Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
Hello and welcome again to Lechem Panim. It is good to have you with us today as we continue our study of the book of Acts. We have been in chapter 8, which of course tells of how Philip brought the Gospel to the region of Samaria and a great many Samaritans have come to faith in Jesus Christ. And after Peter and John come and open the door for these Samaritans to receive the Holy Spirit it says in…
Acts 8:25 (ESV)— 25 Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.
For The World— Now this is a crucial turning point in the book of Acts, because it is here that we begin to see the message of the Gospel breaking out from being just a Jewish reality to being a message for everyone. God is starting to remind His people of something that they had forgotten; and that is that His salvation is for a whole world.
Another Woman Not My Wife— Some time ago I read of [A preacher, who shall we say was “humor inspired”, {and who} attended a conference to help encourage and better equip pastors for their ministry. Among the speakers were many well-known and dynamic speakers. One such speaker, boldly approached the pulpit, gathered the entire crowd’s attention, and said, “the best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman that wasn’t my wife!” The crowd was shocked! He followed up by saying, “And that woman was my mother!” The crowd burst into laughter and he delivered the rest of his speech, which went quite well. The next week, the pastor decided he’d give this humor thing a try, and used that joke in his sermon. As he approached the pulpit that sunny Sunday morning, he tried to rehearse this joke in his head. It suddenly seemed a bit foggy to him. Getting to the microphone, he said loudly, “The greatest years of my life were spent in the arms of another woman that was not my wife!” The congregation inhaled half the air in the room! [And he began to get excited. But when he got ready to deliver the punch line, he found that in his excitement he couldn’t remember it. So] After standing there for almost 10 seconds in stunned silence, trying to recall the second half of the joke, the pastor finally blurted out, “…and I can’t remember for the life of me who she was!”]
Rooted in Israel— Forgetting things can sometimes be very painful. But we I think are prone to forgetting things; particularly about the Christian faith. And one of the basic things we forget (or choose to ignore; perhaps because we don’t recognize the importance of it) is the place of Israel in God's overall plan in bringing redemption to the world. Especially we in our western culture. We forget that God had always intended Israel to be a light to the nations. All the way back in Genesis 1:28 God had told Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,…” And he repeats that command to Noah in Genesis 9:7 immediately following the flood. And later, when God entered into covenant with Abraham, he made a promise to him, saying in Genesis 12:3 “…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” And so we see that when God established Israel, they were to be a light to the nations. God says in…
Isaiah 42:6 (ESV)— 6 “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations,
Isaiah 49:6 (ESV)— 6 he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Isaiah 52:10 (ESV)— 10 The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.
Isaiah 60:3 (ESV)— 3 And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.
Now, fast forward to the New Testament. Listen to the words of Jesus in…
John 8:12 (ESV)— 12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
God’s Love for The World— Now first of all notice how Jesus’ claim to be the Light connects back to concept of salvation given in Isaiah. It is very important to understand that Jesus saw himself as the embodiment (literally) of God’s salvation that God had always planned on giving to the world through Israel. Now that must have sounded a bit jarring to those who heard Jesus; because notice Jesus doesn’t say “I am the Light of Israel.” That is what his Jewish audience probably would have expected Him to say. But no, He was speaking to them in the spirit of Isaiah, pointing them back to the reality that they had forgotten; which was that God’s salvation is for a whole world. And so He says, “I am the Light of the world.” Even in His conversation with Nicodemus he had begun to hammer this point. What did he say to Nicodemus in John 3:16? “For God so loved the world…”; another all-inclusive statement. Now this is so important because the Early Church saw Jesus as the fulfillment of these passages in Isaiah and therefore took these passages as their own personal commission. When Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch in Pisidia, it says in…
Acts 13:44-48 (ESV)— 44 The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. 45 But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him. 46 And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. 47 For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,
“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”
48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.
Channels of Blessing— You see, God’s plan has always been for Israel to be the means through which his salvation would be brought to the world. And though God had made a covenant with Abraham and with his people to bless them, the blessing was never meant for them alone. No, they were to channel that blessing to the world. Now the sad reality that we are confronted with is that Israel failed to live out this call, and instead gravitated towards either of two extremes.
Nationalism— The first was that Israel gave in to a separatistic nationalism in which Israel resisted contact with all the surrounding Gentile nations. We see this attitude very much alive in the person of Jonah. He was commanded by God directly to preach to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire. But not wanting them to experience God's salvation, he took off in the opposite direction. And God had to use some mighty big circumstances in order to turn him around. Now we know that Assyria had caused Israel a lot of grief; and they were a very wicked empire. But the nationalistic attitude of Israel during that time had all but completely cut them off from engaging in God's mission to reach the world. And unfortunately this attitude pervaded much of Israel's history.
Compromise— Now the second extreme was that of compromise. Israel was called to influence the surrounding nations to God; however what ended up happening was that Israel became influenced by the surrounding nations. They were seduced by the paganism and the idolatry. And so they allowed themselves to become tainted by that spiritual adultery. And because they were tainted by that sin and false religion, they didn't have anything that they could give to the surrounding Gentile nations. They had become the very thing that they were supposed to fight against. Now God was able to cleanse Israel of her idolatry; which He did through the Babylonian exile, after which Israel never returned to their former idolatry again.
The New Idolatry— However, they did embrace a new kind of idolatry; and that was that they allowed their religion to become corrupted into a system of salvation by works. The temple itself became an idol. The religious rights and sacrifices became idols; so much so that when God Himself visited His temple in the New Testament, they did not even recognize Him. And they even hated many of the people that Christ came to save. But all of that changed with the birth of the Christian Church, as each new stage of growth pushes the Church farther out in its scope.
God’s New Instrument— And what I want you to see is that the Church has now become God’s new instrument to further the work He had always intended for Israel. They are His great new means of reaching the world. And while Israel had up until this time been very nationalistic in its focus, we find that the Church would be an entity that would embrace people of every race and culture and nation. But (as we have said before) this happened in stages. At Pentecost the spread of Christianity began first in Jerusalem to an exclusively Jewish body. It wasn't long after that that the Church soon began to reach out to minister to the half-breed Samaritans, as they were called. And then in our passage next week we find the third great milestone of the Church as the Gospel finally begins to reach a Gentile audience as well; as through the ministry of Philip a high official in the court of the Ethiopian queen comes to faith in Jesus Christ. But not only him, but we will see also that through him the Gospel would eventually reach those in the great African continent as well.
Is Israel’s Problem Ours As Well?— But what we need to be careful of is to keep Israel’s problem from becoming our problem. Are we thinking globally? Are we fulfilling God’s call to carry the Good News of the Gospel to the ends of the earth? Oswald J. Smith has rightly pointed out that “Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist.” But you know, in light of that (every pun intended), let us not forget our central purpose; and that is to join Christ in the work He is doing in the world. Let’s join Him this week. Amen.
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