean.
It took Peter years to understand what Jesus was saying all the way back then, because when Jesus was among his disciples, ceremonial laws were not the distinguishing mark of the people of God. The fact that they were following Jesus was the distinguishing mark of the people of God. That they recognized Jesus as the Messiah was the distinguishing mark. And on the day of Pentecost, in Acts chapter two, the Holy Spirit dwelling within every believer became the distinguishing mark of the people of God. Believers are marked by a new heart with new desires they're made distinct from the world around them by the presence of God within them.
Make a note of this. The distinguishing mark of the nation of Israel was their adherence to the law of God. Their adherence to the law of God. That means they followed the law of God. The distinguishing mark of the church is the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Indwelling every believer and then turn back with me to Acts 1017. It says while Peter was deeply perplexed about what the vision he had seen might mean, right away the men who had been sent by Cornelius, having asked directions to Simon's house, stood at the gate. They called out asking if Simon, who was also Amen Peter, was lodging there. As Peter's vision ends, the mercy seat by Cornelius arrives looking for him. While Peter was thinking about the vision, the Spirit told him, three men are here looking for you.
Get up, go downstairs and go with them. With no doubts at all, because I have sent them. Then Peter went down to the Amen and said, here I am, the one you're looking for. What's the reason you're here? They said, Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and godfearing man who has a good reputation with the whole Jewish nation, was divinely directed by a holy angel to call you to his house and hear a message from you.
Peter then invited them in and gave them lodging. Peter knows God is doing something. He just can't put the pieces together quite yet. Peter is actually following the old Covenant law by showing hospitality and inviting these men to stay with him even though they're Gentiles. Because they were coming to stay with him, he would be able to control the environment and the food and all of that sort
It would be an entirely different thing for Peter to go into the home of a Gentile, where he would have no control over how anything was prepared, anything was served, or what cleanliness standards were followed. This is why the Holy Spirit had to tell him, go with them with no doubts at all, because I have sent them. And again we see that Peter didn't seem to have any animosity toward the Gentiles. He just wasn't sure how he could go into one of their homes without sinning against God. But that immediate concern had been laid to rest by the Lord Jesus himself, who had given Peter a direct command to go to the house of Cornelius.
The next day he got up and set out with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa went with him. Acts 11/ 2 will tell us that Peter took six of the brothers from Joppa with him. They were circumcised Hebrew Jews, and the Spirit gave Peter the wisdom to have these men join him on this trip. And I say that because, as we shall see in our next study, these men will serve as important witnesses to the amazing events that will transpire in the house of Cornelius. I'll share a couple of thoughts in closing today, the Church has been grafted in like a branch being grafted into a tree, the tree of Israel.
In this sense, we're the chosen people of God too. Israel was initially called to be a light to the nations, but that task has now been given to the Church, and the Church will fulfill that calling until she's taken to be with Jesus. But like Israel, as I said, we too are called to be set apart. We're called to live lives that are distinct from the world around us. We're called to be different.
Peter wrote to believers, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the One who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. We have the Holy Spirit. The world is not.
We are following Jesus. The world is not. We are going this way. The world is going that way. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the crowd, enter through the narrow gate.
This is so heavy. I don't think we understand how heavy what Jesus is saying here is. For the gate is wide and the road broad. That leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and how difficult the road that leads to life and few find it.
Jesus said the road that leads to destruction is easy. It's broad. It's a pleasant stroll for most of your life. He said, the road that leads to eternal life is narrow, it's difficult, and there's not many who find it because not many want it. As a pastor, it pains me when I see believers who are trying to figure out how to follow Jesus and simultaneously fit in with the world.
It pains me because it's impossible. I heard someone put it well too. They said, You've got too much of Jesus to enjoy the world and too much of the world to enjoy Jesus, and you just end up miserable. And I just want to share with you an honesty. This is not just a message for teenagers.
We never outgrow this. We never outgrow a desire to fit in. Do you know that? It's one of the strongest innate human needs. It affects our psychology tremendously.
We just want to fit in. And one of the easiest ways to fit in is by adopting the beliefs of the majority in the culture. It doesn't even matter what they are. I've shared this before. They've shown that the way social engineering works is that in our culture today, all those who want to influence society have to do is convince society that the majority of people hold this belief.
So, in other words, let's take a belief, whatever belief you want to take, let's do something ludicrous. We should all chop a leg off every cat, okay? No, I don't have something against cats. I'm realizing now, this is the second time in 48 hours that I've gone up against cats. But something ludicrous.
Let's chop a leg off every cat. And people go, that's preposterous. That's ridiculous. And here's what you do, is you begin to post on Facebook, on Twitter, TikTok, every social influencing channel. These videos about people saying, people need to open up their minds and understand that chopping a leg off a cat is really good for a cat.
It makes them lighter, makes them more aerodynamic. And scientists are all saying this is a necessary evolution of the species. And then the next version of cats are going to be amazing, but we have to go through this. This is what all the experts are saying right now. And then they go on there and they use bots to give these videos millions of likes, tons of fake comments and people go, wow, this thing is really blowing up.
And it looks like everyone pretty much seems to agree we should be chopping a leg off cats. We should do this. And everybody who doesn't have an anchor, who doesn't have a moral or intellectual tether to the truth will follow completely the winds of what they believe the culture are doing. So if you don't have some kind of anchor to a system of truth that is unchanging, you don't have some kind of moral tether to something, you are a kite who will blow wherever the winds of the culture go. And wherever you think even those winds are blowing, that's where you'll go.
Because your thoughts and your actions and your views and your beliefs will be driven entirely by this deep rooted psychological need to fit in. And your subconscious is telling you, if you believe what everybody else believes, then you'll fit in. It doesn't matter how preposterous the belief is, you will believe it. If you have no tether to the truth, you will believe whatever the majority believes. And if you're any student of history at all, you will know that history is replete with examples of the majority being horribly, horribly wrong.
You will know that history has killed millions because of beliefs held by the majority. You will know that millions have suffered and died because of beliefs that were held by the majority. Hitler was democratically elected. Russians were in favor of Stalin. And on and on and on it goes.
Doctors were in favor of opioids. We could go on and on and on where there's no tether to the truth. You will blow wherever the winds of culture go. And what God says is, he says, if you're going to be my people, you're going to be set apart because you're going to be anchored to me. You're going to be anchored to the truth.
You will not be blown wherever the winds go, but all of culture might blow over there, but you're going to stay here because you are rooted in me. You are set apart from me. You don't go wherever the winds blow. You're rooted in the truth. And that is why, as Christians, we must come to terms with the truth that we are to be set apart for the Lord.
There are no double agents in the kingdom of God. None. Make peace with it. Why? Because everything that seems so pressing right now is going to fade away into nothingness so much faster than you think.
We have no concept how long eternity is. Scripture says this life is a vapor. And the only tactic that Satan really has is to try and convince you that right now is everything. Do you know that's a doctrine from the pit of hell you only live once. Demonic doctrine.
Yolo, demonic doctrine. You don't only live once. You're going to live forever somewhere. Somewhere. And the only tactic that Satan has is to try and tell you that right now is the only thing that matters.
And it doesn't. It doesn't. The better things of God are not only waiting for you in eternity, they are available to you now, available to you now in this life. But they have a price. And I don't want to lie to you.
They have a price. And the price is you will be set apart for God. You do not belong to the world. You belong to him. You will not fit in.
The whole world will blow this way and you will stay here. And you won't be able to fly under the radar forever. People will begin to notice that you're not glowing with the wind like you're supposed to be. And you have to be comfortable being set apart for Jesus. You have to be.
The second thing I want to share with you in closing is just the glorious truth that if you belong to Jesus, he has made you clean. Hear me please. He has made you clean. He has robed you in the righteousness of Jesus. And if he has declared you clean and righteous, then you are clean and righteous.
It doesn't matter what anybody else says. The fact that the Spirit of God dwells within you is undeniable evidence that you are clean and righteous and holy through Jesus. Hear me on this. How you feel does not affect that. Truth has no bearing on it.
Jesus is the judge. What he says is clean is clean. And we have to choose to stand on that truth. We have to usher out every contradictory thought and feeling. This is what scripture is talking about when it says we have to take captive every thought that sets itself up against the word of God.
These thoughts that come in and say you're not righteous, you should be ashamed. He doesn't love you. You have to get those out of your head because they're in competition with the truth and they're not accurate. We have to submit our minds and our emotions to the truth of God. Paul said, the Father chose us in Him, in Jesus before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless, in love before Him, not because we can make ourselves holy and blameless.
He chose us because he knew he could. He knew he could. And BJ's going to come up in a moment and pray that all of us who belong to Jesus would feel in a real way and comprehend in our minds and our hearts that we've been made righteous by Jesus. But because we forget we have need of communion, it's a reminder. And when we take it, we should confess our sins to the Lord.
Don't take communion without confessing your sins to the Lord, if you're aware. And then we can be blessed by the tangible reminder that our sins have been paid for by the body and blood of Jesus. And as we take those elements, we can say, thank you, Lord, for dying for me. Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for robing me in your righteousness.
The Gospel Goes to the Gentiles (Part 2) Date:11/27/22
Passage: Acts 10:24-11:18 ..Speaker: Jeff Thompson
Peter visits the household of Cornelius and preaches the Gospel. What happens next changes the course of history.
God has spoken to a Roman centurion named Cornelius and told him to send for a man named Peter. This, of course, is the apostle Peter. And at the same time, Jesus gave Peter a vision of a sheet coming down from heaven full of all kinds of animals that were both clean and unclean under Hebrew food laws. God then told Peter to kill and eat whatever he wanted, telling him not to call anything impure that God has made clean the messengers of Cornelius. Find Peter in the city of Joppa.
Jesus tells Peter to go with them. And now we continue in verse 24. The following day, he that's Peter entered Caesarea. Now, Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. Verse 14 will tell us in the next chapter that Cornelius had gathered all of his household.
That would have included his slaves, his attendants, his family, any relatives and close friends, and anyone he could get to come in anticipation of the message that God was going to deliver through Peter. Seven orthodox Jews, Peter, and seven of the brothers from Joppa were on their way to do something none of them had ever done before. They were going to enter the house of a Gentile, and I'm certain that none of them, even Peter, could imagine what was about to happen. It would change the course of history.
Verse 25. When Peter entered, Cornelius met him, fell at his feet, and worshiped him. Cornelius did this because he knew Peter was being sent as a messenger from God. Then we read in the next verse, but Peter lifted him up and said, stand up. I myself am also a man.
Write this down as your first filling, and then we'll unpack it. The servants of Jesus, direct worship to Jesus. The servants of Jesus, direct worship to Jesus. They do not accept worship or veneration, for to do so would be to steal it from Jesus. When we reach Acts, chapter 14, we'll see Paul and Barnabas ministering in the city of Listra, and the people will respond by shouting, the gods have come down to us in human form.
And here's how the text tells us. Paul and Barnabas responded. The apostles Barnabas and Paul tore their robes when they heard this and rushed into the crowd, shouting people, why are you doing these things? We are people also, just like you, and we are proclaiming good news to you that you turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them. At the end of the Book of Revelation, the apostle John writes, I John, am the one who heard and saw these things.
When I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had shown them to me. But he said to me, don't do that. I am a fellow servant with you, your brothers, the prophets, and those who keep the words of this book and worship God. The servants of Jesus, be they human or angelic, do not accept worship or veneration. They direct all praise, worship, and glory to Jesus.
I want to show you a photo. It's a little hard to see because the projector is not great, but that is a statue. It's got a really sort of ornate background, but it's a bronze statue. In St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican sits this statue of Peter.
It was crafted over the centuries, so many pilgrims have kissed its right foot that the individual toes are now barely distinguishable. Today, most pilgrims opt for touching instead of kissing the feet. But I have a duty to point these things out when they come up in the text. Devout Catholics and the Vatican itself encourage this kind of behavior when in Scripture we have an example of a man falling at the feet of the living Peter. And what does Peter do?
Then the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom. When the centurion who was standing opposite him saw the way he breathed his last, he said, truly, this man was the Son of God. In addition to that centurion in Cornelius, there's another account in the Gospels that features a centurion and moves me to tears pretty much every time I read it. Hopefully not this time, though. It's found in Matthew chapter eight and in Luke chapter seven.
Jesus is entering the town of Capernaum, and some of the Jewish elders from the town come up to him with a message. There's a centurion who seems to be a God fearer like Cornelius. They tell Jesus that he loves our nation and has even built us a synagogue. He's paid for it himself. Being a sincere Godfarer, this centurion cares for his servants, and one of them has become deathly ill.
In fact, he's become paralyzed from whatever is attacking his body and is in terrible agony. This centurion did not consider himself worthy to approach Jesus directly, so he asked the elders to approach him on his behalf and beseech him to heal his servant. Jesus agrees to go to the house. The centurion knows that Jews are not supposed to enter the homes of Gentiles. So when Jesus gets close to the house, he sends some of his friends to intercept Jesus with this message.
Lord, don't trouble yourself, since I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof. That is why I didn't even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed, for I too am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under my command. I say to this one, Go. And he goes, and to another, Come.
And he comes and to my servant, do this, and he does it. As a military man, this centurion understood the concept of authority, and he recognized that Jesus had authority over sickness and death. He understood that all Jesus had to do was say the Word and the sickness in his servant would have to leave because Jesus had authority in this centurion's mind, it was a simple chain of command. Then it says hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him, truly, I tell you, I've not found anyone in Israel with so great a faith. I tell you that many will come from the east and west to share the banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the kingdom of heaven.
Then Jesus gave the friends this message for the centurion as you have believed, let it be done for you. And his servant was healed. That very moment when Jesus was on the earth as a man, he emptied himself of his omniscience. Omniscience is just a fancy word for being all-knowing, knowing everything. It's an attribute of God.
God is omniscient. But when Jesus came to the earth as a man, he gave that up and really became a man. Everything that Jesus knew, he learned, or had revealed to him by his Father through the Holy Spirit. At this time, Jesus had been ministering and performing miracles. Crowds were following him.
But Scripture tells us that he knew their hearts. He knew that they didn't really believe he was the Messiah, the Son of God. He knew that his own people were not really receiving him. And then along comes this centurion. And when his friends stopped Jesus from coming all the way to the house, telling him he need only say the word I love that.
And people like this centurion will be with me in heaven one day, feasting right next to the patriarchs. And then he says to the centurion's friend, it's done. And the servant is healed that very moment. I love this because it captures a moment when Jesus is blessed by the faith of someone, he's blessed by the faith of someone. He doesn't need anything from us.
But incredibly, God is able to be blessed by us. The way that we bless Him is with our faith showing, with our words and our actions that we genuinely believe he is who he says he is. It's the heart of a father when your children treat you as though you actually are a good father when they make assumptions about the care you will provide for them because they have confidence that you love them, that blesses the heart of a father. That's how we bless God. When we act and speak and live in such a way that shows we genuinely believe we have a Father in heaven who loves us, that blesses him.
It blesses him. Cornelius didn't just believe in God, he believed God. So when the Lord spoke to him, he obeyed and revealed his faith by gathering everyone he could to hear the message God was going to deliver through Peter. That's the way to study the scriptures, where to adopt a posture before the Word of God that says, I'm here to get my orders. I'm here to learn whatever you want me to learn.
I'm here to change whatever you want me to change. I'm ready to respond to whatever you want to say to me, because you are in authority over me, Lord. When asked what makes a great preacher, Charles Spurgeon is said to have answered, a great congregation. Because where a congregation is hungry for God's word, submitted to God's Word, and eager to obey God's word, I guarantee there will be good preaching and teaching. I guarantee it.
I'm thankful for you, by the way. You are a good congregation. Verse 34, says, Peter began to speak. Now, I truly understand that God doesn't show favoritism, but in every nation, the person who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. So Peter keeps moving closer and closer to the revelation that God is working through him.
It bears mentioning again that much of this should not have been as radical to the apostles and the Jewish believers as it was all the way back in the Old Testament. Under the old covenant in the law, god had clearly given Israel commands to embrace foreigners who wanted to be part of Israel, who wanted to be part of the people of God. In Deuteronomy 10, god told them, for the Lord your god is the God of gods and Lord of lords the great, mighty, and awe-inspiring God. Showing no partiality and taking no bribe, he executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the resident alien, giving him food and clothing. You are also to love the resident alien since you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt.
Peter, at this moment, was saying, wow, this is amazing. What a revolutionary concept. God will accept everyone who responds to the revelation he's given them, even if they're a foreigner and God's like. That's always been my thing, Peter. That's always been my thing in this moment.
In Peter's mind, the Gentiles don't have to become Jewish anymore to be part of the church, but they're still in a different category. Much like foreigners who joined the nation of Israel, they would never be accepted on the same level as ethnic Hebrews, even though technically they were part of the nation. Yes, they're part of Israel. Would you let your daughter marry one of them?
Would you have them over for dinner?
But they're part of the nation. Of course. Of course, they are. We're all equal here. Of course.
But God's going to get to this too. Peter now begins preaching to the household of Cornelius. In verse 36, he that God sent the message to the Israelites proclaiming the good news of peace through Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all, a brief opening line that is loaded with massive truths. In that opening line, Peter tells them that Jesus was sent by God to humanity to bring a message of good news.
And the good news is that a man can have peace with God through Jesus Christ. You know, the events that took place throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John preached, Jesus' impact during the three years of his earthly ministry was massive. He electrified Israel with his miracles, his teaching, and his conflict with the religious leaders of the day. Pretty much everyone in the country had heard of him and knew who he was and what he was doing. It's also possible that Philip the Evangelist had been preaching in Caesarea and may have even started a church there and shared some more of that knowledge with the household of Cornelius.
But the idea is you guys have all heard about Jesus. You've all heard about it he says you've heard how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who were under the tyranny of the devil because God was with him. We ourselves are witnesses of everything he did in both the Judean country and in Jerusalem, and yet they killed him by hanging him on a tree. The apostle Paul would later write to the Corinthians that Jesus appeared to Peter than the rest of the twelve disciples, then to more than 500 believers at one time, then to James, then to all the apostles, and finally to Himself. The method of Jesus' death crucifixion is specifically mentioned by Peter to make two points.
Firstly, that Jesus was given a criminal's death. He's highlighting the contrast and the injustice between who Jesus was a man anointed by God, full of the Holy Spirit, who went about doing good and healing the oppressed, and how Jesus was treated. He was put to death as a criminal. He's also mentioning this for a second reason that both the Romans and the Gentiles participated in the murder of Jesus. The Jews arranged it, and the Gentile Romans executed it, for it was our sin that he died for.
On the Cross - verse 40 - God raised up this man on the third day and caused him to be seen, not by all the people, but by us, whom God appointed as witnesses, who ate and drank with Him after he rose from the dead. He specifically mentions that they ate and drank with him because people believed in ghosts at this time. But everyone at this time knew that a ghost can't eat or drink because they have no physical body. And so, when Peter mentions this, he's making the point that Jesus was physically alive from the dead. He was resurrected in a physical body.
They witnessed him eating and drinking, they ate and drank with him. He wanted them to know that Jesus in his resurrected form interacted with the physical world. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead. The Gospel message is incomplete if it does not include the vital piece of information that Jesus will judge every man and woman. There won't be a vote on who gets into heaven.
Write this down and we'll keep talking about it. Every person will be judged by Jesus according to the standard of his righteousness. The standard of his righteousness.
But since obviously nobody can meet his standard of righteousness, how is it possible that some will be found acceptable while all others will not? Please don't miss this. I'm about to share one of the single most important pieces of doctrine every person needs to understand. Every person. If none of us can meet his standard, how is it possible that some people will?
It's because those who put their faith in Jesus are not given the power to meet his standard of sinless perfection. They are given his sinless perfection. Let me explain. It wouldn't help you if God gave you the power to meet his standard of sinless perfection because you've already blown it. You don't have a time machine.
The option of producing a complete, perfect life is long gone. Can you say amen if you have a modicum of self awareness? Amen. Jesus took the punishment for all your sins, past, present, and future at the cross. He took the punishment that you and I deserved on our behalf.
Praise Jesus for that. But that still leaves this issue of God's standard of sinless perfection that we must meet in order to be part of his family and be with Him for eternity. And that's the incredible part of what took place on the cross, the incredible second part. It's the reason it's called the divine exchange. You see, not only did Jesus take our sins on the cross, but he gave us his righteousness.
There was an exchange. Paul says it like this in two Corinthians 5/21, god made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. He gets our sin, we get his righteousness. It's scandalous, it's absurd, but praise God, it's true. It's true.
The best way I can explain this is by taking you back to my childhood and early teen years, where I had some very, very suspect theology that was deposited into me by some very well-intentioned pastors and youth pastors and people in the churches that I grew up in. You see, I grew up believing that when I died, I would be brought before God who would judge my life, and we'd be in some sort of cosmic courtroom, and everyone who had ever lived and died would be in the audience. And my life would be judged by way of video evidence displayed on a giant screen for billions of people to see. When your youth pastor tells you not to go watch that Rated movie, it hits differently when you've got this picture in your head, I'll tell you. And then what would happen in my mind is an angel would put in this VHS cassette, push Play, and there it would all be on the screen.
Everything I had ever done wrong, every impure thought, every cuss word, every wrong act, every single sin. But then at the end, Jesus would say, I've died for you and forgiven you. You may enter heaven, and then into heaven, I would go. Where I would avoid contact with everyone else for the rest of eternity because they knew every sin I had ever committed. And I just walk around forever looking at the floor.
And you're puzzled because on the screen is a young boy who seems to have lived a long time ago.
And you're watching him. And he's just the best kid. He's kind and respectful to his parents and always cares about others, never trying to get revenge on anyone who wrongs him. And he's a kid and he talks to God all the time. He's just amazing.
And as the video continues playing and the boy on the screen gets older and older, you realize it's Jesus. You're watching a video of the life of Jesus and he just becomes more and more amazing and more and more wonderful and he's just perfect. And you don't say anything because you're just so captured by what you're watching on the screen. But eventually, you can't take it anymore. And you say, I need to tell the court.
That's not me. I wish that was, but that's not me. That's not my life. That's clearly the life of Jesus. And God says, well, I guess we better doublecheck the evidence.
The angel ejects the VHS cassette and holds it out toward the audience so that you can see the edge that has the label on it. And you can clearly see that the label said Jesus' life. But somebody's taken a Sharpie and drawn a line through the name of Jesus. They've written your name on there instead. Everyone knows what's going on, but to your amazement, God, the judge, says, I think everyone here can tell what's going on.
The evidence is clear. This is obviously a video of your life. And then he says, because you've lived a perfectly righteous life and there are no outstanding warrants or charges against you, I'm delighted to welcome you to my family and into heaven for all eternity. That's what I'm talking about when I say those who put their faith in Jesus are not given the power to meet his standard of sinless perfection, they are given his sinless perfection. We are robed in the righteousness of Jesus.
Not righteousness like Jesus, the righteousness of Jesus. When God looks at us, it is as though we are as righteous as Jesus. He didn't give us a fresh start so that we could try again. Because news flash, we just messed that up too. Listen, if we could lose our salvation, we would lose our salvation.
If there's any way we could mess it up, we would mess it up. I'm sorry if you haven't realized this about yourself yet, but Jesus gave us something we could never mess up his righteousness. Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead in our place. He lived a perfect life in our place. He died for our sins and was judged in our place.
And he rose from the dead in our place so that we could follow in his footsteps and rise as he did. If you haven't written this down yet, would you please do so? Those who put their faith in Jesus are not given the power to meet his standard of sinless perfection. They are given his sinless perfection. And now, before we go on, I just need to correct some of that atrocious theology that I just poured out for you.
In some of those illustrations, you need to know that in reality, those who have placed their faith in Jesus were judged at the cross because Jesus was judged in our place. If your faith is in Jesus, you've already been judged two thousand years ago at the cross of Calvary. The only judgment awaiting believers is for eternal rewards, for good works. Our salvation is a settled issue. Secondly, you need to know that those who reject Jesus will stand before Him and be judged.
Nobody will say it. It will all become clear the second they see them in an instant. Nobody will refute the judgments rendered by Jesus, because they will know that they're all true. All of them. And then, thirdly, praise God, the sins of every believer have been paid for and will not be remembered in eternity.
That's right. We will be able to look each other in the eye of heaven forever. For we will be who we were created to be. And we will enjoy fellowship with one another on a completely different level. Because all of us will be freed from our sins, our issues, our insecurities, and our infirmities.
There is a version of every person in this room who would blow your mind with how awesome they are. You're going to meet them. You're going to meet them. We're going to hang out together for eternity. The gospel message must include the reality of sin.
The coming judgment because it is the reason we so desperately need to be forgiven of our sins. We have an appointment with judgment apart from the mercy and grace of Jesus, and the only way to be forgiven and made righteous is through Jesus.
Peter continues in verses 43, and he says all the prophets testify about him, about Jesus, that through his name, everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins. We hear again this hint that Peter is in real time having his understanding unlocked. He's beginning to realize what Jesus was talking about when he told his disciples, I have other sheep that are not from the sheep pen.
I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd. While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even when the Gentiles heard them speaking in tongues in other languages and declaring the greatness of God. If you've been with us through our study, you will recall that this is the same thing that happened to the Hebrew believers in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. In Acts chapter two, it was the same thing that happened to the Samaritan believers when Peter and John were called up to minister with Philip.
The point is that they, the Gentiles, were receiving the same Holy Spirit as the Jews and the Samaritans. God was giving His Spirit to and placing His Spirit in these Gentiles the same way he had done it with the Jewish believers in Jerusalem. This made it clear that God was making no distinctions between Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles. God had eliminated any kind of class structure in the church, and God was not requiring the Gentiles to be circumcised or follow any Jewish rituals or anything like that. This was once again undeniable and incontrovertible evidence.
The theology of the Jerusalem Church would need to change to line up with what God was doing. And we should also note there was no special teaching on the Holy Spirit that needed to be given before these Gentiles could receive the Holy Spirit. All they did was listen and believe. And when they believed they received the Holy Spirit and they were regenerated, their dead spirits were brought to life. Simply put, when a person repents and believes the Gospel, the Holy Spirit comes into their lives, there's no such thing as a Christian who doesn't have the Holy Spirit.
Declare the greatness of God, it says. Then Peter responded, can anyone withhold water and prevent these people from being baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? He commanded underline and commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, we always see baptism follow salvation. Peter even makes the point that since these Gentiles have clearly received the Holy Spirit, they must already be saved and should therefore be baptized.
It's clear evidence that baptism is not what saves a person, but it is what should immediately follow salvation. And I think Peter was being smart when he got the six Jewish men who had accompanied him from Joppa to do the baptizing. Peter was like, I'm getting you in on this as well. You're not going to be able to pretend this whole thing didn't happen because you're going to be the ones who baptized these guys. So later on, when we have to go give a report about this to somebody, you're all going to be witnesses because you're part of this now, and that's what he's doing.
It says, then they asked him. They asked Peter to stay for a few days. And these are other evidences of genuine salvation. There's a hunger for fellowship with other believers and the desire to learn more about Jesus. Even if someone is a brand new Christian, we see these desires when the Holy Spirit is present in a person.
They want to be around other believers who love Jesus, and they want to learn more about Jesus by staying with them. Peter would, of course, be eating with them, and he did. All the pieces came together, and Peter was able to understand the full picture of what God was doing in bringing the Gentiles and the Jews together. In one church on Pentecost, Peter had quoted the prophet Joel in his sermon to the crowd when he said, then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. His thinking had been, of course, that everyone could become a Jew and be saved.
But now he was realizing there weren't Jews and Gentiles anymore. There was just the Church of Jesus, and Jesus would give his spirit to anyone who called on his name, repented, and placed their faith in him. There were no other prerequisites or requirements. While Peter chose to stay in fellowship with the Gentile converts in Caesaria, word of what had taken place reached the Jerusalem church and shocked them. All they heard was Peter's defiling himself by eating with uncircumcised Gentiles.
Let's continue into chapter eleven. The apostles and the brothers and sisters who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the Circumcision Party criticized him, saying, you went to uncircumcised men and ate with them. The Circumcision Party was a sect within the very early Church made up of Pharisees who claimed to be Christians but believed and taught that one had to become Jewish in order to be saved. Most notably, this belief mandated circumcision for men who wanted to join the church.
Members of the Circumcision Party are also referred to by scholars as Judaizers, which means to become a Judean or to live like the Jews. As we shall see in later chapters of the Book of Acts and later books in the New Testament, some members of the Circumcision Party were genuine believers who would change their wrong beliefs over time, but others were not genuine believers, and they would eventually oppose the early Church. It says in verse four that Peter began to explain to them step by step I was in the town of Joppa praying, and I saw in a trance an object that resembled a large sheet coming down, being lowered by its four corners from heaven, and it came to me. When I looked closely and considered it, I saw the fourfooted animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky. I also heard a voice telling me, get up, Peter.
Kill and eat. No, Lord, I said, for nothing impure or richly unclean has ever entered my mouth. But a voice from heaven answered a second time. What God has made clean, you must not call impure. Now, this happened three times, and everything was drawn up again into heaven.
At that very moment, three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to accompany them with no doubts at all. These six brothers he's obviously gesturing to the brothers from Joppa, also accompanied me, and we went into the man's house. He reported to us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, send to Joppa and call for Simon, who is also named Peter. He will speak a message to you by which you and all your household will be saved.
Peter expands on the account we read in chapter ten by telling us that a Divine visitor specifically told him that Peter's message would save him and his household. As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came down on them just as on us. In the beginning, I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If then God gave them the same gift that he also gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, how could I possibly hinder God? Peter tells him it wasn't my call.
God does what he wants, and it's clear that God has given the Gentiles the same Holy Spirit he's given us. This was a seismic theological shift. If God considered these gentiles worthy of being temples of his spirit, then it meant that ceremonial laws and food laws no longer had the ability to make a man clean or unclean. Before God says in verses 18 when they heard this, they became silent and they glorified God, saying so then God has given repentance resulting in life even to the Gentiles. When we look at the actions of the circumcision party over the rest of the New Testament, I think it's likely that in this moment the sincere believers glorified God, while the insincere members probably just got angry eyebrows and held their tongues because they knew there was nothing they could say.
They couldn't argue with Peter's logic because it was arguing with God. Unquestionably, the apostles and the other believers definitely glorified God in this moment. And again, this marked a seismic shift in the Church, because if this had not happened, the Church would never have begun to evangelize Gentiles like us in earnest. It took years, but the Church finally realized that because Jesus had lived a perfect life on our behalf and fulfilled the law on our behalf, all Jewish ceremonial laws had passed away with the old covet. Write this down.
This is what it meant in the New Covenant were made clean and righteous by faith in Jesus. We're made clean and righteous by faith in Jesus.
As Western men and women, we don't generally like the concept of submission. If asked the question, do you submit to your boss? You'd likely say no. Or at a minimum, you'd fight me covet the terminology. You'd be like, use a different word, Jeff.
I mean, in reality, you do submit to your boss, right? Because if you didn't, you wouldn't be working there very long. You just don't like the word submit, do you? Something in the natural flesh of a woman shafts at the biblical command to submit to one's husband, just as something in the natural flesh of a man chafes at the biblical command to submit to governmental authorities must be a typo. Hear me on this, because it's deeper than you think.
Our flesh values deeply the illusion that we are independent of all authorities. I'll say it again. Our flesh values deeply the illusion that we are entirely independent of all authorities. That's why when churches talk about the Great Commission that Jesus gave to his disciples, it's usually quoted as, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and the rest gets left out.
Do you know what the rest of the Great Commission is? Teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples by doing what? Preaching the gospel? Baptizing new believers and teaching them to observe.
That means to obey everything he had taught the disciples. The terms Christian and disciple of Jesus are synonyms. You cannot be a Christian without also being a disciple of Jesus. You cannot accept the forgiveness of Jesus but refuse to obey Jesus, as we often put it. You cannot accept Jesus as Savior, but reject him as Lord.
It's not an offer Jesus makes. Jesus is our Lord. He's our commanding officer. He gives orders, and we obey. Because to be a Christian means willingly placing your life under the authority of Jesus.
That's what it means to be a Christian. I'll ask the worship team to come up and get ready. I was struck by this theme of authority that comes up around Cornelius and the other centurion's interactions with Jesus in Capernaum. Cornelius tells Peter, God commanded me to get ready to receive a message that he had commanded you to bring to me. So here I am with my entire household, ready to receive our orders.
The centurion in Capernaum told Jesus, I recognize that you have authority over sickness and death, therefore, don't inconvenience yourself by coming to my house. Just speak the word. I know it'll be done. And Jesus told his disciples to make more disciples by this standard, teaching men and women to obey his commands.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives serves as inarguable evidence that God has approved of us because we are robed in the righteousness of Jesus. God has marked us as clean in his sight. But they hear me on this. The presence of the Holy Spirit, we love the thing I'm clean. We love it.
I'm approved by God, we love it. But understand this. Paul writes about the synthesis one as well. The presence of the Holy Spirit in us also marks us as God's property.
Paul said it like this in his second letter to the Corinthians, don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body. The Christian life gets a lot simpler when we begin to understand this. It doesn't get easier when we begin to understand this, but it does get simpler.
Jesus is my commanding officer. He gives the orders and I obey. Many Christians are confused and engaged in all kinds of foolish living because in their minds, they're at the table as equals with Jesus making decisions together. And Jesus in their mind is looking at them and saying, but what do you think? What do you think?
I mean, here's how I'm going to approach the surgery. But what I really want to know is what you think we should do. Where should we cut first? That scenario is ridiculous because you know nothing about heart surgery. I don't either.
The gap in medical knowledge between you and me and the heart surgeon is about the size of the Grand Canyon. We get that. But we don't get this. How immeasurable, then, is the gap in knowledge understanding, and wisdom between you and God in every subject? How great is that gap?
We are not God. We are not at the table to offer our input. He's our commanding officer. He gives orders and we obey. But, my goodness, we are blessed beyond measure for this reason.
Our commanding officer loves us. In fact, our commanding officer loved us so much that he died for us. He took every bullet, every shot, every hit for us. And every command that he gives us is for our good. Every command.
Therefore we gladly submit. Therefore we gladly obey. Therefore we gladly say that Jesus is King. Jesus is king. Let's pray.
Would you bow your head and close your eyes? Jesus, thank you for Your word. Thank you that you are the commanding officer of our lives. Thank you that we need not flounder in life directionless. We need only turn our focus and our attention to the One who has authority over us, who only commands us to do that which is good for us, who loves us and gave Himself for us.
And so, Jesus, I pray, first of all, would you forgive us where we have resisted and been rebellious against Your authority over our lives? Forgive us, Lord. You have never been anything but good. We have no reason to doubt and no reason to question. And so forgive us where we have ignored the ocean of evidence of Your kindness and instead listen to the lies of our flesh.
Forgive us, Lord, and wherever we need to turn and repent. Would you illuminate that right now in each of our individual lives by the power of Your Spirit, that we might repent and begin to follow our orders? Because you're the king. You're the king. And then, Jesus, thank you that we're robed in Your righteousness.
Thank you that you didn't just give us a second chance because we know we would have messed that up too. But You gave us Your righteousness that is more kind and good than we could ever put into words than we could ever express with a million songs. You're just so good to give us, you. And so I pray again this week for anyone who is living for you, following you as Lord, but is haunted by any shame from sins that you have forgiven. In Jesus's name, we speak the righteousness of Jesus over that life.
In Jesus name, we speak the truth of God's Word over that mind and we command every contradictory thought to leave in the name of Jesus and be replaced with the peace and the assurance that comes from the inalterable, unchangeable righteousness of Jesus that is ours through him. Thank you for that. Lord Jesus, we bless you and we love you. And just as we take this time to worship you, we just want you to be blessed. We don't want anything from you other than for you to just be blessed and to hear from the depths of our hearts.
Thank you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for caring about us. Thank you for lighting the way that leads to life. Thank you for calling us.
Walk on it. Help us to do it. Lord, we want to be a blessing to you. We love you so much. Jesus.
In your name, we pray. Amen.
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Passage: Acts 11:19-12:4 ...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
The Gospel explodes in the city of Antioch, as the first Jew/Gentile mixed church is bor
The Church was born on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem in Acts chapter Two and was made up almost entirely of ethnic Jews. It would be at least seven years before a similarly Gentile Church would be planted. That Church would be in Antioch, and we'll learn more about it in today's study. There were several reasons for that gap in time and why it took a while for the Gospel to make its way in earnest to the Gentiles. And when I say gentiles, I mean nonJews.
Firstly, a doctrinal foundation had to be established. The Church needed to be taught by the apostles and grow in their knowledge of Jesus, and the Jews needed to understand how Jesus connected to historical Judaism, how he was, the fulfillment of the Law, the end of the old covenant, and the ushering in of a new covenant. That all needed to be sorted first before you add Gentiles to the mix. Sort of like if you're starting a home renovation project. It's always nice when you can do one project at a time rather than starting four different projects at the same time, and it's absolute chaos and nothing gets done as efficiently.
The second reason for that gap in time is that mature leaders needed to be identified and developed. Immature believers do not make effective missionaries and do not plant healthy churches. It would have been a disaster if, during the first year, people who didn't even really understand Christianity went out and started planting churches. It would be a recipe for all kinds of heresy and errant beliefs, and it would be a total disaster.
And then third, as we've seen over our two previous studies, the long-established prejudices of the Jews toward the Gentiles needed to be eliminated. This was beginning to happen through the Apostle Peter and some of the Hellenistic Jews who had less of a hard time with the concept of associating with Gentiles. If you recall, a Hellenistic Jew is someone who was ethnically Jewish but was raised in Greek culture rather than Hebrew culture. In other words, they were raised outside of Israeli territory in Greek culture, which was the predominant culture in the Roman Empire at the time. As we shall see, what God does in Antiochus will not be organized by the Church in Jerusalem.
It will not even be inspired by Peter's interaction with the Gentile household of Cornelius, which we studied last week. But it will be the first Church to be made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers. So we'll pick things up in Acts chapter 11/19, where we read now those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. Speaking the word to no one except Jews serving as the narrator, Luke zooms out and flashes back in time to the moment when Saul began zealously persecuting the Church in Jerusalem, the time that we read about in Acts chapter One, where it says all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria. And it turns out that they went even further than Judea and Samaria.
So let's throw this map up because it's probably about time in our study for me to just walk us through where these places are. Geographically. All the blue part is the Mediterranean Sea. And so if you're looking at the Mediterranean, we are at the far eastern side of the Mediterranean. You've got Turkey to the north and Greece is up in the top left corner over there.
And then above Phoenicia to the north is the city of Antioch. And as the Jerusalem Church scattered, returning to their homes across Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus, they shared the Gospel with only Jews, because it was still their paradigm that the Gospel was a continuation of Judaism. And so, in their minds, Jesus was a Jewish messiah. And so those who wanted to follow him had to become Jewish. They believed that the good news of the Gospel was that the Jewish Messiah had come.
And so in their minds, they're thinking, why would a Gentile be excited about a Jewish Messiah coming? This is only good news for Jews. And so you have to become a Jew to be able to even understand the significance of the Gospel. Philip's ministry to the Samaritans and the Ethiopian Eunuch, as well as Peter's ministry to the household of Cornelius, happened quite a while after the Jerusalem Church was scattered. And as it was being scattered, most of them hadn't heard about any of these developments.
They didn't know that the Gospel had gone to the Gentiles and that Gentiles were being saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. As I shared a moment ago, our focus is going to be on the city of Antioch. It was located about 18 miles, or 29 km inland from the Mediterranean on the Orontes River. According to the ancient historian Josephus, it was the third most important and populous city in the Roman Empire, only behind Rome and Alexandria in Egypt. It was home to the Roman governor of the province of Syria.
And it had a population of this is massive. At that time it had a population of around half a million people and a large Jewish community that had been there practically since the city's founding in 300 BC. In Acts chapter Six, we read about the selection of seven men of good reputations full of spirit and wisdom who were chosen to oversee the distribution of food to the Hellenistic widows in the Jerusalem Church. You might recall Stephen and Philip were two of those seven, and another was Nikolaus, who was described as a convert from Antiochus. Antioch was an advanced city built from scratch around the Hippodamian grid system that was invented by the Romans.
The pattern that cities are laid out in of having a grid, in many cases with streets and avenues, that was invented and implemented by the Romans. It was enlarged and adorned by Caesar Augustus and Tiberius. Herod the Great added colonnades all the way along the main street and actually paved the street with polished stone. It was a political and commercial hub with the goods and produce of the East passing through on their way to the West. The city was deeply pagan and full of s*xual immorality, closely tied to the Roman goddess Daphne, who in mythology was the s*xual obsession of the god Apollo.
There was a shrine dedicated to her about five miles outside of the city, which was home to rampant religious prostitution. With the possible exception of Corinth, Antioch was the most carnal and depraved city in the Empire. When the Roman satirist Juvenil wanted to insult the depravity of Rome, he commented that the Orontes River emptied its sewerage into the Tiber, which is the river that flows past Rome. In other words, Rome is bathing in the immorality of Antiochus, is what he was saying. As you can tell, it was a cosmopolitan city in the truest sense.
And in this instance, that's referring to Greek-speaking, gentiles also proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus underline this phrase the Lord's hand was with them, the Lord's hand was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. Now, Siren was a Mediterranean port city located in present-day northeastern Libya. Let's put up that next map there again. And you can see it is a long, long way away. It's all the way over there on the left.
And so, my best guess is how these men from Syren end up in Antioch is that when the Jerusalem Church scatters, pretty much everyone heads north. That's what happens. They go up into Samaria, up toward Galilee, up into the Phoenician area, and then some, all the way to Antioch. And so that's just where everyone is going. They might not have had any food, and the only other people who had food were going in that direction.
And so, I would imagine that some of those who were scattering back to their homes in Phoenicia said, come and stay with us for a while and we'll make sure that you're safe because that is a long journey from Jerusalem to Siren. And so, what most likely happened is these men from Syria began new lives in Antioch, whatever the case may be. They would have been Hellenistic Jews again, meaning they were ethnically Jewish but raised in Greek culture. Syrene was a Greek settlement. It was a Greek port.
And as we saw with Philip and the Samaritans, these Hellenistic Jews, as we said, were more open to ministering to Gentiles because they shared everyday life. They lived among Gentiles, whereas the Jews in places like Jerusalem did not live among the Gentiles and kept their distance from them. The Holy Spirit stirred the hearts of these men to share the Gospel with Gentiles and Antioch. And God moved. God moved.
He did supernatural work, and a large number placed their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. This was something new in the history of the Church. Never before had there been a move of God that resulted in a large number of Gentiles becoming believers and joining the Church. As the narrator Luke is intentionally choosing verbiage, that highlights the similarity between what God is doing in Antioch among the Gentiles, and what he did in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost among the Jews. In both instances, there was a move of God that was not the result of man's planning or strategies.
The good news about the Lord Jesus was proclaimed, and the Lord's hand was with them. Therefore, incredible things happened, and churches were born where none had existed before. Verse 22. News about them, about all these Gentile covets, reached the Church in Jerusalem and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antiochus. The Jerusalem Church, you'll recall, was led by the apostles, who felt a duty to care for all of the churches.
That would soon prove an impossible task as the Church exploded in size. But at this point, they were still trying to be a mother church, so to speak. This is why they sent Peter and John to investigate what was going on among the Samaritans when Philip was ministering there. It's why they questioned Peter when he returned from ministering to the household of Cornelius. And it's why they felt an obligation to investigate the apparent mass conversion of Gentiles in Antiochus.
When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain underlying. Remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts. Luke reminds us again that what was happening, this revival unfolding in Antioch was due to one reason the grace of God. God was doing something profound, as he had in Jerusalem, Samaria, Luda, Joppa, Caesaria, and elsewhere. How does one exactly remain true to the Lord?
With a devoted heart. How do you do that? Practically, I put these verses on your outline. John's Gospel tells us Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you continue in My word, you really are my disciples. And the apostle John wrote in his first Epistle what you have heard from the beginning is to remain in you what you have heard.
If what you have heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the son and in the Father. The Word of God, the teachings of Jesus, and the Scriptures are the keys to keeping your mind on God and on the things of God. We must grow in our knowledge and understanding of the Lord so that our faith does not rest on our emotional state. Hear me on this. We must grow in our knowledge and understanding of the Lord, so that our faith does not rest on our emotional state, but rather on our grasp of the unchanging truths of who God is, what he has done for us, and who we are in Him.
Write this down and we'll talk about it more. Believers must remain in God's word to maintain a devoted heart. You must remain in God's word to maintain a devoted heart. We'll soon see that Barnabas understood this truth, and it's why he wanted to see the believers in Antioch grow in their knowledge of the truth as soon and as much as possible. Verse 24 tells us that Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith.
Now hear me on this Barnabas wasn't full of the Holy Spirit and faith because he was a good man. Barnabas was a good man because he was full of the Holy Spirit and faith. In Proverbs 4/23, Solomon wrote this timeless counsel guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life. And Jesus said a good tree doesn't produce bad fruit. On the other hand, a bad tree doesn't produce good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit.
Figs aren't gathered from thorn bushes or grapes picked from a bramble bush. A good person produces good out of the goods stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. Hear me on this. You cannot truly change the outer man apart from changing the inner man, for everything that manifests in the outer man flows from the inner man.
That's why we need Jesus to create in us a new heart by giving us his spirit. It's why we need to be filled with his spirit every day in a fresh way. If you want to get on the path to becoming a better man or a better woman, you need Jesus to give you a new heart, and then you need to be filled with his spirit daily. You know, when we're young in the faith, when we're young in our thinking, let's go back even before that, before we become Christians, our general thinking tends to be man. All the things that are negative about me are because of other people, things done to me, and things coming from the outside.
And what happens is when you have wrong thoughts, when you do wrong things, you now begin thinking, where did that thought come from? Where did that behavior come from? What's going on in my heart? And you begin to say, man, I need to spend some time with Jesus. Where is this coming from?
You know, it's coming from inside you, but you're concerned with what's going on in your heart because you understand that everything happening on the outside is flowing from the inside. That's where the issue is. The thoughts and behaviors of the outer man are driven by the inner man. That's why I say Barnabas wasn't full of the Holy Spirit and faith because he was a good man. No, Barnabas was a good man because he was full of the Holy Spirit and faith.
So would you write this down? Everything that manifests in the outer man flows from the inner man. Everything that manifests in the outer man flows from the inner man. When the Jerusalem Church did not believe Saul's conversion, it was Barnabas who sensed that God was working. He reached out to Saul and then vouched for him to the apostles, paving the way for fellowship between the former persecutor of the Church and the saints in Jerusalem.
And in just a moment, we'll see Barnabas display his generous and encouraging spirit once again. It says, that large numbers of people were added to the Lord as happened in Jerusalem. A large number were saved, then another large number were saved because God was doing something. Verse 25 then he, that's Barnabas, went to Tarsus to search for Saul and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they met with the Church and taught would you underline taught large numbers?
Barnabas recognized that what the new believers in Antiochus needed most was to be aggressively taught and disciples in the faith so that they could grow into mature believers ASAP. And as he looked around, he realized there were not enough mature teachers in Antiochus. And the Holy Spirit brought to mind his old friend Saul. If you recall, the last time we encountered Saul, he was visiting the Brethren in Jerusalem and managed to stir up in just a few days trouble by getting into debates with the same Hellenistic Jews who had orchestrated the execution of Stephen. Seeing the writing on the wall, the leaders of the Jerusalem Church rushed him out of the city to the port of Caesaria, where they stuck him on a ship and sent him off to his hometown of Tarsus for his own safety.
Let's put up our final map for today. And if you take a look, it's pretty interesting because you will see that Tarsus is actually really close to Antioch. So we would have gotten on a boat in Caesaria, which is just northwest of Jerusalem, down there, sailed up the coast, he actually would have gone past Antioch on his way to Tarsus. And so Barnabas goes there. There's no Internet or anything like that, he just goes to Tarsus.
It's the last place he heard Saul was, and he's able to track Saul down. And Saul has been ministering and sending people to Jesus and making disciples on his own in Tarsus, likely starting a church there. And I'll point it out one more time because I think it's so important. Barnabas' response to the growth of the Church was not first and foremost, you know what we really need to do? We need to start a building project.
That is the most important thing. The most pressing need from Barnabas' perspective and the solution provided by the Lord, was the Apostle Paul, who partnered with Barnabas and together they taught as many people as they could, as often as they could for a year. If you are a new or young believer, this is one of the things you most desperately need. You need to be in the Word, you need to be taught the Word, you need to be growing in your knowledge and understanding of Jesus. So that you can grow in spiritual maturity as quickly as possible.
Let me encourage you with this. I have seen believers grow into more mature Christians in three years than people who have been in church for three decades for one reason. Those people spent three decades in a church that did not prioritize the Word and did not encourage them to be in the Word in a deep, regular way themselves. I've seen it happen many, many times. I've seen a three-year-old believer know far more about the Lord than a 30-year-old believer, because they were in the Word, just being saturated by the teaching of God's Word.
So if you're a new or young believer, listen. You can go to our website; and find a series I taught through all four of the Gospels. Get to know Jesus. Priority number one. There are 129 messages. It'll keep you busy for a while.
Do that. Start it, go through it. Listen to a message a day. On the way to work, on the way home, you'll be astounded by how much you will grow in your faith and in your understanding of Jesus. The three essential ingredients for growing Christians into maturity were all functioning in Antioch during this time.
The first essential ingredient is active membership in a local church, being part of regular fellowship, being around your brothers and sisters, sharing life with them, serving them, and loving one another. The second ingredient is filled with the Spirit. They were praying regularly and faithfully and being filled with the Holy Spirit. And then thirdly, they were being taught the Word. If you're a new believer or a young believer, and you commit to being actively involved with a church family in a biblical way, if you commit to pray, seek the Lord regularly, be filled with the Spirit, and you're being taught the Word regularly, you're going to grow guaranteed.
I guarantee it. Barnabas is such a great example of how God uses different people to play different roles. He was a great man. But in terms of history, Paul's ministry goes down as unquestionably more significant in the eyes of historians. And yet there would have been no Apostle Paul apart from brothers like Barnabas, for without him, Paul would not have been accepted by the apostles in Jerusalem.
And without him, he would not have been brought to Antioch into the very center of God's move among the Gentiles. God's work is accomplished wherever obedient men and women care more about advancing the kingdom of God than they do about their own ego, comfort, and desires. The Jew-Gentile mix in the Antioch Church was seemingly not an issue at this stage. And again, this was likely because they were just used to living together in the same city and sharing the same streets. From the very beginning, the ethos of the Church in Antioch was completely different from the Church in Jerusalem.
Continuing in verse 26, we read the disciples were first called Christians, underlying Christians at Antioch. It's a term that basically means you're all about Christ, just as those who were all about King Herod were called Herodians in Matthew and Mark's Gospels.
But his poor body was witnessed to what he had suffered. It was all one wound and bruised, bent up, and robbed of outward human shape. But suffering in that body, Christ accomplished the most glorious things, utterly defeating the adversary and proving as an example to the rest that where the Father's love is, nothing can frighten us. Where Christ's glory is, nothing can hurt us. I am a Christian.
In verses 27, it says in those days, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antiochus. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine throughout the Roman world. This took place during the reign of Claudius. These prophets were men gifted by God to speak on his behalf, sometimes regarding future events. In this instance, God gave a prophet named Agabus a message of warning that a severe famine was coming.
So he stood up and shared this message with the Church in one of their services. At this time, Egypt was the breadbasket of the region, but she had a poor harvest. History tells us in 45 Ad. That led to a severe grain shortage and sky. High prices.
This lines up with a historical famine that disproportionately affected Judea by 47 Ad. But I want you to notice how the church in Antioch responded to this news, and then we'll talk about why they responded this way.
In verse 29, it says each of the disciples underline according to his ability and then underline the word determined, determined to send relief to the brothers and sisters who lived in Judea. The prophecy specified that this famine would affect all the Roman Empire, which would have included Antioch. However, their first thought and concern was for the believers in Jerusalem.
Why? Because that's how grateful they were for the gospel that had come to them from members of the Jerusalem church. They felt eternally indebted to them, and they were grateful for the opportunity to express their gratitude in a practical way. We talked earlier about the importance of being in the Word to help one grow into spiritual maturity. And last week we talked about how a hunger for Christian fellowship and a desire to know more about Jesus are evidences of true conversion.
I suggest we see another evidence here of genuine conversion and spiritual growth in Christ's gracious generosity. Here's a message a lot of people don't want to hear. When a person is genuinely saved, the whole person is saved, and Jesus becomes Lord of the whole person, including the wallet. That's just the truth. I'm not really concerned if it offends you.
When it comes to our money, the question is simply the same as every other area of life what do you want me to do, Lord? What do you want me to do? So write this down and we'll talk more about it. The Spirit works to produce gracious generosity in believers. Gracious generosity in believers.
We saw the Jerusalem church display gracious generosity toward their own congregation meeting needs among them from people who had come into the city planning to stay for just a week for Pentecost. We saw gracious generosity as the Jerusalem church gave to meet the needs of widows and orphans among them. And here we see that same gracious generosity at work in Antiochus now extending from one church to another church.
And God was working through this famine to grow the love of those in Jerusalem for their brethren in Antioch. It was providential by God's grace. And I'm struck not only by the gracious generosity of the believers in Antioch but also by their faith. When they heard Agabus's prophecy of the coming famine, they responded like people who actually believe they have a loving heavenly father who will care for their practical needs. They responded like people who actually believed what Jesus told his disciples if they sought first his kingdom and his righteousness, their heavenly father would take care of all their practical needs.
And I can't help wondering what the response of the church today would be like in a similar scenario if someone stood up and said, there's a famine coming to Canada, and we could all sense by the spirit that this was true, how would you respond? Would you panic? Would you think every man for himself? Buy gold, buy silver, find a gun, I love you all.
It's been a good life. I'm going to build a cabin in the woods and ride this thing out, godspeed.
Or would you think, man, we better figure out how to get organized and make sure that all the brothers and sisters among us have their needs met, make sure they're taken care of. We've got to figure out how to really take care of each other and check on each other and share whatever needs to be shared to make sure that every need is met among us. I pray it's the latter. And because I love you, I always want to be truthful for you, truthful with you. If that's not your mentality now, if you don't practice gracious generosity now, you're not going to magically transform into someone who does when it's exponentially more difficult to do.
It's just not going to happen. Oh, I don't do it now, but maybe when it's harder to do, then I'll start doing it. Like, what? Really? That's just not how it works.
If your life isn't marked by gracious generosity now, ask the Lord to change your heart. Ask Him to change your heart. Look within yourself and say, I'm not characterized by gracious generosity, but I want to be, and I recognize I should be. Ask the Lord to change your heart, and then do your best to obey Him when you know what he's commanded you to do.
Verse 30. They did this. They took up an offering for the Jerusalem Church, sending it to the elders by means of Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas returns to Jerusalem, once again accompanying Saul as he meets with the elders of the Jerusalem church. This is the first time elders are mentioned in the context of a church in Scripture.
Jewish synagogues were originally led by elders, and that's likely where the model finds its roots. It bears repeating almost every time it comes up that eldership is the only model of church leadership in the New Testament. The only model. And when I say eldership, I am referring to a church being led by multiple elders who share authority and make important decisions together. That's the only church leadership model in the New Testament.
The New Testament does record one man, Paul, sometimes planting churches as the lone leader, but he always treats the task of appointing multiple elders with the highest urgency. That's always, like, a top priority for him. We got to get some elders, multiple elders appointed in this church. Following Saul's conversion and some shuffling among regional political leaders. The church in Jerusalem had enjoyed a time of relative peace for a few years, but that soon changed, as we shall see in chapter twelve.
And I'll do my best to bring some clarity to this, but I have to warn you, this is soap opera stuff. This is juicy history and would make a great TV show that believers would probably have no business watching. The Herods were a political family. Herod. The Great ruled Judea from 47 BC.
In 39 BC. He was dubbed King of the Jews by Anthony, Octavius, and the Roman Senate and given authority over all of Palestine because he had done such a good job in Judea. His nickname is likely part of the reason why he was so offended when wise men Magi showed up one day from Babylon looking for a child who fulfilled an ancient prophecy that he would become, King of the Jews. Herod's like, well, this is a little awkward seeing as I'm the King of the Jews and if you're familiar with the Nativity, then you know how Herod the Great responded. He ordered the slaughter of all the male infants in and around Bethlehem.
Jesus was, of course, at that time safely in hiding with his parents in Egypt. Herod the Great died a few years after the birth of Jesus, and he could see his death coming. Concerned there wouldn't be sufficient grieving in Israel at his passing, he arrested a group of the most beloved civil and religious leaders in Israel and imprisoned them with a command to execute them upon his own death, because he figured at least that way there would be sadness across the whole land at the time when I die. Unfortunately, the men in charge didn't go through with his plans. When he died, Herod the Great married at least ten women, including one named Miriamny.
She was a Hazmat, which means she was a Jew who descended from a famed line of Hebrews connected to a family known as the Maccabees. The Hazmanians and the Maccabees were legendary among the Jewish people because both families had led rebellions against empires and freed Israel for a time from foreign influence. Miriamney gave birth to a son named Aristobulus. Aristobulus was one of at least nine sons that Herod the Great had between all the wives, and he was one of at least three that he had executed. Before his death, though, Aristobulus grew and fathered a son named Agrippa.
So Agrippa is the grandson of Herod, the Great. Agrippa's mother could see the writing on the wall. She was like, this family is messed up. And she didn't want her son to end up being murdered by her own family. So when he was just four years old, she shipped him off to be raised in Rome, where he grew up among the elites and became friends with future leaders like Gaius, better known as Caligula and Claudius.
Into his 20s, Agrippa seems to basically have been the life of the party. A lot of friends in high places, very charismatic. But he eventually burned through all the family money. But he loved living the high life. He didn't own a business, didn't hold a political office, and so this was a problem.
And so he was constantly involved in scams and things like borrowing money from politicians in Rome and then hightailing it off to Palestine. When he couldn't pay his debts, he got word that Emperor Tiberius was looking for him because so many people in Rome were complaining about him being delinquent on his loans. And when he heard Tiberius was looking for him, he started talking trash about Tiberius, who's the Emperor at the time. So Tiberius has him thrown in jail. Well, in his late 20s, though, things get a little bit better because Caligula, his old buddy,
And when Caligula rises to power in Rome and 37 Ad, he calls up his buddy Agrippa and puts him in charge of southern Syria. He even allows Agrippa to use the term king in those parts. Two years later, he expanded Agrippa's territory south to include Galilee and Perez. And then when Claudius, Agrippa's other childhood friend, succeeds Caligula, he expands Agrippa's territory further south to include Samaria and Judea. And it is this Herod Agrippa that we read of here in Acts Chapter Twelve, a man tenuously holding on to power, desperate to keep his station among the elite.
And in order to do so, there were two non-negotiables. If you were a territorial leader for the Romans, if you were a governor or a prefect, and if you oversaw any geographical region, there were two things you had to do. You've got to keep the peace and you've got to collect the taxes. You failed to do one of those two things you're done. The problem was that the Jews were the hardest people to rule in the Empire because they were fanatical about their religion, strictly devoted to their laws, and literally all willing to die rather than worship Caesar.
And the Romans realized this, but they had this egotistical dream of ruling over all peoples, and they realized, listen, we're going to have to kill all the Jews before they'll actually submit to us. So everyone else in the empire had to make the pinch, offering once a year to Caesar and speaking the words Caesar is God. The Jews were the only ones who had an exception because they would all die rather than do that. And these are the people that Herod Agrippa had to rule over. But he had an in.
He had an in. He had strategically married Miriam, a Jewish woman from a legendary Hebrew family line. And he was always looking for ways to ingratiate himself with the people he was ruling over the Jews and maintain their loyalty. So he even tried to live like a Jew, pretty half-heartedly. I mean, it's hard to say that and then has ten wives and kill your sons and stuff like that.
But this is why we read is that he violently attacked some who belong to the Church. You see, he picked up the vibe that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were opposed to the Christians. The religious Jews hated this sect of Christianity. And so to try and ingratiate himself with them, Herod Agrippa decides, I'm going to start taking out the leadership of the Jerusalem Church to score points with the Jews that I'm ruling over to buy their loyalty. And that's why we read that he executed James, John's brother, with the sword.
The first thing he does is order the beheading of the apostle James, brother of the apostle John, and one of Jesus' three closest friends among the disciples. In Mark 10/39, Jesus told James and John, you will drink the cup I drink and you will be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with. At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples that the cup represented his blood. And we know that the baptism Jesus was speaking of was his death. And those words of Jesus were partly fulfilled in the martyrdom of James.
For the sake of clarity, I must mention that the James who wrote the New Testament Book of James is not this James, not James the Apostle. That James who wrote the book is not the brother of John, but the brother of Jesus, and was not one of the twelve disciples, though he was a pillar of the Jerusalem Church. This James is the first of the apostles to be martyred before the end of the first century AD. All of them will die martyrs' deaths except for John. And they tried to kill John by boiling him in oil.
They didn't die surrounded by the other apostles or by brothers and sisters in the faith supporting them. They died alone. And to a man they died saying, Jesus is alive and he's God. And you might think, well, people believe all kinds of things, and people are willing to die for all kinds of things. That doesn't mean they're true.
Jeff, you're right. People are willing to die for all kinds of things they believe are true. But people aren't willing to die for things they know aren't true. And the claim of the apostles was not that they simply believed the resurrection was true. Their claim was that they had seen the resurrected Jesus, they had touched him and shared meals with him.
This is the difference. They were in a position to know whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead. They knew whether they had made the whole thing up or they had really seen him. They knew. And people don't die for lies.
And what did holding those beliefs gain them before their deaths? Power? Wealth, prestige, political influence, fame? None of the above. The Bible didn't become the bestselling book of all time until they were all dead.
Their beliefs got them thrown out of their synagogues, banned from the temple, excommunicated from Jewish society, family members and even spouses disowned them. They lost their jobs, they lost their income, they lost personal property, they were thrown in jail, they had to flee for their lives, and they were even killed for speaking the name of Jesus. Not only did they have no motive to lie, but they had every reason to come clean if they were lying. Every reason because it would have brought an end to their suffering and the threat of death. And yet, to a man, when facing death alone, they all died with the same testimony Jesus is alive and he's got I can't say otherwise because I know the truth.
And there's only one logical explanation for their behavior. They were telling the truth. They were telling the truth. Verse three it says Herod saw that the execution of James pleased the Jews, so he proceeded to arrest Peter too during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The Festival of Unleavened Bread is the weeklong time of celebration that immediately follows the day of Passover.
I'll ask the worship team to come up after the arrest. He put him in prison and assigned four squads of four soldiers each to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. Seeing the positive reaction from the people to the execution of James, Herod Agrippa imprisons Peter, and his plan is to execute him before the people at the end of the weeklong festivities. Because the law forbade executions during the week of celebrations, he chooses this time because Jerusalem is going to be packed with pilgrims, thereby ensuring maximum viewership of Peter's execution. He takes guarding Peter extremely seriously.
If you can't put two and two together, this is a serious situation that Peter is in. James has already been beheaded and now Peter's there. They're going after the leaders of the church and the church is obviously very concerned and we'll see what happens next week. Two reminders in closing. Firstly, everything that manifests in the outer man flows from the inner man.
Trying to change the outer man without addressing the inner man is pointless. You can fake it for a while, but it will not last. It will not last. So, I just want to invite you in this coming time of communion and worship and prayer, if there's something in your life that you just don't like about who you are, about how you think, about how you act, talk to the Lord about it. Say, Lord, just change my heart.
Can I tell you; the Lord loves that prayer. He loves that prayer when we stop blaming everybody else for what's coming out of us, he loves that prayer. When we stop saying, I'll fix myself, and we go to Him and we say, lord, I can't fix this. I need you to do a work in my heart. If you're doing that for the first time or for the millionth time, your heavenly Father is available to you.
He's available and he loves a prayer that is essentially saying, please make me more like Jesus, please do it. Lord. If your life is not currently marked by gracious generosity, ask the Lord to change your heart and then obey Jesus. And if you want to grow in spiritual maturity, be active in the faith family of the church, ask the Lord to fill you with His Spirit every day, and get in His Word. Get in His Word, make a plan and then do it.
So, let's pray. Would you bow your head and close your eyes?
Lord Jesus, thank you so much for your Word. Thank you for the truth of Your Word, that it speaks to us where we need to hear it most. Lord and Lord, we do just confess that our default condition doesn't lead us to become more like you.
But you've done a miracle by putting Your Spirit in us. And we know that the work of your Spirit is always to try and make us more like Jesus. You're always inviting us to accept that invitation. You're always working through all things to make us more like Jesus for our good.
Do a work within us what we really need is some heart surgery by Your spirit. So we invite you to come and do that, Lord.
And Lord, we also ask that you would grow us in spiritual maturity, grow us in our understanding and knowledge of you. Grow us in our love for one another, grow us in our understanding of the work that you're doing in our lives and what it means to follow you. We're proud to be called Christians, not because of anything we've done, but because we bear Your name. And so help us to be people who talk about you all the time. Help us to be people who are just obsessed with you and with Your goodness Your kindness and Your grace.
Give us that reputation, Lord. We love you. We're thankful for you. In your name, we pray. Amen.
Series: Acts
Passage: Acts 9:26-31...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
Three years after his astonishing conversion, Saul travels to Jerusalem seeking fellowship with the Apostles and the Church. His initial attempts are rejected, as the brothers wrestle with fear and the prospect of walking through some very difficult forgiveness.
Acts, chapter nine. Today, in our previous study, we witnessed one of the most astonishing transformations the world has ever seen, as Saul, the man leading the persecution of the early Church and possessed by the singular goal of destroying it, encountered the resurrected and glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus. Three days later, Saul had moved from hating the name of Jesus to loving the name of Jesus. And the man who had sought to eradicate the Gospel began publicly proclaiming it. Saul would spend the next three years in the region around Damascus, in modern-day Syria, growing in his faith and in his knowledge of the Lord Jesus, fellowshiping with him in prayer, preaching the gospel, and making disciples.
At the end of those three years, the local religious and political officials conspired to murder Saul, but he learned of the plot and was aided in his escape by his disciples. He then headed for Jerusalem and his first encounter with the apostles and the Church located there. Let's pick things up. In verses 26 we read, when he arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him since they did not believe he was a disciple. Can you blame them?
While they had no doubt heard the rumors of Saul's conversion, they weren't yet willing to bet their lives on those rumors being true. They were not aware of the miracle that had taken place in the life of Saul. And I think there might have been another dynamic in play as well. Not only was there this question of do we believe that Saul is actually changed, but there's the dynamic that says, even if he has, do I want a fellowship with him? Do I want to be his brother?
Do I want that? There's this issue of forgiveness that I suspect the brethren in Jerusalem would have been wrestling with. And I say that because it's so easy for us to read things in the Bible and read things in the book of Acts and forget that the names in this book are people. They were real people, just like you and me, flesh and blood, like us. And Saul's return to Jerusalem after three years must have stirred up some deep, deep pain in the brothers and sisters there.
How many of you know it's a lot easier to forgive someone when they leave and never come back?
The bliss the early Church had enjoyed had been shattered by Saul. He was the reason everyone had to flee, reducing the Jerusalem Church from tens of thousands to just the apostles and their families. They had lost friends and family members to prison and even death because of Saul. They had watched him drag people they loved away in chains. They knew the families that he had destroyed and torn apart.
They had to navigate what to do with the children whose parents had been killed for blasphemy under Saul's persecution, which is why it's not surprising to learn that the imperfect tense of the original Greek word translated tried suggests there were repeated attempts made by Saul to meet with the apostles that were rebuffed. As the apostles wrestled with Saul's attempts to meet with them. I wonder which of Jesus teachings played in their hearts and minds much as they do ours today. Matthew 18 tells us about a time when Jesus was teaching his disciples about how believers are to work through conflicts and offenses. And I put the whole passage on your outlines for you in Matthew 18/21.
Date:11/6/22
Series: Acts
Passage: Acts 9:26-31
Speaker: Jeff Thompson
Three years after his astonishing conversion, Saul travels to Jerusalem seeking fellowship with the Apostles and the Church. His initial attempts are rejected, as the brothers wrestle with fear and the prospect of walking through some very difficult forgiveness.
Transcription (automatically-generated):
Acts, chapter nine. Today, in our previous study, we witnessed one of the most astonishing transformations the world has ever seen, as Saul, the man leading the persecution of the early Church and possessed by the singular goal of destroying it, encountered the resurrected and glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus. Three days later, Saul had moved from hating the name of Jesus to loving the name of Jesus. And the man who had sought to eradicate the Gospel began publicly proclaiming it. Saul would spend the next three years in the region around Damascus, in modern day Syria, growing in his faith and in his knowledge of the Lord Jesus, fellowshiping with him in prayer, preaching the gospel and making disciples.
At the end of those three years, the local religious and political officials conspired to murder Saul, but he learned of the plot and was aided in his escape by his disciples. He then headed for Jerusalem and his first encounter with the apostles and the Church located there. Let's pick things up. In verses 26 we read, when he arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him since they did not believe he was a disciple. Can you blame them?
While they had no doubt heard the rumors of Saul's conversion, they weren't yet willing to bet their lives on those rumors being true. They were not aware of the miracle that had taken place in the life of Saul. And I think there might have been another dynamic in play as well. Not only was there this question of do we believe that Saul is actually changed, but there's the dynamic that says, even if he has, do I want a fellowship with him? Do I want to be his brother?
Do I want that? There's this issue of forgiveness that I suspect the brethren in Jerusalem would have been wrestling with. And I say that because it's so easy for us to read things in the Bible and read things in the book of Acts and forget that the names in this book are people. They were real people, just like you and me, flesh and blood, like us. And Saul's return to Jerusalem after three years must have stirred up some deep, deep pain in the brothers and sisters there.
How many of you know it's a lot easier to forgive someone when they leave and never come back?
The bliss the early Church had enjoyed had been shattered by Saul. He was the reason everyone had to flee, reducing the Jerusalem Church from tens of thousands to just the apostles and their families. They had lost friends and family members to prison and even death because of Saul. They had watched him drag people they loved away in chains. They knew the families that he had destroyed and torn apart.
They had to navigate what to do with the children whose parents had been killed for blasphemy under Saul's persecution, which is why it's not surprising to learn that the imperfect tense of the original Greek word translated tried suggests there were repeated attempts made by Saul to meet with the apostles that were rebuffed. As the apostles wrestled with Saul's attempts to meet with them. I wonder which of Jesus' teachings played in their hearts and minds much as they do ours today. Matthew 18 tells us about a time when Jesus was teaching his disciples about how believers are to work through conflicts and offenses. And I put the whole passage on your outlines for you in Matthew 18/21.
He grabbed him, started choking him, and said, pay what you owe. At this, his fellow servant fell down and began begging him, be patient with me and I will pay you back. We're supposed to go, oh. The same situation is playing itself out again, but there are two big differences. The first servant's debt was impossibly large.
The second servant's debt is not. It's a reasonable amount that he could pay off in less than a year. The other difference is that the first servant has been forgiven his impossibly large debt. Everyone hearing Jesus teach this would have been thinking the same thing that we're thinking when we hear the story. We all know what's supposed to happen next, because the word choice of the second servant is almost identical to the word choice of the first servant, and it should trigger in the mind of the first servant, oh, my goodness, he's me.
Everyone understands this, which is why it's so shocking when Jesus continues. But he wasn't willing. Instead, he went and threw him into prison until he could pay what was owed. Everyone hearing the story would have been appalled, appalled by the actions of the first servant, because he did not extend his coworker even the smallest measure of the scandalous mercy the King had shown him. When the other servants saw what had taken place, they were deeply distressed and went and reported to their Master everything that had happened.
Those who were aware of the size of both debts and the generous forgiveness of the King were appalled by the first servant's lack of grace. And so they told the King about it, and he demanded to speak with the first servant again. Then, after he had summoned him, his Master said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? And because he was angry, his Master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed, which he never could.
So also, my Heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart. Jesus was telling his disciples that those who belong to his kingdom must forgive others. And he explains why. Through this parable, you see, that God has forgiven our impossibly large debt. He's a perfect God, and his standard is perfection.
And here's the thing about perfection. When the standard is a perfect life, you can't fix things after you sin even once. Because the standard is perfection. You've fallen short of God's standard in a way you could never repay or repair because you can't go back to the start of your life and try again. And even if you could, in every possible lifetime, you sin again.
Here's the thing about perfection, we want to look at one another and validate ourselves by saying, well, I'm better than him. I'm better than her. I've shared it before. Most people think, if there is a heaven, when I get there, all I have to be able to do is point out ten people who are worse than me, and I'll get in, oh, I know ten jerks I can easily name that get my way into heaven. But the standard is not jerks.
The standard is Jesus. And that's the problem. I love the analogy. It's like the standard is swimming in Hawaii. How foolish is the man or woman who swims a mile offshore, treads water for a minute, turns around, looks at all the other people giving up and drowning, and goes, oh man, I am doing so good.
You're going to die a little bit further out to zee than them. Way to go. It's still an impossible standard. Not only do we all fall short of God's standard, but we fall short by sinning against Him in egregious blasphemous. Ways.
This is what I mean when I say that he created us and we disowned Him. He made us to know and love Him and be loved by Him, and we rejected Him. He is the God of the universe. And we looked at Him and said, I would be a better God of my life than you, so I will be God over my life rather than you. What possible words could I find to express the gravity of such cosmic treason?
In most countries where the death penalty still exists, treason carries the death penalty. You get that for betraying your country. What should you get for betraying God?
There's no crime that a human being can commit against another human being. That is worse than what each of us has done to God. Quite simply, we cannot compare sinning against another person to sinning against the God who created us. Those sins cannot be compared on any scale. They cannot compare.
But it gets worse, because not only did God forgive us our sins, our impossible debt, but he did so at the cost of the life of Jesus. Jesus received the punishment that we should have received in our place. And what Jesus tells his disciples in this parable is, how do you think my Father in heaven who watched me, his only begotten son, suffer and die so that you could be forgiven? How do you think he feels when you want to accept that forgiveness that I paid for with my body and my blood, but you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters? How do you think my Father feels about that?
And Jesus'point is you don't want to find out. You don't want to find out. You see, the reality is this when we refuse to forgive, it begs the question, do we really understand the gospel? Do we really understand what Jesus has done for us? Do we really understand that we rejected Him after he had done all that for us?
That he would say, hey, I died for you so that you could be forgiven and brought into my family? And we still said in many different ways, yeah, I'd still rather be my own God. I love myself more.
Amen. Because if we do understand the gospel, we will understand why we must forgive it's. Because whatever they've done to me cannot compare to what I have done to God. And whatever I need to forgive them for cannot compare to the debt that I owed God, that he forgave me through the body and blood of Jesus. We don't get to accept the forgiveness of God and withhold forgiveness from others.
Would you write this down? We are commanded to forgive without limits because God has forgiven us without limits. We are commanded to forgive without limits because God has forgiven us without limits. This radical concept flowed from the heart of Stephen, who, as he was being stoned to death, cried out in prayer, lord, do not hold the sin against them. Stephen had already forgiven them for murdering him, even as they were murdering him.
That's the effect the gospel can have on our hearts if we'll embrace the implications of the forgiveness we've received through Jesus. I always feel obligated to say this when we talk about forgiveness. Please know that forgiveness and restoration are two very different things. Forgiveness is how you view them in your mind and in your soul. When you forgive them, you no longer view them as owing you a debt.
You no longer wish ill on them. You pray for their good. You understand that justice was done to Jesus. Restoration is how the relationship is repaired. If it can be, it should be.
The brethren in Jerusalem met with Saul and fellowshiped with him. And what I wouldn't have given to listen in on some of those theological conversations. Inevitably, Saul began preaching publicly and debating in synagogues around the city of Jerusalem. We read, he conversed and debated with the Hellenistic Jews, but they tried to kill him. The same thing happened again.
Saul preached the Gospel. The stubborn Hellenistic Jews couldn't refute him, so they went to their standard Plan B of trying to murder him. This was the original cancel culture, it seems. In this, we see another beautiful connection between Saul and the ministry of Stephen, the man who spearheaded the persecution of the Church. Saul was now preaching the Gospel to the same men who had brought Stephen before the Sanhedrin on charges of blasphemy.
It's an astonishing turn of events. The ministry of Stephen to the Hellenistic Jews is taken up, at least temporarily, by the man who contributed to his martyrdom. I think it's more than possible that Saul felt a burden to continue that specific evangelistic work precisely because Stephen had been engaged in it up till the day of his death. If the Hellenistic Jews hated Stephen for preaching the Gospel to them, how much more must they have hated Saul, who preached the same Gospel but was also guilty of betraying them by switching sides? He had once worked with them against believers like Stephen, but now here he was preaching the same Jesus that Stephen had preached now because they had seen this movie before, we read when the brothers found out, they took him down to Caesaria and sent him off to Tarsus.
According to Galatians 11/8, Paul stay in Jerusalem lasted just 15 days. And I suspect it was a bit of a mixed bag because on the one hand, the Church would have been thrilled by what the Lord had done in Saul's life. On the other hand, he begins stirring up trouble for them almost the second that he rolls into town. He had made trouble for the Church in Jerusalem by persecuting them, and now, three years later, he was back to make trouble for the Church by preaching the Gospel. You're going to find this is a pattern with Paul.
He's generally either starting revivals or starting riots. Most of the time, it's one of the two or both. In Acts 22, Paul tells us that the Lord Jesus came to him in a vision and warned him about the plot to assassinate him. Paul wanted to stay and try and lead the Hellenistic Jews to salvation, but the Lord told him specifically they would reject his message. Instead, he was to take the Gospel to the Gentiles.
When Saul shared his vision with the brothers, they told him, you need to obey the Lord and get out of Jerusalem. So the brothers took Saul to the Mediterranean Seaport of Caesarea and sent them off to Tarsus, his hometown in the province of Kilikha, which is located on the southern coast of present-day Turkey. It took persecution by Saul to get the church to take the Gospel beyond Jerusalem, and it took the persecution of Saul to get him out of Jerusalem and back on track with his calling to take the Gospel to the Gentiles. Saul will disappear from the narrative for a few years and the next few chapters of the Book of Acts. During those years, he traveled around the province of Cilicia and the neighboring country of Syria, where he spent three years following his conversion.
With Pilot being ousted as governor and Herod Agrippa's authority expanding, he restricted and dramatically lessened the power of the Sanhedrin, meaning they didn't have the authority to persecute the church to the same degree as before. This is the first time in the Bible that the church is referred to in the singular, despite it being geographically dispersed across multiple congregations. The teaching of Scripture is there is that there's one church and it's made up of all those who belong to Jesus and follow him as Lord. We'll often refer to this as the "Big C" or "Uppercase C" Church because within the "Big C" Church there are many Little Sea or Lowercase Sea churches. Like Gospel City.
We are a little Sea church that is part of the "Big C" church. And that concludes today's episode of Sesame Street. Then we read Living in the Fear of the Lord. Would you underline this in your Bibles? Living in the fear of the Lord and - also underline- encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.
The original Greek tells us that the believers in the church were choosing to live in fear of the Lord, and because of that, the Holy Spirit was encouraging and comforting them. The idea is that when believers submit themselves to the lordship of Jesus and live their lives honoring Him, rightly. The Holy Spirit provides comfort, encouragement, boldness, whatever is needed. God's Word tells us that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because the fear of the Lord puts everything in life in its rightful place. It causes you to see things as they truly are and prioritize things as they should be.
A fear of the Lord gives us an understanding that he is God and we are not afraid of the Lord. Frees one from the fear of man because you are more concerned about offending God than you are about offending man or the culture or the people around you. You're more concerned with God's approval than the approval of the culture. You're more concerned with honoring Jesus than you are with honoring the government. Fear of the Lord causes you to honor Jesus in His Word as the truth, allowing you to see through the lies and deceptions of the day and think clearly.
The fear of the Lord allows you to view your life from the perspective of eternity, emboldening you to serve the Lord, suffer for the Lord, and even, if necessary, die for the Lord. A fear of the Lord helps you to prioritize your life with wisdom, making decisions that will be eternally profitable, rather than just doing whatever brings satisfaction in the moment. And when you have individual believers who are living in the fear of the Lord that form churches, that live in the fear of the Lord, that is led by elders who walk in the fear of the Lord given, god can begin to do some amazing things. But we must ask ourselves the question am I living in the fear of the Lord? Please hear me on this.
I'm not asking you if you love the Lord and think he's great. I'm asking you if you're living in the fear of the Lord. Is what he wants you to do, is how he wants you to spend your life tomorrow and the day after. The single biggest factor in how you make decisions in your life are you more concerned with his approval than anything else's, including your own flesh? Are you more concerned with pleasing Him than yourself?
They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than they? Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying? Why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow.
They don't labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you? You of little faith, so don't worry saying, what will we eat? Or what will we drink?
Or what will we wear? For the Gentiles, the nonbelievers eagerly seek all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be provided for you. Jesus was giving his disciples the promise that the Church was experiencing in Acts, chapter nine.
It's the promise that if we make our lives all about living for Jesus, our Heavenly Father will provide everything we need. In Matthew 6, Jesus talks about practical, material needs. But the rest of the New Testament will make it clear that God's promise and provision include all of our emotional needs as well. If we live our lives in the fear of the Lord, God will provide the encouragement, the comfort, the strength, the joy, the peace, the boldness that we need. The early Church found it to be true, and I promise it's true for you and me today as well.
So, if you are living for Jesus as your highest priority and you have any emotional need, ask your Heavenly Father to meet it. Ask him, and by the Holy Spirit, the comforter. He will, he will. Make a note of this. Those who live in the fear of the Lord will be encouraged by the Holy Spirit.
Those who live in the fear of the Lord will be encouraged by the Holy Spirit. Lynn asked the worship team to come up and get ready to lead us in just a minute. But I want to wrap up by just asking you a couple of these questions again. Are you living in the fear of the Lord? Is your life oriented around Jesus, or is he a supplement to everything else in your life?
Are you more concerned with pleasing Him than anyone or anything else? If not, repent, change, and do things differently. Do the things you know he's calling you to do. Stop doing the things you know he's calling you to stop doing. If Jesus is not the center of your life, then what I'm about to say is not for you, because he doesn't make this offer to you.
But if Jesus is the center of your life, I want to remind you that he promises to meet your needs, materially and emotionally. And so if there's anything you need, I want to encourage you to stand on that promise tonight. Say, Lord, Lord, I'm experiencing a need in this area, practical or emotional, and just say, Lord, I just need this. Would you please meet that need? He will.
He will. But the thing that just breaks my heart is the thought that anyone would walk in here this evening with a burden, having a deep emotional need. Never ask the Heavenly Father that loves you to meet it and walk out of here with that same need, because you don't need to. You don't need to. Your Heavenly Father loves you so much, man, does he love you.
And he loves to meet the deep needs of our heart. So if you choose to leave tonight without getting that need met. It's not because you don't have a Heavenly Father who loves you. You do it's because you won't ask. And so I urge you to ask.
You can. He would love you to be part of his family. He would love you to have a life oriented around Him so that he can bless you that way. And if you want that, come and talk to me or BJ after the service. We'll talk and pray with you and we'll take that next step together.
And lastly, forgiveness. Man, if there's someone you need to forgive, do it. And if it seems impossible and you don't know how, bring that need to your Heavenly Father. Say, lord, I don't know how to forgive this person, but I want to, because I know you've forgiven me. I want to forgive as You've forgiven me.
Help me to do it, Lord, and then just in faith in your own heart. Just pray, lord, I forgive them. In Jesus's name, by the power of the Spirit, I forgive them and let it go. And I believe he'll empower you to do that. You may need to do it again tomorrow, but then do it tomorrow.
You may need to do it again the next day, then do it again the next day. But we must forgive. This is not a recommendation from the Lord Jesus. This is a command from the One who has forgiven us of the unforgivable. So we must obey.
And if we understand the Gospel, we will feel compelled to obey. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head and close your eyes? Jesus, thank you so much for Your word. And thank You for the truth of Your word.
And thank you that every single one of us has a reason to praise you this evening, a reason to be thankful, a reason to call ourselves blessed because we have been forgiven an unforgivable debt. The slate has been wiped clean with Your blood. And You've brought us into Your family, adopted us as sons and daughters. And when you look at us, you see us the way you see your Son Jesus spotless and blameless robed in his righteousness, not with a righteousness of our own, but a righteousness given to us by the generosity of Jesus. And so we thank you for that.
And we confess. We are blessed. We are blessed beyond measure.
Lord, we could sing a thousand songs for 100 days, and I'll put a dent in how much we owe you for what You've done for us.
We owe you an unpayable debt for what You've done for us, but you don't even ask us to repay it. All you ever say is, just be mine. Just be mine. Belong to me. Be my son.
Be my daughter. And so, we thank you that we have no burden, no burden of shame, no burden of guilt.
We're just forgiven. We're just clean.
So, Lord, I just pray for anyone here who doesn't experience emotionally that reality. Father, I pray that You would do it by Your spirit even now, that You would lift shame where there are people who know and comprehend the gospel, but the shame is just never lifted, for whatever reason. Would you do that? In Jesus' name?
Would you bring freedom, Lord, and a reminder of the power of Your blood and the power of Your forgiveness that you didn't make us good and then challenge us to hold on to it? You robed us in the righteousness of Jesus, and we stand on that. We find our identity in that. And we cannot lose that, much as we may try sometimes in our stubbornness and our foolishness and our rebelliousness. And yet Your righteousness stands unshakable, unchanged.
So, thank you for doing that for us, God. And I pray that the weight of that would fall upon us, Lord, so that all the petty quarrels we have in our minds of why we shouldn't have to forgive him, why we shouldn't have to forgive her, would fade away in the glorious light of what you have done for us. And we would feel the weight of understanding. There's just no comparison. It's such foolishness to compare what anyone has done to us to what we have done to you
Mercy, triumphs, covet, judgment, let it be so in our lives. And so we forgive, Lord, anything, anyone that has wronged us, lord, if there's anything that needs to come to mind, would you bring it to mind right now so that we can be obedient and forgive? And we do that in Jesus's name, in faith. And then, Lord, I pray for anyone who loves you in this room who has an emotional need, maybe one that's so deep they don't even think they can pray it out loud and ask for it. But you know, lord, you know.
You see. And so collectively, Lord, we lift up those among us, our brothers and sisters who we love, who are wrestling with deep hurts, with discouragement, with depression or anxiety or pain or hurt or shame, whatever it is, you know? And so we ask our heavenly Father, who we know loves us, Father, would you provide what is needed? We release joy in the name of Jesus. Peace.
In the name of Jesus. Faith and hope in the name of Jesus. Strength in the name of Jesus. The energy of the Holy Spirit who works so powerfully in us. In the name of Jesus.
Lord, there are needs in this room that none of us can meet, but you can. And so we ask that you do it, and we thank you for it. In faith. We love you, Lord. You're just so good.
And we bless you that you care about all these little things in our life. You're sovereign over galaxies, over the most distant regions of the universe, and yet you are concerned with our good here and now, with our relationships, with our state of mind, with the condition of our hearts. Who can fathom a God like that? And yet you are. So we just love you.
And we declare Your wonderful praiseworthy above anything else else. We ask that You would inhabit our praises in this time, as we thank You just for who You are and for what You've done for us. We love you, Lord. In Your name, we pray. Amen.
Mercy, triumphs, covet, judgment, let it be so in our lives. And so we forgive, Lord, anything, anyone that has wronged us, lord, if there's anything that needs to come to mind, would you bring it to mind right now so that we can be obedient and forgive? And we do that in Jesus name, in faith. And then, Lord, I pray for anyone who loves you in this room who has an emotional need, maybe one that's so deep they don't even think they can pray it out loud and ask for it. But you know, lord, you know.
You see. And so collectively, Lord, we lift up those among us, our brothers and sisters who we love, who are wrestling with deep hurts, with discouragement, with depression or anxiety or pain or hurt or shame, whatever it is, you know? And so we ask our heavenly Father, who we know loves us, father, would you provide what is needed? We release joy in the name of Jesus. Peace.
In the name of Jesus. Faith and hope in the name of Jesus. Strength in the name of Jesus. The energy of the Holy Spirit who works so powerfully in us. In the name of Jesus.
Lord, there are needs in this room that none of us can meet, but you can. And so we ask that you would do it, and we thank you for it. In faith. We love you, Lord. You're just so good.
And we bless you that you care about all these little things in our life. You're sovereign over galaxies, over the most distant regions of the universe, and yet you are concerned with our good here and now, with our relationships, with our state of mind, with the condition of our hearts. Who can fathom a God like that? And yet you are. So we just love you.
And we declare Your wonderful praise worthy above anything else else. We ask that you would inhabit our praises in this time, as we thank you just for who you are and for what You've done for us. We love you, Lord. In your name we pray. Amen.
Believe me it is not always easy to forgive. My sister had hurt me pretty bad again, and I had a hard time forgiving her.
I heard a scripture in my head that said; "Vengeance is mine, sayest the Lord.”
I thought this was just great! “Okay Lord, I forgive my sister, You go get her!”
When I told this at the Bible study, one wise sister said; "Jenny, that was not forgiving what you did, it was passing the buck you must forgive her without you thinking of revenge.
The Lord may not punish her at all, and you surely may never wish that He did."
“What do you mean? He may let her get away with it. That is not fair, she deserves to be punished!”
To forgive my sister now was not easy, but I finally managed to do so.
* I read about a woman, who had seen her sister and father, die in a concentration camp. This family had been hiding Jews during the war, and were betrayed by someone. This lady was the only one of her family that came out of the war alive. She became an evangelist as she had promised God she would. She had been preaching in Germany when a man came to her, she recognized him as the one who had been cruel to her sister when he had been a camp guard. He now came to her with his hands outstretched and said; “It is true what you just said, God does forgive everybody that asked Him and He has forgiven me.”
This lady fought the battle of her life, when after what seemed like a long spell, she took his hands in hers and welcomed him into the family of God.
I was in “Melody Land,” when a visiting minister asked those who needed to forgive someone, to come up on the platform. He told us to close our eyes, and to ask the Lord to reveal to us, whom and what we needed to forgive. I was shocked to find that there were so many people and things that had been done to me, that I thought I had long forgotten. It all came back to me now. Wow!
As a new Christian, there is so much to learn. Like how do I get more patience and how do I get more love to give to others? Pray, right? Right!
You better mean what you ask for, because He does not answer you in the way you will expect. At least I did not expect it to work that way.
I thought that when I needed patience, I would cry out to the Lord; “Please give me more patience,” the next thing you know, there it would be, all the patience I needed.
I was so wrong!
I had to drive about 15 kilometers to get to work. Through farm country. What was that on the road ahead of me? They were farm tractors. Everyday they were there and I could not pass them! I said; "Lord! Please get those things moving!"
“Did you not ask for patience? Well, this is how you learn!”
Some people don't learn quickly, or just forget a lesson learned, but I had now asked the Lord for more love, so I could love others more, than the love I felt at times for my brothers and sisters in the church.
You pray this or that way at times and then sort of forget about it. Not to worry, the Lord has a way of reminding you. I was at a Bible study when a woman that was not so lovable to me, came over to talk.
She gave me a hug and I had to give her a hug, the Lord said; “See if you can love this person, the next one will be easier.” And so it was!
Date:9/18/22
Series: Acts
Passage: Acts 6:8-7:8...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
Stephen was one of the greatest men who ever lived. In Part 1, we’ll study his rise to prominence in the Early Church, the adversity he encountered, how he answered charges of blasphemy brought against him, and what his message means for us today.
Last week in Acts chapter six, we were introduced to Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit. He was one of the seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom chosen to verses the distribution of food to the Hellenistic widows in the Jerusalem church. Today's text will continue Steven's story as God works mighty things through this amazing man. In just a few weeks, or at most months, we're going to see several parallels between Stephen and Jesus. The Lord wants us to recognize that Stephen was Christ-like and the Lord wants us to recognize where that led Steven's earthly life.
In Luke chapter two, we are told that as a boy Jesus grew up and became strong, and filled with wisdom, and God's grace was on him. And a few verses later we read and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God and with people. Now, compare that with verse three and verse five and what we read about Stephen's development in verse eight. It says now Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people. The original Greek tells us that Stephen was doing this consistently on an ongoing basis.
In other words, Stephen was working wonders, performing miracles, healing the sick on the level of the apostles, the Lord anointed Stephen with incredible power in these early days of the Church. Like the Lord Jesus, Stephen was admired by the people for the great wonders and signs he performed among them. And like the Lord Jesus, he remained a humble servant, waiting tables 1 minute and performing wondrous miracles the next, it says opposition arose, however, from some members of the freedman synagogue composed of both Sirenians and Alexandrians and some from Cilicia and Asia. And they began to argue with Stephen.
Friedmen were Jewish slaves or the children of Jewish slaves who had been set free by their Roman masters. They often formed their synagogues. At this time, synagogues were centers of Jewish communal and academic life. That's why, even though the temple was located in Jerusalem, there were also many, possibly even hundreds of synagogues located around the city. The freedmen in view here belonged to one or more of those synagogues.
Steven was himself a Hellenistic Jew, a Greek-speaking Jew who had been raised in Greek culture rather than Hebrew culture. You'll recall that all of the seven men who were chosen to verses the distribution of food to the Hellenistic widows were themselves Hellenistic Jews. It's possible that Stephen belonged to one of these freed men's synagogues. When it says that they begin to argue with Steve. And the original Greek tells us they were having formal debates or at least a formal debate.
Subsequent events will make it clear that their debate centered on the death and resurrection and Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth and the inability of the Mosaic law and temple rituals to provide salvation it seems that as a Hellenistic Jew, Stephen's theological understanding of these areas may have been significantly more advanced than even that of the disciples and the apostles. We don't have any indication in Scripture that the apostles were yet wrestling with how Jesus' life, death, and resurrection affected the role of the Law and the Temple in the life of the believer.