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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This is literally the opposite of what we sought out to do. Then we read Paul and Barnabas 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 loving God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them. Paul would later write to the Romans that since the creation of the world, god's invisible qualities, his eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse. You see, people understand there must be a power behind creation.
God has built us to recognize, design and order in creation and to recognize that a god must have created this. And Paul's a people. Paul's appeal to the people of Lystra is to turn from baseless myths and legends and idols made by their own hands to the God who is the power behind the glory of the universe. Anyone who's searching for the truth of reality, anyone, must answer several key questions. And the first question you have to answer if you're going to be a serious seeker of truth, is why is there something instead of nothing?
Why does anything exist? Why is anything here? And you'll find that if you begin to dig into and think and critique the answers that you were taught in public school or college, they are woefully inadequate for any explanation that has something coming from nothing without the involvement of any creator is, quite frankly, nonsense. It's nonsensical. Consciousness cannot come from unconsciousness.
Order cannot come from disorder. You cannot have code in creation without a coder. The universe is in entropy. Creation requires the exact opposite to take place. Everyone is worshipping something.
And the call of the gospel is to turn from those worthless things to the living God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them, because none of those worthless things can save you. None of them can give you peace. Nothing else but God can give you a joy that transcends your circumstances. None of those worthless things can cleanse you of your sins and free you from your guilt and shame. And none of those lesser things can bring you into the family of God, give you a new identity in Christ, turn from those worthless things and worship the loving God.
Paul and Barnabas realize in this moment that they've got to get way, way more basic in their gospel presentation. And so for this audience, the good news is not that the long-prophesied Hebrew Messiah has come. The good news is that they can know the true and living God, who is the ultimate power behind all things and the creator of the universe. They can know the God of gods. And instead of worshipping meaningless idols made by human hands, they can worship the living God.
And here's the good news he's good. He is good. He's not capricious like the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon. He's not capricious like the Olympians or the Immortals or the Eternals. The living God is good.
I also noticed that the reaction of Paul and Barnabas to the crowd shatters the misguided notion that if more Christians could just get a platform in the culture, then we'd be able to influence the culture for gospel purposes. There are many Christianity who believe that we need to just acquire influence in the culture by gaining a platform in the music industry, the film industry, and fashion culture on social media and in the mainstream media.
And then when I've succeeded in doing that, then I'll share the gospel with them. But what always ends up happening when we do that? As Paul told the Corinthians, do not be deceived bad company, corrupts good morals. Hear me on this. When we try to win over the world by becoming like the world, all that happens is we end up becoming like the world.
They don't become more like Jesus, and neither do we. We're called to be like Jesus, to speak like him, to live like him, to love like him, not like the world, like Jesus. And if there was ever a cultural platform to be strategically exploited for gospel purposes, this was it. Do you think that you might have the culture's attention when they think you're gods? You better believe it.
Think how tempting it would have been for Paul and Barnabas to just say to the other, okay, hang on, let's not be too hasty here. I mean, they're hanging on every word we say. I mean, why don't we just roll with it for a couple of days, use our influence to share the gospel, because people are going to listen to everything we say, and then in a couple of days we can set them straight and tell them we're not gods. What do you think? Would have been easy to do, right?
But how did Paul but how did Paul and Barnabas react? They tore their clothes. They told the people, we're just men like you. And they urged them to not worship them, but to turn and worship the true and living God. They were horrified that they were receiving any glory instead of Jesus.
Paul tells the crowd in past generations, that God allowed all the nations to go their own way. That's why there are problems in our world. God allows us individually and collectively to choose who we serve and submit to. The world collectively has rejected God, and as a result, the nations are ruled by wicked and evil men. What Josephus Dd Mestra wrote in 1811 is still true every nation gets the government it deserves.
And what an indictment that is on our nation. Verse 17 although he God, did not leave himself without a witness, since he did what is good underline good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and filling you with food and your hearts with joy. Here's the idea everything good comes from God. Anything that is genuinely good that is experienced by a believer or a non-believer comes from God. Rain, the harvest, good food, the ability to feel joy, to share laughter, music, art, beauty.
If it's truly God, it comes from God. He is the only source of goodness in the universe. As our brother James put it, every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights. And Paul tells this crowd that anything good they've experienced was given to them by God as a witness to his reality, that even when men are evil and reject Him, God is still good, because that's just who he is. Indeed, God's grace toward the unbeliever during their earthly life is incredible.
The question is not why do bad things happen to good people. The question is always why does anything God happen to anybody, ever? When the reality is that humanity has collectively rejected the Lord? The answer because God is good and God is gracious. Paul's overarching point is, that we're just men.
We're not the one who send reins on your crops or fill your heart with joy. God does that, so give Him the glory. And then the last verse we'll read for today, verse 18. It says even though they said these things, they barely stopped the crowds from sacrificing to them. If you're not a believer and you want to respond to the grace of God that has come to you today, please go to the website and watch the Gospel video.
Fill out the form and let us know that you've begun your journey of faith with the Lord. And we want to make sure you get connected with a good local church and begin your walk with Jesus. Take that step of faith and do that if you're not a believer yet. If you've placed God I'm sorry if you've placed others above God by allowing them to define love repent. If you've placed yourself above God by allowing yourself to define love repent.
We're going to pray for God to fill us with His Spirit so that we are full of his love, because nobody in our loves needs our definition of love. They need God's love poured out on them as he pours it into us and we pour it out on them. People need the love of God, not our love. And we cannot conjure up within ourselves the love of God. It comes from him.
So we're going to ask Him to fill us with His Spirit, that his love might flow through us to those he's put in our lives. And then we're also going to pray to be filled with the Spirit, that we might be bold with the Gospel, and we might listen when the Holy Spirit calls us to step out in faith and be bold.
And we're going to ask that the Lord would help any of us who haven't done so to accept the reality that the Gospel brings division. And if we're waiting for a method that won't bring division when we share the Gospel, we will be waiting forever. And we can't do that because there's people who need to know the Lord. So let's pray together. Would you bow your head and close your eyes?
Lord, thank you so much for Your Word, for the wisdom and the loving confrontation in Your Word. And thank you for servants like Paul and Barnabas, and for everyone who truly loves you and seeks to serve you today. Thank you for the gifts that they are to the Church. Jesus, Father, I pray for any of us who have allowed someone else to define love or allowed ourselves to define love. Lord, please forgive us for doing that.
We want to repent of that. We want to look to Your Word to see how you define love, and then we want to love people like that in the way that is pleasing to you. And so in order to do that, Lord, we need to be filled with Your Spirit, because we can't stir this up within ourselves. It's a gift from you. So fill us with Your spirit.
Fill us with Your love that it might be poured out through us, onto those in our lives. Jesus, fill us with Your Spirit so that we can be bold with the Gospel. And Lord, help us to exercise faith, that even where there is fear, we would choose to exercise faith, believing that you will give us the words to say and the boldness. We need to share you with others and then help us to be okay with whatever the outcome is, because you're the Lord of the harvest. You're the One Who decides how people respond.
And so help us to be faithful, to share the good news, because that's what You've called us to do, and then to leave the results up to You, because You alone are God. We love you, Lord. We bless you. We're so thankful for all Your goodness and just. Lord, we just thank you for every little good thing we experience in our lives.
So we're going to ask Him to fill us with His Spirit, that his love might flow through us to those he's put in our lives. And then we're also going to pray to be filled with the Spirit, that we might be bold with the Gospel, and we might listen when the Holy Spirit calls us to step out in faith and be bold.
And we're going to ask that the Lord would help any of us who haven't done so to accept the reality that the Gospel brings division. And if we're waiting for a method that won't bring division when we share the Gospel, we will be waiting forever. And we can't do that because there's people who need to know the Lord. So let's pray together. Would you bow your head and close your eyes?
Lord, thank you so much for Your Word, for the wisdom and the loving confrontation in Your Word. And thank you for servants like Paul and Barnabas, and for everyone who truly loves you and seeks to serve you today. Thank you for the gifts that they are to the Church. Jesus, Father, I pray for any of us who have allowed someone else to define love or allowed ourselves to define love. Lord, please forgive us for doing that.
We want to repent of that. We want to look to Your Word to see how you define love, and then we want to love people like that in the way that is pleasing to you. And so in order to do that, Lord, we need to be filled with Your Spirit, because we can't stir this up within ourselves. It's a gift from you. So fill us with Your spirit.
Fill us with Your love that it might be poured out through us, onto those in our lives. Jesus, fill us with Your Spirit so that we can be bold with the Gospel. And Lord, help us to exercise faith, that even where there is fear, we would choose to exercise faith, believing that you will give us the words to say and the boldness. We need to share you with others and then help us to be okay with whatever the outcome is, because you're the Lord of the harvest. You're the One Who decides how people respond.
And so help us to be faithful, to share the good news, because that's what You've called us to do, and then to leave the results up to you, because you alone are God. We love you, Lord. We bless you. We're so thankful for all Your goodness and just. Lord, we just thank you for every little god thing we experience in our lives.
For every little good thing we will experience today, for the taste of good food, for a smile, for laughter, for the ways that we get to experience love that comes from you and is directed toward us by others who love you. For the things we see that are beautiful. And God. Lord. Just thank you.
You've pour out so much goodness into our lives, and it all comes from you. So we glorify you for it, we praise you for it, and we can't wait to experience the ultimate good, which is going to be spending eternity in Your presence. We love you so much, we can't wait to see you. In your name we pray. Amen.
Passage: Acts 14:19-28..........Speaker: Jeff Thompson
The crowd in Lystra goes from hailing Paul as a god one day to trying to stone him to death the next. We’ll look at what causes such dramatic changes in people’s attitudes toward the Gospel, and why it is God’s plan that we go through trials in this life.
Well, Paul and Barnabas are on the first major missionary journey in church history. Having been expelled from Pisidian Antioch by the civic authorities, they journeyed to Iconium, and there they learned of a plot by their enemies to stone them to death the following day. So they wisely led to the surrounding countryside and ministered in smaller provincial towns like Lustra. And there, in the middle of his public sermon, the Holy Spirit empowered Paul to heal a lame man. The crowd responded by declaring Paul and Barnabas to be God, visiting them in human form, Hermes and Zeus, and sought to worship them and offer them sacrifices.
Appalled by their blasphemous words and actions, Paul and Barnabas persuaded the crowd to stop. But we ended our previous study in verse 18 where we read even though they said these things, they barely stopped the crowds from sacrificing to them. We're going to jump back in in Acts 14, verse 19, as our story continues, it says some Jews came from Pisidian, Antioch and Iconium, and when they won over the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city thinking he was dead. So some of the Jews, religious leaders who had arranged to have Paul and Barnabas thrown out of Pisidian Antioch, and who hatched the unsuccessful plot to stone him to death in Iconium, hated the Gospel so much that they made the journey to Lystra to persecute them there. And this time, they didn't hatch a plot to be executed the following day.
They worked those men of the city into a religious frenzy and created a mob that grabbed Paul that very day and stoned him to the point where they believed him to be dead and dragged his limp, unconscious body out of the city. We don't know if they focused solely on Paul because he was the public speaker, or if Barnabas was running an errand at the time or something like that. Suffice it to say, it is serious to be assaulted to the point where your attackers believe you to be dead. It is believed that Paul was pointing about the scars left by this attack when he told the Galatians, I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. This insane turn of events raises glaring questions like how in the world does the crowd in Lustra go from worshipping Paul as a god to trying to stone him to death?
How were the traveling Jewish religious leaders able to change the minds and attitudes toward Paul so quickly and so dramatically? I suggest that to find an answer, we take a detour to chapter four of the Gospel of Luke. So if you would just stick your bulletins in Acts chapter 14 and then turn back to Luke chapter four, verse 14. Luke, chapter four, verse 14. We read, Then Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread throughout the entire vicinity.
He was teaching in their synagogues, being praised by everyone. This was early on in Jesus's ministry, and he was just beginning to speak publicly. Pretty much everybody recognized Him as a rabbi, a legitimate Jewish religious teacher. Accordingly, he was offered the opportunity to read from the Scriptures and comment on them at any Sabbath service, at any synagogue. It goes on and says he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up as usual.
He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. So Jesus requests to read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and he's about to read a messianic prophecy, a prophecy recorded by Isaiah hundreds of years earlier, that speaks about what the Messiah would do during his ministry and unrolling the scroll. He found the place where it was written the Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.
And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And the reason everyone is staring at Him and there's this awkward silence is because he left this messianic prophecy incomplete. In fact, he stopped at a comma. The next line that comes after that comma reads the day of our God's vengeance. You see, Jesus stopped at that comma because it divides the work that Jesus did in his first Coming from the work that he will do in His Second Coming.
Isaiah 61 continues and details more that the Lord will do at His Second Comin,. But the Jews at the time didn't have any concept of a first and a second coming, even though it's all over Old Testament prophecies. They believed the Messiah would come once, take care of their sins, and more importantly in the Jewish mind at that time, vanquish Israel's enemies, restore her political independence, and give her the highest place of prominence among the nations of the earth.
So they're puzzled when Jesus stops and sits down, indicating that he's finished reading from the Scriptures, leaving this prophecy incomplete.
Then we read He Jesus began.
So he's beginning his comments on the Scripture now by saying to them today, as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled. Jesus was saying, Isaiah 61 is about me. The Spirit of the Lord is on me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
And we keep reading in verse 22 that now,underline this, they were all speaking well of Him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from His mouth, yet they said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. Isn't this Joseph's son? So even though God is doing something amazing, even though he's stirring their hearts, and as Jesus is saying, literally, I am the Messiah, and their spirits are resonating in them, yes, this is true. Even as God is doing all that, they talk themselves out of committing to following Him by saying, but he's just one of us. He's just Joseph's boy.
He's just a redneck, blue-collar guy like the rest of us. He doesn't come from a prestigious family. He's not a military commander. There is zero chance that he is capable of overthrowing the Romans. He can't be the messiah.
The Holy Spirit reveals to Jesus what they're thinking and saying. And so Jesus says to them, no doubt you will quote this proverb to me, Doctor, heal yourself. What we've heard that took place in Capernaum Hebrews do in your hometown also, so Jesus can read their minds, because the Holy Spirit reveals what they're thinking to him.
I know he's doing that. He knows they've been given enough revelation by the Spirit to believe, but they've talked themselves out of it because they don't want to believe. They don't want to believe in the kind of Messiah He is. They already have made their mind up about the kind of Messiah they want, and they're not interested in anything else, even if it comes from God. He also said, Truly, I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
But I say to you, there were certainly many widows in Israel in Elijah's days, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months while a great famine came over all the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. And the prophet Elisha's time. There were many in Israel who had leprosy, and yet not one of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian. So here's what Jesus is saying.
He's saying no legit prophet of God is accepted in his hometown. In fact, no legit prophet of God is even accepted by his own people. For example, two of the greatest prophets in Israel's history, Elijah and Elisha, and then Jesus alludes to two stories that everyone there would have been familiar with. He points out that the common denominator in both of those miracles, both of those stories, is that the prophet of God performed miracles for Gentiles because no one in Israel had faith in God at that time. And so Jesus is saying, like Elijah, like Elisha, I am a legit prophet.
And like all legit prophets, I'm not accepted in my hometown. Or by my own people. So like those other legit prophets, I will have to go to the Gentiles to find faith. It was a stinging rebuke that warned the people, you are repeating the mistakes of your ancestors when they heard this. Now underline this in contrast to what I just had you underline a second ago, when they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was enraged.
They got up, drove him out of town, brought him to the edge of the hill that their town was built on, and it underlined this intending to hurl him over the cliff, but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way. Jesus miraculously and supernatural supernaturally just walks away, walks through the crowd. They're all stirred up in such a frenzy, that nobody notices them because God blinds their eyes to him, and he just walks away from this crowd that literally wanted to murder Him. In verse 22, we read they were all speaking well of him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from his mouth. Six verses later, we read everyone in the synagogue was enraged.
They got up, drove him out of town, and brought him to the edge of the hill that their town was built on, intending to hurl him over the cliff. It's the same kind of insane, 180-degree change in attitude that we just saw in the citizens of Lystra regarding their treatment of Paul. And what was the cause in both cases? Well, I suggest that the cause is almost always the same when we see someone who has initial enthusiasm toward God, but it quickly turns not only to apathy but all the way over to disdain and hatred. The cause is almost always unfulfilled expectations and unexpected costs.
Write this down and we'll talk about it. Unfulfilled expectations and unexpected costs cause people to turn against the Gospel. Unfulfilled expectations and unexpected costs. The former are those who decide what God should be like before they even meet Him. They create a God in their own image, a God who will do what they want God to do and allow them to live their lives however they want to live.
I've already decided what God is going to be like. He's very much like me.
Probably not an important point. The latter, those who walk away because of unexpected costs are interested in the living God until they learn the cost involved in following him. They're excited until they learn what the Lord Jesus asks of those who are his. And they're not ready to get off the throne of their loves just yet. The Jews in Nazareth had already decided what the Messiah should be like.
And Jesus didn't fit the bill. They had already decided that the Messiah would free them from the Romans and only benefit the Jews. So Jesus talking about Gentiles enraged them. The Jewish religious leaders who traveled to Lystra likely won over the crowds by pointing out all the things that they would have to give up if they followed this God, Paul was preaching about. You won't get to have your pagan celebrations anymore, I could tell you that.
Did you know Christians don't even have temple prostitutes? So you can forget about your weekly worship trips to the temple. They'll expect you to give up all your religious traditions. Those are part of your culture. You don't want to lose your culture, do you?
This Christian guy is trying to erase your traditions. Did you know they don't even let you worship idols? Not even, like, little ones. Unfulfilled expectations and unexpected costs reveal who genuinely desires the light of truth and who in reality desires to avoid it at all costs. If you've been following Jesus for a while, then sadly, you've seen this happen.
You've seen people who claim to be Christians but then walk away because they thought it was supposed to make everything in their life easier. They thought all their relationships would suddenly improve. They'd get a promotion at work. Miraculously, though, the closest spots at Costco would be vacant. When they rose down the aisle, and when their expectations weren't met, they were done.
You've seen people who profess to love Jesus, but when they learn about some unexpected costs, they walk away angry. What do you mean? Jesus commands us not to do that. What do you mean? Jesus says I have to do that?
I'm not doing that. I'm not giving that up. I'm out of here. I'm done. And here's the thing about truth.
The truth does not care about your opinion. In fact, the truth is not affected in any way by what I think of it. I know that's shocking for some of us, the truth doesn't go, yes, this is objective reality, but what do you think about it? Should I change the truth? Doesn't Caleb about your opinion, or mine at all?
Even if it offends you, even if it offends the culture, not one time does the truth say, okay, this is the truth, but I'd like to take a vote and then I'll revise it based on what you guys think. The truth remains the truth. You can be offended by it, you can reject it, you can bury it, you can censor it, you can protest against it, you can do whatever you want, and yet the truth remains the truth.
And I point that out to make this point. If you sincerely want to know the truth, you cannot place any preconditions upon it. In other words, you cannot say, oh, I want the truth unless it's this, unless it's that unless it doesn't meet my criteria, if you place any preconditions on the truth, you are automatically disqualified from finding it. If you place preconditions on the truth, then the words of the American philosopher Jacques Nicolson will apply to you. You can't handle the truth.
Those who desire to know the truth cannot place any preconditions upon it. The good news of the gospel is not that the truth will meet your expectations. The good news of the gospel is that the truth is so much better and so much more glorious than your expectations. What God wants to do in you and what God has prepared for you is so much greater than you could possibly imagine. Who would expect a God who lacks nothing to love us?
And not in a distant, everything is love generic kind of way, but in a personal I care about every single detail of your life kind of way, a I am with you and will never leave you kind of way. The truth is so much better than you could imagine or expect. But to find it, you must place no preconditions upon it. Let's return to Acts 14, verse 20, where the townsmen have dragged Paul's assumed to be lifeless body outside the city and left it. It says, after the disciples gathered around him.
Now, we don't know if they were coming to take his body away for burial, to pray for him, or to protect his body from desecration, but among these disciples may have been Timothy, who would later become Paul's protege. And so they gather around his body, and then this happens. He got up. Against all odds, Paul was still alive, beaten, bloodied, bruised, unquestionably, with multiple broken loves.
Whoever you are, you will sometimes find yourself beaten within an inch of your life by life, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, sometimes even physically. And when that happens, one of the most helpful and powerful things that we can experience is the disciples of Jesus, our brothers and sisters, gathering around us. And as they grieve with us, as they comfort us, as they remind us of God's promises, as they pray with us and for us, we find that through them, God has imparted to us the strength to get up and keep loving. We may be beaten up, bloodied and scarred, but by the grace of God, we have the strength to persevere. In difficult times, I find myself increasingly wanting and seeking a brother or some brothers to simply gather around me, lay hands on me and pray for me.
Because God ministers to us through his people. We need each other. We need each other. So do that for your brothers and sisters. And if you're a disciple of Jesus and you've been knocked down, open up and share that with some of God's people.
Don't miss out on an incredible source of strength that God has made available to you. Do not suffer in secret. Remember what the Word says god resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. A church family is a grace given by God to those who love Him that they might experience his grace through their brothers and sisters.
Well, after Paul gets up he does the most Paul thing ever. We read he got up and went into the town. Of course he did. Of course he did. He went back into the city completely undeterred.
Paul genuinely did not fear any man. He was absolutely relentless. I suspect Paul would have liked to stay and continue ministering in the city but was probably talked out of it by some of the other disciples and likely Barnabas. They're like, I know you'd love to stay and minister Paul, but we feel like this might be a sign from the Lord that it's time to move on. So we read that the next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe.
Let's throw up our map again to give you an idea of where Derbe was located. It was about 60 miles our 97 km southeast of Lustra. And Paul undertook that journey just a day after being beaten within an inch of his life. He simply was not going to stop doing God's work until he was dead.
It was Paul saying, when I'm gone, do not forget these truths because they are essential. And if you remember those things, Timothy, you will live a fruitful, faithful and profitable life. And Paul wrote, you have followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love and endurance, along with the persecutions and sufferings that came to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra. The civic authorities expelled Paul in Pisidian, Antioch. They plotted to murder him.
In Iconium, he was almost stoned to death in Lystra. What persecutions I endured. And yet the Lord rescued me from them all. In fact, now underline this, it's on your outlines all. What's the fascinating thing about that Greek word all?
In English, it means all. All who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, and evil people and impostors will become worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, underline this, continue in what you have learned and firmly believe. You know those who taught you, and you know that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
And you can hear in Paul's words how desperately he wants Timothy to understand how vital the Word of God is. He says, Timothy, the wisdom and the training that you need, it's in the Scriptures. And so if we're going to be those who continue in the faith, those who persevere, who endure, we have to be people of the Word. We're going to have to adjust our perspective from God's Word is good to God's Word is essential. I must have it.
I desperately need it. If you're not a reader, you're going to have to become one. If you are limited by some disability, you're going to have to learn how to listen to the Word with something from an audio Bible. Whatever you have to do to get God's Word into you, you have to do it. This is Paul writing to Timothy.
Okay. One legend writes to another legend, and their discussion is about how desperately men of God like them, need the Word of God. Reality check you are no Paul. I am no Timothy. So we need the word of God.
Paul and Barnabas encouraged the new believers to continue in the faith and told them it was necessary to go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God. I'm going to share one thing here that for some of you, will change your perspective on this issue forever from this moment, as in other places in the New Testament, the original Greek word that's translated in your Bibles there as something like necessary is the word day, D-E-I. And it refers to the divine plan, god's plan for our lives. Here's what I want you to understand. In other words, Paul and Barnabas were telling the new believers it is God's plan that we go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.
Not that these are undesired obstacles, on the way. It is God's plan that we go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. Now, why would that be God's plan? Because, like me, you're like, why couldn't it be God's plan that it was super comfy and, like, wearing sweatpants at home to go into the kingdom of God? Why couldn't we do that instead?
Well, I suggest our brother James gives us the answer when he writes, consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials. Why? Because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance from two weeks ago. How do we learn to persevere? How do we learn to endure?
How do we learn to continue in the faith?
God is working through our trials. Scripture says that he will not test us beyond what we can stand. So even the trials that we experience are tailor made for where we are right now in our spiritual maturity, but they are tailor made to increase our spiritual maturity. Firstly, trials reveal how we're really loving with trusting God. Trials are a reality check of our faith.
They cut through all the words we say, and all the verses we post on social media. The old saying is true like a tube of toothpaste. When the squeeze is on, whatever is on the inside comes out.
We're able very often to delude ourselves and fool others. But when the pressure is on, when we're in the trial, the truth of what we believe comes out and it's revealed. And our level of spiritual maturity is revealed. It's put on display. And that provides opportunities for us to learn, to grow, to be lovingly corrected and taught by more mature believers.
Also, opportunities to repent and choose to trust God in a greater way going forward.
You know, when it comes to speaking doubt, you're in a trial, that is it. I'm going to die. Might as well just go to bed and not wake up. There's no way out of this. We're doomed.
You're doomed. This ship is going down. We're all going to die. God is dead. Now, the way that God works through trials is that we're eventually supposed to get tired of putting our foot in our mouths.
Do you know that? Like, we're actually supposed to reach the point where we have the epiphany. It just dawned on me. He's always been faithful. Always.
Without exception. I don't know if I'm the first person to notice this, but he also promises in his word that he will always be faithful.
So hang with me here.
What if he's faithful? What if he's just faithful and I should actually notice that and stop speaking doubt in every trial that comes into my life and actually graduate to a greater level of faith? By noticing what he's been screaming at me my whole life, which is that he's with me. He's good and he's faithful. What if I just listened and believed and learned from observable reality?
So that's what trials do. They're a reality check. Doesn't matter what lies we tell ourselves about our spiritual maturity, doesn't matter how good we are at speaking the lingo and the jargon and fooling others. When the squeeze is on, it reveals where we're really at. And that's an invitation to grow from there to a place of greater faith.
Secondly, why would trials be God's plan? Because they bring us closer to him. Because when we're in the middle of a storm, we cling to Jesus like never before. Like never before. And that is where we learn what it means to abide in Christ.
That's where we learn to view Him as our only hope. It's true that you will never learn. Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. Where was the one place Shadrach, Meschech and Abednego fellowshipped with Jesus face to face in the fire where they had been cast to die for refusing to bow to the statue of King Nebuchadnezzar? Then King Nebuchadnezzar jumped up in alarm and he said to his advisors, didn't we throw three men bound into the fire?
Yes, of course, Your Majesty. They replied to the King. He exclaimed, Look, I see our men not tied, walking around in the fire unharmed. And the fourth looks like a son of the gods. And when they were called out of those fires, Jesus remained in it, because that's where he is.
I wish that I had grown when my life was easy. I wish that when it was smooth sailing, my reaction was just like, oh, lovely, just another good day where everything is taken care of. And I just want to acknowledge you're just so good and I love you so much. I wish that was my reaction. Do you know what my reaction is?
Oh, man, sleeping in was sweet. I did not get much done today. I coast when my life is easy, put in cruise control, put my feet up on the dash, put the seat back, and take a nap. I grow when I'm placed under stress and tension. But God's desire is not for us to be stressed and tense.
He desires that we encounter Him in the trial, draw near to him receive his peace, and have fellowship with Him. And there is nothing like his peace is what Paul was writing about when he told the Philippians not to worry about anything. Don't worry about anything but everything through prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your request to God. What is Paul saying?
He's saying, as you present your request to God, give Him thanks for what? For who He is, for what you've already seen Him do, and for who you know He will be tomorrow and the day after that. So Paul instructs the Philippians. Even as you're asking God and sharing your burdens, be thanking Him in faith for who He is. There's power in that.
If you don't know this yet, when you pray even more than just asking, pray in faith and thank the Lord. Lord, thank you that you see. Thank you that you know, thank you that you're with me. Thank you that you know what I need and you promise to meet it. Thank you.
That you're good. And so here's my prayer. Lord, help me to seek first the kingdom of God. I don't need to pray. I like to say this.
Stop asking God for things he's already promised. You in his word. Stop asking like it's 50-50 whether he'll do it or not. Lord, please see. Please care about me.
Stop that.
Lord, thank you that you see. Thank you that you care. Thank you that you're with me. I don't need to pray to God and ask Him to be anything my prayer needs to be.
Lord, help me to walk with you. Help me to hear from you. Get my mind right. Lord, help me to take every thought captive.
Thank you for your promises.
God's not the issue. He's not the One that needs to change. He's promised to be good. All I want is, Lord, fill me with faith.
Help me to go through this trial in a way that honors you. And then Paul says, hey, if you do that, then the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Paul is saying, Listen, the peace of God doesn't have anything to do with your circumstances. It's from heaven. It's divine, it transcends your circumstances, and it'll guard your heart and mind so that people will say, why aren't you freaking out in this?
Because the Lord is with me. He's given me his peace. Paul says that's what's available to you if you will bring these things to God in faith. David wrote the Lord is near to the brokenhearted. He saves those crushed in spirit.
So why are trials part of the divine plan? Write this down trials draw us closer to God and teach us how to abide in Christ. They draw us closer to God and teach us how to abide in Christ. If you are going through a trial, let me exhort you to reflect on what the trial is revealing about your faith right now. Reflect on what it is revealing about your spiritual maturity, what you really believe about God, and whether you really trust His promises, and then go to His Word.
You are being sanctified. You are not who you were. And above all, remember that the Lord is near to you. He's available. So cling to him.
Hold fast to him. Ask for his peace, and receive it by faith. He will not fail you. He will not fail you.
We read in verse 23 underline this when they had appointed elders for them in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the loved in whom they had believed. So these groups of new believers had been meeting together since they heard the Gospel. And as Paul and Barnabas journey back through the towns and the cities where these people had turned to Jesus, they established churches by appointing elders. We noticed that they didn't just say, Everybody loves Jesus, so we don't need leaders or structure or anything like that. Let's just be led by the Spirit.
They appointed elders, plural. This means they appointed multiple elders in every church. Tasked with leading the church together and sharing authority, these men met the requirements for elders that Paul would later define in 1 Timothy 3, and Titus, chapter one, Paul and Barnabas did not appoint lone lead pastors. They appointed multiple elders to share authority in every church. This is the only church leadership model we see in the Bible.
The only one. Therefore, I believe we can safely assume it is the one Jesus desires for his church. Now, had I known and understood this when I planted New Hope Church, I would never have planted the church alone. I believe it was a sin of ignorance, but that doesn't make it right, and it's a large part of why Gospel City Church was formed. The Lord revealed this in his word to me and through my relationship with BJ, and I wanted to obey.
We both wanted to obey. And then the Lord made a way for us to obey by New Hope Church and God Rock Church joining together, creating a plurality of elders, even with two. And so we continue to work on developing future deacons and future elders that we can add to our church leadership to become even more biblical. We desire to have enough elders that the Lord could call some of them to go out one day and plant a church. We would love to have a healthy enough congregation and eldership that we can send them out with at least two of them together, so that their church can have a plurality of elders from day one.
And then any congregants who feel led by the Spirit to join them can go. We'd love to see the Lord do that. We don't have any desire to be a church of a thousand people we desire to see, people called and sent out to do the work of the Lord. Now, if you're wondering how in the world Paul and Barnabas could appoint elders so quickly from a group of new believers, I should explain this that pretty much every elder they appointed would have been Jewish. They would have been a man who had spent his whole life learning the Old Testament Scriptures, knew them inside and out, had lived and practiced the discipline of honoring God's commands, and had years of reputation as a man of Godly character.
And they were now following Jesus because they recognized him as the Messiah prophesied by the Old Testament Scriptures. These were not typical new converts. These were not Greek pagans and then church elders one day later. They were Jewish men who recognized that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah and then continued following him as the Messiah in the continuation of their Judaism becoming part of the Church. Their spiritual maturity was nowhere near that of a brand new pagan believer.
They passed through Pisidian. Antioch came to Pamphylia. After they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia. Paul and Barnabas had apparently not preached in Perga when they first passed through it, so they did that now on their return journey. Attalia is just the port of Perga.
It's just a couple of hours away. It's too close to even show on the map. Then it says from there they sailed back home to Antioch. This would be Syrian Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. Let's throw up our map one last time for this first missionary journey, and we can see the entire journey now.
So they basically went all the way to Derbe and then backtracked all the way back to their home base of Syrian Antioch. They just bypassed the island of Cyprus on the way homes. Verse 27 after they arrived and gathered the Church together, they reported everything underlying God. They reported everything God had done with them and that he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. Unlike the Jewish religious leaders who opposed Jesus and the early church in Jerusalem and Paul and Barnabas in Galatia, the apostles of Jesus delight in directing glory to Him rather than themselves.
We see that as they joyfully share everything God did during their journey, and that's how a servant of Jesus thinks and views their life. Anything good that happens is because of the grace of God and he deserves the praise and glory for it. Verse 28. And they spent a considerable time with the disciples, paul and Barnabas must have been, I mean, just think emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually drained after such an eventful and dramatic journey. And yet I noticed that it doesn't say and they drew away from their church to recharge their batteries.
It doesn't say and they went away on vacation because they had earned some me time. It doesn't say and they stopped serving and meeting with their brothers and sisters because they were tired. It doesn't say that, no. Paul and Barnabas were refreshed, recharged and healed in part by spending time with the disciples, other men and women who sincerely loved the Lord Jesus. I'm sure they rested, I'm sure they needed to.
But for them and for any genuine believer being around other people who sincerely love the Lord and follow Him as Lord is rest, it is refreshment, it is healing, because God has wired us to be an encouragement to one another. And every genuine believer loves the bride of Christ, which is the church. I don't know where so many modern Christians get the idea that being around their brothers and sisters is unrest. Because if you find being around people who genuinely love Jesus to be draining, there's only a few explanations.
First possibility you're not saved, and so you don't have God's spirit in you stirring up love for his people. First possibility. Second possibility you're not in a church where people are genuinely saved. That would be a problem. Third possibility you're disobeying Jesus and you need to repent.
You need to ask Him to fill you with his love for his people and his bride, the church, and you need to ask Him to allow you to understand how much you need them. Sometimes we don't have a desire, but we recognize we should. And the prayer in those moments is, Lord, change my desires, because right now I don't have that affection. But I recognize that's not good, that's not right. And I've just become entrenched in my self absorption and that needs to change.
Jesus said, this is my command. Love one another as I have loved you. It's pretty simple. And by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.
So I just encourage you, man, this is kindergarten level Christianity, and I share this because I love you. But it grieves me and it grieves BJ when we see professing believers say, oh, I haven't been to church for a while because I'm just dealing with a lot right now. It grieves us because firstly, you haven't made the connection that when you're in a trial, you need Jesus more than anything else. You haven't even figured that out yet. You haven't figured out that you need the disciples to gather around you and pray with you and pray for you and strengthen you.
You haven't figured out that you need to be in the presence of God as the saints lift up His name and worship as His Word is spoken over you. You haven't figured that out yet. And so when you get in a trial, you just pull away from the things you need most, because you want to sit in a hole in the dark instead and think that that's what's going to help you. And I lovingly need to exhort you. Stop it.
Grow up. Grow up. Act with some spiritual maturity. Drag yourself to church if you have to, because you recognize you need it. It pains us so much to see this is the oldest tactic of Satan in the world.
Oh, you're going through a hard time. How can I exploit this? Step one, isolate you every time. needs to get you away from all the people who can speak the truth of God into your life with grace power and hope. Right now, I got to get you alone so that you don't get any of that.
I got to get you to isolate yourselves away from people, away from fellowship, away from the encouragement of the saints. Step two, is to get you away from the word of God. Isolate you, isolate you, isolate you. And the number of people who I see going, yeah, I'm good with that. Just grieves me.
Because we love you and we want good for you. And I see Christians do it over and over and over and over again, playing right into the enemy's hands.
Grow up. Grow up and recognize your need for Jesus, your desperate need for him. Desperate need for him.
Now, it's just an interesting side note that it's also believed that during this season of recovery in Syrian Antioch, Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians. So if you have some spare time this week and want to dig into that now, you know the context that the churches there were founded in.
And if you read his Epistle to them, you can see the challenges that came up in their first few years of existence. And so with that, I'm going to ask the worship team to come up. I'm going to share just a few key points to conclude today.
Whatever. It is a lot to follow Jesus, he's worth it. Whatever it costs, he's worth it. Remember, if you want to know the truth, you cannot place any preconditions on the truth. I want the truth, whatever it is.
Disciples of Jesus, follow Jesus. By obeying Jesus, trials reveal the true status of our faith and spiritual maturity. And trials draw us closer to God because they teach us how to abide in Christ and Jesus will give you his peace if you will come to Him in your trial in faith, believing he's good, he's with you, he cares about you. He will guard your mind and your heart with this supernatural peace. So let's come to the Lord in prayer.
Lord Jesus, thank you so much for Your word and thank you for the brothers that went before us, men like Paul and men like Barnabas, who were just relentless with the Gospel. And Lord, I just pray first of all for us, Lord, just give us a fraction of their boldness that we would be fearless with the gospel, with no concern for the cost to ourselves, just absolutely sold out for Your glory and Your fame. Loved, speak to us by Your Spirit with clarity and help us, help us not to complicate things or talk ourselves out of it, but to willingly, full of Your boldness in faith, speak the truth. So we pray for that, and we ask for that, Lord.
And then, Jesus, I pray if any of us are disobeying you in an area of our lives right now, reveal it to us, Lord, because as Your disciples we desire to obey you.
So we invite you to reveal those things to us, Lord, that we might repent and walk in obedience to you. And then, Jesus, I ask that where you need to, you would change our perspective on trials, because we understand it is part of Your divine plan and that You are doing good things in us. You are making us more like Jesus through these things, preparing us to rule and reign with you in the ages to come. So have your way loved.
Do that, we welcome it. But Lord, I want to pray for anyone who is going through a trial right now and is feeling overwhelmed. Jesus, I pray by Your spirit you would remind them of what they know to be true, that you are faithful. You always have been and you always will be.
So I ask in Jesus name for the gift of faith to be imparted to them in their trial, not so that they can get through it, but so that they can honor You in it, speaking only honorable things about You, speaking only praiseworthy things about Your character and about Your goodness in faith.
Jesus and Father, I pray that you would enable those going through a trial right now to cast their cares upon you, to come to you and just say, lord, help feel like I'm drowning here right now. And then we thank you in faith, Lord Jesus, that you are near to the broken hearted and you save those who are crushed in spirit. And we thank you in faith that you will touch their mind and their thoughts, and you will bring peace upon them. You will touch their soul and their emotions and their heart, and you will bring peace there. Not because the circumstances change, but because You are with them.
And they suddenly sense that, and they feel that and they perceive that, and you do a supernatural work guarding their minds and hearts in Christ Jesus. So, Lord, we do where we are overwhelmed with anxiety, overwhelmed with restlessness, we give that to you. And we believe in faith, even if we don't know what that means or how to do that or what that looks like. We just believe you could take it. And so we thank you in faith for doing that.
Lord, I pray that no one would leave here without accepting that invitation if they are carrying any kind of anxiety or unrest. Lord, touch Your people in Your grace and in Your power that Your name might be glorified and honored, because you're faithful only, ever and always, Jesus, and we love you. In Your precious name we pray. Amen.
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The scene is darkly comical outside of the tragedy of a man being demon possessed. We know from this account that demonic possession can result in abnormal strength, as this single man tears the clothes off seven men and attacks them so violently that they're collectively forced to flee for their lives. Now, it could be that they're just not the rough and tumble sort because they're from the upper class, and he jumps on them, and they're like it could be that, but it seems clear there's a little more than that going on. This incident, though, busts the popular Christian myth that there is unconditional power in the name of Jesus. I'm speaking of the belief that all a person needs to do when confronted with evil is speak the name of Jesus, and that evil must bow or flee.
The sons of sea confidently name drop Jesus. And yet the demon in this man was completely unmoved. It did nothing to him. And that's because the name of Jesus only holds transferable power when used by those given the authority to use it, or by those crying out to him in desperation and inviting him to come in and reign as Lord. If a person recognizes that their life is under the power of sin and death and cries out to Jesus for deliverance, he will deliver them as long as their cry is not deliver me from this situation and then get out of my life, but rather deliver me from this situation and take the throne as king of my life.
If it is indeed the former rather than the latter, then it matters not how dark or hopeless the situation or circumstance Jesus will free and deliver from the power of sin and death. The only other situation where the name of Jesus has transferable power is when it is employed by those he has given authorization to wield it - His Church. It is an essential detail that Jesus was speaking to his disciples when he said, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. Who is the "you" Jesus is speaking of?
It's his disciples. It's the church. It's those who belong to him. So, would you write this down? The name of Jesus only holds power for those who call upon him as loved those who call upon him as Lord.
The name of Jesus is not some magic incantation. It's not a magic word. He is not like the lesser gods. The sons of Sceva learned that lesson the hard way. The demon knew that Jews had not given them authority to operate in the power of his name, and so it did not have to respect their command.
These men would have been shocked as assumingly Satan had in the past allowed them to appear to succeed most of the time, but this was something different. Satan, it seems, was not permitted by God to impersonate the power of the name of Jesus. These demons were not given permission to impersonate the power of the specific name of Jesus in Ephesus. And this event serves as a serious warning to anyone who wishes to simply add Jesus to their spiritual toolbox. It will not end well for those who carelessly meddle in the supernatural realm.
Series: Acts.Passage: Acts 19:13-19...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
Some traveling Hebrew exorcists learn the hard way that the name of Jesus is not a magic word or an incantation, and "many" Ephesians turn to Christ after witnessing His power through Paul's ministry in their city. The radical and immediate actions of those new believers remind us just how profound the immediate change produced by the Holy Spirit coming into a person's life is.
We've spent the past three weeks in verses eleven and twelve of Acts 19 and it's time to move on. And you better hold on because today we are going to go through seven, count them, seven verses. So, let's return to the city of Ephesus and get straight into the text of Acts, chapter 19, verse 13. It says now some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists also attempted to pronounce the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I command you by the Jesus that Paul preaches, seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish high priest, were doing this. Now, there's no reference in any historical source of a Jewish high priest named Sceva, and we can safely assume he was not a real high priest.
The original Greek word translated here, high priest, is used in Luke's Gospel and the Book of Acts to refer to members of the Jewish priestly aristocracy or who are part of the court that determined issues related to the priests and the temple. So, this guy was just part of the Jewish religious bourgeoisie is the best way to think about it and would have almost certainly lived in Jerusalem. So, who were his seven sons and what were they doing so far from home in Ephesus? Well, the text tells us they were itinerant exorcists. They were traveling professional Jewish exorcists who claimed to cast out evil spirits from the possessed as a professional service.
If you wanted to summon the power of the Hebrew God, the belief in the world at that time was, well, then you had to hire a Hebrew exorcist because he's got the inside track with the Hebrew God. Now remember, Jews would never speak the name of God. They viewed it as an issue of reverence, and they still do today. They will write what we think the name of God is, Yahweh, without the vowels. Because for devout Jews, it would be blasphemous to actually say or write the full name of God.
So, when Jewish exorcists would cast a demon out of a person, they would use all other kinds of phrases and methods to try and do it. They would use phrases, they were allowed to say, spells and sorcery mixed in with some of the names like Jehovah, that maybe they could say the Book of Tobit, which is an extra biblical Hebrew writing, tells a tale. It's just a tale wherein the heart and liver of a miraculously caught fish are burned in the ashes of incense and the resulting smell and smoke will drive away demons. It's basically a spell in this old Jewish book. Josephus, the famed Hebrew historian, told of a cure in which a demon could be drawn out of a person through the nostrils of the possessed by waving a special kind of magic root under their nose that supposedly came from Solomon.
And other rabbinical writers talk about other magical superstitions that were going around at the time. Satan and the demons were playing games with them.
They were creating the perception that these exorcists and the spells that they used were more forceful and powerful than God and nobody could be helped unless they found the right professional, the right exorcist. We read a few weeks ago how Jesus explained that if all the demons are cleansed from a person's spirit, but they don't ask the Lord to take up residence in their place, those demons will just come back even stronger. And we still see those dynamics in Play in the Roman Catholic Church with its well-known history of alleged exorcisms.
That's what those powers want you to believe, and it's what they wanted people to believe back then. Before Jesus died and rose again, how did he say demons could be cast out of a person? He told his disciples, sometimes by nothing but prayer and fasting. Now, Jesus could just do it because he had the authority, but for everyone else, he said pray and fast. After Jesus died and rose again, claiming victory over sin and death.
How are demons cast out of a person? Now? That person needs simply repent and turn to Jesus as Lord and Savior. And those who desire to see such persons freed from demonic oppression need only bring them to Christ if they are willing, and he will set them free. Sceva's sons were traveling around and making money by marketing themselves as Jewish professional exorcists.
And apparently, this was a common thing for sons of the Jews, the religious bourgeoisie to do. Because in Matthew chapter twelve, when Jesus has just cast demons out of a person, the religious leaders accuse him of doing it by the power of Satan. And part of Jesus's reply to them is, if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, another name for Satan, by whom do your sons drive them out? Jesus was saying, I'm not casting out demons by the power of Satan, but your sons, on the other hand, and so these sons of the sea had come to Ephesus the perfect place to ply their trade, a city steeped in supernaturalism and religious syncretism. And while there, they hear of mighty miracles being worked by a man named Paul, and they hear of people being healed by merely touching his sweat cloths and aprons.
And they think, this guy Paul, he must have some real powerful magic, he must have some spells, some incantations that are the next level. And so they begin doing some research, they start asking around, doing some digging, and they learn that everything Paul is doing, he's doing in the name of the Lord Jesus. And they think, that must be it. That must be the spell. Those are the secret words.
And they decide to try using it themselves on a seriously possessed person. You might recall Simon Magus in Acts chapter eight, who wanted to buy the ability to lay hands on people and give them the Holy Spirit or Elymas in Acts chapter 13. It's the same idea with the sons of Sceva. They had no real interest in the truth, no interest in the Lord, only in learning how they could leverage his power to enrich themselves. And so, they take on this serious case of possession.
They enter the house of a possessed man, and they confidently employ their new super-powerful magic spell, saying, I command you by the Jesus that Paul preaches. See what happens in verse 15. The evil spirit answered them, I know Jesus, and I recognize Paul, but who are you? Note that Paul had a reputation in the spiritual world among demons. They took him seriously.
They knew he represented Jesus, the one who had total authority over them. Paul was a bad man. And among the demons, word was, if you see the apostle Paul coming, you might want to get out of there. And I've always found this scene so cinematic because of how I picture it in my mind. I imagine the sons of Sceva slowly opening a door to a house that's dark inside, with just a few little rays of light penetrating, and it seems to be empty like there's nobody in there.
The scene is darkly comical outside of the tragedy of a man being demon possessed. We know from this account that demonic possession can result in abnormal strength, as this single man tears the clothes off seven men and attacks them so violently that they're collectively forced to flee for their lives. Now, it could be that they're just not the rough and tumble sort because they're from the upper class, and he jumps on them, and they're like it could be that, but it seems clear there's a little more than that going on. This incident, though, busts the popular Christian myth that there is unconditional power in the name of Jesus. I'm speaking of the belief that all a person needs to do when confronted with evil is speak the name of Jesus, and that evil must bow or flee.
The sons of the sea confidently name-drop Jesus. And yet the demon in this man was completely unmoved. It did nothing to him. And that's because the name of Jesus only holds transferable power when used by those given the authority to use it, or by those crying out to him in desperation and inviting him to come in and reign as Lord. If a person recognizes that their life is under the power of sin and death and cries out to Jesus for deliverance, he will deliver them as long as their cry is not delivering me from this situation and then get out of my life, but rather deliver me from this situation and take the throne as king of my life.
If it is indeed the former rather than the latter, then it matters not how dark or hopeless the situation or circumstance Jesus will free and deliver from the power of sin and death. The only other situation where the name of Jesus has transferable power is when it is employed by those he has given authorization to wield it - His Church. It is an essential detail that Jesus was speaking to his disciples when he said, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. Who is the "you" Jesus is speaking of?
It's his disciples. It's the church. It's those who belong to him. So, would you write this down? The name of Jesus only holds power for those who call upon him as loved those who call upon him as Lord.
The name of Jesus is not some magic incantation. It's not a magic word. He is not like the lesser gods. The sons of Sceva learned that lesson the hard way. The demon knew that Jews had not given them authority to operate in the power of his name, and so it did not have to respect their command.
These men would have been shocked as assumingly Satan had in the past allowed them to appear to succeed most of the time, but this was something different. Satan, it seems, was not permitted by God to impersonate the power of the name of Jesus. These demons were not given permission to impersonate the power of the specific name of Jesus in Ephesus. This event serves as a serious warning to anyone who wishes to simply add Jesus to their spiritual toolbox. It will not end well for those who carelessly meddle in the supernatural realm.
There's no discussion, no battle, no, "The power of Christ compels you!" Just effortless, authority, effortless. He's the king of what? Everything. Everything and just as word had spread throughout Ephesus of the miracles being worked by Paul, so too did word spread rapidly of the spectacular failure of the sons of sea to invoke the name of Jesus Paul preached about.
And so, we read in verse 17, when this became known to everyone, underline everyone, everyone who lived in Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, the whole city heard about it. Hey, look, there's those guys who ran out of that house naked. The whole city knew. And when the whole city heard about it, the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high esteem. You see, first, they had seen Jesus work miracles that no other God could perform through Paul.
Second, they had seen Jesus behave not like other gods. Men could not summon him with a spell or an incantation. This Jesus was something else entirely, something other, something more powerful and more awesome than anything they had ever experienced or even heard about. And as a result, they were filled with fear, the good kind of fear, the fear that Scripture says is the beginning of wisdom, because they understood that God was real and all powerful, and his messengers are to be taken seriously. And the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high esteem.
As I mentioned earlier, there was a tendency back then to do the same thing that many people do today with spirituality. Simply add anything new that you find that is good or that you like to your spiritual toolbox, pick up a Bible and add it to your bookshelf. Put it on the same shelf as all your other books on spirituality and occultic practices and the secret and things like that. But anyone in Ephesus who was paying attention realized very quickly that this Jesus was not like any other god. And the Jesus Paul preached, demanded exclusivity.
He claimed to be the only true God and demanded that his followers renounce all other gods. He said, you want to put Me on the shelf? Everything else on the shelf has to go. So logically, Jesus is not compatible with other belief systems. You can't fit him into universalism or pluralism, because he claims to be the only true God and demands to be the only object of worship.
He refuses to share the throne in terms of power. Jesus stands alone. There's no other God like him. Those who have been part of home groups will know that in the Old Testament, the Lord repeatedly points to his unique ability to predict the future and then bring it about to pass. In fact, he directly challenges any other god to do the same thing because he knows they can't.
Jesus is the king of kings. He's the Lord of Lords. He's the God of gods. And that's why we see the following response. For many in Ephesus, beginning in verse 18, it says and many who had become believers came confessing and disclosing their practices.
While many of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in front of everyone. So, they calculated their value and found it to be 50,000 pieces of silver. In response to the incredible displays of God's power among the Ephesians, it says, many turned to Christ. I'm going to ask you to make a note of this because we see here a demonstration of the reality that turning to Christ means turning from sin and all other gods. Turning to Christ means turning from sin and all other gods.
And so, they begin reading their spells and their incantations aloud, not as a way to practice them or use them, but as a way to render them useless, to read them out in public based on their thinking at the time. Again, this is not theologically true, but they're coming from a real place of sincerity and devotion to Christ. They're making the choice, they believe, to render all of those things worthless and useless. And I want us to note that they didn't try and sell their spells and books. They destroyed them.
They spoke them aloud, believing that would render them worthless, and then they burned their books. If the Lord ever leads you to get rid of something because it's sinful, don't sell it. Don't put it on Facebook marketplace. Don't be like, great deal on a bong. Don't do that.
Don't donate it to a thrift store either. Destroy it. Because heaven forbid you give someone a great deal on something that's going to help them sin more. Don't do that. I don't care what it is.
I don't care how much it's worth. We're told the value of all the books they burned was 50,000 pieces of silver. That is basically the equivalent of 50,000 days wages. But they weren't concerned about the value of what they were giving up. They were only concerned with the value of what they were gaining Christ.
They were gaining eternal life in the Holy Spirit, a right relationship with God, freedom from sin and guilt and shame and death, and receiving in its place joy and life and hope and peace. What they were gaining was priceless. They didn't even stop to think about the value of what they were destroying. Somebody else who was on the side was like, this is a lot of stuff. I wonder how much this is worth.
When our brother Paul wrote to the Philippian believers, he laid out for them all the things he had confidence and trust in before he came to Christ. His lineage, his education, his social status, his good works. And then Paul wrote this. He said but everything that was a gain to me I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.
Because of Him I've suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know Him. Paul says, I've seen Christ, and nothing is anything compared to Him. By most accounts, Abraham became one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest men on earth over the course of his life. And yet Scripture says he never even built himself a home because God gave him a glimpse of what awaited him in Heaven.
They understood just a tiny bit of it and nothing could compare. And their immediate response was, I'll do anything to have Christ. I'll do anything just to have Him. There's no record of anybody telling them to burn their books or confess their spells. They just did it.
They were moved by the Holy Spirit that had come into them. They were convicted by the Spirit and driven by a desire to have more of Christ. And they understood intrinsically, if I want more of Christ, I have to make more room for Christ in my life. So, these things have to go. As we said, the Lord will not share the throne if you want Him to come into your life.
Everything else must bow to Him. And to state the obvious, that can only happen if we want everything else to bow to Him. So, write this down the Ephesian converts gladly traded the vestiges of their old lives for new lives in Christ. They gladly gave up the old for the new, gladly gave up death for life. And I want to be very clear about something as we talk about this.
I am not saying that you must clean out your life and get rid of everything before you come to Christ. You can't, you won't because you do not have the power. The power comes from the Holy Spirit. And when he enters your life, he gives you the power to get rid of the things that need to go. He breaks the chains of the things that are holding you captive, the things holding you in bondage and in shame and in condemnation and loving destruction in your life.
He goes to work changing us from the inside out. But before we come to Christ, we must decide whether we want the Holy Spirit to do that work. We must decide whether we want Him to turn over tables in our hearts, command wicked things to leave, shine a light in dark corners, smash our precious idols, and kick out anything that desires to be on the throne instead of the Lord. When we come to Christ, we must understand that is what he is going to do. He is not offering to come into our lives and serve on a committee of advisors whose counsel we can take or leave.
He's coming to reign. He's coming to establish a monarchy in our hearts. And those who have seen just a glimpse of the goodness of God, say, yes. Come and do it, Lord, please.
That is the only gospel offer there is. There is no other offer of salvation through Christ where you have Christ as Savior, but you don't have to have Him as Lord. There's no offer where turning to Christ doesn't also mean turning from sin. There's no solution where you can live cross-eyed. It's not loving to work.
I think of the rich young ruler when I think of people who think they can negotiate with God, people who want to come to the Lord and say, hey, I want you, Jesus, but I also want to keep my sin. The rich young ruler came to Jesus, and in his heart, he was hoping to negotiate. He wanted to strike a deal where he could be right with God and yet continue serving money as his Lord and master. But Jesus knew what was going on in his heart, and he knew that money was this man's God. And so, Jesus, like he does with us, put his finger right on that pressure point.
He probably hasn't come to many of you and said, like, you need to give up everything. You have to follow me. Give up all your money. Because some of you are probably like me, and you're like, okay, listen, Lord, if you want my $12 that bad, it's yours. You can take it, Jesus.
But the Lord has probably put his finger on that pressure point, and maybe he's doing it now.
Jesus didn't say that to anybody else. He didn't go to any of the disciples and say, sell everything you have. Didn't need to. Then in Matthew's Gospel, we read, when the young man heard that, he went away grieving because he had many possessions. And I'm always struck when I read this that Jesus did not chase after him.
There are so many Christians today who would have chided Jesus, corrected Jesus, and rebuked Jesus in that situation for being cold and legalistic. I know many Christians who would have said, he's just a baby Christian, Jesus. You can't expect him to make such radical changes so fast. People take time to change Jesus. He needs to experience love and community first, and then his heart can change over time.
Don't be so judgmental, Jesus. Listen to me, church. And if you're listening or watching online, tune in, because I believe the modern church needs to hear this. We fear making Christianity too hard for people, and so we lower the bar on God's behalf, something we do not have the authority to do. And when we lower the bar and redefine what it means to be a Christian, we devalue Jews, we lower the value of Christ.
We say to people, I know Christ is pretty expensive, he's costly, but what if I took 50% off the cost? Would you be interested then? Would you be a buyer then? What if I told you you could keep your sin and have Christ? What if I offered you 50% off Jesus as Savior, but you don't have to take him as Lord as well?
Would you be interested then?
May God have mercy on us for trying to lower the value of the perfect Son of God and the priceless sacrifice he made on our behalf. May the Lord forgive us for cheapening his blood, his broken body, and his death on our behalf. And this is how twisted much of the modern church has become, how distorted our view of grace has become, that we think we're putting too much of a burden on people if we tell them that in order to follow Christ, they must abandon all their other gods and idols. We think that's asking too much of people when Jesus says they can't have him and their idols too. As though Jesus Christ is asking too much when he offers us freedom from sin and death.
As though Christ is asking too much when he refuses to share the throne with idols. And if you think I'm misrepresenting Jesus or the Bible in this, let's allow the Lord to speak for Himself. This is going to be on your outlines. Our brother Luke, who recorded the Book of Acts, also wrote this in chapter 14 of his Gospel. He wrote, now great crowds were traveling with him, with Jesus.
So, he turned and said to them, I love this. Do you understand what's happening here? There are great crowds traveling with Jesus, and it says that he turned to them. There are great crowds. So, Jesus literally says, I got to do something about this.
There are so many people following me. I have to do something about this. So, he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Now, here's what Jesus is saying. He's simply saying, if you love your family more than you love me, you cannot be my disciple.
Then Jesus says, Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. In other words, we've got to be ready to pay whatever price it ends up costing to follow Jesus. There's no option where we get to say yes to the Lord, say, but on one condition, as long as it doesn't include suffering if those are our terms. Jesus says, you cannot be my disciple if you're not willing to die for me, you cannot be my disciple. You're not willing to suffer for me, you cannot be my disciple.
I imagine the crowd starts thinning pretty quick for which of you, wanting to build a tower doesn't first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, after he's laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying, that this man started to build and wasn't able to finish. Jesus points out that we need to count the cost of following him before we commit to follow him. He's been very, very clear in His Word about what he's offering and what it will cost. He's been very clear about the price you need to be willing to pay if you want to follow him.
And Jesus says, don't impulsively raise your hand in a church service just because your emotions were stirred, and they were playing that song and you got caught up in the moment. He says think. Weigh the cost, weigh the benefits, and then decide with a sober mind or what king going to war against another king will not first sit down and decide if he is able with 10,000 to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000. If not, while the other is still far off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
In the same way. Therefore, every one of you who does not renounce - that means leave - all his possessions cannot be my disciple. Jesus likens himself to a mighty king. And indeed, he will judge the living and the dead one day as the King of kings. And we would be wise to ask what his terms of peace are, knowing that he's coming as a conquering king.
And when we stand before Him one day, we will be powerless. And he's told us his terms. Him over everything. Those are his terms. If we refuse, we cannot be his disciples.
Now, salt is good, but if salt loses its taste, how will it be made salty? It isn't fit for the soil or for the manure pile, and they throw it out. That everyone who has ears to hear, listen. Lastly, Jesus says if we try to find neutral ground, try to have it both ways and refuse to make a decision.
We are making a decision by not saying yes to Him and his conditions. We are saying no. And ultimately that will result in us being cast from his presence to spend eternity apart from Him. Christ has laid out the terms of salvation and they are simple. We get all of Him and he gets all of us.
No other gods, no other idols. Those are the terms. And I want to clarify the kinds of changes that Christ expects upon salvation. I've already shared that the Lord does not expect you to change your life before you come to Him, because you can't. You don't have the power.
And I say that because most of the time you can't snap your fingers and just change certain heart issues. Lust is a great example. I wish you could be saved and just don't lust anymore because I love Jesus now. But most men and many women will battle it until they go to be with the Lord. And generally, we can experience greater victory and freedom as we allow the Lord to sanctify us, but not total victory until we arrive in his presence.
Patterns of thinking, deeply held beliefs, and attitudes that are being stirred up by repressed life events. There can be all kinds of heart issues that take time to change. And the change we experience will be dramatically impacted by our desire to change and our willingness to confront those issues with the help of the Holy Spirit. But hear me on this some sin issues can be dealt with immediately or at a minimum, significantly impacted. I'm talking about situations where you can make a decision and then take an action that will free you from that sin or at least make it significantly harder to get caught up in it again.
I'm talking about things like burning occultic books. How do I know I won't be tempted to go back and look at the book again? Burn it. Just destroy it. The Ephesians are a perfect example.
It would take a while for them to learn solid theology and grow in their Bible knowledge of the spiritual world, but they could make a choice. They could take a specific action and free themselves from the power of sin in that area by getting rid of anything and everything they owned that had anything to do with the occult. Hear me on this. They didn't need time to weigh it, time to think about it, time to discern the will of the Lord. They didn't need time to grieve over it or grieve having to let go of it or emotionally process letting it go.
They didn't need to say, I'll destroy one page a week. I'll make a commitment and I'll get there. They just needed to get rid of it and they could do it in a moment. And the only issue was, do you want to obey Christ or not? Yes or no?
You can decide and stop living with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You can put your stuff in a box and move out. You can do that. You can stop paying for our part of the rent. You can decide and stop going to those places, those bars, those clubs.
You can decide to install covenant eyes on your phone and all your computers. You can decide to ask a mature brother or sister to be an accountability partner. You can decide to cancel TV service that give you access to sexually immoral content. You can decide to throw out your drug paraphernalia and go to rehab if it's needed. You can make a choice.
You can decide to stop being part of non-biblical spiritual practices and get rid of all other spiritually related stuff that's in your life and in your home. Our thinking is so often flawed in this area because we see things clearly when it concerns more serious sins. None of us would say it's nuanced, Jeff. None of us would say this if I said to you, how long should the murderer keep murdering after salvation? How should we taper that down over time?
How long should the thief keep stealing? Well, maybe he can lower the dollar amount, like incrementally, you know, how long should the witch keep practicing wicca? But we pretend it's somehow more complicated and nuanced and I don't know something about grace. When the question is something like how long should the fornicator keep fornicating? The answer, of course, is they shouldn't.
Listen, if you love the Lord, if you really love the Lord, then you are genuinely grateful for those times when you can just make a decision, take an action, and obey the Lord. You are. You're grateful that, hey, if I want to start honoring the Lord in my finances, I just got to write a check and my heart might not be all the way there yet, but I can just make this decision and then do it, and then I'm doing it. The most frustrating part of following Christ is the slow pace at which my heart changes.
Anybody's heart changes at the speed they thought it would when they first got saved. No. Anybody like this is taking much longer than I anticipated. All of us, right? Because my heart is so uncooperative, it is so resistant to the work of the Spirit.
So, when I can obey Christ by just making a decision and taking an action, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Just burn those books and then I'm done with that. Yeah, then you're done with that. Oh, praise God.
Being anyone's disciple, this is going to be a news flash for some. But being anyone's disciple means you want to be like them. This is what the word means. And so, you're submitting yourself to them to learn from them how you can be like them. So when Jesus says, this is how you can be like me, do this, don't do that, think this way, don't think that way.
We're so glad and grateful for his instruction because we want to be like him. Because we are disciples of Christ. We seek to obey Christ. We want to obey Christ. Why?
Because obeying him is what's going to make us more like Him. And that's the whole point. Now, hear me on this. There is no such thing as a disciple who does not want to be like Christ. There's no such thing.
And there's no such thing as a person who wants to be like Christ but doesn't want to obey Christ. Doesn't even make sense. If you don't want to be like Jesus, you're not a disciple of Jesus. If you don't want to obey Jesus, you're not a disciple of Jesus. When someone turns to Christ, his spirit, the Holy Spirit, comes into their life, producing an immediate change in desires.
We saw that in Ephesus when Christ comes into a person, the things that they want begin to immediately change. Most notably, they want more of Christ. Show me a person who has no appetite for God's Word, no desire to serve and love their brothers and sisters in Christ, no desire for the Church gathering and fellowship, no desire to obey the commands of Jesus, no conviction over their sin. And I'll show you someone who's not a Christian. When God comes into a person's life, the change is seismic.
It is seismic. The Bible says they're given a new nature. Paul expected to see dramatic, immediate change in the desires of the Corinthians who had turned to Christ. Why? Because, as he said, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away, and see, the new has come. I cannot overstate the profound difference the Holy Spirit makes in a person's life. Doesn't make us perfect at all, but it changes what we want. It changes what we want. For many of those Ephesian converts, their occultic books were the most significant investment they owned.
Now, notice this. When did the word of the Lord spread and prevail? When believers got radical about personal holiness and did all they could to get sin out of their lives. How often I find that when my appetite for the things of God diminishes, it's because there's something in my life that needs to be burned up. When I lose my passion for being around my brothers and sisters in Christ, when I lose my passion for serving the Lord, reading His Word, worshiping Him and praying, it's almost always because I filled my life with something useless, an idol that's taking up my time and attention, energies and passions.
How do I get that passion back for the things of the Lord? I ask Him, okay, Lord, where's the idol? Where is it? I know it's hiding in here somewhere. Please find it and please smash it.
And if I'm willing to act on what he reveals to me, the passion returns as my focus becomes oriented once again where it belongs, on Christ. But hear me on this do not bother asking the Lord to show you where the idol is in your life unless you've already determined that you're willing to let Him destroy it. God doesn't play games. It's an insult for Him for you to say, show me what the idol is, and then I'll decide if I want you to destroy it or not. He's not going to show you anything.
If that's the attitude, it has to be, Lord, find it. Whatever it is, destroy it. Free me from it, please. And if there's anything I can do, any actions I need to take to help that happen, I'm committed to doing them. Then the Lord says, okay, I'll put my finger right on it for you.
He'll show you tonight if you ask Him to do that. Repentance means turning from sin and turning to Christ. And if you have not yet turned to Christ, I beg you, turn to Christ today. Turn to Him today, because you are turning away only from sin and death and guilt and shame, and you are turning only to good things in the Lord Jesus. And if your focus has turned from Him, I urge you to return your gaze to Him.
There is but one throne in your life and mine, and it cannot be shared. And right now, it is not being shared. There's something on the throne in every life in this room, mine included. There's not room on that throne for Christ and our idols, no matter how precious to us they may be, and the Lord has no intention of tolerating them. If you don't want Jesus to smash your idols, you're going to have a miserable time trying to follow him.
Because those who love Jesus want him to smash the idols in our lives over and over and over again. Because we've recognized that all they do is enslave us while the rule and reign of Christ sets us free. And so, the believer's prayer is always, lord, if you find any idol in my life, please destroy it. As our brother John put it, this is what loves for God, is to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden.
They're not a burden. They're the path to freedom. Why would you want to go through such upheaval? Why would you want to choose to upend your life in such a radical way as the Ephesians did? Because this is the truth.
My sin is far uglier and Christ far lovelier than I could ever imagine.
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Date:9/17/23
Series: Distinct...Speaker: BJ Chursinoff
Is church membership biblical? That's the question this series will attempt to answer. In this message, we look in the Bible at how God’s people have always practiced formal membership. It was practiced when it came to belonging to Israel in the Old Testament and it was practiced when it came to belonging to the Church in the New Testament. When we observe this pattern, it should lead us to ask the question: Can a practice be unbiblical if it is practiced all throughout the Bible?
We're picking things up where we left off six weeks ago, where we introduced this new series for the first time, a series that we've titled Distinct. This is a sermon series that is all about something called church membership. Back in our introductory message to this series, I explained why we're talking about church membership again. And I went on to address one of the main pushbacks I hear to the idea of church membership - that it's too rigid and too exclusive for a local church to draw a line around a group of people that belongs to the church and that distinguishes them from everyone else who isn't. And I showed you from the Scriptures how God has always made a rigid distinction between those who are his people and those who are not.
He always has and he always will. And we saw examples of that from Genesis all the way to Revelation. If you weren't here for that message, and you haven't had a chance to listen to it yet online, I encourage you to do so this week. I put the link on it for you, on your outline. And at the end of that message, I asked the question how do we know, or how can we know who has crossed over the line into belonging to God's people and who hasn't?
Without explaining myself at the time, I simply said the answer to that question is church membership. The practice of church membership at the local church level is the way everyone knows who belongs to Jesus and is a part of his people and who isn't. I'm going to use the rest of this series to show you why that statement is true. I'm going to show you why it's true by taking three messages to answer one big overarching question. And the question is is this the practice of church membership biblical?
For the Christian, this should be the only question that matters. For the Christian, it doesn't matter how the idea of church membership makes me feel. All that matters is whether or not we can see that the idea of church membership is rooted in the Scriptures, and it's something that God expects us to do at the local church level. If we can see that church membership is biblical, that should lead us to some powerful conclusions. If we can see that it's biblical, then that means that practicing church membership is good because God is good.
And that means that anything God tells us to do is good. Good flows from good, and God is the ultimate supreme source of all goodness. So, if God is telling us in his word that we ought to practice church membership, then we should get excited about the idea of practicing it, because it would be good for us to do so. That is only if it proves to be biblical. If we can see that church membership is biblical, that means that those of you here who aren't Christians yet will know what you need to do after you become a Christian.
When you stop fighting against the grace of God in your life and you finally decide to turn your life over to Christ, to trust Him and to follow Him, then you will know that pursuing membership in a local church is the next thing to do after you do that. But that is only if church membership is biblical. If we can see that church membership is biblical then that means that those of you who do know Christ but have not yet come to the conclusion that you should become a member of a local church.
Let's define it because we need to be on the same page with this because everyone brings different experiences and different ideas and different expectations to this discussion. So, what is church membership? The definition is a little bit wordy, but it covers everything that it needs to. It's going to be the first fill-in on your outline. Church membership is a covenant of union between a particular church and a Christian that consists of the church's affirmation of the Christian's gospel profession, the church's promise to give oversight to the Christian, and the Christian's promise to gather with the church and submit to its oversight.
Now "covenant" is very strong language, it's formal, it's official, it's binding, it's a commitment of the highest order and you need to know right out of the gate that nothing about church membership is willy-nilly, just like there's nothing willy nilly about putting rings on each other's finger when you marry your spouse. And church membership is more like that than it is to, say, a friendship or a dating relationship. Let me encourage you not to be put off by any kind of covenant language. Lean into it. It's so good.
The Bible uses marriage language when it talks about Jesus and his church. Christians have entered into a covenantal relationship with Jesus. When they decided to follow Him, we each said yes to Jesus. He said yes to us, and it's binding. But no individual Christian is the bride of Christ.
That can make for some really weird theology. The church collectively is the bride of Christ. Collectively. We've all entered into the same covenant relationship with Jesus, and we are in that covenant together with Him as a people, as a church. So, if you have bound yourself to Christ, you have done so with others who have also done the same.
And it's this collective, this body of believers who are in covenant with Jesus together. Our convenient with Jesus binds us together as we are bound together with Him. The covenant aspect of church membership is beautiful. But is it biblical? Again, that's the question.
That's what I'm going to attempt to answer with each of the messages in this series. Each message will attempt to answer that question in a different way. In this message tonight, we're going to look at what I'm calling the biblical pattern of church membership. Let me ask you a few questions. Would it be reasonable to conclude that church membership is biblical if we saw that the people of God have practiced formal membership all throughout the Bible?
So, let's take a look at it. I'm going to show you eight patterns that exist between membership in Israel in the Old Testament and membership in the church in the New Testament. Here's pattern number one. It's going to be the next. Fill in on your outline.
There has always been a specific event that incorporates a person into the distinct group of God's people - birth and/or religious conversion. Birth and/or religious conversion. There are two ways in which a person could become an official member of the people of Israel. In the Old Testament, the first way was to become an Israelite by natural birth. You were physically born into the people of God. Your dad was Jewish, and your mom was Jewish.
Then one night you were just a twinkle in their eye, and nine months later you came onto the scene a brand-new baby Israelite born to proud Israelite parents. This was by far and away the most common way to become a part of Israel. But it wasn't the only way a person could become a part of Israel. You didn't have to be born a Jew in order to become a part of the Jewish people. If you weren't a Jew, you could become a proselyte or a convert to Judaism.
You could be grafted into the people of God. There have been Gentiles in the Old Testament who recognized that the God of Israel was the one true God, and they wanted to be a part of God's people, living for God and belonging to God. The prophet Isaiah, speaking on behalf of the Lord, said this about Gentiles becoming a part of God's people. This is on your outline Isaiah 56, starting in verse three. No foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord should say, the Lord will exclude me from his people.
And the eunuch should not say, Look, I'm a dried-up tree. For the Lord says this for the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose what pleases me and hold firmly to my covenant, I will give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give each of them an everlasting name that will never be cut off. As for the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, to love the name of the Lord, and to become his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and hold firmly to my covenant, I will bring them to my holy mountain and let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.
And so, in the Old Testament, there were two different ways a person could become a part of Israel by natural birth or by religious conversion. And we get to the New Testament. We see that both of these birth and conversion are true of a person who becomes a part of Jesus's church. Both the decision to convert to Christ and the need to be born into God's family are at play. Every single person who has become a Christian over the past 2000 years has had to make the choice to become one.
Christianity isn't an ethnicity that you can be born into. Everyone has to make the choice for themselves to repent of their sin, believe in Jesus, and follow him with their entire life. It's called conversion. Our repentance and belief or faith or biblical Christianity. You believe Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins and to make a way for you to gain entrance into his family.
You acknowledge your sinfulness before God, and you turn from that sin in your life and you turn your life towards Christ. You receive forgiveness by faith. You choose that. And when you do, you have become a Christian and a part of God's family. That's the conversion part of being incorporated into the church.
When a person makes this choice, they are in. But now there's a birth aspect to this too. Jesus says in John, chapter three, that to enter the kingdom of God, one has to be born again. We've all been born naturally and physically into this world. And when we were, we came into this world spiritually stillborn.
We had physical life when we were born, but all of us were born spiritually dead. And you can thank Adam and Eve for that. Therefore, we need to be spiritually born. We need to be born a second time or born again. This is the spiritual birth that incorporates you into God's family as a child of his.
And this event of your new spiritual birth happens the moment you choose to become a Christian. It happens at your conversion. When you place your faith in Christ, your sins are forgiven and removed, and God causes your dead spirit to come alive within you and he places his own loving spirit within you. You become spiritually born, spiritually alive to God for the first time. You are now a child of God.
You are now part of his family. New birth and conversion. Conversion and new birth. Only one of these two is necessary in order to be incorporated into the people of Israel. Both are at play when a person is incorporated into the church today.
Now, here's a question. When a person became an official part of Israel, either by birth or conversion, how did the rest of the people recognize their inclusion into the people of God? Or when a person becomes a Christian today and they become an official part of the Church by both their conversion and their new spiritual birth, how do the rest of the members of the church recognize their inclusion into the people of God? This brings us to the second pattern. We can observe and it's this.
There has always been a specific mandatory ritual performed one time that officially identifies you as a member of God's people. Circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New. In the Old Testament, it was the same ritual whether you were brought into the people of Israel through natural birth or you became a Jew through religious conversion. Whatever way you came in, you got the snip. If you were a male and God gave this command to Abraham in Genesis 17.
God said to Abraham, as for you, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations are to keep my covenant. This is my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you, which you are to keep. Every one of your males must be circumcised. You must circumcise the flesh of your foreskin to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and you throughout your generations. Every Caleb among you is to be circumcised at eight days old.
Exodus twelve. If any alien resides among you and wants to observe the Lord's Passover, every male in his household must be circumcised, and then he may participate. He will become like a native of the land, but no uncircumcised person may eat. The same law will apply both to the native and the alien who resides among you. And so, the sign of circumcision was necessary, whether you became an Israelite by being born into Abraham's line or you were a convert.
It's the official ritual that formally identifies you as belonging to God's special, distinct people. Now. Praise God. The Bible is crystal clear that circumcision has absolutely no value for the person united to Christ under the new covenant today. Those who come to be a part of Jesus' Church today go through the waters of baptism of fully immersion instead
Now, Baptist publicly identifies anyone who has become a Christian, both men and women, that they have trusted in Christ and are now a part of his family, the Church. This is what Jesus has commanded us to do in the Great Commission. When we preach the Gospel and someone responds to our message in faith by believing in Jesus, the next thing we do is baptize them. Matthew 28 Jesus says, Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus tells us to baptize those who believe in Him and become a part of his family through faith. Now, speaking to Christians at Colossae, the Apostle Paul connects the practice of baptism under the New Covenant to the role of circumcision under the Old. He says this to the Colossians, and he says it to us as well. Colossians, chapter two, verse eleven. You were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ.
When you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When a professional athlete gets traded from one team to another and put their New Jersey on for the first time, that change of jersey identifies them as having changed teams. When a man and woman get married and they put their ring on for the very first time, that ring is a symbol identifying that their identities have changed. They are no longer two, but they're one. When Jewish men were circumcised, that was the mark that they belonged to God's special people in the Old Testament.
And when Christian men and women are baptized, that is the mark that they belong to God's special people. In the New Testament, baptism identifies those who have switched over to God's team and are now united. To Him. It signifies an identity change. You're no longer separate from God.
You are now one with Him and with his people. There were and are no exceptions. You could not and you would not be recognized as part of the people of God without participating in either of these rituals. Pattern number three. Next fill-in your outline. There have always been smaller, official, recognizable subcommunities within the larger community of God's people. And these subcommunities collectively make up the people of God tribes in the Old Testament, local churches. In the new tribes and local churches, Israel was to be one single unified nation under God. And although it was to be one, it was made up of twelve individual, separate tribes.
This concept didn't exist. Now we can see the same pattern play out in the New Testament Church, the Big-C Church, the universal, the global Church is one single, supposed to be unified, body of believers who belong to God. And this group stretches to the four corners of the earth. And although the church is one, it too is made up of smaller, individual, separate local churches. If you are a part of the one big C church, you will or should be part of one of the smaller local churches.
And if you are part of a smaller local church, then that identifies you as being part of the one big church. There was no scenario in the New Testament where someone was a part of the church and not a part of a local church. This concept did not exist in the first century and it shouldn't exist today. Pattern number four the smaller subcommunities of God's people have always been separated from one another geographically. Each of the twelve tribes of Israel was given specific boundaries that they would live within.
And you can see this both when they were in the wilderness coming out of Egypt and when they crossed over into the Promised Land. After the Israelites left Egypt and came out of slavery, God commanded Moses to have them set up their wilderness camp in a very specific way. They didn't gather willy-nilly. I'm going to use willy-nilly lots in this sermon. They didn't gather willy-nilly as each of them thought best.
They were instructed on how to gather, and they were told to gather according to the tribe each was a part of. And each tribe was placed in a specific position around the Tabernacle, which was always in the middle of God's people. Numbers chapter two, it's on your outline, says this the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, every one of the children of Israel shall camp by his own banner beside the emblems of his Father's house. They shall camp some distance from the Tabernacle of meeting the children of Israel did according to all, the Lord commanded Moses, so they camped by their banners and so they broke camp, each one by his family, according to their father's houses. I'm going to put an image on the screen behind me of what it looked like in the wilderness.
And this is how they traveled for 40 years. They maintained this tribal distinction among them in the wilderness for four decades. Now. This distinction between tribes was maintained once they eventually entered into the Promised Land. During the conquest of Canaan, Joshua allotted the land to the tribes of Israel.
You can read how he did that, how he distributed the land to each of the tribes in Joshua chapters 13 to 19. Now, here's a picture on the screen of what their allotment looked like.
Each of the twelve tribes was to live in geographically distinct areas from the other tribes. And we can see the same pattern of geographical distinction among the local churches in the New Testament, there is only one church, just like there is only one Israel. But just like Israel was made up of smaller tribes, the church is made up of smaller tribes. We call these local churches. And each of the local churches we see in Scripture are distinct from one another geographically.
Geographically they're separate. Now, I need to be clear about one difference we can observe between the tribes in the Old Testament and the local churches in the New. God commanded the geographical distinction in his word in the Old Testament. In the New Testament church, each local church exists separate from all the other local churches. But God didn't specifically mandate their geographical distinction and yet we see it in the Bible.
And I think it's interesting that we can see in the scriptures how local churches honored each other and their distinct identity. When you read through the letters to the churches in the New Testament, keep your eyes open for the language of sending and receiving. There are times a local church would send one or more of its members to another local church to minister, and that local church would receive them into its fellowship. It was a formal sending and receiving, probably keeping with the custom of the day. A Christian who was sent from one church to another was probably accompanied by a letter of recommendation from the sending church.
The sending church would in essence say, this person that we're sending to you is a Christian who is a part of our fellowship. You can trust that they are a Christian because we've already affirmed that they are one. And that would give the receiving church peace of mind bringing a stranger into their midst. And they would welcome their brother or sister into their fellowship for as long as they were in town. Jews in the Old Testament did not jump from tribe to tribe.
They weren't allowed to. And Christians in the New Testament didn't go from church to church willy-nilly either. Tribe hopping wasn't a thing in the Old. Church hopping wasn't and shouldn't be a thing in the New. That's because each tribe or local church was its own distinct subgroup of God's people and there was a level of formality involved with belonging to each one.
Pattern number five there have always been specific leaders that govern all of God's people and there have also always been leaders that govern the subcommunities of God's people. There's a long list of great leaders in Israel that gave leadership over the entire nation. First, there were the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then there were the deliverers and the judges like Moses and Samuel and others. Then were then the time came for the long line of kings beginning with David and Solomon and so forth.
We can see that pattern plainly in the Old Testament. Now, there could be some confusion when some people try to misapply this principle in the wrong way to the church today. Because here's how a problem can arise, and it's a big one. There is one big-leader over the universal church today. There is one Father, there is only one High Priest, there is only one judge, there is only one King, and no human being on this planet is Him.
No human being on this planet is to fulfill any of those roles we see fulfilled in the Old Testament by big-leaders. And you want to know why? Because all of those roles are filled by one and the same person. And he is a human being. It's just that at the moment he doesn't reside on this planet.
He is the God-man, Jesus Christ, and he is filling all of these big-leader roles from his current position on his those in heaven. Jesus is the Eternal Father, spoken of in Isaiah chapter nine. Jesus is our great High Priest, interceding for us and making atonement for us in the heavens after the order of Melchizedek, spoken of in Hebrews chapters four and five. Jesus is the one who very soon will judge the living and the dead. Jesus is the King who was born into the line of David, whose kingdom will know no end.
Jesus is the greater Moses. Jesus is the head of the church. Jesus is the bridegroom of the church. Jesus is the founder, the builder, and the sustainer of the church. And he alone fills all these roles, and no human being should try to take this mantle from him.
No pastor, no priest, no pope, no government official. Jesus is the boss over the entire church. And we will always run into major problems when mere mortals try to be like Moses today or David in the church today. Men who want to be the big- leader run away. If you're ever a part of a church where one single man has or wants.
All the power and answers to no one. That's not biblical. What is biblical is that Jesus is the chief shepherd over his flock, the church, and yet he, like Moses, and like both Moses and David did, he appoints under-shepherds, tasked with providing oversight to the smaller subcommittees of local churches that are spread all across the world. As the church was growing in the first century, we can see that the leadership of individual churches was given to biblically qualified men who were tasked with shepherding the church. Jesus is always the chief shepherd, but these men were to be the boots on the ground, so to speak, shepherding Jesus' Church in a way that would honor Jesus and take care of the ones he spilled his blood.
Every local church on the planet should have a plurality of elders who provide oversight and shepherding and governance of that local body. This is the biblical model for leadership in the local church today, and there's no other. Jesus is the boss, and he calls elders to be the ones who exercise pastoral leadership over his churches. Every church should have a plurality of elders if it's to be a healthy biblical church. Pattern number six.
This is going to be the next fill-in on your outline. Those who are part of the community of God's people have always been numbered, always. This is an aspect that some people really don't like about church membership today. The act of counting people and numbering them, it feels so impersonal to some people, like an inmate got a number. But you want to know why I have zero problem with counting our members and numbering them?
Because God's people are routinely numbered in both the Old and the New Testaments, although many people skip reading it. There's a book in the Bible called Numbers. It's a part of the Torah. It's part of the first five books of the Bible, and its name kind of gives its purpose away. It numbers people that's like, why it exists as a book in the Bible.
We see the numbering of Israel in the Bible from the very inception of the nation onward, the twelve sons of Israel are numbered 70 is the number of their extended family that went into Egypt. 600,000 men was the count of the nation. When they left Egypt a little over 400 years later, Moses counted the people under his care and divided them up into smaller units so that he could care for them better. If you remember, he did this at his father-in-law Jethro's advice. Exodus, chapter 18, verse 21.
But you should select men, he told Moses, from all the people. Let me start again. You should select from all the people, able men, God-fearing, trustworthy, and hating dishonest profit. Place them over the people as commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. I don't know if you realize this.
You have to count people in order to make these kinds of groups. There were censuses taken. Now this went south when David did it in a dishonorable way. But his sin didn't render the act of counting the number of people of Israel a wrong thing to do in and of itself. The pointing of Israel was so detailed that those in charge could know who belonged to the nation before they were exiled, while they were in exile, and after they came back from their exile.
Read Ezra, chapter two, and Nehemiah chapter seven for examples of this detailed numbering. The Old Testament is filled with the detailed numbering of those who not only belong to the nation of Israel but of those who belong to his individual tribes as well. And we see this practice of numbering continue into the New Testament with the church. Those were various counts of Jesus's disciples. There was the three, the Twelve, the 70, the 120 at Pentecost.
The 3000 who were added to the church at Pentecost were numbered in Acts chapter two, verse 41. In Acts chapter four, verse four, we're told that the number of men in the church had come to be 5000. Now, how did they know it was 5000? They counted them.
I did buy 2 years of extra warranties a good thing this Chromebook is only 15 months old.
So please stand by as I will be back, the question remains, when.
Be good, someone is watching you!!!..............jenny
It's not unbiblical to count such names and looking at both the Old and the New Testaments, it would be unbiblical not to count them. And I'd argue that we need to count people if we're going to make sure that they're shepherded well. How would we know if one sheep was missing from the 100 if we never counted the 100?
Pattern number seven. It's next. Fill in on your outline. There has always been a specific parameter placed around God's people that governs the way they are to live, and that is His Word. His Word.
God's people have always been called by God to be distinct from the world around them. This is true of those who live under the Old Covenant as a part of Israel, and it's true of those who live under the New Covenant as part of the church. But how do we do that? What is it that distinguishes the people who belong to God and are a part of his special people from everyone around them who isn't? Now, it's really a simple concept.
God, get this. If you take anything away from tonight, take this. God tells us how to live. He gives us words that we can understand. He gives us the ability to do what he says, and he expects us to obey what he says.
And it's obedience to His Word that makes us stick out as a peculiar people compared to those around us. When God delivered Israel out of their slavery in Egypt, he led them by Moses into the wilderness and then into the Promised Land. But before they got to the Promised Land, they had a pivotal detour that brought them to Mount Sinai. It's on Mount Sinai where God gave Moses and the entire people of Israel His word on how he wanted his people to live. Moses went up the mountain and received direct revelation from God.
The people down at the base of the mountain witnessed it, and it was quite the scene. Moses came down the mountain and relayed all that info to God's people. And it's this info that fills the Torah or the first five books of the Old Testament Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It's in these books where God's people had their law that shaped their culture and community and identity. Adherence to this law is what made them a distinct people from the nations around them.
It informed the way they worshiped God through the sacrificial system. It told them how they were to interact with other members of God's people. It told them or instructed them on how they were to give financially to the work God was doing among them. It shaped the way they worked and did business. It gave them guidelines for their feasts and festivals.
It told them how to party. Now, you might be tempted to think that following rules takes the fun out of everything. But the rules that we make up for ourselves most of the time don't lead to fullness of life, but the rules that God gives us. They are literally the very best way a person can live. And if they were obeyed, they would lead to fullness of joy and the deepest level of satisfaction.
The Book of Psalms opens this way. Psalm chapter one, verses one and two how happy, how happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked, or stand in the pathway with sinners, or sit in the company of mockers. Instead, his delight is in the Lord's instruction, and he meditates on it day and night. Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, and it's a poem dedicated to reveling in and rejoicing in how awesome God's word is. Read it sometime this week and see how amazing the word of God was to the Psalmist.
He taught us directly how God wants us to live. He told us what he wants us to do. He modeled for us how he wants to do it. The apostle Paul refers to these words as the law of Christ. These words and deeds of Christ are recorded for us in the first four books of the New Testament known as the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
These are the very words that Jesus points his disciples back to when he meets with them after his resurrection from the dead, again going back to the great commission of Jesus, where Jesus said, go therefore, make disciples, baptize them, and then teach them to observe everything I've commanded you. Where are we going to find everything that Jesus commanded in the Gospels? Teach new disciples, teach new converts, teach new members of the family of God. Teach them to obey My commands. Now, it's not just the commands of Jesus in the Gospels that Christians are to obey, but it's the whole of the teaching of the New Testament.
Because before he died, Jesus told his hand-selected delegates, his apostles, that they were going to receive even more instruction and more information after Jesus was gone, after he died, rose, and ascended to Heaven. That's because the Holy Spirit would come. And when the Spirit came upon them, Jesus said that he would guide the apostles into all the truth. He told them this in the upper room. John 16, verse twelve, he said to them, I still have many things to tell you, but you can't bear them.
Now, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come. So, Jesus's teaching of his disciples would continue after he was physically gone from them, and that teaching would come through the Holy Spirit who was given to them. And the rest of the New Testament that comes after the Gospels was inspired and produced by way of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' Apostles.
So, Christians obey the words of Jesus that came out of his mouth, recorded for us in the Gospels, and we obey the words of Jesus that came through the Apostles' mouths by way of the Spirit of Christ that was in them. And it is trust of these words and the adherence to them that marks the life of the people of God today. It makes us a distinct people. Jesus said this at the end of those Histaminer on the Mount Matthew, chapter seven therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house.
Yet it didn't collapse because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn't act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell and the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash. According to Jesus, there are only two groups of people those whose lives are built on a rock and those whose lives are built on sand.