This 71 part expository study of Acts was preached at Flagstaff Christian Fellowship in 2000-2002. Audio and manuscripts are available for each lesson.
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How do you launch a worldwide enterprise? In the last century, Coca-Cola did it. You can go just about anywhere in the world and buy a Coke. They are the world’s largest multi-national corporation. Right behind them is Microsoft. Last year when I was in Poland and Romania, I discovered that although the languages were different, their computers looked and worked just like mine, with the familiar Windows and Word screens.
The church is Jesus Christ’s worldwide “enterprise.” He prophesied that He would build His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). The Book of Acts tells us how His church began in Jerusalem and spread to the ends of the earth. It provides a vital link between the gospels and the New Testament epistles. How did the Christian faith that began with a few followers of Jesus in Israel spread to Rome and points beyond? How did an ardent Jew who was not even a believer become the apostle to the Gentiles? How did the early church, which was exclusively Jewish, begin to reach out to and incorporate the Gentiles? Without Acts, we would be hard pressed to answer these questions. While we have four gospel accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, there is only one Book of Acts.
The title, Acts of the Apostles, was probably added sometime in the second century, but it is a bit of a misnomer. “Acts” fits, since there is plenty of action. But “apostles” isn’t quite right, since the story does not tell of the deeds of most of the apostles, but primarily of Peter (chapters 1-12) and Paul (chapters 13-28). The book actually describes the acts of Jesus through the Holy Spirit in His servants.
Almost all Bible scholars agree that Luke was the author of Acts. He was a physician (Col. 4:14), and the only Gentile author of the Bible. An early writing, dated between A.D. 160-180, tells us that Luke was a Syrian from Antioch, a single man who accompanied Paul until his martyrdom, and who died himself at age 84 (cited by Simon Kistemaker, Acts [Baker], p. 20). Luke probably wrote Acts about A.D. 62-64, toward the end of Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome, where the book leaves off. There is no mention of the intense persecution launched by Nero in A.D. 64, or of the martyrdom of Paul in about 68, and so Acts was probably written before these events.
The first verse of Acts links it with the introduction of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1:1-4). Both volumes were written to an otherwise unknown man, Theophilus, who was probably a Roman official, to provide an accurate historical foundation for his faith in Jesus Christ. Together, Luke and Acts comprise about 30 percent of the New Testament, surpassing both the writings of Paul and John in size (Richard Longenecker, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], p. 207).
Purpose: Why did Luke write Acts? Several theories are proposed, but probably his primary purpose was to provide an account of the beginnings of the Christian church in order to strengthen his readers’ faith and to give assurance that its foundation is firm (I. Howard Marshall, Acts [IVP/Eerdmans], p. 21). Perhaps a skeptic had tried to convince Theophilus that his faith was based on myths or legends. Luke wants to show through his gospel and Acts that the accounts were based on eyewitness testimony given by credible men who were not promoting it for personal gain. In fact, they proclaimed the message in the face of strong opposition and even death.
Luke also intended to explain how the church spread from Jerusalem to Rome, encompassing both Jews and Gentiles, in accord with God’s purpose. One key to understanding Acts is to see that it is a transitional book, showing how the worship of God moved from the Jewish temple, to the hesitant acceptance of Gentiles into the Jewish church, and finally to the Christian worship of predominately Gentile churches all over the Roman empire. Acts shows us how God went from working primarily with the Jews as a nation to working with the church, comprised of Jews and Gentiles on equal footing. In Matthew 21:43, Jesus had told the Jewish leaders, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it.” Acts shows us the transition that lasted from the death of Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, which fulfilled Jesus’ prophecy.
Acts records many miraculous signs that were given to prove to Israel that they had been wrong to reject Jesus as their Messiah and Lord. The main message that the apostles and others in Acts proclaimed centered on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which was the primary sign authenticating Jesus as the Christ, and on the offer of forgiveness of sins in His name. The apostles were given unusual miraculous power, authenticating them as God’s witnesses to Jesus Christ and His resurrection. While God obviously can and does work miracles today (after all, He is God!), to claim as some do that miracles should happen today with the same frequency as in Acts is to miss the transitional nature of the book. God had a special purpose for miracles, to authenticate the apostles within this transition period.
Themes: In addition to the transitional nature of Acts with miracles to authenticate the message and the messengers, and the central message of Christ and His resurrection from the dead, there are several other themes running throughout Acts:
The sovereignty of God in the founding of the church and the spread of the gospel. Clearly, God is at work and nothing can stop what He intends to do.
The power of the Holy Spirit, given to all who believe in Jesus Christ.
The importance of prayer in the life of the church.
The importance of preaching God’s Word. Acts contains numerous sermons and speeches, including eight by Peter, nine by Paul, one lengthy sermon by Stephen, and a shorter one by James. The addresses by Peter, Paul, and Stephen make up about 25 percent of the book (John Stott, The Message of Acts [IVP], p. 69).
The importance of mission to all peoples. This outward thrust of the gospel is the main story line of Acts. Acts shows us how to do evangelism and missions.
The reality of opposition and suffering in the spread of the gospel. Clearly, although God is sovereignly at work and nothing can stop what He is doing, His servants often suffer greatly, even unto death, in the cause.
The life and organization of the church. Acts gives us glimpses of early church life that show us how the church dealt with problems as it grew.
Outline: A simple outline of Acts is contained in Acts 1:8:
With that as a brief introduction to the book, let’s look at the first two verses, which develop an important theme:
By the power of the Holy Spirit the church is obediently to continue to do and teach what Jesus began.
Luke’s words about his gospel, that it contained what Jesus began to do and teach, have the strong implication that His work is not done. He was taken up into heaven, but His work on earth did not cease. Rather, His body, the church, continues to do and teach what Jesus began. Jesus was God in human flesh, dwelling among us, showing us what the Father is like (John 1:14; 14:9-10). While Jesus was totally unique, perfect in all of His ways, we are given the daunting task of representing Jesus Christ to the world as His body. Ray Stedman makes the point that whether in the Gospels or in Acts, God uses incarnation—His life manifested through human life—as His strategy to change the world. The book of Acts, he says is the record “of men and women possessed by Jesus Christ and manifesting His life every day. Anytime you find a Christianity that is not doing this, it is a false Christianity” (Acts 1-12, Birth of the Body [Vision House], p. 14).
To understand what we are to do as His church, we must first understand what Jesus Christ began to do and teach:
As I said, Jesus Christ was totally unique in all history, in that He alone was God dwelling in sinless human flesh. John makes this clear in the prologue of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14). Christ’s mission was to come to this earth to offer Himself as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). When on the cross, Jesus cried out, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He had completed that work of redemption, offering Himself as the sacrifice for our sins. In all these matters, Jesus Christ was totally unique. No further offering for sin is needed. Christ is the sufficient sacrifice (Heb. 10:12).
Christ’s mission was to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). Jesus was always focused on the task of reconciling sinful men with the holy God. He did this through His life and deeds and through His teaching of God’s Word.
Before Jesus was taken up into heaven, He gave orders to His apostles. This can refer to all that He commanded them over the course of the three years that He taught them. But specifically it focuses on the final command, the Great Commission, to take the good news to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem (Luke 24:47). As you read through the Book of Acts, it becomes obvious that the apostles and early church were not doing their own thing, formulating their own plans, and building their own empires. Rather, they were instruments through whom the Lord was working His purpose and plan.
When they choose a successor to Judas, it is the Lord who chooses (Acts 1:24). When Peter explains the phenomenon of tongues on the Day of Pentecost, he makes it clear that it was the risen Jesus who did it (2:33). When we read of the early church growing in number, it is stated, “The Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved” (2:47). When Peter and John healed the man by the temple gate, they make it clear that it is not them, but Jesus Christ the Nazarene who healed him (3:6; 4:10). When Saul of Tarsus is converted, it is plain that the Lord sovereignly saved him and sent Ananias to open his eyes (Acts 9:1-19). And so it goes throughout the Book of Acts. Men are merely the instruments; it is the Lord who is at work through them.
This same truth can also be seen in the way that the narrative of Acts picks up and then drops various men according to the degree which they are for the moment the instruments of Christ’s power. If Acts had been written solely by Luke (apart from the Holy Spirit), do you think that he would have said nothing about the majority of the twelve apostles, or that he would have treated his main characters as he did? Peter, the most prominent apostle, slips out of the narrative without a word after chapter 15. James, another of the inner circle with Jesus, is mentioned only in the list in 1:13, and then in one verse when he is martyred (12:2). John, the other inner circle apostle, is only referred to in the first four chapters, once in chapter 8, and then in reference to his brother’s martyrdom, and he passes from the scene in Acts. Barnabas, who pioneers the first Gentile church in Antioch and who goes with Paul on the first missionary journey, slips into oblivion after chapter 15. Even the great apostle Paul, who dominates the last half of the book, is left in the final chapter in Rome in prison, with no account of his subsequent work or martyrdom. (For the above two paragraphs, I am indebted to Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Acts 1-12:17 [Baker], pp. 12-14.)
Students of the Book of Acts have puzzled over the somewhat abrupt ending. The narrative is sailing along, telling of Paul in prison in Rome, when suddenly it stops. The best explanation of this is that Luke intended for the book to be viewed as an unfinished story. The followers of Jesus throughout the centuries are writing the remainder of the book. As G. Campbell Morgan (The Acts of the Apostles [Revell], p. 11) observes:
When we come to the study of this book, therefore, we must understand that it is not a merely mechanical story of the journeyings of Paul, or of the doings of Peter. It is intended to reveal to us the processes through which Christ proceeds in new power, consequent upon the things He began to do and teach, toward the ultimate and final victory, which we see symbolized in the mystic language of Revelation.
What kind of men does Christ use in His work?
Chosen men.
Luke begins by stating that Christ had chosen the apostles. He wants us to know that these men were not self-appointed leaders. They did not even volunteer for the job. Jesus Christ sovereignly chose them, first to salvation, and then to apostleship (the word “apostle” means “sent one”). They were men under authority, laboring as bondservants. They were not entrepreneurs, building their own empires. They did not make up or preach their own message. Rather, they were witnesses, relaying to others what they had seen and heard.
Throughout Acts, Luke puts a distinct emphasis on the sovereignty of God in the progress of the gospel. This is especially seen in the case of Paul’s dramatic conversion, which is told three times for emphasis (Acts 9, 22, 26). But we also see it in the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), of Cornelius (Acts 10), where God “granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life” (11:18). In Acts 13:48, after Paul preached, “as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” In Acts 16:14, it was the Lord who opened Lydia’s heart to respond to Paul’s message. In Acts 18:10, the Lord tells Paul to keep preaching in Corinth, and explains, “for I have many people in this city.”
When salvation is genuine, those who come to the Lord know and testify that it was not their decision that saved them. It was God who mightily saved them when they could not save themselves.
Obedient men.
Christ gave the apostles orders by the Holy Spirit (1:2). Everything that Jesus did, He did in obedience to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. Even so, we are never to live under self-will, but only for God’s will. The Book of Acts makes it plain from early on that being obedient to God’s will engages us in God’s mission, and that this often brings us into persecution. Peter and John were arrested and warned against preaching the gospel. They continued preaching, leading to all of the apostles being arrested and warned. They responded, “We must obey God rather than men” (5:29). When they were beaten, they rejoiced that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for Christ’s name, and they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (5:41-42).
The book goes on to tell of Stephen’s martyrdom and of the many trials that Paul and his companions suffered as they sought to take Christ to the nations. Paul told the young churches, “It is through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God” (14:22). But the suffering did not deter these men from obeying the orders that Christ had given them. So also should we be obedient to our Lord, no matter what the cost.
Spirit-filled men.
The great difference between the disciples before the crucifixion and after the Day of Pentecost is clearly attributed to the Holy Spirit’s coming upon them. Before, they were confused, often self-seeking, doubting, and fearful. After, they were clear, self-denying, bold and confident. The difference was the fulness of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
Since the Day of Pentecost, all believers are indwelled by the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation (Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:2-5). But, we must learn to walk daily in the Spirit’s power, not in the flesh (Gal. 5:16-23). We must be sure that we are clean vessels, fit for God to indwell and use. We must seek the Lord to fill us every day so that He can do His work through us.
Men working together.
While the Book of Acts emphasizes the ministry of two great men, Peter and Paul, it shows clearly that these men were not one-man shows. They worked together with many others to do the Lord’s work. Luke lists over 100 personal names in Acts. He shows that God has an interest in individuals and that He works through bringing these individuals together into His church.
Furthermore, Acts shows us that God is no respecter of persons (10:34). He cares about people from every walk of life and every racial background. In Antioch, the church leaders consisted of a former Jewish priest (Barnabas, 5:36), a black man, a man from North Africa, a man brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and former Pharisee, Paul (13:1). A major theme in Acts is that the gospel is not just for the Jews, but for all people. It is to God’s glory to save men and women from diverse racial and social backgrounds and to bring them together to labor for His cause. There is no place in His church for racial discrimination.
Men with confidence in the power of God’s Word.
Another major theme throughout Acts is the power of God’s Word. The church is to continue teaching as Jesus taught. In Luke, we saw the emphasis on the teaching ministry of Jesus. He believed in and powerfully taught God’s Word. God’s Word is the seed of the gospel that has within it the power to give life to dead sinners (Luke 8:11). The Book of Acts contains 40 references to God’s Word. The apostles did not want to be distracted with administrative duties; they declare their priority: “But we will devote ourselves to prayer, and to the ministry of the Word” (6:4). Thus we read that “the word of God kept on spreading” (6:7). We are not committed to the ongoing work of Jesus unless we are committed to teaching and preaching God’s Word.
We should come away from our initial study with two great truths that should lead us to ask ourselves a basic question. First, Christianity is a faith rooted in history. We saw this in our initial study of Luke also. Christianity is not the religious speculations of a bunch of brilliant thinkers. Christianity is God’s revelation of Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. The apostles faithfully handed down to us what they had seen and heard concerning the life, death, resurrection, and teaching of Jesus Christ. Our faith is built on “the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). Thus we can have confidence about our faith.
Second, God is at work in history through His church. While the life and ministry of Jesus Christ is the historical foundation of our faith, God didn’t just send Christ, pull Him off the planet, and stop working. Jesus began the work; His church continues it. That’s why He saved us and why He leaves us here on earth. This leads to a basic question that each of us needs to ask ourselves:
Am I committed to God’s work through His church? There are many that profess to know Jesus Christ as Savior, but if you examine their weekly schedules, they are living for themselves. I realize that most people are not going to be supported by their labors for the Lord. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a mindset, a basic focus in life. Do you see yourself primarily as the servant of Jesus Christ, fully committed and obedient to His cause? Ask any pastor in America and he will tell you that one great frustration in ministry is that only 20 percent of those who attend church are doing 80 percent of the work. If you are a Christian, serving the Lord in His cause through His church is not optional. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we as His church are obediently to continue to do and to teach what our Lord Jesus began.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
I hate working on cars, but sometimes I do it to save money. Invariably, I get to a point where it is impossible to do the job without some special tool. Recently, I had to replace a power door lock on my car. A guy working at the parts department at the Chevy dealer told me that you could pry the panel around the lock off easily with a screwdriver. He lied. The panel was held on by some clips that had to be removed from the inside. I later discovered that to get to these clips, you need a special tool. Some design engineer in Detroit, making six figures a year, devoting his entire time to designing a door panel with a part behind it that invariably will break, makes it impossible to fix without a special tool! It’s frustrating to try to do a job without the proper tools.
When our Lord left this earth, He gave the disciples (that includes us) a daunting task: to proclaim the good news of repentance for forgiveness of sins to the entire world (Luke 24:47). As we saw last week, the church is to continue to do and teach what Jesus began. But Jesus did not leave us without the tools that we need to do the job. Our text reveals four essential tools for doing Jesus’ work:
To do Jesus’ work, the church must have a solid foundation, sufficient power, a sharp focus, and a sure hope.
The solid foundation consists of the resurrection of Jesus and the message of His kingdom (1:3). The sufficient power is that of the Holy Spirit (1:4-5, 8). The sharp focus is the Great Commission (1:6-8). The sure hope is the second coming of Jesus Christ (1:9-11).
Luke emphasizes the factuality of the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection that He gave to His disciples over the 40-day period between His resurrection and ascension. This is the only verse that tells us how long this period was. Jesus gave the disciples “many convincing proofs.” One proof was the visual: He presented Himself alive. He appeared repeatedly to them. If it had only been one occasion, we could perhaps conclude that it was a vision or mass hallucination. But there were multiple appearances, some to individuals, some to the whole group, and not on one day only, but over 40 days. Furthermore, there was the proof of His teaching them. As Luke 24:45 puts it, “He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” Besides this, He ate with them (“gathered together,” 1:4, may have the nuance of eating together). They knew that He was not a phantom when they saw Him eat a piece of broiled fish in their presence (Luke 24:42-43).
The bodily resurrection of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian faith. If He is not risen, our faith is in vain. We may as well become hedonists (1 Cor. 15:17, 19, 32). Jesus’ bodily resurrection proves His deity and it is our guarantee that God accepted Jesus’ death as the satisfactory payment for our sins. Jesus had claimed before His death that He would be raised. He claimed to be one with the Father, so much so that He could say, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). He told His disciples, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). If Jesus were not God, then these claims were blasphemy. God would not have raised a blasphemer from the dead. But God raised Jesus, proving His deity. Since Jesus is God, everything He taught was true. Thus we can and must trust and obey His teaching. What did Jesus teach?
He spoke to the disciples “of the things concerning the kingdom of God” (1:3). The word “kingdom” occurs over 40 times in Luke’s Gospel and 8 times in Acts (here, 1:6; 8:12; 14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31). Some would limit this to the future Millennial Kingdom, but I think that while it includes this, it also is broader than this. It refers to God’s sovereign rule over all that is (Ps. 103:19; Dan. 4:17, 25, 32), and more specifically, to the realm where He actually rules. In the latter sense, God’s kingdom was manifested through His elect nation, Israel, to the degree that they followed His covenant laws. This reached its apex under the reign of David and the early reign of Solomon, who were types of the reign of Messiah the King. The kingdom was present in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ (Luke 17:21). In the present age, the kingdom is spiritually manifested when Christ reigns in the hearts of His people, the church. But there is a future sense in which His kingdom will come in fulness and power when the King returns to judge the world and to reign on the throne of David.
When Jesus began to preach the gospel, Mark 1:15 summarizes His message as, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” There are some who would divorce the message of the gospel from the message of the kingdom. In other words, they say that you can accept Jesus as your Savior, but you do not have to accept Him as Lord until later, and even then it is optional! They also teach that repentance is not necessary to be saved; the only requirement is to believe in Jesus. But the Bible clearly connects repentance, faith, and the lordship (or kingship) of Jesus with the gospel.
Paul preached to the intellectual Athenians, “God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). He reasoned with the Jews and sought to persuade them about the kingdom of God (19:8). He summed up his ministry as going about preaching the kingdom (20:25). He wasn’t discussing nuances of Bible prophecy. He was preaching the rightful lordship of Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, and returning in power and glory to judge the earth and rule in righteousness. He was urging his hearers to repent of their sins and submit to Jesus as King before they faced Him as judge.
Thus the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the message about His kingdom rule are the foundation of our work for the Lord. We must proclaim to people that Jesus died for their sins, that He was raised from the dead, that He now sits at the right hand of God, and that He is coming again in power to reign over all the earth.
The disciples still seemed to be thinking in terms of political power, of Jesus restoring Israel’s power as an earthly kingdom. Jesus did not correct them by saying, “Don’t you guys get it yet? My kingdom is not and never will be on this earth.” Someday Jesus will restore the kingdom to Israel. If the disciples had been mistaken on this crucial matter, surely Jesus would have corrected them here before He ascended. What Jesus corrected was not the fact of His future rule over Israel, but rather their desire to know the timing of it. Instead, He emphasized their need for spiritual power to accomplish the task that He was giving them, of being His witnesses to the ends of the earth.
Jesus told the disciples not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which they had heard from Him (John 14-16). The Pentecostals teach that we need to wait for a dramatic experience with the Holy Spirit, which they call the baptism of the Spirit. But they fail to see that Pentecost was a unique, sovereign act of God in history. The reason Jesus told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem was that in God’s timetable, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit was to coincide with the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover. Pentecost, also called the Feast of Weeks, was a time for Israel to offer to God the first fruits of their harvest (Lev. 23:15-21; Num. 28:26-31; Deut. 16:9-12). By His resurrection from the dead, Jesus became the first fruits of those who have died (1 Cor. 15:20, 23). Through the new birth, brought about by the Holy Spirit, we become the first fruits of His creation (James 1:18).
Before the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit empowered many of God’s people, but He did not permanently indwell every believer (Exod. 31:3; Ps. 51:11). John the Baptist had prophesied that Jesus would baptize His followers with the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16; John 1:33). The word “baptize” meant to immerse a person in water or to deluge him with it (I. Howard Marshall, Acts [IVP/ Eerdmans], p. 58). It has the main meaning of being totally identified with something, in this case, the Holy Spirit. The passive “be baptized with” indicates that God did the baptizing; the disciples merely received it. With reference to sending the Holy Spirit, Jesus told the disciples that the Spirit “abides with you, and will be in you” (John 14:17). On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples received the permanent indwelling of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
In the Book of Acts, this initial reception of the Spirit’s indwelling follows the pattern of Acts 1:8. In Acts 2, the believers in Jerusalem receive the Holy Spirit. In Acts 8 and 10, the new believers in Judea and Samaria receive the Spirit. In Acts 19, believers in Ephesus (the remotest parts of the earth) receive the Spirit. Since then, every Christian receives the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation (1 Cor. 12:13; Rom. 8:9; Gal. 3:2-5).
But although every Christian has received the Spirit, we still need continually and repeatedly to be filled with or controlled by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18). This is also referred to as walking in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16) and it results in the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, rather than the deeds of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-23). The power of the Spirit that we need for witnessing is not just the power to speak the gospel boldly and clearly. We also need the Spirit’s power to live holy lives. Our godly lives are the foundation for our verbal witness. If you are not denying ungodly lusts and growing in holiness (Titus 2:12), then please do not tell anyone that you are a Christian, because your life will bring disgrace to the name of Christ. I am not saying that you must be perfect before you bear witness. I am saying that you must be walking in the Holy Spirit, seeking to please God with your life, and forsaking all known sin.
The power for verbal witness is not identical with being an effective salesman. An effective salesman may be able to talk someone into making a decision for Christ, but only God can impart new life to a dead sinner. We need to be clear and persuasive when we present the facts about Christ and the gospel, but the power to save a sinner lies with the Holy Spirit, not with us. Thus we cannot witness effectively for Christ unless we rely upon the Holy Spirit to produce godliness in our daily lives and to use our verbal witness as we have opportunity.
Thus, to do Jesus’ work, we need the solid foundation of Jesus’ resurrection and the message of His kingdom. We need the sufficient power of the Holy Spirit.
The disciples ask Jesus if it is at this time that He is restoring the kingdom to Israel. He replies, in a nice way, “That’s none of your business. Your job is to be My witnesses in every part of the world.” In other words, our focus is not to be on prophetic timetables, but on the Great Commission.
Commentators are quick to jump on the disciples for focusing on the earthly kingdom of Israel, whereas Jesus’ focus was on His spiritual kingdom. But this is to miss the point. Jesus did not correct the notion that He would someday restore the kingdom to Israel. He corrected their concern about when it would happen. He redirected their focus to the great task of the present age, to bear witness of Jesus Christ to all peoples.
Donald Grey Barnhouse calls the amillennial view (that God is through with the Jews as a people and that there will not be a future kingdom on earth) “one of the greatest heresies that men can promulgate” (Acts [Zondervan], p. 20). On the other side, I read this week from a web site called “Dispensational Dementia,” that dispensationalism is a terrible heresy that denies the gospel. I think that both Barnhouse and the anti-dispensationalists are greatly overstating their criticisms! There are godly Bible scholars who hold to all of the major views (pre-, post-, and a-millennial) of Bible prophecy. As long as they affirm the bodily second coming of Jesus Christ in power and glory, there is room for difference of opinion, and we must be charitable to those who disagree with us. While it is both necessary and profitable to study the prophetic portions of Scripture and to try to fit them into a consistent eschatology, we need to take heed to our Lord’s warning here. We should not get so caught up with our views of prophecy that we neglect the clear mandate of the Great Commission.
Jesus says that it is not for us to know the times or epochs. Times is the Greek word chronos, and refers to any length of time. It includes the other word, kairos, which means opportune moments or critical, epoch-making periods (R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament [Eerdmans], p. 211). Thus the Reformation or the great missionary movement of the past 200 years would be “epochs.” All such movements are already fixed by the Father by His own authority. This should give us great comfort, not only that history is under God’s sovereign control and plan, but that it is the Father who is our Sovereign! Thus whether we live in an age of intense persecution for our faith or in an age of revival, we can know that the loving Father is in sovereign control.
Note also that our witness must extend towards people that our culture (and even we, by virtue of being raised in our culture) may despise. The disciples were to be witnesses in Jerusalem, where Jesus had just been rejected and brutally, unjustly killed. They were also to bear witness in Samaria. The Jews hated the Samaritans and vice versa! But they were to go into Samaria. Beyond that, they were to go to the remotest parts of the earth. Perhaps the disciples at first thought that they were to go to the Jews who were scattered abroad. But they soon learned that the same gospel that converts Jews works on Gentiles! Even so, we must take the gospel to people we may not naturally like or be drawn to, remembering that it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe (Rom. 1:16).
One final observation on verse 8: the disciples were to be Christ’s witnesses. Is this a command or a prophecy? Both! There is a sense in which every Christian is a witness. The question is, are we effective witnesses or are we a hindrance to the cause of Christ? The word “witness” is a major theme in Acts, occurring 39 times. Since it is the Lord’s command and since we cannot escape being witnesses of some sort, it behooves us to seek by our godly lives and by our clear verbal witness to bring glory to Jesus Christ.
Thus to do Jesus’ work, we need the tools of a solid foundation in the resurrection of Jesus and the message of His kingdom. We need the sufficient power of the Holy Spirit. We need the sharp focus of the Great Commission.
Luke succinctly repeats the story of Jesus’ ascension, which he told at the end of his gospel. The cloud that received Jesus out of their sight was probably the Shekinah glory of God. As the disciples, quite naturally, stood gazing up into the sky at this unusual sight, two men in white clothing, probably angels, suddenly stood beside them and in effect said, “Quit gazing into heaven and get on with what Jesus told you to do. He will return in just the same way as you saw Him leave, bodily, with power and glory.” Thus the certainty of Jesus’ ascension as witnessed by the apostles guarantees the certainty of His bodily return. If we know for sure that Jesus is coming back, we will be obedient to the work He gave us to do.
Before He comes, the gospel must first be preached to all the nations (Matt. 24:14; Mark 13:10). Our ability to carry out the Lord’s missionary mandate depends on the fact that Jesus is exalted to the right hand of God, where He possesses all power and authority (Matt. 28:18-20; Eph. 1:19-23). As we saw when we studied Jesus’ ascension in Luke 24, it not only means that He has all power and authority, but also that He has made one offering for sins for all time (Heb. 10:12-13). Thus we can confidently proclaim forgiveness of sins in His name to everyone who repents and believes in Him. His place at the Father’s right hand also means that He is interceding for His saints. Thus we can be assured of His care for us when we suffer persecution for the sake of the gospel. The fact that He is coming again and we must give an account to Him should also motivate us to be faithful to the mission He has entrusted to us.
To carry on Jesus’ work, He has left us with these tools: (1) the solid foundation of His resurrection and the message of His kingdom; (2) the sufficient power of His Holy Spirit; (3) the sharp focus of the Great Commission; and, (4) the sure hope of His coming again. They are simple and yet powerfully effective tools.
In 1941, the great Welsh preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, spoke to a large audience of students at an Anglican church in Oxford. He preached to them as he would have preached anywhere else. After the meeting, it was announced that if anyone had questions, they could come to a room at the back of the church and ask Dr. Lloyd-Jones. He expected just a few, but the room was packed. A bright young student immediately got up and phrased his question with all the grace and polish of a union debater. He complimented the preacher, but then said that he had one great difficulty. He didn’t see but how the sermon might not equally have been delivered to a congregation of farm laborers. The intellectual crowd roared with laughter.
Lloyd-Jones replied that he could not see the difficulty, in that he regarded undergraduates and indeed graduates of Oxford University as just ordinary, common human sinners like everybody else, and that they had the same needs as farm laborers or anyone else. Thus he had preached quite deliberately just as he had done! He also drew a laugh and from then on had the full attention of everyone there. He goes on to say, “There is no greater fallacy than to think that you need a gospel for special types of people” (Iain Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones [Banner of Truth], 2:pp. 76-77).
The point is, whether you are a farm laborer or a Ph.D., there is one and only one message that will save you from sin and God’s judgment: the gospel that Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead, and that He is coming again to judge the living and the dead. In light of that truth, all men everywhere must repent. If you have believed that gospel and if you will rely on the Holy Spirit’s power, you can tell it to a farm laborer or to a Ph.D., and God will use it mightily according to His purpose. He has given us the tools that we need. Our task is to use these tools to do the work that Jesus began.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
How do you know that Christianity is true? How do you know that it isn’t just subjectively “true” for you, but not true for everybody? These are important questions that we need to answer, first for ourselves, and then for others to whom we may witness.
As we have seen, the foundation for the Christian faith is a historical event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless” (1 Cor. 15:17). But our evidence for the resurrection hinges on the credibility of the witnesses. How do we know that they weren’t deluded or deceived? How do we know that their witness was not tainted by selfish motives? How do we know that the men who testified about Jesus’ resurrection were credible witnesses? That is the question that Luke deals with as the Book of Acts unfolds. He begins by assuring his first reader, Theophilus, that Jesus presented Himself alive to these men by many convincing proofs (1:3). Now he wants to show that these men were godly men of integrity, whose witness we can trust.
When you study the Bible, a good question to ask is, Why did the author include this material at this point? What is his line of reasoning? What is his purpose? Luke here wants his readers to see that Christianity is founded on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, which is a major theme of the apostolic witness throughout the whole book (2:32; 3:15, 26; 4:10; 5:30; etc.). And, he wants us to know that the men who proclaimed this resurrection were trustworthy men. They were not religious hucksters, making a good living by peddling their wares. In fact, they suffered greatly because they proclaimed this message. Luke wants us to know that …
Christianity is credible because it is based on the witness of the apostles, who were godly men of integrity.
With that purpose in mind, let me deal at the outset with a somewhat common view that I think is in error, namely, that the apostles were mistaken to replace Judas with Matthias. Those who propound this view argue that Peter was being his old, impulsive self, acting without waiting on the Lord. If he had just waited until the Holy Spirit had been given, God would have made it clear that Judas should be replaced by the apostle Paul. We never hear anymore of Matthias, which proves that he was not God’s choice. Also, the way he was chosen, casting lots, was not from the Lord. Therefore, Peter was wrong.
The major flaw with that view is that it goes against Luke’s main purpose for this passage, which is to establish the credibility of the apostolic witnesses. He isn’t arguing that they were perfect men. He would never say that Peter was the infallible first Pope of the church. But even so, to say that Peter was mistaken on this crucial matter of appointing a replacement for Judas would be to go against the flow of what Luke is trying to establish here.
Also, if Peter were mistaken, surely there would be some hint of it in the context; but there is none. Rather, he takes this action after waiting on the Lord in prayer (1:14). He bases his action on Scripture (1:16, 20). He does not promote his favorite candidate, but rather submits the whole process through prayer to the Lord’s sovereign choice (1:24). (I’ll deal with the casting of lots later.) The fact that Matthias is never heard from again is irrelevant, because we never hear of most of the other apostles again, either. While Paul was clearly an apostle, appointed by God, he did not meet the criteria set forth here, since he was not with Jesus from the beginning of His ministry. If Peter had been wrong on such a major decision, surely there would be some correction from the Lord afterwards, but there is none. I think we must conclude that Peter acted in line with the will of God.
Our text reveals five qualities that these twelve men possessed to make them credible witnesses:
The apostles had spent three years living with Jesus. They saw Him when He was tired and hungry. They saw Him arrested, mistreated, and finally crucified. Surely they knew and affirmed that He was fully human. And yet they affirmed that He was also fully God. Peter here calls Him, “the Lord Jesus.” “Lord” means God. It is likely, in light of the reference to the Lord Jesus in verse 21, that when they pray to the Lord in verse 24, they are praying to Jesus as God. Thomas, the doubter, had exclaimed to the risen Jesus, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). If, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim, he was swearing, surely Jesus would have sternly rebuked him. Instead, Jesus affirmed his testimony by saying, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (John 20:29).
Although we don’t have much historical information on most of the apostles, we know enough to say that they were all men who were dramatically changed by their encounter with Jesus Christ. Peter himself, when he witnessed the first miraculous catch of fish, fell before Jesus and proclaimed, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Matthew had been a wealthy tax collector, living a comfortable life. But he gave it all up and turned from his greedy, crooked ways, to follow Jesus as Lord. Simon the Zealot was a part of a radical political movement that killed tax collectors for sport. But here he is, joining with Matthew as a part of this apostolic band. While we don’t know for sure what became of most of these men, early tradition tells us that most of them gave their lives to proclaim the message that Jesus Christ is Lord, risen from the dead.
Not only the apostles, but also Jesus’ mother, Mary, and His brothers are a part of this group. This is the last reference to Mary in the Bible. There is no biblical evidence that Mary was perpetually a virgin. That view arose from the unbiblical idea that celibacy is morally superior to having marital relations. She and Joseph had other children after Jesus was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit. Neither is there any biblical evidence that we are to pray to Mary or that she is elevated above any other believer. There is no biblical support whatever for the blasphemous teaching that Mary is co-redemptrix with Christ. It is implicit by her being present here that she believed in Jesus as her Savior and Lord.
Jesus’ brothers had not been believers just a few months before (John 7:5). At one point, they had even thought that He had lost His sanity (Mark 3:21). But Jesus had appeared at least to His half-brother, James, after the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:7), leading to his conversion. His other brothers (Mark 6:3) may also have seen the risen Lord Jesus, or James may have borne witness to them. But their presence here indicates that they now believed in Jesus’ deity and in the truth of His resurrection.
The point is, each of those gathered in this upper room, was there because he or she had experienced a dramatic change in their hearts and lives because of their personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Although many of them had been thrown into doubt and confusion by His crucifixion, they now fully believed that He was raised from the dead. With Thomas, they believed that He is Lord and God.
That is the starting point of the Christian faith. Have you come to know Jesus Christ personally? Has He changed your heart from being self-seeking to being subject to Him? Christianity is not just a matter of accepting a set of doctrines or of following a moral code, although it involves both. It is primarily a matter of coming to know God through Jesus Christ, of receiving forgiveness of sins and eternal life through believing in His death and resurrection for your sins (John 17:3; 3:16).
Why were they gathered in this upper room in Jerusalem? Because Jesus told them to stay there and wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit (1:4). That was not an easy thing to do. Jerusalem was not a friendly place for believers in Jesus just then. It would be easier to find a quiet retreat out in the countryside. Besides, they all had living expenses to think about. Why not spend the time earning some money by going back to their fishing business or doing some other kind of work? Or, if they were thinking about the Great Commission, they might have thought, “We need to get going on the task of preaching the gospel.” But Jesus told them to wait, and so they waited.
Waiting on the Lord is one of the hardest things to learn in the Christian life. Why doesn’t God hurry up? Life is short enough as it is! But so often the Lord says, “Wait!” We need to learn to obey Him. The apostles’ obedience shows us that they were not self-willed men, trying to build their own empires. We can trust their witness.
What did they do while they waited? They devoted themselves to prayer (1:14). What were they praying for? We are not told. They may have been praising God for the times that they had experienced with Jesus after His resurrection. They may have been praying for wisdom in carrying out the Great Commission that Jesus had given them. And, they may have been praying for the gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised.
You may ask, “Why would they pray for something that Jesus had promised? If He promised it, isn’t it going to happen?” But Scripture is clear that we should pray for the things that God has promised. We see this in the Lord’s prayer. Is it a certainty that God’s kingdom will one day be established on earth? There is no question about it! Yet Jesus instructs us to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10; see also Dan. 9:2-3).
Thus God’s promises should motivate us to pray and to persist in prayer until they are a reality, because we know that He will fulfill His Word. Like the apostles here, we should join with others in prayer, making sure that we are not at odds with one another, but rather that we are of one mind (1:14), “striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1:27). Prayer shows our dependence on the Lord and our submission to Him. Because the apostles were men of obedience and prayer, we can trust their witness about Jesus’ resurrection.
Peter had not only been attending prayer meetings. He also had been spending time in God’s Word. His sermon on the Day of Pentecost is loaded with Scripture that he recites from memory (2:17-21, 25-28, 34-35). Here, he quotes from Psalms 69 and 109 to cite reasons why Judas had defected and why his position should be filled by someone else. He affirms that David did not write the Psalms by his own genius, but rather through the Holy Spirit (1:16). During His 40-day ministry to the apostles after the resurrection, Jesus had taught them from all of the Old Testament concerning Himself (Luke 24:44-45). Thus during these ten days after His ascension and before Pentecost, the disciples were poring over Scripture, seeking to understand in more depth the things that Jesus had been explaining.
Judas’ defection and suicide had been difficult for the disciples to understand. How could a man chosen by Christ for such a high privilege turn against Him? Had Jesus made a mistake in choosing Judas? Why would God let such a terrible thing happen? Peter and the other apostles found help with these difficult questions by going to God’s Word. “The Scripture had to be fulfilled” (1:16). “Had” is the word that Luke uses often to refer to divine necessity. God’s purpose will be accomplished. God is sovereign, even over evil events, such as the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus, and yet He is not responsible for sin. Judas was fully responsible for the wicked deeds that he committed, even though they were a necessary fulfillment of David’s prophecies.
Luke inserts a parenthesis in verses 18-19 to explain Judas’ tragic end to his readers who were not familiar with the story. Judas did not himself buy the field with his betrayal money. Rather, he threw it down at the feet of the Jewish leaders in remorse for what he had done. They used it to buy the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers. Meanwhile, Judas went out and hanged himself (Matt. 27:5-7), perhaps at that very field. It became known as the Field of Blood, due both to Judas’ death and to its subsequent use as a burial ground. So Judas exchanged his privileged position as one of the twelve apostles for a piece of ground that he never got to use, except as perhaps a place to kill himself!
Why does Matthew report that Judas hanged himself, whereas Peter here states that he fell headlong and all of his bowels gushed out? Probably, both were true. He hung himself over the edge of a cliff, but either the rope or the limb broke. He may have already been dead and bloated. The impact of his fall caused his intestines to gush out. Matthew was writing for a Jewish audience that viewed suicide as a sinful, terrible way to end life. Thus to show the awful end of Judas’ life, all he had to say was that he hanged himself. Luke was writing to a Gentile audience where suicide was not necessarily viewed as bad. To make the point that Judas’ end was reprehensible, Luke had to bring out more of the gory details (Richard Longenecker, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 9:264). But both reports were factually true.
Peter appealed to Psalm 109:8 as the justification for why Judas’ office must be filled by another. Jesus had told the twelve that they would sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28). In Revelation 21:10, 12, & 14, the New Jerusalem has twelve gates with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel and twelve foundation stones with the twelve names of the apostles written on them. If the apostles were to be credible witnesses to Israel, it was important for this symbolism to be preserved. Thus a replacement had to be found for Judas.
The point is that the apostles were men of the Word who were appealing to the Word to explain the difficulty of Judas’ defection and death, and of the need to replace him with another credible witness. They teach us that we should go to God’s Word with all of the difficulties that we encounter.
Thus we can believe the testimony of the apostles because they were men whose lives had been changed through a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. They were men of obedience and prayer, and men of God’s Word.
As I said in earlier studies, the apostles were not religious geniuses who invented Christianity. They were not profound philosophers. They were not even, primarily, theologians. They were witnesses. Good witnesses don’t invent stories; they truthfully tell exactly what they have seen and heard. Thus Peter, in setting forth the qualifications for a replacement for Judas, states that the man must have been with Jesus from the beginning of His ministry and he must be a witness of His resurrection (1:21-22).
It is important to affirm that the Christian faith is founded primarily on a historical event that has many credible eyewitnesses, namely, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I am not minimizing the importance of the core doctrines about Christ and the cross. Rather, I am affirming what Scripture affirms, that the foundation of our faith is a verifiable historical event (1 Cor. 15:1-19). If it is true, everything else follows. If it is false, then nothing else follows.
Alexander Maclaren (Expositions of Holy Scripture, Acts 1-12 [Baker], pp. 34-35) points out that you cannot prove that a thing has happened by showing how desirable it is that it should happen, how reasonable it is to expect that it should happen, or what good results would follow from believing that it has happened. All of this is irrelevant. The only relevant question is, Did it happen? Is it true because credible eyewitnesses assert it? Is it commended to us by ordinary standards of evidence that we accept with regard to all other matters of fact? He goes on to argue (p. 36) that the testimony for Christ’s resurrection is enough to guarantee any other event. If so, why isn’t it enough to guarantee this also?
It was to this historic, life-changing event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that the apostles spent the rest of their lives proclaiming that it was true. Each of us must consider their witness and either accept or reject it. There is a final reason we should accept their testimony as credible:
Many men have abused positions of authority, even in church history. The popes have a terrible track record of using spiritual office for selfish gain. Sadly, even many Protestant churches operate on a political basis, with various factions vying for control. But it is clear here and throughout the record of Acts that the apostles did not view their privileged position as a base for power or prestige. They viewed it as a ministry (1:25). The word means, being a servant. When it came to replacing Judas, they did not pick the most politically correct man for the office. They didn’t maneuver behind the scenes, lining up votes for their favorite candidate. Even though they were quite diverse in background and personality, which could have led to a power struggle here, the eleven all submitted themselves to God’s sovereign will.
First, they listed the spiritual qualifications. The man had to have followed Jesus from the earliest days of His earthly ministry, and he had to be a witness of the risen Savior. Two men were qualified. One of these, outwardly, seemed to be better qualified. He was nicknamed “Justus,” a Latin name meaning “just” or “righteous.” His Jewish name, “Barsabbas,” probably meant that he was born on the Sabbath. But they didn’t pick him based on outward qualifications. They prayed, “Lord, You know the hearts of all men. Show us which one of these two You have chosen.” Then they determined the Lord’s choice by casting lots. This involved putting each man’s name on separate stones of similar size. The one that fell out of the pot first was the choice.
This was an acceptable means of determining God’s will in the Old Testament (Lev. 16:8ff.; Num. 26:55ff.; Josh. 7:14; 1 Sam. 10:20; 14:41ff. Prov. 16:33; 18:18). But this is the last instance of it in the Bible, indicating that since the Holy Spirit has been given, it is no longer a valid means of determining God’s will. Some Christians have used this method, but I would not recommend it. I would point out that if you do use it, you can’t go for two out of three if you don’t like the first result! You have to submit to God’s will as revealed the first time! That’s what the apostles did here. They weren’t voting for their favorite candidate. They were submissive to God’s will. They let Jesus, who chose the original twelve (1:2), choose Judas’ replacement.
In a jury trial, the attorneys try to discredit their adversary’s witnesses. If they can convince the jury that their opponent’s witnesses are questionable, they can win their case.
God wants us to know that our Christian faith is credible. It is not based on religious speculations, but on the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That event proves that He is God, and everything else follows from it. We know that the resurrection is true because these twelve godly witnesses, the apostles, affirmed that it was true. They did not profit from their witness, either materially or by gaining power. Rather, they were servants who laid down their lives for the sake of the truth that they had personally experienced, that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead.
You must decide: Will you, like Judas, ignore the evidence and follow your selfish desires that lead to destruction? Or, will you accept the apostolic witness as true and follow Jesus as your Savior and Lord?
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
When the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles and the other believers on the Day of Pentecost, those who heard them speaking in tongues were perplexed and asked, “What does this mean?” (2:12). The question persists in our day. Many claim that the meaning of Pentecost is that we should have the same experience as the disciples, namely, that we are to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit and to speak in tongues. You have probably had other Christians ask you, as I have, “Have you received the baptism of the Holy Spirit?” If you have not spoken in tongues, they are eager to help you have this experience for yourself. We all need to answer biblically, in light of the context, What is the meaning of Pentecost?
Acts 2 must be interpreted in light of Acts 1:4-8, where the risen Lord Jesus instructed the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit. Jesus explained that they would “be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (1:5) and they would receive power to be Christ’s “witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (1:8). Just as the ministry of Jesus depended on the Holy Spirit descending on Him at His baptism, so the ministry of the disciples depended on them receiving the Holy Spirit and relying on His power. While they had experienced a measure of the Spirit’s power before (John 20:22), now He would come to dwell in them permanently (John 7:37-39; 14:17).
Thus Acts 2 must be interpreted as a special historical event, signifying a new period in God’s dealings with His people. Pentecost signals the dawning of the age of the Holy Spirit. And the fulness of the Spirit in God’s people is to empower them for witness to all the nations. Thus,
The meaning of Pentecost is God’s equipping His church with the power of His Spirit so that He will be glorified among the nations.
The point of Pentecost is mission, and the goal of mission is that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). If we properly understand this great historic event, our hearts will be enflamed with cause of seeing some from every tribe and tongue and nation bowing before the exalted Lord Jesus Christ. Note four things:
To understand this event, we must understand the Jewish Feast of Pentecost. It was not by coincidence that God poured out His Spirit on the disciples on that day. There were three great Jewish feasts each year: Passover (in the spring), celebrating Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, followed immediately by the Feast of Unleavened Bread; Pentecost, also called the Feast of Weeks, which occurred 50 days (seven weeks) after Passover; and, Tabernacles (in the fall). Pentecost was an initial harvest feast, where the Jews were to offer to the Lord the first fruits of the new grain. Among other rituals, they were to wave before the Lord two loaves of wheat bread, made with leaven (Lev. 23:15-21).
This picture came to fulfillment in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Until this time, the Lord’s people consisted of Israel, along with a few Gentile proselytes. Not all in Israel were believers, but it was through that nation exclusively that God worked through His covenant promises to form a people for Himself. But now the Lord formed the body of Christ, the church, made up of Jews and Gentiles on equal footing. Paul calls this inclusion of the Gentiles in the church a mystery, meaning that it had not been formerly revealed (Eph. 3:4-7), although it was typified in this Jewish feast with two loaves. That these two loaves were made up of leavened bread pictures the fact that although we are redeemed in Christ, we are still sinners who must learn to get along with those who, in the flesh, are very different than we are.
You will recall that the Lord had told Peter that He would build His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). Thus the church, founded on the apostolic confession and witness of Christ, is God’s means of taking the gospel to the nations, resulting in His being glorified in all the earth.
We need to remember that our purpose as the Lord’s church is not to focus on ourselves and our own happiness. Our purpose is to spread the knowledge of God to all the nations, beginning here in our own “Jerusalem.” If we lose our outward focus, with the overall purpose of God’s glory, we have lost our reason for existence.
As I studied this portion of Acts, I wondered at first why Luke goes through this long, somewhat tedious list of nations (2:9-11). He starts east of Israel and ends up encircling the land. While most of the men mentioned were Jews (a few were Gentile proselytes), they are representative of the nations that the Lord wants to reach. The key to the list is in verse 5, that it represents “men from every nation under heaven.” They were devout men, meaning God-fearing, as is obvious from the fact that they had made this pilgrimage to Jerusalem for this feast. But they did not yet know that their Messiah had come and had been sacrificed. Peter will shortly explain all of that in his sermon.
This list of the nations reminds us of the list of nations in Genesis 10, which led to the building of the tower of Babel. God judged those proud men by confusing their languages. Here, by His grace, God turned this confusion of tongues into a miracle of miraculous speech, resulting in great blessing. The gift of speaking in tongues was a special miracle to demonstrate God’s purpose in taking the gospel to all the nations. It enabled the church to be launched in all of these places when these men returned to their homes. But since then, missionaries (even Pentecostal missionaries!) must struggle to learn the foreign languages in the places they go. Later in Acts (14:11-14), even Paul and Barnabas did not understand the Lycaonian dialect. They could only preach to the people in Greek, which almost everyone understood.
But the point is, God’s plan is no longer to be bottled up with the Jews. His good news is for all the nations. As John proclaims in Revelation 5:9, Jesus purchased for God with His blood “men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” We cannot rest until all the nations have heard the good news about Christ. But how can we possibly fulfill God’s plan?
The Holy Spirit is not just a force. He is the third person of the Trinity, God is every way. We know that He is a personal being in that He can be grieved (Eph. 4:30); you cannot grieve an impersonal force. Jesus calls Him the Paraclete, or Comforter. The word means, “one called alongside to help.” We know that He is God in that He performs deeds, such as creation, which only God can do. In Acts 5:3, Peter accuses Ananias of lying to the Holy Spirit and then adds, “You have not lied to men but to God” (5:5).
Before the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit regenerated men and empowered them for serving God. But He did not permanently indwell all believers (Ps. 51:11; Luke 11:13). In the Upper Room, Jesus had told the disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit to be with them forever. He added, “You know Him because He abides with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17). Thus on the Day of Pentecost, the disciples were baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5), in fulfillment of Jesus’ promise. In Acts 8, the Spirit was poured out on the Samaritans through the apostles, so that both they and the apostles would realize that they were now members of the same body of Christ. The same thing happened with the Gentiles in Acts 10 and with the followers of John’s baptism in Ephesus (Acts 19). These transitional outpourings of the Holy Spirit follow the pattern of Acts 1:8.
Once the transition was completed, all that believe in Christ receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation (Gal. 3:2-5). Paul states, “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him” (Rom. 8:9).
We need to be careful to distinguish several terms that are often confused. In Acts 1:5, Jesus said that the apostles would be baptized by the Holy Spirit, which occurred on the Day of Pentecost. Baptism refers to being totally identified with the Spirit and to the initial reception of the Spirit. Paul tells the Corinthians, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). If the baptism of the Spirit were a special experience for the spiritually elite, Paul would not have said such a thing to the Corinthians, who were not noted for their spiritual maturity! The New Testament nowhere commands believers to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, since it is not an experience we are to seek, but God’s action performed on the believer at the moment of salvation.
We are, however, commanded to be filled with the Spirit, which means to be controlled by the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). The disciples on the Day of Pentecost were not only baptized with the Spirit. Also they all were filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4). While the baptism of the Spirit is a one-time event, being filled with the Spirit happens repeatedly (see Acts 4:8, 31; 6:5; 7:55; 9:17; 13:9). To be filled with the Spirit, we must empty ourselves by confessing all known sin and by dying to self. We must yield ourselves fully to the Lord and depend on Him step by step (“walking in the Spirit,” Gal. 5:16). Being filled with the Spirit is also called (in a parallel passage) letting the word of Christ richly dwell in you (Col. 3:16; see Eph. 5:18 and context). Thus the filling of the Spirit cannot be divorced from God’s Word being at home in your heart. The results of a consistent daily walk in the Spirit will be the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) manifested in our lives and relationships (Eph. 5:19-6:9; Col. selves fully to the Lord and depend on Him step by step (“walking in the Spirit,” Gal. 5:16). Being filled with the Spirit is also called (in a parallel passage) letting the word of Christ richly dwell in you (Col. 3:16; see Eph. 5:18 and context). Thus the filling of the Spirit cannot be divorced from God’s Word being at home in your heart. The results of a consistent daily walk in the Spirit will be the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) manifested in our lives and relationships (Eph. 5:19-6:9; Col. 3:16-4:1).
This initial outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost was marked by three symbolic phenomena. First, there was the sound of a violent rushing wind that filled the house. Then, there was the visible sign of tongues of fire resting on each person. Finally, there was the miraculous speaking in foreign languages which none had previously learned.
The sound of the violent rushing wind was primarily a picture of invisible power. As you know, the wind, which you cannot see, exerts incredible power in a tornado or hurricane. In this case, the disciples heard the noise, but there is no indication that they felt it blowing. It was rather a miraculous sound that came from heaven. The noise was loud enough that it gathered the crowd to find out what was happening (1:6).
Both the Hebrew and Greek words for wind and spirit are the same. In Ezekiel 37, God commanded the prophet to prophesy to the winds to breathe on a valley of dry bones. When he did so, the breath of life came into them. God explains that He will put His Spirit within His people and they would come to life (Ezek. 37:9-14). In John 3, Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about the need to be born of the Spirit. He explained, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (3:8). The Holy Spirit, like the wind, is a mighty power, but we cannot see Him. We can only see His effects. One of His most powerful effects is when He imparts spiritual life to those who were dead in their sins.
The second phenomenon was the appearance of tongues of fire resting on each person in the room. Throughout the Bible, fire symbolizes God’s holy presence. Moses in the wilderness saw the bush that was burning and yet not consumed. God Himself was in the bush. Later, Israel in the wilderness was guided and protected by the pillar of fire. John the Baptist predicted that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Jesus said that He had come to cast fire upon the earth (Luke 12:49). The final place of judgment is the lake that burns with fire forever and ever. Hebrews 12:29 says that our God is a consuming fire.
Fire brings both heat and light. The heat of fire consumes the dross, purifying those who come in contact with it or destroying those who have no gold in them. The heat of fire also pictures the zeal that should mark believers, who are to be hot, not lukewarm, in their devotion to Christ (Rev. 3:15-16). The light pictures the illumination that God brings to those in spiritual darkness.
The fire on the Day of Pentecost appeared in the form of tongues to symbolize God’s holy power through the proclamation of His Word, burning into people in a way that purifies them. As Paul later stated, the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16). That gospel must be verbally proclaimed for the power to come through.
Down through church history, the sovereign Spirit has moved unseen as the wind, where He wills, to bring revival. Invariably, it starts with the church, purifying God’s people, igniting their cold hearts with a renewed passion for knowing God and burning off the dross of the world that had contaminated them. Through them, it spreads as the gospel is proclaimed and the Spirit imparts new life in Christ to dead sinners. Through His mighty Holy Spirit, God does what no humanly orchestrated “revival” could ever do. He brings lasting change by regenerating and purifying dead sinners so that He is glorified as people recognize His mighty deeds. Such revival is clearly a sovereign act of God, not the result of any human effort or planning. We should be praying that God would graciously send such a revival on our land!
Before we leave the subject of the power of the Holy Spirit, let me briefly deal with the question, “Should we seek to speak in tongues?” Some argue that the sign of being baptized with the Spirit is speaking in tongues and that if you have not done that, you are lacking a vital spiritual experience. This is a controversial subject; if you disagree with me, please try to set aside your emotions and reason with me from Scripture. As I said, there is no command to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit, although we are commanded to be filled with the Spirit. The main evidence of being filled with the Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit, which is godly character (Gal. 5:16-23; Col. 1:9-12).
First, we need to be clear that the genuine gift of tongues is the ability to speak a foreign language that you have not studied. It is not, either in Acts or in 1 Corinthians, to speak “ecstatic utterances,” which is a nice term for gibberish. In Acts the disciples were speaking languages which the native speakers could understand, but which the disciples had never learned. In 1 Corinthians, the tongues needed interpretation because native speakers were not present. But you cannot interpret nonsense syllables; you can only interpret language that has fixed, objective meaning behind the sounds that are uttered. This criterion alone invalidates 99 percent of what is called speaking in tongues in our day.
Secondly, we are never commanded or encouraged to seek the gift of tongues. Rather, the Holy Spirit sovereignly distributes gifts as He wills (1 Cor. 12:11). When Paul says to earnestly desire the greater gifts (1 Cor. 12:31), he is talking to the church as a body, not to individuals. He means that the church should seek gifts that build up the body, not those, such as tongues, that may edify the individual.
Also, the miraculous gifts were given to the church during the early period to confirm the apostolic witness, but they faded as time went on. The author of Hebrews wrote to a second generation of Jewish Christians. He tells them how the word of the Lord was confirmed by the apostles through various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will (Heb. 2:3-4). If these gifts were present in the churches at the time he was writing, he would not have needed to refer to them as a thing of the past. Their purpose had been to confirm the apostolic message. After that purpose was fulfilled, they passed off the scene.
Finally, as I hope you can see from the context of Acts 2, the meaning of Pentecost was not to encourage believers to have an ecstatic experience for their own edification. The meaning of Pentecost was that God gave the Holy Spirit to His church so that they would bear witness to the nations for His glory.
These Jews from all of these nations heard the disciples “speaking of the mighty deeds of God” (2:11). Peter will shortly preach the gospel, leading to the conversion of 3,000 souls. But the goal of the gospel is the glory of God. As John Piper has put it, “The reason missions exists is because worship does not.” In Revelation 5, John has a vision of the nations worshiping before God’s throne. That should be our vision as well.
Note that not all responded positively, even though this was a “Class A” miracle. Even miracles will not convince mockers, who do not want to submit their lives to the Sovereign God. The Book of Acts is a record not only of might conversions, but also of fierce opposition to the preaching of the gospel. We should expect the same response. But we know that our God will triumph, that every knee will someday bow to Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11).
Last Sunday, Marla and I listened to a powerful sermon by John Piper, which he gave to 50,000 college students. He began by telling of two elderly women who had given their “retirement” years to go to Cameroon for the sake of the gospel. They had been killed when their brakes gave out and their car plunged over a cliff. He asked, “Was that a tragedy?” He answered, “No, that wasn’t a tragedy. Let me tell you about a tragedy.” He cited a Reader’s Digest article about how many Americans are taking early retirement so that they can pursue their own pleasure. One couple had bought a yacht and spent their time sailing off the coast of Florida, collecting seashells. Piper said, “Now, that’s a tragedy!” Can you imagine this couple standing before God at the judgment and saying, “Here’s our seashell collection, Lord”?
God’s purpose at Pentecost was to equip His church with the mighty power of the Holy Spirit so that we would be His witnesses to all the nations, resulting in His eternal glory. I want you to ask yourself these questions as you think about this purpose:
(1) *Is my focus on God’s glory in all things? Did I even think about that as I went through my week? Did it determine how I resisted temptation or how I spoke to others?
(2) *Is my passion that the nations would glorify God through the gospel? If my heart is not on world missions, it is not in tune with God’s heart.
(3) *Is my daily life consciously dependent on the Holy Spirit? Would I have missed Him if He had withdrawn from me this past week? Do I lean on Him for purity of life and power to obey God?
(4) *Is my daily desire to bear witness of Christ to those who are lost and perishing? The power of the Spirit isn’t given just to make me happy. It is given to make me holy so that my life and my words bring glory to God as I bear witness to His saving grace. That should be the meaning of Pentecost for you and me.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
I have read that the number one fear that people have is the fear of speaking in public. It ranks ahead of the fear of death! The fear of speaking in public would increase if a person knew that he would be speaking to a hostile audience. Add to that the fact that the audience is not just a small group, but at least five to ten thousand hostile people, and you must address them without a public address system! To make matters worse, you have made a fool out of yourself just weeks before in such a manner that many in your audience would have heard about it. And, you have no time to prepare your message. The opportunity presents itself and you’re on—without any notes!
Such was the situation facing Peter on the Day of Pentecost. The sound of the rushing wind from heaven had drawn a large crowd, which then heard all the believers speaking of the great deeds of God in the many different native languages of the crowd. This perplexed them as they asked, “What does this mean?” (2:12). But others in the crowd were mocking and accusing the believers of being drunk. It was to this Jewish crowd in the city of Jerusalem, where Jesus had been killed just over seven weeks ago, that Peter delivered the sermon that launched the church. In terms of results—about 3,000 got saved that day—it was one of the greatest sermons ever preached.
Luke here only gives us the gist of that great sermon (2:40). But even so, there is far more here than I can deal with in the time allotted to me. Thus I plan to give an overview of the whole sermon today and then go back in future weeks and look more in depth at certain parts of it. I want to walk you through this sermon, explaining the flow of thought so that you grasp Peter’s method and argument. Even though you may never be called on to preach to a crowd, you will have opportunities to bear witness for Christ. Studying Peter’s sermon can help you be ready.
Peter begins (2:14-21) with the questions that the crowd was asking about the phenomena of Pentecost, linking what they saw and heard to the prophecy of Joel 2:28-32. He then (2:22-36) rather abruptly shifts to the person of Jesus, arguing as his bottom line that God authenticated Jesus as Lord and Christ, “this Jesus whom you crucified” (2:36). But he builds his argument inductively (a good method with hostile audiences), building his case point by point, but not giving the main point until last. When his audience responds with conviction of sin, asking, “What shall we do?” Peter tells them to repent and be baptized, and 3,000 did so. Let’s work through his sermon in more detail:
Notice that twice Peter appeals to his audience to listen carefully to his words (2:14, 22). No matter how dynamic or dull the speaker may be, the audience has a responsibility to listen carefully. Even the Lord Jesus, the most gifted speaker in history, exhorted His audiences to take care how they listened (Luke 8:18). In other words, the responsibility for a good sermon lies not only with the preacher, but also with the hearers. We should always ask God to give us ears to hear what He wants to say to us through His Word.
Peter begins with a touch of humor. Some mockers were accusing the believers who spoke in tongues of being drunk. Peter could have ignored them or responded defensively, but instead he says, in effect, “It’s too early for us to be drunk!” The Jews would not normally have eaten or drunk at this hour during the Feast of Pentecost. Often, a touch of humor can disarm your critics long enough to gain a hearing. If you are called on to preach, your introduction should grab the attention of the audience and make them want to hear the rest of what you have to say.
Then, Peter explains that the phenomena they had seen and heard were “what was spoken of through the prophet Joel” (2:16). He proceeds to quote, with a few minor variations, Joel 2:28-32. Later Peter will cite Psalm 16:8-11 and Psalm 110:1. He did not have a Bible in book form, since books as we know them were not yet invented. And he did not unroll several scrolls to the right text so that he could read these verses. Rather, he recited them from memory! If you want to be an effective witness for Jesus Christ, you must memorize certain Scriptures that explain the gospel. You will not always have a Bible handy to look up the verses.
Peter’s citation of Joel makes three points:
Joel’s prophecy actually says, “after this,” but Peter changes it to “the last days.” The time from Jesus’ first coming until His second coming can all be referred to as the last days. The apostles did not know that it would stretch out to 2,000 years. But as Paul put it, we are the ones “upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor. 10:11). Peter warned “that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’” (2 Pet. 3:3-4). He goes on to say that with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. But Peter’s citation of Joel is simply making the point, we are now in the end times when this prophecy will be fulfilled.
Peter’s use of Joel is in line with what biblical scholars have identified from the Dead Sea Scrolls as a typical form of Hebrew teaching, called a “pesher” (from the Hebrew word for “interpretation”). “It lays all emphasis on fulfillment without attempting to exegete the details of the biblical prophecy it ‘interprets’” (Richard Longenecker, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 9:275). Thus Peter never specifically shows how prophecy, visions, and dreams are identified with the phenomenon of speaking in tongues that everyone had heard. But he seems to use this passage since it is “the nearest equivalent to tongues in Old Testament phraseology” (I. Howard Marshall, Acts [IVP/Eerdmans], p. 73).
Peter’s main point is not the particular form that the outpouring of the Spirit took, but rather that He was poured out “on all flesh.” Not just the prophets or rabbis, but even sons and daughters would experience this outpouring of the Spirit (2:17). Not just the older men, but also younger men would know the Lord and His will (“visions”). Not just the wealthy, but even bondslaves would know the fulness of the Spirit. Not just men, but also women would have the Spirit. As the apostle Paul later taught, “by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). No believer today lacks the presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Peter did not know how soon these judgments would take place (since Joel does not indicate such). He was not claiming that they had been fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost; rather, he is saying that these things would precede “the great and glorious day of the Lord.” Since the prophecy had begun to be fulfilled, as evidenced by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it is reasonable to assume that the rest will come to pass in due time.
Some relate these signs in the heavens back to the darkening of the sky on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, understanding them “as tokens of the advent of the day of the Lord” (F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts [Eerdmans], p. 69). Others interpret these signs as symbols for any cataclysmic judgments, whether volcanoes, earthquakes, fires, or whatever. I might grant that there may have been an initial, symbolic fulfillment when Titus destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But Revelation 6:12 predicts these same signs when the Lamb breaks the sixth seal during the Great Tribulation. Thus the literal fulfillment still awaits that time just prior to the return of Christ when He will judge the whole world.
Peter’s point is that the outpouring of the Spirit predicted by Joel has happened. The Messianic age has begun. Can God’s awful judgment predicted in the same passage be far behind? Then Joel offers good news:
Here is the great mercy of our God! He offers to those who deserve His judgment a means of escape. Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Up to this point, Peter has been rather generic. He has linked the phenomena of Pentecost to Joel’s prophecy about the outpouring of God’s Spirit in the last days. This hints that the day of Messiah has dawned, inaugurating the last days, but he hasn’t yet said that clearly. He has also brought up the subject of God’s judgment at the final Day of the Lord, but he hasn’t stated yet that his audience (good religious Jews) needs to fear that judgment. And he has set forth the offer of God’s mercy for anyone who will take it. But now he shifts from preaching to meddling! He gets specific about just who this Lord is that a person must call upon to be saved. He shows them that they had crucified their Messiah!
Although he doesn’t state the punch line until verse 36, Peter shows four ways that God authenticated Jesus as Lord and Christ:
Even Jesus’ enemies had to admit the fact of His miracles (although some attributed them to Satan’s power; Luke 11:15). But most people acknowledged, as Nicodemus did, that “no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him” (John 3:2). Peter reminds his audience that Jesus had done many such miracles in their midst, and they knew it.
While many in our day deny that miracles can occur, they are basing their denials on the assumption that God does not exist, contrary to much evidence in creation. In the mornings National Public Radio has a program called “The Pulse of the Planet,” which is totally naturalistic and evolutionary. Ironically, their motto is that they are bringing you “the miracles of science.” I would like to ask them, “How does science perform miracles?” What they are presenting are the miracles of God as seen in His creation! The miracles that Jesus did, attested by many eyewitnesses, including His enemies (John 11:47), authenticate Him as Lord and Christ.
Here Peter stomps on some toes: “This man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” Jesus’ death at first glance may have seemed like something that invalidated His messianic claims. But Peter shows that Jesus was not killed because He was a victim of His enemies. He was killed because God predetermined before the world began that Jesus would die as the Savior of His people. Isaiah 53:10 prophesied, “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief.” And so rather than invalidating Jesus as Lord and Messiah, His death actually validated Him, since it was a fulfillment of God’s eternal decree.
Does this mean that since God determined it, men are not responsible? No, Peter says, “you nailed [Him] to a cross by the hands of lawless [lit.] men [the Romans] and put Him to death.” Without violating their will, God used evil men to accomplish His eternal purpose, but those evil men were responsible for their crime. No one can blame God for his own sin.
After spending one verse each on Jesus’ life and death, Peter spends nine verses on His resurrection, which is the main theme of the apostolic preaching in Acts. Note the implicit contrast between “you put Him to death. But God raised Him up again” (2:23-24). In other words, they were guilty of opposing God!
Peter cites Psalm 16:8-11 to show an Old Testament prediction of the resurrection. In that psalm, David declares that God will not abandon his soul to Hades nor allow His holy one to undergo decay. But, Peter argues, David both died and was buried, and his tomb was right there in Jerusalem. In other words, David’s body did undergo decay. Therefore, David as a prophet knew that God had promised to seat one of his descendants on his throne, and so he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of Christ. Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah when he confidently states, “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses” (2:32). Perhaps the other eleven standing with Peter nodded in affirmation.
Thus Jesus’ miracles, death and resurrection all authenticate Him as both Lord and Christ. But there is a final evidence:
Peter states that the ascended, exalted Jesus was the one who had sent the Holy Spirit as evidenced by the miracle of everyone speaking in foreign languages. Again, he cites David: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’” (Ps. 110:1). Since David is not seated at God’s right hand, this must refer to Messiah. A not-so-subtle implication is that the enemies of Messiah are those who crucified Him! Then Peter comes to his punch line (2:36): “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Their address, “brethren,” shows that their hearts had been softened. To be “pierced to the heart” shows their feelings of deep anguish as they realized that they were guilty of killing their own Messiah. The Holy Spirit stabbed them with conviction of their terrible sin. C. H. Spurgeon said, “It is idle to attempt to heal those who are not wounded, to attempt to clothe those who have never been stripped, and to make those rich who have never realized their poverty” (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Ages Software], vol. 44, “A Far Reaching Promise”). The conviction of sin is often the missing note in our evangelistic efforts. We are too quick in trying to heal people who do not realize that they are mortally ill. We need to use God’s holy law to show sinners their desperate condition. Only after they feel that should we apply the promise of God’s grace in the gospel.
First Peter calls upon them to repent. There are many in our day who argue that repentance has no place in salvation; rather, all a person must do is believe in Christ. Repentance, they say, comes later. If so, Peter botched the gospel! The fact is, repentance and faith are flip sides of the same coin. You cannot have true saving faith without repentance. Others minimize the definition of repentance, saying that it means simply to change your mind about who Jesus is. Certainly it includes that, but it is more than that. I. Howard Marshall writes, “The word indicates a change of direction in a person’s life rather than simply a mental change of attitude or a feeling of remorse; it signifies a turning away from a sinful and godless way of life” (ibid., p. 80). Faith in Jesus Christ is implicit in repentance, as it also is in Peter’s next word.
“Each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” Peter is calling them to an individual response. Salvation always is a personal transaction, not a group plan. As with John the Baptist’s ministry, he links repentance, baptism, and forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4). Baptism is never just an outward ritual, but rather is a public confession of one’s private faith in and commitment to Jesus Christ.
Those who argue that you must be baptized to be saved use this verse as their proof text. But they ignore both the context of this verse and the overwhelming testimony of Scripture, that salvation is by grace through faith, and that good works (such as baptism) are the result of salvation (Eph. 2:8-10). Granted, the notion of an unbaptized believer was foreign to the apostles, since it was assumed that saving faith would result in prompt obedience to Jesus Christ. But, in the next chapter (3:19), Peter calls his audience to repent “so that your sins may be wiped away,” but he never mentions baptism. When Peter called upon these people to be baptized, he was calling them to make a radical break with their culture and religion that had crucified the Messiah, and to be publicly identified with Jesus Christ. This outward symbol would prove the reality of their inward repentance and faith, and the fact that God had forgiven their sins.
Then, Peter proclaims God’s promise, that they will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (i.e., the Holy Spirit Himself is the gift). When they repented and trusted in Christ, the Holy Spirit was a part of God’s gift of salvation. Peter extends the promise beyond them to their children and beyond them to those who are far off, “as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” While salvation, on the one hand, requires that a person call on the name of the Lord (2:21), on the other hand no one calls on the Lord unless the Lord first calls him to Himself (2:39). Although Peter may not yet have understood it, those who are far off no doubt referred to the Gentiles. Luke summarizes Peter’s further exhortations with, “Be saved from this perverse generation” (2:40). Salvation always demands a radical break from our wicked culture.
Much modern evangelism tries to make becoming a Christian as easy as possible. We dodge the issue of sin. We don’t talk about the cost of discipleship. We wouldn’t dare call on people to make a radical break with their culture. But Peter called them to repentance and baptism. For a Jew to be baptized was a traumatic thing. They generally looked on baptism as a rite for Gentile converts or for notorious sinners, not for “good” Jews (Longenecker, p. 286). But Peter preached boldly, God worked inwardly, and the church was launched, 3,000 strong! Peter’s message in a nutshell was:
Since God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ who will judge the world, sinners must repent.
Years ago I was reading Charles Simeon, a great Anglican preacher from the early 19th century. He stated that he had three aims in his preaching: to exalt the Savior, to humble the sinner, and to promote holiness. I thought that those were clear, godly aims, and so in a sermon, I shared that those were my aims, also. I was somewhat startled when a woman who had been on staff for 25 years with a Christian evangelistic organization came up to me and said, “I don’t agree with those aims. We don’t need to be humbled. We need to hear more how we are made in the image of God.”
Her comment reflects the man-centered focus of much modern evangelism. But the point of biblical evangelism is not to make people feel good about who they are or to feel that God loves them just as they are. Rather, it is to show them who Jesus Christ truly is, the Lord of the universe, the Christ of God who offered Himself for our sins and who was raised from the dead. It should show them who they are, sinners who crucified the Son of God, who are in danger of His impending judgment. It should show them God’s great mercy, that if they will repent and call on the name of the Lord, He will save them from His judgment. It should show them the need to live in obedience to Him, no matter what the cost.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
The doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty versus man’s so-called “free will,” especially as it relates to our salvation, has sparked controversy in the church for centuries. John Calvin’s name is most often attached to this controversy, and some mistakenly think that he was the first to teach God’s sovereignty and the doctrine of predestination. But over 1,000 years before Calvin, Augustine contended against Pelagius, who insisted that men have full freedom of the will in spiritual and moral matters.
In 1525, while Calvin was still a teenager, Martin Luther strongly insisted on God’s sovereignty in all things, including man’s salvation. In his classic work, The Bondage of the Will [Revell, translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston), Luther attacked the views of the Roman Catholic scholar, Erasmus, who argued for a semi-Pelagian view. Erasmus said that men have free will, which he defined as “a power of the human will by which man may apply himself to those things that lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from the same” (ibid., p. 137). Luther vigorously denied this and argued that Erasmus’ views utterly destroyed the Christian faith and undermined the promises of God and the whole gospel (ibid., p. 84).
Although you may not know it, many of you are semi-Pelagian by default, since it is the prevailing view in American evangelical circles. Semi-Pelagianism is also called Arminianism, after Jacobus Arminius, who lived a generation after Calvin and opposed his views on predestination and free will. The Arminian view is that men can, of their own free will, choose to believe in Jesus Christ. The fact that God elects some to salvation is explained as being due to His knowing in advance who would choose Him. Arminians reject the doctrine that God chose in advance those whom He would save.
You may wonder, “Why bring up an issue that is so divisive? Shouldn’t we just focus on matters where we all can agree? Besides, isn’t the issue irrelevant to how we live? Why not focus on something more practical?” The answer is, because the Bible deals with these matters, so should we. Augustine, Luther, and Calvin all maintained that the issue is crucial to the entire Christian life. Luther writes,
It is, then, fundamentally necessary and wholesome for Christians to know that God foreknows nothing contingently, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His own immutable, eternal and infallible will. This bombshell knocks “free-will” flat, and utterly shatters it… (p. 80).
A proper understanding of the Bible’s teaching on God’s sovereignty affects our whole understanding of God, of man, and of salvation. Since God saw fit to say a great deal about these matters in His Word, we would be greatly impoverished if we set them aside, as if they were just academic matters for debate. We must wrestle to understand what God has wisely revealed for our growth in grace.
The verses we have read in Acts 2 invite us to ponder this deep subject. They present to us God’s absolute sovereignty over all things, even over all evil deeds. They also show us the open invitation that the sovereign God issues to all sinners to call upon Him for salvation. And they reveal to us to fact that all who call upon the Lord were previously called by God, so that none can boast in his salvation. Note these three important truths:
Jesus was “delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (2:23). In Acts 4:27, 28, the early church declares in prayer that all of the wicked men who opposed Jesus merely did “whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.” Nothing—not even the death of the Son of God—happens outside of God’s predetermined plan. Paul states with regard to our salvation, that we have “been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). Let’s explore three aspects of this important truth:
To say that God is totally sovereign, even over sin, immediately raises the charge, “If God decreed sin, then He is the author of sin.” That fits human logic, but we must accept the testimony of Scripture, realizing that our finite, time-bound minds may not be able to reconcile matters of eternity. The fact is, if God did not decree sin, then there is a major flaw in His universe that He could not prevent, and thus He is not omnipotent. There would be an evil power equal to or greater than God. This erroneous view is called dualism.
If He could have prevented it and did not, then clearly He decreed it. Some try to get God off the hook by saying that He did not decree it, He only permitted it by giving men a free will. But, as Calvin argues, God “does not unwillingly permit it, but willingly” (The Institutes, ed. by John McNeill, translated by Ford Lewis Battles [Westminster], 1:18:3). Besides, as Calvin points out with numerous biblical examples, God openly declares that He is the doer of certain evil deeds, thus repudiating the evasion that He only permitted them (1:18:1)!
For example, God wills that the wicked King Ahab be deceived. An evil spirit offers his services to this end. God sends him with a command to be a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab’s prophets (1 Kings 22:20, 22). Thus the wicked prophets were lying in disobedience to God, and yet they were fulfilling what God had determined to take place! Calvin gives many more examples, stating that for the sake of brevity he could have given even more. But he gave these, he says, to show “that they babble and talk absurdly who, in place of God’s providence, substitute bare permission—as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events, and his judgments thus depended upon human will” (ibid.).
Jonathan Edwards argues that since God decreed the sin of crucifying Christ and it is the worst of all possible sins, it follows that “all the sins of men are foreordained and ordered by a wise Providence” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards [Banner of Truth], 2:528). If you cannot grasp how God can will something that He forbids to be done, and yet remain untouched by evil, Calvin says, “let us recall our mental incapacity, and at the same time consider that the light in which God dwells is not without reason called unapproachable [1 Tim. 6:16]” (loc. cit.).
Many try to evade God’s absolute sovereignty by saying that God decrees all that will happen only because He foreknows it. But,
Obviously, God knows everything in advance. But He didn’t make up His eternal decree in response to seeing that men would someday sin and even crucify the Savior. Can you imagine God, sitting passively in heaven, wringing His hands because He saw in advance that men would sin against Him and crucify the Lord Jesus, but He couldn’t do anything about it, because, after all, He had given man free will and He dare not violate it! The cross was not God’s plan B! Nor did God see in advance that you and I would believe in Him and then say, “I’ll elect them to salvation, since I see that they will choose Me”! That would make the will of men sovereign over the eternal will of God! It also contradicts what Scripture plainly asserts, that our fallen will is unable to choose God apart from His first imparting a new nature to us (Rom. 3:10-18; 8:7-8; 1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:4). It would make salvation depend on something in us (our faith), rather than the unconditional grace of God.
Besides, God’s foreknowledge does not just refer to His knowing all things in advance. In that sense, He foreknows all men. But when Scripture says, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29), it refers to God’s sovereign choice to enter into a personal relationship with an individual. When Peter says that Christ was delivered up according to God’s foreknowledge, he means that God the Father, based on His personal knowledge of the Son, decided before time began that He would die for our sins. Surely Peter did not mean that God knew by looking down through history that evil men would kill His Son, and so He devised His plan to fit their evil deeds! Such a thing is unthinkable!
If salvation depends on fallen man’s will to believe, we’re in big trouble! According to Scripture, my will (before I am saved) is enslaved to sin (John 8:34; Eph. 2:1-3) and unable to do anything to please God (Rom. 8:8). Since believing in Jesus Christ is pleasing to God, the natural man cannot do that, apart from God imparting saving faith to him. If any part of the process depends on us, rather than on God’s sovereign will, the chain has a weak link that could snap at any time. The only way that we can hope to be saved is if God sovereignly undertakes all that concerns our salvation.
A. W. Pink makes this point when he laments,
The average evangelical pulpit conveys the impression that it lies wholly in the power of the sinner whether or not he shall be saved. It is said that “God has done His part, now man must do his.” Alas, what can a lifeless man do, and man by nature is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1)! (The Sovereignty of God [Banner of Truth], p. 105).
Thus all hope for our salvation lies with the sovereign God, who ordained even the death of His Son for our sins. What process does this sovereign God use to impart that salvation to us?
Peter cites Joel 2:32, “And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21). Also, he says that this promise of salvation “is for you and your children and for all who are far off” (2:39). This means that …
“Everyone” is about as broad as you can make it! He doesn’t say, “Everyone except those who are really bad sinners.” In fact, in the context, God has just warned of impending cataclysmic judgments—blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood (2:19-20). God wouldn’t impose such terrible judgments unless people were more than deserving of them. And yet to such sinful people, the Lord promises, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”! There is hope for the worst of sinners right up to the brink of judgment!
Furthermore, the invitation is open to people from every race and walk of life. Peter tells these Jews, whom he had just indicted for crucifying their Messiah, that the promise was for them (2:36, 39)! Also, the promise was for their children. Even if your parents were horrible sinners, if you will call on the Lord, He will save you. More than that, the promise was “for all who are far off” (2:39). This is a reference to the Gentiles, even though Peter wouldn’t come to understand this until Acts 10. This means that even if you have had no religious background, if you will call upon the name of the Lord, He will save you. The scope of this invitation is unlimited! The gospel is offered to all who will call on the Lord. But, what does this invitation mean?
To do this, you must realize that you are lost and under God’s just condemnation. “Salvation” refers to being delivered from God’s judgment. Thus you must be convicted of your sinfulness before the holy God or you will not call on the Lord to save you.
To call on the name of the Lord implies that the person knows something about who God really is. His name refers to His character or His attributes. He is revealed in Scripture as the triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is revealed in flesh to us in the person of Jesus Christ (and in this sermon Peter is arguing that Jesus is the Lord [2:36]). Obviously, a person does not need to have a full theological understanding of the nature of God to call upon Him. But, he at least needs some basic understanding of who God is and how He revealed Himself in His Son, Jesus Christ who offered Himself on the cross in the place of sinners. This knowledge is revealed in God’s Word, the Bible.
To call out to any “god,” however you understand him to be, will not save you. A sincere Muslim may call out to Allah to save him, but he will not be saved because he has not called upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. A Hindu may call upon a number of deities to save him, but he will not be saved, because he is calling out to demons, not to the Lord Jesus Christ. A Buddhist may call out to Buddha for salvation, but his prayer will not be heard, because Buddha is not the Lord. A sincere Roman Catholic may pray to the pope or to Mary or one of the saints to save him, but he will not be saved, because he is not calling on the name of the Lord.
To call upon the name of the Lord implies faith in Him, that Jesus has the ability to save you. No mere man and not even an angel can save you from God’s wrath. Only God can do that. To come to God, we must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him (Heb. 11:6). If the sovereign God states that everyone who calls upon His name will be saved, it seems reasonable to take Him at His word! Indeed, not to do so would be to call Him a liar! That “everyone” includes everyone here. “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off.” No matter who you are or what you have done or how far off from God you may be, if you will call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in faith, He promises to save you from His judgment.
But, we need to come back full circle to His sovereignty:
After saying, “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off,” Peter adds, “as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself” (2:39). He is going back to Joel 2:32. After stating that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered,” Joel adds, “For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.” The King James Version reads, “even among the remnant whom the Lord shall call.” Obviously, not all will be saved, but only the remnant, which the Lord calls to Himself. God must first call us and send His Spirit to convict us of sin, righteousness, and judgment, before we will call upon Him.
Paul links these things in Romans 8:30-33: “And these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect?”
If you have called upon the Lord for salvation, you know that it was because He first called you. Thus He gets all the praise and glory. As Paul puts it in Ephesians 1:5-6, “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace.” We can take no credit for calling upon the name of the Lord for salvation. John Calvin put it, “… God’s lovingkindness is set forth to all who seek it, without exception. But since it is those on whom heavenly grace has breathed who at length begin to seek after it, they should not claim for themselves the slightest part of his praise” (Institutes, 2:3:10). Thus the bottom line is,
The sovereign God invites everyone to call upon Him for salvation, calling to Himself those whom He will, that no one should boast.
There are dozens of practical applications of the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in our salvation, but I will limit myself to five:
If we think that we came to God because of our own free will, we will boast in our brilliant decision. We made a smarter decision than those who reject Christ. If we think that we came to God because of our great faith, we will boast in our faith. If we think that we did anything at all for our salvation, our proud hearts will be lifted up and rob God of His glory. All that we did was to cry out, “Lord, I deserve Your wrath because I am a sinner. Save me by Your grace.” We realize that we would not even have cried that, except that God in His mercy first called us. He gets all the glory.
Calvin repeatedly argues that the reason the Bible teaches God’s sovereign election is that it is the only doctrine of salvation that produces humility. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).
If your salvation depends upon anything in yourself (including your “free will”), it is a most shaky salvation! What if your will decides to reject Christ? One weak link anywhere in the process, and you are lost! But if it depends on God’s sovereign purpose, His effectual calling, and His safe keeping, you can be sure, as Paul puts it, “that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:6).
Whatever trials come your way, whether mild or severe, even unto death, come from the hand of the sovereign and loving God who is working to conform you to the image of His Son. Thus “we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).
If salvation depends on man’s will, we have no guarantee that anyone will be saved. But if it depends on God’s will and God’s working, we know that He will use the gospel to save many. The Lord encouraged Paul to go on speaking in Corinth because, He said, “I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:10). When Paul preached in Pisidian Antioch, many opposed his message. But others “began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). Paul summed up his ministry by saying, “I endure all things for the sake of the elect [lit.], so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
If you have never called upon the name of the Lord to save you from your sins, I invite you to take God at His Word today. His promise is for you: If you will call upon the name of the Lord, you will be saved.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Everyone wants to be happy. The Rolling Stones complained years ago that they couldn’t get any satisfaction, but clearly satisfaction was their goal. Sixteen centuries ago, Augustine observed, “I am not alone in this desire [for happiness], nor are there only a few who share it with me: without exception we all long for happiness… They may all search for it in different ways, but all try their hardest to reach the same goal, that is, joy” (Confessions, X, 21, cited by John Piper, The Legacy of Sovereign Joy [Crossway Books], p. 70).
Probably you could explain all human behavior as a search for joy or happiness or satisfaction, although most search in the wrong place. People get married and pursue a certain career because they hope to find happiness through these things. They divorce and change careers for the same reason. People commit sexual immorality because they think that it will bring them happiness. They steal because they think that having material possessions will satisfy. Murderers kill because they think that they will be happier if they get rid of an enemy or take what belongs to the other person. Even suicidal people hope that death will bring relief from their problems.
One of Satan’s most successful lies is that God is a cosmic killjoy who wants everyone to be miserable. People view God as a great sadist in the sky, who gets perverse delight in making His creatures miserable.
But even a casual reading of the Bible reveals that, to the contrary, God is a being who has great joy and that everyone who comes to know Him enters into the only true and lasting joy possible. The Psalms overflow with joy and gladness. Jesus told the disciples that He spoke to them so that His joy would be in them and their joy would be made full (John 15:11). The fruit that the Holy Spirit produces in the believer is first love, then joy (Gal. 5:22). God has promised eternal, lasting joy for us in heaven (Rev. 21:4). The Puritans had it right when they said, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” So, rather than discouraging us from seeking joy and gladness, the Bible rather exhorts us to seek it, but to seek it in the right place. God Himself is the source of all joy and gladness. If we seek joy in God, we will find eternal satisfaction.
In his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Peter cited Psalm 16:8-11, and applied it to Jesus Christ (“for David says of Him,” Acts 2:25). Peter is arguing that this psalm, in which the author says that God will not allow his body to undergo decay, did not ultimately apply to David, whose body did undergo decay. Rather, as a prophet, David was writing about his descendant, Jesus the Messiah, whom God raised from the dead. Thus while on one level the psalm applied to David, on another level it applies only to Christ.
What I want you to see is that the subject of the psalm, Jesus Christ, was full of joy and gladness. He says, “My heart was glad and my tongue exulted; moreover my flesh also will abide in hope” (2:25). “You will make me full of gladness with Your presence” (2:28). Peter left off the final line of the psalm, which reinforces the theme, “In Your right hand there are pleasures forever” (Ps. 16:11). Since Jesus was full of God’s joy and gladness, if we are growing to be like Christ, we will be growing in God’s joy and gladness. Our text teaches us that …
God wants us to be growing in His joy and gladness.
While true joy and gladness come from God, our text breaks it into three sources: Joy and gladness come from knowing God’s presence; from being conformed to God’s holiness; and, from the hope of God’s raising our bodies so that we can eternally dwell with Him.
“For David says of Him [Jesus], ‘I saw the Lord always in my presence; for He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken’” (2:25). Peter is citing the Greek translation of Psalm 16. The Hebrew reads, “I have set the Lord continually before me.” It implies a deliberate action. To have the Lord at one’s right hand signifies protection. Advocates would sit to the right of their clients to defend them in court (R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles [Augsburg], p. 86). Bodyguards would stand on the right side so they could cover the person they were protecting with their shields and still have their right arm free to fight (John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Acts 1-12 [Moody Press], p. 65). Jesus had God’s joy and gladness because He continually knew God’s presence. But before we go further, we need to define the terms “joy and gladness.” The best way to understand it is:
At first you may think it strange to lift up Jesus as the great example of joy and gladness since He was known as a man of sorrows who bore our grief (Isa. 53:4). It is ironic and instructive that the shortest verse in the English Bible is John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” But the shortest verse in the Greek New Testament is 1 Thessalonians 5:16, “Rejoice always.” The two verses are not contradictory. Biblical joy and gladness do not deny sorrow and grief. In the garden, Jesus told the disciples that His soul was deeply grieved to the point of death (Mark 14:34). Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross. The cross itself was not joyful, but there was great joy ahead. Thus, biblical joy and gladness are the deep undercurrent or foundation in God that sustain the believer in and through times of sorrow and grief.
On my 36th birthday, I had to conduct the funeral of a 39-year-old man who had died of cancer. After the service, I was consoling the widow, who was weeping, when her former pastor bounced up with a big smile and said, “Praise the Lord! Scott’s in glory now!” I wanted to pop him in the mouth! What he said was true, but he was denying the biblical command to weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15). Biblical joy and gladness are not a superficial happy face that we paint over deep sorrow. Rather, they are the foundation that comes from knowing that our sovereign God works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28).
I am saying that if we want a picture of biblical joy and gladness, we should look at the life of Jesus Christ. Though He went through times of great difficulty and sorrow, especially as He bore our sins on the cross, He also had times of great joy and gladness. The word gladness is used in Luke 15:32, where the father of the prodigal son explains to his complaining older son, “We had to be merry and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.” Throughout that chapter, Jesus emphasized the great joy in heaven when a single sinner repents (Luke 15:5-7, 9-10, 23-24, 32). On another occasion, Jesus rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit over God’s sovereign grace in the lives of the apostles (Luke 10:21-22). The word used there is the same word in our text translated “exulted.”
Jesus told the disciples that He wanted His joy to be made full in them (John 15:11; 17:13). Although He acknowledged that they would be sorrowful when He was crucified, He also promised that when they saw Him alive again, they would rejoice, and no one could take that joy away from them (John 16:20, 22). Thus biblical joy does not deny times of sorrow and grief. But it does overcome such times because it rests on the sovereign God and His certain promises to every believer. I like the way John Newton, in his hymn, “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken,” called our legacy, “solid joys and lasting treasure.”
What was the source of Jesus’ abiding joy?
David says of Jesus, “I saw the Lord always in my presence; for He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken” (2:25). Jesus lived each moment aware of the Father’s presence. He never had a second when He lived unto Himself. The only time He did not know the Father’s presence was that awful moment on the cross when He cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus always lived in God’s presence.
That is the key to joy and gladness, daily to cultivate a sense of God’s presence. Then, even if we go through trials, we will not lose our joy, because God is with us. Jonathan Edwards expressed it well in a sermon, “God the Best Portion of the Christian” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards [Banner of Truth], 2:106):
Hence we may learn, that whatever changes a godly man passes through, he is happy; because God, who is unchangeable, is his chosen portion. Though he meet with temporal losses, and be deprived of many, yea, of all his temporal enjoyments; yet God, whom he prefers before all, still remains, and cannot be lost. While he stays in this changeable, troublesome world, he is happy; because his chosen portion, on which he builds as his main foundation for happiness, is above the world, and above all changes. And when he goes into another world, still he is happy, because that portion yet remains.… But how great is the happiness of those who have chosen the Fountain of all good, who prefer him before all things in heaven or on earth, and who can never be deprived of him to all eternity!
We all face the danger of enjoying God’s gifts, but not loving Him as the One who gave these gifts to us. Augustine used the illustration of a man who made a ring for his bride-to-be, but she loved the ring more than her betrothed who made it for her. Certainly she should love the gift. But what would we think if she said, “The ring is enough. I do not want to see his face again”? Augustine concludes, “God, then has given you all these things. Love Him who made them” (cited by Piper, Sovereign Joy, p. 71).
As we go through our day, we should see God’s hand in every situation. Every trial He brings lovingly to shape us into the image of Jesus Christ. Every blessing He graciously gives to show us His great love. Every delight to our senses, whether the taste of food or the beauty of creation or the sounds of birds chirping, should cause us to rejoice in the presence of our God.
While I often fall far short of experiencing God’s constant presence in my life, I can offer three things that will help you move in the right direction:
First, spend time often with God in His Word and in prayer. Even if it’s a short time, get up early enough to meet with God before you head out the door. The godly George Muller used to say that “the chief business of every day is first of all to seek to be truly at rest and happy in God” (A. T. Pierson, George Muller of Bristol [Revell], p. 257; see also pp. 314-315). Memorize His Word and meditate on it throughout your day.
Second, relate everything, even little events, in your day to God’s providence. Everything is from His loving hand. Nothing happens by chance. As the hymn writer put it, “Every joy or trial falleth from above, traced upon our dial by the Sun of Love” (Francis Havergal, “Like a River Glorious”).
Third, take time often to enjoy God in His creation. I don’t know what people do who live in a place like New York City, where there are few opportunities to get out in God’s creation! I often sense God’s presence and am caught up in worship as I enjoy what God has made. A year or two ago, Marla and I were hiking in Weatherford Canyon on a fall day. The trail leads you into a dense aspen grove, where the trees are so thick, you feel as if you’re walking into a building. There was a yellow canopy overhead and a yellow floor beneath. It was snowing lightly, with big flakes floating down through the trees. If you can’t sense God’s presence and glory at a time like that, you may not know God!
Thus Jesus shows us that the first way to know joy and gladness is continually to know God’s presence.
Jesus is here called God’s “Holy One.” He was without sin, as even His enemies had to admit (John 8:46). Hebrews 1:9 says of Jesus, “You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your companions.” Note how righteousness and gladness go together.
Again, Satan perpetrates a great lie. He makes us think that real happiness is found in sin, whereas holiness is a dull, wearisome matter. But God’s Word teaches that holiness and happiness are inextricably bound together. Sin may give momentary pleasures, but it always wreaks destruction and death.
Clearly, a person living in sin could not be happy in God’s holy presence. Men love darkness and want to hide from the God who is light, because their deeds are evil (John 3:19-21). When Jonah disobeyed God, he tried to run from God’s presence (Jonah 1:3, 10). So the only way to know the joy and gladness that come from God’s presence is to know that your sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ and to be walking in obedience to Him, beginning on the thought level.
In our text, the Lord Jesus prays, “You have made known to me the ways of life” (Acts 2:28). This refers to God’s paths of righteousness that lead to true life—eternal life—that begins now. The one who lives for sinful desires is on the way that leads to destruction and death. The one who puts to death the sinful deeds of the flesh knows God’s ways of life (Rom. 8:13).
In his excellent book, The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, John Piper observes (p. 146),
The battle to be holy—the battle for sanctification—is a battle fought at the level of what we love, what we cherish and treasure and delight in.
To be sure there is real self-denial and real discipline and gouging out of the eye and cutting off of the hand—a spiritual severity of warfare that many have not attained. But it must be said—and let the apostle say it with all authority—that the secret beneath this severe discipline, the secret to severing all else as rubbish, is to savor Christ as gain (Philippians 3:8).
The battle for holiness is a battle to be fought mainly by fueling the fires of our passion for Christ. Sanctification is the triumph of “sovereign joy.”
When David sinned with Bathsheba, he was miserable until he confessed his sins and prayed, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation” (Ps. 51:12). If you lack God’s joy, examine your heart and make sure that you are not entertaining any known sin. Confess and forsake it and with David entreat God to restore to you the joy of His salvation. True joy and gladness come only as we continually know God’s presence and walk in His paths of holiness.
The joy of Jesus in this psalm is the joy of knowing that God would raise Him from the dead before His body would undergo decay. We can rejoice because we have the certain hope that because Jesus was raised, even so we will be raised when He returns (1 Cor. 15). The instant we die, our soul goes to be with Jesus in heaven (2 Cor. 5:8). But our bodies await that great moment when “the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16-17).
All of the blessings that God gives us in this life are just samples to whet our appetites for the eternal blessings that we will enjoy in His presence in heaven. Do you like to eat? Heaven is pictured as a great banquet. Do you like to rest from hard work? Heaven, as Richard Baxter put it, is the place of “the saints’ everlasting rest.” Do you enjoy your relationship with your mate? I used to be bothered by Jesus’ words, that there will be no marriage in heaven. I’ve said to Marla, “How can it be heaven if I can’t be married to you?” But then it dawned on me, that my earthly marriage is just a dim picture of the eternal joy that I will have when I am united with my heavenly Bridegroom forever.
Jesus says that His flesh will abide in hope (2:26). The literal meaning of “abide” is “to put down a tent.” The idea is that as long as we’re in this body, we will hope in God and the promise of the resurrection. But like a tent, our hope is temporary, until the resurrection, when we no longer need to hope because the promise is realized (Rom. 8:24-25).
Don’t miss the application: As the Lord’s people, we should be filled with the certain hope of His coming and the resurrection of our bodies, when we shall dwell with Him eternally. Such hope will fill us with joy and gladness. Only when you’re ready to die are you ready to live. You can have true joy in this life only when you know that you will have eternal joy in the next life, after death.
And the psalmist isn’t just talking about a trickle of joy and gladness in this life. He says, “You will make me full of gladness in Your presence” (2:28). Don’t rest until the Lord fills you with His joy and gladness. Of course, we won’t be totally full of His joy until we’re with Him in heaven. But we should seek Him continually, not settling for a trickle of joy, but asking Him for the fulness of His joy that comes with our salvation.
In a sermon, “The Christian Pilgrim” (Works, 2:244), Jonathan Edwards has a paragraph that I often have thought about, because it jars me as I see how far short I fall of Edwards’ knowledge of God:
God is the highest good of the reasonable creature; and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean. Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey towards heaven, as it becomes us to make the seeking of our highest end and proper good, the whole work of our lives; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for, or set our hearts on, any thing else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness?
God desires that you be full of joy and gladness. You will find it only in Him. Aim for it, seek after it, and don’t rest until you enjoy a good measure of it! As you grow in God’s joy and gladness, He will be glorified through your life. As John Piper puts it, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Of all the uncountable lists of human needs, none is greater than the need for God’s forgiveness. Many people erroneously think that their main need is to get more money. But the richest man in the world is truly poor if he does not know God’s forgiveness, and the poorest is rich if he is forgiven.
Others think that their need is pleasure. But as Jesus said in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, those with the most pleasurable life on earth with be miserable for all eternity if they die without God’s forgiveness, but the most miserable beggar here who is forgiven will have eternal pleasure at God’s right hand.
In spite of the fact that God’s forgiveness is our greatest need, I find it rare to have someone ask me, with desperation in his voice, “How can I receive God’s forgiveness?” It is not the burning question in most people’s minds. Only the Holy Spirit can impress on a person his great need to be reconciled to God. But to be effective witnesses, we need to be clear on how to answer a person who needs to know how to receive God’s forgiveness. Some of you may need to answer that question first for yourself.
Peter’s audience on the Day of Pentecost asked him that question at the end of his famous sermon. He had demonstrated to them that Jesus Christ, whom they had crucified, was none other than the Lord and Messiah (2:36). “Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?” (2:37). Peter’s answer in verse 38 tells them how to receive God’s forgiveness. His words came to them as the greatest news that they had ever heard. Three thousand of them responded and were saved that day.
However, Peter’s answer also presents Bible interpreters with some difficult theological matters that must be explained. Many in our day want to avoid theology. Some say that emphasizing doctrine leads to fighting and division in the church. They think that theology doesn’t have much practical bearing on life as we live it each week. They think that it is boring and that studying theology will lead a person into dead orthodoxy. They just want “a simple faith in Jesus,” and so they avoid grappling with anything that smacks of theology.
But the fact is, everyone does theology. The question is, How well are you doing it? You cannot study the Bible properly without seeking to understand it as a whole. Scripture does not contradict itself. Thus every text must be interpreted in the light of all other relevant Scriptures. The minute you compare Scripture with Scripture to fit it all together harmoniously, you are doing theology.
Acts 2:38 demands that we think theologically. If we took the verse all by itself, ignoring other Scriptures, we would have to conclude that the answer to the question, “How does a person receive God’s forgiveness?” is, “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” That’s what the verse says. Some denominations teach that a person must be baptized to be saved. But we have to understand this verse in the light of all other verses.
There are many other verses in Acts (not to mention other Scriptures) that say nothing of baptism as a requirement for forgiveness. In the next chapter, Peter exhorts his hearers, “Repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19). He does not mention baptism. In Acts 5:31, Peter tells the Council that Jesus is the Savior whom God gave “to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” Again, no mention of baptism. In Acts 10:43, Peter tells the Gentiles at Cornelius’ house: “Of Him [Christ] all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.” Believing in Christ, not baptism is the requirement for forgiveness. In Acts 16, when the Philippian jailer asks Paul what he must do to be saved, Paul answers, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (16:31). Baptism follows belief, but it is not mentioned as a requirement for salvation. In Acts 26:18 & 20, Paul mentions repentance and forgiveness of sins, but not baptism.
So how do we explain Acts 2:38? I think that we must understand the close connection in the minds of the apostles between saving faith and baptism. The idea of an unbaptized Christian is foreign to the apostles because they assumed that every true believer would be an obedient believer. In the Great Commission, Jesus stipulated that baptism is a vital part of making disciples of all the nations (Matt. 28:19). It is basic to observing all that He commanded (Matt. 28:20). So in Acts 2:38, Peter adds baptism as the naturally understood consequence of repentance. But it is not the baptism, but repentance, which brings forgiveness. As I will explain in a moment, repentance and faith in Christ are inseparable. Baptism is the outward sign of inward repentance and faith.
We see the connection between faith and baptism in Acts 8:35-38, the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. No sooner had the man believed than he saw water and asked if he could be baptized. The same connection exists in Acts 10:43 & 47. Peter states that the one who believes receives forgiveness of sins. Those who heard him believed, as evidenced by the fact that the Holy Spirit fell upon them at that point. Since they had all believed, Peter immediately brings up the subject of baptism (10:47). We see the same thing in Acts 16, where Paul tells the Philippian jailer that he must believe in the Lord Jesus to be saved, and that this also applies to his household (i.e., if they believe, they will be saved). As soon as they all believed, Paul baptized them (16:33-34).
Also, in Acts 2:38 the gift of the Holy Spirit is connected with repentance and baptism. If you took that verse alone and interpreted it sequentially, you would surmise that a person receives the gift of the Holy Spirit after he has repented and been baptized. But when you go to Acts 10, it is very clear that the order was: they believed and received God’s forgiveness, the Holy Spirit came on them, and then they were baptized (10:43-48). Clearly, the Holy Spirit does not fall on people who are still in their sins. Thus water baptism could not be a necessary condition for forgiveness of sins, as some erroneously conclude from Acts 2:38. Galatians 3:2-5 also makes it clear that we receive the Spirit when we believe, apart from any good works. Thus in Acts 2:38, Peter is not being technical about the sequence of salvation, but rather is viewing repentance and baptism as a package, with baptism being the fruit of repentance. You receive forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit at the point of repentance. Baptism should follow soon after repentance and faith in obedience to Christ as Lord.
It was necessary to do all of that theological thinking to bring you to the main idea, which is:
To receive God’s forgiveness we must repent of our sins and obediently believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, baptism is an initial evidence of obedient, saving faith. Repentance and faith are often linked as the necessary requirements for salvation. Jesus’ preaching is summed up as, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The apostle Paul summed up his message as “solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). Let’s explore these two crucial concepts:
Note four things:
It seems odd that this point needs to be made, since it is so obvious from Scripture. Yet there is a whole movement (“non-lordship” salvation) among evangelicals that teaches that repentance has nothing to do with salvation. They even accuse those who hold that sinners must repent of adding something to faith alone. They view repentance as necessary for the believer to have fellowship with God, but not as essential to salvation (see Zane Hodges, Absolutely Free [Zondervan], p. 146). They claim to be in line with the Reformation doctrine of sola fide (faith alone; see Hodges, p. 163), although the Reformers would be aghast at their teaching (see John Calvin, Institutes, 3:14:1, 7; and 3:2:8-13).
If repentance is not necessary for salvation, Peter really blew his opportunity to make the gospel clear to these works-oriented Jews! He could have said, “You don’t have to do anything! Just believe in Jesus and you will be saved.” But instead, he said, “Repent and be baptized.” Not only did Peter blow it; Jesus also blew it. He preached, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). He told unbelieving audiences that if they did not repent, they would perish (Luke 13:3, 5). He commissioned His disciples to proclaim repentance for forgiveness of sins in His name to all the nations (Luke 24:47). Clearly, repentance isn’t optional or extraneous to salvation. It is at the very core of what it means to be saved. We need to be clear, then, on what it means.
John Calvin defines repentance as “the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of him; and it consists in the mortification of our flesh and of the old man, and in the vivification of the Spirit (Institutes, 3:3:5). This is something that God grants at the moment of salvation, but the believer must also practice it throughout his entire Christian life (3:3:6-9).
Louis Berkhof (Systematic Theology [Eerdmans], p. 486) says that conversion comprises both repentance and faith. Repentance is directly connected with sanctification, while faith is closely, though not exclusively, related to justification. He defines repentance as “that change wrought in the conscious life of the sinner, by which he turns away from sin.”
He points out that repentance has three elements: (1) An intellectual element, which is a change of view regarding personal guilt, defilement, and helplessness. (2) An emotional element, a change of feeling in which one feels “sorrow for sin committed against a holy and just God.” And, (3) A volitional element, “consisting in a change of purpose, an inward turning away from sin, and a disposition to seek pardon and cleansing.”
Charles Spurgeon said, “I do not believe in the faith that is unaccompanied by repentance…. Repentance and faith are twins; they are born together and they will live together, and as long as a Christian is in this world, both will be needed” (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Ages Software], vol. 54, “Heart-piercing,” Acts 2:37).
I have often said that repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin. Repentance looks at the aspect of turning from my sins. Faith is the hand that receives God’s free gift of eternal life. The thought that a person could knowingly hang onto his sins with one hand while he receives the gift of salvation from a holy God with the other is inconceivable!
Dr. Charles Ryrie defines repentance as changing one’s mind about Jesus Christ, not turning from one’s sin. In other words, he accepts the intellectual aspect of repentance, but he rejects the emotional and volitional aspects as necessary for salvation. He argues that to make turning from sin a condition for the gospel is to add works to faith (So Great Salvation [Victor Books], pp. 98-99).
But I think that his definition does not square with Scripture, where repentance “indicates a change of direction in a person’s life rather than simply a mental change of attitude or a feeling of remorse; it signifies a turning away from a sinful and godless way of life” (I. Howard Marshall, Acts [IVP/Eerdmans], p. 80). Also, Ryrie fails to see that both repentance and faith are God’s gifts (Acts 5:31; 11:18; Phil. 1:29; Eph. 2:8-9), which He imparts to the sinner at the moment of salvation. No sinner has the capacity in himself to repent and believe. The Bible says that we were dead in our transgressions and sin (Eph. 2:1-3). We were incapable of seeking God (Rom. 3:10-18), and unable to submit to God or to please God (Rom. 8:7-8). We were blinded by Satan so that we could not understand the things of God (1 Cor. 2:14) or the gospel (2 Cor. 4:4). Thus repentance and saving faith are not human works; they are God’s gracious gift. Repentance focuses on turning to God from sin (seen in 1 Thess. 1:9).
Since repentance is God-ward, a sinner needs some idea of who God is, especially as manifested to us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter has just spelled out who Jesus is in his sermon, showing how He fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies about Messiah. He conclusion is, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified” (2:36). In his sermon in chapter 3, Peter makes it known that Jesus is “the Holy and Righteous One” (3:14), “the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead” (3:15). His conclusion in both cases was, “Repent” (2:38; 3:19). When God opened their eyes to see that they had crucified none other than “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8), it should drive them to repentance. To be saved, a person must realize that Jesus is nothing less than the Lord God who demands to be obeyed.
Only the Holy Spirit can penetrate the hardness of the fallen human heart and bring true conviction of sin (John 16:8-11). It was the Spirit who pierced Peter’s hearers to the heart, so that in despair they cried out, “What shall we do?” Apart from God, sinners can take a moral inventory of their lives and decide to make some changes. But only God can pierce the heart and institute change from the inside out by imparting new life and a new heart.
Until there is conviction of sin, a person feels no need for a Savior. What is there to be saved from? Before the Holy Spirit brings conviction, the sinner thinks, “I’m a pretty decent person. I live a good moral life.” He compares himself with murderers, rapists, child molesters, and the like, and thinks that things must be okay between him and God. But when the Holy Spirit begins to convict the person about sin, righteousness, and judgment, he begins to see that God will judge not only outward actions, but also every evil thought and every careless word (Matt. 5:27-30; 12:36; 15:18-20). And He judges everyone, not based on a curve of human goodness, but by the perfection of His own holiness (Matt. 5:48). Through God’s Word, the sinner learns that his sin put the sinless Son of God on the cross.
When God reveals such things through His Spirit and His Word, sinners see their desperate situation and cry out, “What must I do? How can I receive God’s forgiveness?” The first answer is, “Repent. Turn from your sin to God.” The flip side is,
The entire lordship salvation debate really boils down to the question, “What is saving faith?” Those who hold to non-lordship salvation say that faith is a one-time decision for Christ or assent to the truth of the gospel. It hopefully will result in a life of obedience, but it does not necessarily do so. But Scripture teaches that:
Salvation is a free gift, received by faith alone. But the faith that receives salvation implies a total commitment of the sinner to the person of Jesus Christ. He relies completely on Christ alone to save him. Good works are the evidence of saving faith, as James 2:14-26 argues. We are saved by grace through faith apart from works, but the faith that saves always changes the heart (2 Cor. 5:17) and imparts the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38; Rom. 8:9), causing the believer to pursue good works (Eph. 2:8-10). “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3).
While it is the believer’s responsibility to walk in the Spirit, and while all believers struggle against sin and sometimes fall into it, the general direction of a believer’s life will be to please the Lord (Eph. 5:6-10). If a person claims to be saved, but lives in persistent disobedience to God, he needs to examine himself as to whether he is in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5). “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36, emphasis added; see also Acts 6:7; Rom. 1:5; 2:8; 16:26; 2 Thess. 1:8; 2:12; 1 Pet. 1:2).
Peter’s audience had heard the preaching of John the Baptist and knew that baptism is a public confession of repentance. It was not easy for this crowd of religious Jews to submit to baptism, because they thought that it was only for Gentiles and notorious sinners. By exhorting his audience to be baptized in the name of Jesus, Peter was calling them to identify with the one who had just been publicly scorned and crucified by the religious leaders. He was not contradicting Jesus’ directive about being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). Rather, he was calling them to make a radical break from their religious leaders and to identify themselves publicly as followers of Jesus Christ.
Baptism is an outward act that pictures what God has done inwardly. To think that performing an outward act of going under the water could accomplish the inward cleansing from sin that was needed would have gone against everything that Jesus and John had preached. Even though the person who was baptized might be shunned or even persecuted by family and friends, he must obey Jesus Christ as Lord by being baptized. A person may be untaught regarding baptism (Acts 19:3-5); but once he is properly instructed, he will want to be baptized as a public confession of his faith in Jesus Christ, no matter what the cost.
Peter exhorts his audience, “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38, emphasis added). It was not a group plan. It never is. If you have not personally repented of your sin before God and trusted in Jesus as Savior and Lord, obediently following His command to be baptized, that is your greatest need right now.
By the way, there is simply no command or example in Scripture of baptizing infants. The order in Acts is always, first repentance and faith, then baptism. (See my sermon, “Why We Do Not Baptize Infants” [available on church web site, 9/8/96] for further treatment of this subject.) Each person must believe in Christ as Savior and obey Him by being baptized.
In his excellent book, Faith Works (Word, p. 204), John MacArthur states, “Salvation is absolutely free. So is joining the army. You don’t have to buy your way in. Everything you need is provided. But there is a sense in which following Christ—like joining the army—will cost you dearly. It can cost freedom, family, friends, autonomy, and possibly even your life. The job of the evangelist—like that of the army recruiter—is to tell potential inductees the full story.”
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord’s will, but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumptions, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved” (The Soul Winner [Eerdmans], p. 38).
Have you repented of your sins and trusted in Christ alone for salvation? If you have, you will still be repenting of your sins and trusting in Christ, following Him as Lord. Have you confessed your repentance and faith through baptism? If so, then you can know that God has met your greatest need by forgiving all your sins.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Probably a majority of Christians have had a bad experience in a local church. I grew up in a fundamentalist church where the pastor used power and anger to run the church. When I was a teenager, my dad, who was on the church board, confronted the pastor because he was using the church office for counseling and was charging a fee, but funneling the money through a dummy account, which is against IRS regulations. When the church would not deal with the situation, we left the church. Shortly after, the pastor left his wife and five children and ran off with a young counselee.
I started going to another church, where I got involved with the college group. The college pastor recruited me for a planning group that would come up with clever programs to entice students to attend. If we had 50 come out, he would rave about what a great program it was. If only 25 showed up, we would rack our brains for a better program. I used to call it “Creative Programs for Carnal Christians.”
Meanwhile, at a Sunday morning church service they announced that there would be a meeting that night to discuss the future direction of the church. I stumbled naively into that meeting and discovered that the pastor had been wrongfully involved with a number of women in the church. The denomination quietly moved him to another pastorate.
About this time, I got involved with Campus Crusade at Long Beach State College. We would have 125 students come out on Friday evenings to study the Bible and be equipped to share our faith. There were no clever programs to entice them to attend. They came because the Lord was there and He was working in their lives. It wasn’t long until I thought, “Who needs the games that they’re playing at this church?” I dropped out of church for several years.
But even though I had these bad experiences, I knew that the church didn’t have to be that way. I would read passages like our text and think, “The church can be a godly, exciting place where the Lord’s presence is sensed, where He is at work.” I knew that Christ had promised that He would build His church, even against the opposition of hell (Matt. 16:18). I thought, “If Christ is building His church, then I want to be a part of making the local church what He wants it to be.” In a nutshell, that’s why I’m a pastor.
Our text gives us a snapshot of a healthy local church, the first church after the Day of Pentecost. It was not a perfect church, since it was made up of people. We will later see some of the problems they encountered. But God was at work in their midst. As we have seen, Acts is the record of what Jesus continued to do and teach through His people after His ascension. On the Day of Pentecost, He called to Himself (2:39) 3,000 souls, so that the church began with 3,120 members! Now we read, “the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved” (2:47). Jesus Himself was at work in this church! This snapshot shows us the marks of a healthy church so that we can measure ourselves by it and seek to follow its example.
A healthy church is marked by continual devotion to the Lord, to His people, and to His work in the world.
If these three marks look suspiciously like our church’s purpose statement, I’m sure that it is just coincidental! Our purpose statement was developed from the Great Commandment and from the Great Commission. It reads, in part:
Flagstaff Christian Fellowship exists to show how great God is by helping each person and family grow in fervent love for God, love for one another and love for those without Christ, both locally and globally.
We see these three priorities in the early Jerusalem church:
The risen Lord Jesus was central to all that was happening in this new church. The word translated “continually devoting” points to constancy, purpose, or resolve. Out of ten uses of the verb and one use of the noun in the New Testament, six are connected with prayer and two with the ministry of the Word. We see their continual devotion to the Lord in four ways:
“They were continually devoted to the apostles’ teaching” (2:42). While 3,000 new converts all at once would be any pastor’s dream, it also would be any pastor’s nightmare. These people were from many different locations and backgrounds. While most of them had some biblical background, they were ignorant about the person and ministry of the Lord Jesus. So the apostles had a massive job on their hands, to ground these people in their new faith before they returned home. They must have done with these people what Jesus recently had done with them: Beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, they explained to them the things concerning Jesus in all the Scriptures (see Luke 24:27).
We live in a day where the evangelical church often minimizes and even disdains sound doctrine. Instead, it emphasizes emotional experience and feelings. Several years after I was in the ministry, I audited a church growth class offered by a nearby seminary. The professor had traveled around America in a motor home, visiting many large, growing churches. He came up with a list of 15 characteristics of growing churches. Conspicuously absent from the list was solid biblical preaching! When I questioned him about this, he shrugged and said that it didn’t seem to be a prominent factor in these growing churches!
But when you turn to the last three letters that Paul wrote to his younger pastors, Timothy and Titus, you find him emphasizing again and again the need for sound doctrine (1 Tim. 4:13, 16; Titus. 1:9). In his final appeal to Timothy, just before his martyrdom, Paul gives the strongest possible admonition: “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:1-2a). He goes on to warn Timothy that the time will come when people will not endure sound doctrine, but will accumulate teachers who tell them what they want to hear.
A healthy church must be devoted to sound doctrine, because God has chosen to reveal Himself in the written Word. If we are not continually growing to understand and apply the doctrines of God’s Word, we are not growing in devotion to the Lord.
The preaching of God’s Word should result in worship, in that it should bring us to an encounter with God Himself, which is the heart of true worship. But in addition to the apostles’ teaching, there are several other aspects of worship that we see here:
“They were continually devoting themselves to … the breaking of bread” (2:42), which refers to the Lord’s Supper. I wonder if the Lord’s Supper would be one of the four things that distinguish evangelical churches in our day. I’ve heard people say, “If you celebrate communion too often, it becomes routine.” Bible reading and prayer can also become routine, if you do them every day. But I hope that we don’t read our Bibles and pray less often so that they don’t become routine! The solution is not to decrease the frequency, but rather to ask God to shake us out of our spiritual dullness.
The Lord’s Supper should remind us of the greatest truth in the world, that the Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me, so that I could be forgiven and reconciled to God! It should make us examine our lives, so that we confess and turn from any sin. I wish that we could have the time in our services to have the Lord’s Supper each week, because it is an important part of worship.
Literally, the text reads, “they were continually devoting themselves to … the prayers.” It refers to set times of corporate prayer. Whenever and wherever the church meets, whether in a large meeting (“in the temple”) or from house to house, prayer ought to be woven into the fabric of church life. Our singing can and should be directed to God in prayer. At our elders’ meetings, we often stop to commit a difficult matter to the Lord or seek His mind in prayer. In your personal and family life, prayer ought to be a normal, frequent response when a personal problem arises or when you talk about someone who is facing a problem. Prayer acknowledges our total dependence on the living Lord.
“They were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart” (2:46). Their lives were marked by joy because of what the Lord Jesus had done for them on the cross. “Praising God” (2:47) is a present participle, pointing to the ongoing, common expression of praise to God. It no doubt marked their corporate times of worship, but it also oozed out of the cracks of their daily lives, drawing others to the source of their joy.
The only way to develop that kind of constant joy and praise is deliberately to focus your mind on God: “If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1). In the Psalms, often the psalmist is in dire straits, but he resolves to focus on the Lord: “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises!” (Ps. 57:7). David wrote and sang that song in a cave, hiding from the mad King Saul. Even in the caves of life, God’s people must resolve to be people of praise and joy.
Thus the first mark of a healthy church is continual devotion to the Lord. It must be continual in the sense of a deliberate resolve to be in His Word and to be worshiping Him.
“They were continually devoting themselves to … the fellowship” (2:42, literally). We cannot be devoted to the Head, who is Christ, and at the same time cut ourselves off from the body, His church. That would be like a young man saying to his date, “I like your face, but your body is gross!” That would be his last date with her! Even though the body of Christ is not nearly as lovely as Christ Himself, the Bible commands us not to forsake assembling together with other believers (Heb. 10:25). There are many verses in the Bible that exhort us to bear with one another and forgive each other, since we often offend and get offended (Col. 3:13).
What does it mean to be devoted to the fellowship? The Greek word (koinonea) means “to share in common.” We read in verse 44 that “all those who believed were together and had all things in common.” The Greek phrase translated “together” is repeated when it states that “the Lord was adding to their number (lit., “together) those who were being saved” (2:47). Verse 46 underscores this sense of togetherness when it says that they were of one mind and took their meals together. So being devoted to the fellowship is a commitment to be built together with those who have joined God’s family by being saved. Note these four aspects:
Those added to the fellowship were those whom the Lord was saving (2:47). While some who were not saved may have attended both their large gatherings and their home meetings, they were not truly a part of the fellowship until the Lord saved them. To be saved means to be delivered from God’s wrath and judgment that we deserve because of our sins. We get saved by putting our trust in Jesus Christ as the one who bore the judgment for our sins on the cross. As soon as a person gets saved, he shares Christ in common with all others who are saved. Salvation by grace through faith in Christ is the basis of all true fellowship.
You can’t have fellowship if you don’t gather with the church. Some people object to large churches as being too impersonal. But please observe that when the Lord started the church, He started it big! It began with 3,120, and soon it numbered over 5,000 (4:4) and it kept growing from there (5:14; 6:1, 7). While we should gather with the whole church for worship and teaching, we only enjoy deep fellowship with those we get to know personally. If you only attend the Sunday morning service, but never spend time getting to know the other saints on a deeper level (house to house or restaurant to restaurant!), you will not enjoy the fellowship that God intends for you.
There are two levels of Christian unity. There is the unity of the Spirit, which is a fact among all who have been baptized by the Spirit into the one body of Christ (Eph. 4:3; 1 Cor. 12:13). Paul commands us to preserve it since it already exists. Then there is the unity of the faith, which we are to attain to as we come into a deeper knowledge of Christ and grow to spiritual maturity (Eph. 4:13). Believers who know Christ and His Word well can have deeper fellowship than those who do not know Him well.
Too often, Christians get together and spend the whole time talking about news, weather, and sports. It’s not wrong to talk about these things. But at some point, the conversation needs to move to a deeper level. If the Lord and His salvation are at the center of my life and of your life, when we get together we will talk about Him. If we don’t, it may reveal that He doesn’t have the proper place in our lives.
There is something to be said for food and fellowship going together! These early Christians were taking their meals together (2:46). The fact that their meals are referred to as “breaking bread” might suggest that these were not elaborate feasts, but just common meals. If you wait to have people over until your house is just right and your table settings are perfect, you won’t ever do it. Just have other believers over and share a simple meal. Direct the conversation to the things of God and His Word. You will be built together with your brothers and sisters in the Lord.
Verse 44 is not prescribing communal living for God’s people in every situation. The Bible recognizes the right to personal property and the need for families to be distinct. Years ago, Marla and I enjoyed reading Edith Schaeffer’s book, What is a Family? [Revell]. The Schaeffers lived at L’Abri, a ministry center in the Swiss Alps where dozens of students would come to study. She has a chapter that describes the Christian home as a door with hinges and a lock. The hinges open the door to others, but the lock means that there are times when a family needs to shut out others and be together as a family.
The situation in Jerusalem was somewhat unique. Thousands of pilgrims had traveled there for the Feast of Pentecost. Many had been saved after Peter’s message, and they wanted to stay longer to get grounded in their new faith. They needed hospitality and financial help to do this. To meet these needs, the church opened their homes and their pocketbooks to help the needy. Some even sold land and donated the proceeds, although this was not required (4:37; 5:1, 4).
Before we say, “Whew, this doesn’t apply to me,” we need to remember that we’re all exhorted to be generous and ready to share with those in need (1 Tim. 6:18). We are told not to share with a lazy or irresponsible person who refuses to work (2 Thess. 3:6-12). But if a brother or sister is in need of the basics of life (that means food, shelter, and clothing, not cable TV or a six-pack of beer!), then we should be quick to share the blessings that God has bestowed on us (2 Cor. 8 & 9). If we have this world’s goods and see our brother in need and close up our hearts against him, we should question whether God’s love abides in us (1 John 3:17)!
Thus a healthy church is marked by continual devotion to the Lord and to His people. Finally,
Our text does not say that the church was devoting itself to evangelism. But the fact is, it was happening, and it did not happen apart from these new believers sharing their faith with those who did not know Christ. New believers are often the best evangelists, because they have the largest pool of unbelieving friends, and those friends can see the change in their way of life. New believers should learn a basic gospel presentation and the Bible verses that communicate the gospel.
Some of the evangelism took place through the miracles that the apostles were performing (2:43), and the preaching that accompanied these miracles (3:1-26). The ability to perform these miracles was limited to the apostles and their close associates (such as Philip). The miracles confirmed these men as God’s messengers and identified them with Jesus, who also had done great miracles. I do not believe that the gift of miracles exists today (Heb. 2:3-4), although at times God does perform miracles in response to our prayers, and He can use such miracles to bring people to saving faith. But our main focus should be on proclaiming the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.
Evangelism is primarily God’s work, but He does it through us. It is the Lord who adds to the church those who are being saved, but we are responsible to share the gospel. Note that the Lord added the new converts together with the church (literal rendering of “to their number,” 2:47). He does not save people without adding them to the church where they can grow, and people are not truly added to the church unless they are saved.
There is a sense in which a healthy church will be a reproducing church. Granted, there are special times of God’s sovereign working, where many hundreds, if not thousands, are saved in a short period of time. We cannot expect that as the norm; but we all should be entreating the Lord to add to His church often those whom He is saving. If we are not seeing conversions, we should examine ourselves to ask why. A healthy church is devoted to the Lord, to His people, and to His work in the world.
Many years ago, John Stott met a group of Christian students in Argentina who had visited all of the Protestant churches in their city, but could not find any that satisfied them. They had dropped out of the church. He asked them what they were looking for that they could not find. He was startled when, without realizing what they were doing, they went down the list of Acts 2:42 in order.
They said that they wanted a church where the pastor faithfully expounded the Bible and related it to where they lived. They were looking for warm, loving, caring, supportive fellowship. They sought a sense of the living God and His greatness in worship. And, they were looking for compassionate outreach (in Christianity Today [6/12/81], p. 21).
No church is perfect and none will come close this side of heaven. But as we continually devote ourselves to the Lord through His Word and through worship, as we devote ourselves to the fellowship of His people, and as we devote ourselves to His work in the world, He will use us to glorify Himself. I challenge you to be fervent in your devotion to the Lord and to His church, so that He uses us to reach many in this city and around the globe for His glory.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
John Stott tells of an English Salvation Army drummer who was beating his drum so hard that the band leader had to tell him to pipe down a bit and not make so much noise. In his cockney accent the drummer replied, “God bless you, sir, since oi’ve been converted, oi’m so ’appy, oi could bust the bloomin’ drum!” (Christianity Today [6/12/81], p/ 19.)
Our text records the first miracle in Acts that God enabled the apostles to perform after the Day of Pentecost. Peter and John, going up to the temple for the 3 p.m. prayer service, encountered a man in his forties (4:22) who had been crippled from birth. He asked for a handout, but Peter spoke a word of healing to him in Jesus’ name, reached out his hand and pulled him to his feet. Instantly, God’s miraculous power strengthened the man’s feet and ankles, so that he could walk. He followed Peter and John into the temple, but by now he wasn’t just walking, he was jumping for joy! It may well be that some stern religious leader told him to calm down: “Don’t you know that you’re in God’s holy temple?” But the man would have replied, “I’m so happy that I could jump and dance all night!”
I believe that the man was not only healed physically, but he also was healed spiritually, because he was now praising God. If he was not yet clear on the gospel, I’m sure that he responded to Peter’s sermon that followed. The man’s joy is a fulfillment of what Jesus the Messiah would do. Isaiah 35:5-6 says, “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy.” These words were fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry (Matt. 11:5).
So this story in Acts attests to the divine Messiahship of Jesus. It shows that Jesus was continuing to work through His apostles and that His name was still powerful to perform the same gracious miracles of healing that took place when He was on this earth. Luke shares it as a specific example of what he reported in 2:43, that many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. He picked this miracle because it led to Peter’s second sermon (3:12-26) and to the first persecution against the early church (4:1-22). But it was not just a miracle of physical healing; it is also a picture of the spiritual healing that God brings to a spiritually lame world. It teaches us that …
God’s miraculous gift of salvation should cause us to praise Him with exuberant joy so that others will marvel at His mighty power.
There are three lessons for us to consider:
We often underestimate what happens when God saves a soul. We view it in human terms, as a human decision that requires human follow up so that the decision “sticks.” I’m not denying that a person needs to make a decision and receive proper follow up so that he can begin to grow in his new faith. Rather, I’m emphasizing, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature…” (2 Cor. 5:17). Salvation is nothing less than God imparting life to a person who was dead in sin. God’s mighty creative power is involved in saving a soul! It’s a far greater miracle than healing lame legs.
This man had been lame from his mother’s womb. He is a sad picture of the human race, maimed by the fall. This was not a day when there were concrete wheelchair ramps for those who were crippled. In fact, there were no wheelchairs or handicapped parking places! If this man left his house, it was only because more than one friend came over, put him on a stretcher, and carried him. They often took him to the gate at the temple called Beautiful, where worshipers would take pity on him and toss him a few coins so that he could survive. While the temple gate was beautiful, this man with his useless legs was anything but beautiful. He is a sad picture of how sin cripples humanity.
In 1987, Marla and I went to Hong Kong, Macau, and China on a ministry trip. We were walking around on some crowded back streets in Guangzhou, China. It had rained recently, so there were puddles and mud. As we walked along with the crowd, suddenly, we almost stepped on a poor beggar who had no legs. He was on the dirty street, pulling his torso along by his arms, crying out for money. He was a shocking picture of humanity, scarred by sin.
The Bible uses many different metaphors to picture the fallen condition of the human race: dead in our sins (Eph. 2:1); blinded by the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4); ignorant and unable to understand spiritual truth (1 Cor. 2:8, 14); deceived and deluded (2 Thess. 2:10-11); deaf and dumb (Mark 7:32-37); leprous (Mark 1:40-42); and, lame (Mark 4:1-12).
There were no operations available that could cure his congenital condition. No physical therapy or efforts at self-improvement could help him. He had no hope that he could ever walk. And so he did the best he could to get by—he begged for money.
The Bible teaches that as sinners, there is nothing that we can do to heal our alienation from the holy God. We can embark on a program of self-improvement. We can give away all of our money and possessions to feed the poor. We can enter a monastery where we spend hours every day in prayer and fasting, denying ourselves the normal pleasures of life. We can devote ourselves to a life of selfless service, as Mother Teresa did. At the end of all our efforts, we are not one fraction of an inch closer to God, because we have not eradicated the sin that we inherited from Adam. The Bible says that “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment” (Isa. 64:6) in God’s holy presence. Presenting our good deeds to God only reveals the depth of our pride.
This attempt to save ourselves is probably the biggest barrier that keeps people away from God’s salvation. Except for biblical Christianity, it is an essential part of every religion, including Roman Catholicism, which teaches that we must add our works to what Christ has done in order to be saved. But the Bible plainly states, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).
The power for healing this man came from “the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene” (3:6). Peter attaches the despised name, “Nazarene,” both to show that God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise (1 Cor. 1:27), and to emphasize that it was the man Jesus from this village of Nazareth who is still living, who imparted from heaven the power to heal this cripple.
Sometimes in the Gospels and in Acts, a person was healed because he had the faith to be healed. But in many instances, the person was healed as an act of sovereign grace, without any indication of faith on his part. Here, there is no indication that the man had faith in Jesus to be healed. In 3:16, Peter explains to the crowd that it was on the basis of faith in the name of Jesus that this man was healed, but Peter seems to be referring to his own faith, not to the man’s faith. The man was not expecting a healing; he was only expecting a handout (3:5). Peter also makes it clear that the faith that he exercised “comes through [Jesus].” In other words, Jesus gave Peter the faith to believe that He would heal this lame man. Peter simply responded to the prompting of the Lord.
The healed man knew where his healing had come from. He didn’t shout praises to Peter and John. He didn’t praise his own mental attitude, saying, “I knew that if I kept a positive mental attitude, someday I’d be healed!” He didn’t boast in his great faith as the cause of his healing. No, he simply praised God. God and God alone, by His great mercy, was the cause of his cure.
When God mercifully saves your soul, He doesn’t do it because of anything that He sees in you. He doesn’t do it in cooperation with your best efforts. He doesn’t see great potential lurking beneath the surface of your life and save you because He knows that you’ll make a great disciple. He doesn’t see that you really mean well, in spite of your many mistakes, and save you because of your basically good intentions. He doesn’t see great faith and save you because He knows that you will be a model believer. He saves you because of one reason: His undeserved favor. It is totally by His power and grace. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). All the praise must go to God.
This lame man was not expecting a miracle. He only wanted a handout to get him through another day. Isn’t that a picture of so many who come to God? They are overwhelmed by life’s problems. Perhaps their family life is a mess or they’ve failed in business or they have a life-threatening illness. They come to God just hoping for a handout, something to get them through another day.
But in His great mercy, God imparts to them the miracle of regeneration. They are born again to a living hope, and they obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for them (1 Pet. 1:3-4)! They just wanted a little handout, but they become joint-heirs with Jesus Christ of all the riches that God can bestow (Rom. 8:17)! As Paul exclaims, God is “able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us” (Eph. 3:20). All that we can say is, “To Him be the glory!”
I love the description of this man, “Walking and leaping and praising God” (3:8). I realize that he didn’t leap down the street for the rest of his life. But I’ll bet that he often thought as he walked somewhere, “Praise God for His abundant mercy in healing me!” He often felt the joy of what God had done welling up within him. George Morrison observes,
It takes a little time to find one’s feet after a great experience like that. Give the man ten or twenty years of city life, and he will walk as sedately as any other citizen. First they shall mount up with wings as eagles, says the prophet; then they shall run (as children always do); and then, when time and experience have wrought their sobering work, they shall walk and (thank God) shall not faint. Do not object to preliminary leaping. Do not be hard on a little wild enthusiasm in the man who has really been healed by Christ. Time will convert that spiritual electricity into a driving and illuminating power. Emotion will be translated by the years into the strength of action and of character (Morrison on Acts [AMG Publishers], p. 34, italics his).
We see in this man three reasons why salvation fills us with exuberant joy:
God takes us by surprise. This man’s friends had been bringing him to the temple for years. He had been lying there when Jesus taught in the temple precincts, but for some reason Jesus had not healed him. No doubt Peter and John had walked by him on previous occasions, since they were still in the habit of going up to the temple to pray at the set hours for Jewish worship. But it had not been God’s timing. Even this day, Peter and John didn’t set out for the temple and say, “Let’s see if we can find someone to heal.” They would have passed the man by, except that on this day, the Lord sovereignly acted. The man caught Peter and John’s attention. The Lord prompted Peter’s heart that He would heal this man for His glory. Peter stopped and the man’s life was forever changed.
If we could go around the room and share testimonies, many of you would tell of how you did not see salvation coming until it hit you blindside. You were going through another day, trying to cope with your problems and scrape by, when by God’s providence, you heard the gospel. Maybe you had heard it many times before, but this time it was different. This time God took you by surprise. He moved into your life with His power and you were changed inside. You’ve never been the same. With the psalmist, you can exclaim,
When the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with joyful shouting; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad (Ps. 126:1-3).
This man was healed instantly. Peter grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet and before he was upright, the strength pulsed through his feet and ankles. He didn’t have to go slow until he built up his weak leg muscles. He didn’t have to go for months of physical therapy to learn how to walk (remember, he had never walked before!). He not only could walk, he could leap, and leap he did, over and over again! He was instantly healed.
That’s how God saves a soul—instantly. There is no process of being born again. You are born again in a moment of time, even if you do not remember that moment (as I do not). You could walk into this church service as a person enslaved to some of the worst sins imaginable, get saved, and walk out a new creature in Christ Jesus. The instant that God changes your heart, you are changed forever.
This is a major difference between the Bible’s teaching on salvation and the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. They teach that justification is a process in which we cooperate with God’s grace. But in this life, we can never be sure that we are justified because we can never be sure that we have done enough. Thus our relatives need to pray for our souls after death and give money to the church, so that we will be able to get out of Purgatory, where we need to suffer for our sins.
But Scripture declares that God instantly justifies the one who has faith in Jesus’ death on his behalf. As Paul explains in Romans 4:4-5, “Now to the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.”
The one who has been justified by God’s grace through faith cannot go on living as he formerly did. He is changed within, so that he begins to pursue a life that pleases God. There is no going back to the old ways. This man would never go back to his friends and say, “Please carry me to my begging spot. I miss my old life.” They would say, “You don’t have any reason to beg now.” With his healing came new responsibilities. All he knew was how to beg for a living, but now he had to learn to work for his keep.
The healing of God’s salvation brings new responsibilities. We can no longer excuse our sins. We must face them and deal with them God’s way. But that new way of life can be traced back to the instant that God imparted new life to us in Christ by His sovereign grace. One minute we were congenital spiritual cripples; the next minute, we could walk and leap for joy. The pivotal change in our standing before God took place in an instant.
When God saves us, He gives us the whole package. Like a man who inherits a fortune from an unexpected source, it all becomes his at once. It may take him a lifetime to explore it and to enjoy the benefits of it. But he possesses it all at once.
In Ephesians 1:3, Paul tells us that God “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” Second Peter 1:3 tells us that God’s “divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” It will take us all of this life and maybe all eternity to realize the abundant riches of God’s grace in Christ. But the point is, He poured it all on us at the moment of salvation. For this reason, we can now “greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Pet. 1:8).
I love this man’s unrestrained expression of joy! Imagine, leaping in the sacred temple precincts! How improper! Can’t you see the disapproving frowns as he shouted, “Hallelujah! Praise God! Glory to His name!” “Hey, keep it down! You’re interrupting other people’s prayers!” But he would say, “Don’t you realize, I have never walked before this day, but God healed me! Praise His holy name!” He couldn’t keep it to himself!
The people who knew this man’s sad past were amazed. Their amazement didn’t get them saved, but it did open them to listen to Peter’s sermon that followed, and God used that sermon to save 2,000 more (4:4). People need to hear the content of the gospel message and repent of their sins to be saved, but a testimony of how God saved someone who was hopelessly lost can open their hearts to listen. If you have received God’s mercy in Jesus Christ, then you can and must tell others. Your joy that comes from being saved should provide openings to tell the good news, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners.
I used to have a friend, whom I’ve lost track of, named Glenn. He was saved while he was in Tehachapi Prison, doing five years to life for drug dealing. His godly mother was at home praying for her wayward son at the very moment that he wandered into the prison chapel and got saved. This man in Acts 3 reminds me of Glenn. He was totally exuberant and open about what God had done for him. If you were easily embarrassed, you would be uncomfortable knowing Glenn. He would walk into a crowded restaurant, see you across the room, and yell, “Praise the Lord, brother Steve!” Then, having everyone’s attention, he would hand out tracts at every table on his way across the restaurant, telling people, “God saved me while I was in prison. Here, read this. It will tell you how you can be saved.” He always used to say, “I’ve been forgiven much, so I love Jesus much.”
This story of the healing of the lame man should make each of us ask ourselves three questions: (1) Have I received God’s gift of healing for my soul through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? (2) If I have received Christ, does the joy in my life reflect what God has done for my soul? (3) Am I looking for opportunities to share the joy of new life in Christ with those around me who are spiritually crippled?
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
We’ve all had opportunities to share our faith in Christ where we’ve blown it. A year ago last Thanksgiving Day, Marla and I had run in the Turkey Trot race at Buffalo Park. After the race, a man came up to me and, without any introduction or greeting, said, “How old are you?” When I answered, his next words were, “When was the last time you had your prostate checked?” I must admit that I was a bit taken aback!
He went on to tell me that he was 53 and was dying of prostate cancer. He was going around handing out leaflets to men about prostate cancer and to women about breast cancer. Although he was not in a listening mode, I wanted to say something to him about his eternal destiny, but I stood there tongue-tied. Since then, whenever I have thought of him, I have prayed that God would bring someone else into his life to share the gospel before he dies.
I have had many other opportunities to tell people about the Savior where I could not think fast enough to figure out what to say. About an hour later, I get brilliant ideas of what I could have said, but by then the opportunity is gone. If you’re like me, then we all could use some instruction on how to proclaim the gospel when God opens the opportunity.
Peter’s second sermon in Acts gives us some help. God had just used Peter and John to heal a man who had been lame from birth. A crowd quickly gathered, amazed at what had happened. Peter did not stand there tongue-tied. Rather, he delivered an impromptu sermon that God used to save 2,000 souls. Since he was talking to “men of Israel” (3:12), Peter used language and concepts that Jewish men could understand. In the same way, we should seek to relate to people in a manner so that they can connect with the truth of the gospel. Peter emphasized three truths that we must emphasize if we want to proclaim the gospel properly:
To proclaim the gospel, we must exalt the Lord Jesus, confront sinners with their guilt and the danger of judgment, and offer God’s grace to those who repent.
The first and probably most important principle is:
Peter’s sermon is full of the Lord Jesus Christ, and so should our witnessing be. People must consider, Who is Jesus Christ? Is He a mere man who had some good moral teachings? If so, people may choose to adopt some of His teachings and reject others, according to their own preferences. But if He is the Savior and Lord, prophesied of in the Old Testament, crucified in accordance with God’s plan, but risen from the dead as He predicted, then He is also the coming Judge of the whole earth. This Christ imposes some inescapable claims on every soul. People may reject Him at their own peril, or they may follow Him as Savior and Lord. But everything in witnessing hinges on exalting the person of Jesus Christ. We do not proclaim the gospel rightly unless we exalt Him.
Peter begins his sermon by deflecting the glory for the miracle away from John and him, as if they had either the power or piety to make a lame man walk (3:12). If God uses us to bring physical healing to another person or to lead that person to saving faith in Christ, it is not because of anything in us. We are just the clay vessels that the Potter uses for His own purposes. To take any credit for anything that God does through us is to rob Him of the glory rightly due to His name. As Paul tells the proud Corinthians (1 Cor. 4:7), “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”
If someone praises you for something that you have done, there is nothing wrong with saying, “Thank you.” The person means it as an encouragement, and it is proper to thank them for their kind words. But if they go on and on, or if there is any danger that you are robbing God of glory, you should say, “Thank you for your encouragement, but the Lord should get all the glory. He alone enabled me to minister to you.”
Peter uses numerous titles that apply to Jesus, but they are all summed up in the phrase, “the name of Jesus.” He emphasizes this in verse 16, which hearkens back to verse 6, “And on the basis of faith in His name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know; ...” Jesus’ name stands for everything that He is. The Jews had a holy reverence for the name of God, so much so that they would not even dare pronounce it. In the Hebrew Bible, whenever they got to the name, “Yahweh,” they would say, “Adonai,” which means “Lord.” “The name” became a way of referring to God. Peter here exalts the name of Jesus.
Jesus comes from the Hebrew name, Joshua, which means, “Yahweh saves.” The angel told Joseph to name Mary’s son Jesus, because “He will save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Jesus also points to our Lord’s humanity, since he was given that name at His birth, having been miraculously conceived in Mary through the Holy Spirit.
Peter also refers to Jesus as the Servant (a better translation here than Son) of “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (3:13). The word “servant” is used in the Greek version of Isaiah 52:13-53:12, where the prophet predicts that the coming Servant would be “pierced through for our transgressions” and that the Lord would cause “the iniquity of us all to fall on Him” (
Peter also calls Jesus “the Holy and Righteous One” (3:14). Jesus was without any sin of His own. Thus He could offer Himself as the substitute for sinners, without needing to make atonement for His own sins. Only God is truly holy and righteous. In his first sermon, Peter quoted from Psalm 16:10, where David declares that God will not allow His Holy One to undergo decay (Acts 2:27). On another occasion, Peter affirmed his belief that Jesus is “the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69). Even the demons recognized Jesus as the Holy One of God (Luke 4:34). “Righteous” focuses on the fact that Jesus had done no wrong (Isa. 53:9; John 8:46).
Peter also refers to Jesus as “the Prince of life” (Acts 3:15). The word “prince” means the leader or the author or originator. It is used in this sense in Hebrews 2:10, where Jesus is called “the author of [our] salvation,” and in Hebrews 12:2, where He is called “the author and perfecter of faith.” He originates our salvation and our faith and He brings it to completion. As the Prince or Author of life, He originates life, both physical and spiritual. He declared that He is the life (John 14:6). He said, “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes” (John 5:21).
Peter refers to Jesus as God’s Christ, appointed for you (Acts 3:18 & 20). Jesus was not a self-appointed Christ. God appointed Him as His Anointed One (the meaning of “Christ” or “Messiah”). As such, He fulfills the many Old Testament Messianic prophecies.
Peter goes on (3:22) to show that Jesus is also the prophet whom Moses predicted in Deuteronomy 18:15 (see John 1:21, 25; 6:14; 7:40). Not only that, Jesus was the one of whom all the prophets, from Samuel onward, had spoken (Acts 3:24). While Samuel himself made no recorded prophecy about Messiah, he did anoint David as king and spoke of the establishment of his kingdom through his descendent, which was fulfilled in Jesus (1 Sam. 13:14; 15:28; 28:17; 2 Sam. 7:12-16).
Furthermore, Jesus is the seed of Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed (Acts 3:25). Peter concludes (3:26) by stating again that Jesus is God’s Servant, whom He raised up (in the sense of 3:22, not a reference to the resurrection) and sent to bless them by turning them from their wicked ways. Thus Peter, in relating to his Jewish audience, has shown Jesus to be in line with God’s promises to Abraham, Moses, and David.
When you are sharing the gospel, people will try to get onto all sorts of rabbit trails. While sometimes you must answer their questions, keep in mind the central fact, that the person needs to see who Jesus is. They may never have read the Gospels, and so they may need to read them before they can make an intelligent decision to follow Christ. Or, you can take them to verses where Jesus makes astounding claims, such as John 5:19-47, 8:31-59, or 14:1-11. The main thing is to bring the person face to face with who Jesus is.
Peter makes it clear that the Lord Jesus died on the cross; He was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven; and, He is coming back again to fulfill God’s promises to Israel and to judge all who have rejected Him.
He died on the cross. After showing who Jesus is, God’s Servant, the Holy and Righteous One, the Prince of Life, the Christ, and the Prophet, Peter’s audience should have realized that while they killed Jesus, at the same time He laid down His life willingly. They were responsible for their sin of putting Jesus to death. And yet, at the same time, it had been announced beforehand by God’s prophets “that His Christ would suffer” and now God had fulfilled His word (3:18). As Isaiah 53 shows, God’s servant would bear the sins of His people. The apostles themselves had not understood this clearly until after the resurrection, when Jesus explained to them that the Christ had to suffer these things before He entered into His glory (Luke 24:26, 46).
The cross of Christ must be a central feature of our witness. It will be foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those being saved, it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18). The cross humbles our pride, because it robs us of the glory of being our own savior. It also humbles us by showing that we aren’t pretty good people who just need a little boost from God to get into heaven. If we were, then Christ died needlessly. We are lost sinners, alienated from God and unable to do anything to save ourselves. If Christ had not died for us, we would be eternally lost.
He was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven. It would be impossible for the grave to hold down “the Prince of life”! Peter testifies that God raised Him from the dead, “a fact to which we are witnesses” (3:15). If Jesus’ body had still been in the tomb or if the Jewish leaders knew the whereabouts of Jesus’ body, Peter and the rest of the apostles would have been laughed out of town for making such a claim. The fact that Peter could boldly declare this and 2,000 people that day believed it proves that the resurrection was not just a figment of the apostles’ imaginations. Jesus was raised bodily from the dead. This is the central fact of Christianity, without which everything else falls to the ground (1 Cor. 15:12-19).
If Peter’s audience wondered, “If He is raised, where is He?” Peter explains that He is in heaven “until the period of the restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time” (3:21). This refers to the future millennial kingdom, when Jesus will literally fulfill God’s promises to Israel. Note also that Peter affirms the divine inspiration of the Old Testament prophets. God spoke through them.
He is coming back again to fulfill God’s promises to Israel and to judge all who have rejected Him. Jesus will restore all things (3:21) and bring the times of refreshing (3:19) at His second coming, when God will send Jesus (3:20), who will be bodily present on earth again (3:19). When He comes, “every soul that does not heed” [obey] Him “shall be utterly destroyed from among the people” (3:23). He will come again as the Savior of those who believe in Him, but as the fearful Judge of those who disobey Him.
Thus Peter shows us that to bear witness properly, we must exalt the name of Jesus: who He is and what He did, including what He will do when He comes again in power and glory.
Perhaps Peter was making up for his cowardly denial of Christ a few weeks before, but he is not diplomatic in hitting his audience with the terrible sin that they have committed in crucifying Jesus. At the outset (3:13), he nails them for delivering and disowning Jesus when Pilate would have released Him. The word “disowned” means “to deny.” He repeats the word in the next verse, where the word “you” is emphatic: “You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead” (3:14-15). He is showing how they were opposed to God Himself. He also shows the utter folly of rebellion against Jesus Christ. You can kill Him, but you can’t triumph over Him, because He is the Author of life itself. Like those punching bags with sand in the base, you can knock Him down, but He’s going to come back up and knock you down!
Unlike Peter, many modern preachers try to tiptoe around the matter of sin and guilt. They don’t want to offend people. Besides, if someone has low self-esteem, hearing that he is guilty might drive him to despair. So they give them strokes, tell them how much God loves them, and encourage them to receive Jesus so that they can reach their full potential. But if we omit sin and guilt, there is no need for a Savior!
Jesus didn’t die on the cross for pretty good folks so that they could feel better about themselves and to help them succeed in life. He died for them because they are sinners who are under God’s wrath and judgment. Without a Savior, they face both physical death and the second death, eternal separation from God in the Lake of Fire. The reason for their condemnation is that they have not heeded [obeyed] God’s Prophet Jesus (3:23). Peter sticks the knife in all the way to the handle when he tells them that instead of Jesus, they asked for a murderer to be freed and killed the Prince of life (3:14b-15a).
While the Jews in Jesus’ day literally killed their Messiah, as Spurgeon points out, “Every sin in the essence of it is a killing of God” (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Ages Software], vol. 14, “Apostolic Exhortation,” on Acts 3:19). If you are living for sin rather than for the Lord Jesus, you are choosing a murderer instead of Christ. You may be choosing alcohol or drugs, lust or greed, or some other sin. But whatever sin it is, it leads to death and eternal judgment. It is a murderer that will kill you.
Verse 17 is difficult to understand in light of Jesus’ words in John 15:22, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin [meaning, guilt], but now they have no excuse for their sin.” Also, Peter’s words seem to go against Stephen’s bold charges against the Jewish Sanhedrin, where he accuses them of receiving God’s law, but not keeping it when they killed Jesus (7:51-53). In what sense had Peter’s audience and their leaders acted in ignorance when they killed Jesus?
As I explained in my sermon on Jesus’ prayer from the cross to forgive His enemies (“Our Great Need, God’s Greater Grace,” Luke 23:34 [6/25/2000]), I understand Peter to be reflecting the Hebrew concept of unintentional sins of ignorance as opposed to sins of willful defiance (Num. 15:22-31; Lev. 4:2; 5:18; 22:14). For sins of ignorance, an offering was available to remove guilt (Heb. 9:7). But for willful, brazen defiance, which I understand to be tantamount to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:30-32), the person was without hope.
In Peter’s audience, there were varying levels of ignorance when it came to the death of Jesus. Peter was offering the hope of God’s mercy to any who would respond. Some of the Jewish leaders had committed the unpardonable sin, attributing Jesus’ works to Satan. They were not ignorant and they could not be forgiven. Other Jewish leaders, like Paul (and only God knew their hearts), were zealous for their Jewish system, but they were ignorant of Jesus’ true identity. Others in the Jewish crowd were even more ignorant and were wrongly swayed by their evil leaders. But, while the level of spiritual ignorance may lessen the level of guilt, ignorance is no excuse when it comes to the final judgment. All stand guilty and condemned before God, as Paul argues so forcefully in Romans 1-3. If they did not heed Jesus after hearing Peter’s sermon, they would face His awful judgment (Acts 3:23).
We have not adequately presented the good news of Christ as Savior unless we confront people with the bad news, that they have chosen a murderer instead of the Prince of life. They have killed Jesus by their sin. If they do not repent, they will face God’s certain and awful judgment.
But, thankfully, there is a final element that we must include:
After Peter’s indictment of his audience, you would expect him to say, “You’re all going to burn in hell for crucifying Jesus,” and walk off and leave them. But rather, he exhorts them (3:19), “Repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away.” If they would repent, God would send Jesus to bring times of refreshing and to restore all things (3:19, 21), a reference to the millennial kingdom. There will be a major revival in Israel just before the return of Christ (Matt. 23:39; Rom. 11:26; see Zech. 12:10; 14:9). He tells them that God sent His Servant Jesus “to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways” (3:26).
If God is so gracious as to offer forgiveness and His kingdom blessings to those who crucified His Son, then surely He offers grace to every sinner who will repent. The apostle Paul was the chief of sinners, but he found mercy, so that in him as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life (1 Tim. 1:15-16). God sent His Servant Jesus to bless you, by turning you from your wicked ways!
What is repentance? It is a change of mind that results in a change of one’s entire life. It means to turn to God from our sin. Spurgeon (ibid.) says that there is no better definition of it than in the children’s hymn: “Repentance is to leave the sins we loved before, and show that we in earnest grieve, by doing so no more.” No matter how terrible your sins have been, if you will repent, you will experience in advance “times of refreshing” from God, because He will wipe away your sins and bless you.
So whenever you get an opportunity to talk to someone about spiritual matters, seek to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. The sinner needs to know who Jesus is and what He did. Don’t hesitate, out of fear of giving offense, to confront the sinner and warn him of impending judgment. He needs to feel his guilt so that he realizes his need for a Savior. And, don’t fail to offer God’s grace and forgiveness to everyone who will repent. And whether God uses your witness to save 2,000, as He did with Peter’s sermon, or maybe just one, you will be filled with joy to know that by turning a sinner from the error of his way, you have been used to save his soul from death (James 5:20).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
There is a faint knock at your door. You open it to find a cowering man who timidly asks, “You wouldn’t want to buy a vacuum cleaner, would you?” Unless you either took great pity on this poor excuse for a salesman or you badly needed what he was selling, you would not respond positively to his weak presentation.
While there are many differences between salesmanship and evangelism, most notably that evangelism depends on the power of the Holy Spirit and the gospel, there are a few parallels. An obvious parallel is that if you want to communicate effectively, you must be confident about your subject. The best salesmen honestly believe that their product is something that people really need. The best evangelists are confident that Jesus Christ is the only Savior and that people desperately need to trust in Him or they will perish.
God had just used Peter and John to heal a beggar in his forties who had been lame from birth. The spectacle of this man walking, leaping, and praising God drew a crowd, and Peter proclaimed the gospel to them. Perhaps after the main message, John joined Peter in responding to the crowd, since Acts 4:1 says, “As they were speaking to the people….” Suddenly they were interrupted as the priests, the captain of the temple guard, and the Sadducees came upon them, extremely upset that they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. They arrested Peter and John, put them in jail over night, and the next day brought them in front of the Jewish Sanhedrin.
Although they were on trial before this intimidating council, Peter quickly turned the tables on the Sanhedrin, showing that it was they who were on trial. He points out that it was not a crime to do a good deed to a cripple. Then he indicts the Sanhedrin because they had crucified Jesus, whom God had raised from the dead and in whose name this lame man had been healed. Furthermore, Peter let them know that “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (4:12).
The members of the council were amazed at the confidence of Peter and John, who had not been educated in the rabbinical schools. When the council saw the man who had been healed standing there (proof positive of his healing), they had nothing to say. After a private conference (Luke may have learned of the details from Paul or Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus), the council commanded Peter and John not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. Peter and John replied that they had to obey God, because they could not stop speaking what they had seen and heard. After further warnings, the council let them go, since the crowd was glorifying God on account of this miracle.
While Peter and John had to be commanded to stop speaking, most of us need to be reminded of the command to speak to others about Jesus Christ. Many modern Christians think that Jesus’ Great Commission was really the Great Suggestion. Or, we think that it applies to those called into missionary work, but not to the rest of us. But every believer should be able to say with Peter and John, even under threat of persecution, “I cannot stop speaking about what I have seen and heard.” If we are prone to be timid witnesses for Christ, we should pray that the Lord would give us the confident boldness that we need to speak out for Christ, even if we suffer for it.
We all should seek to be confident witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Note four characteristics of a confident witness as seen in Peter and John:
To picture this scene correctly, we need to understand how threatening it was for Peter and John. The Sanhedrin was like their Supreme Court and Congress all rolled into one. They had religious and, to a great degree, civil authority in Jerusalem. The high priest was the most powerful Jew in the city and the captain of the temple guard was second behind him. Furthermore, they had just been the main force behind the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Even if they didn’t go so far as to crucify Peter and John, they certainly could make life very uncomfortable for them. They were powerful men. The fact that they arrested Peter and John, kept them over night in jail, and then threatened them with dire consequences if they continued speaking in Jesus’ name shows their use of power to intimidate.
We also need to remember that just a few weeks before Peter, in order to avoid possible arrest, had denied that he knew Jesus Christ to a lowly servant girl. But here he is before this powerful body of men, boldly reminding them that they had crucified Jesus, that God had raised Him from the dead, and that He is God’s only way of salvation. If Peter had been fearful, he would have said only what he thought was necessary to secure his release. But instead, he boldly witnesses to these murderers of Jesus. What made the difference? Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit (4:8).
Some by nature may be more daring souls than others, but we’re not talking here about natural inclination, but supernatural power. If we want to be like Peter and John, who (as we will see) were like Jesus, we must be filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus had told the disciples that they would be brought before the rulers, but not to worry in advance about what to say, because the Holy Spirit would teach them in that very hour what to say (Luke 12:11-12). Later He again told them that they would be brought before rulers for His name’s sake, and that it would lead to an opportunity for their testimony. He promised that He would give them utterance and wisdom which none of their opponents would be able to resist or refute (Luke 21:12-15). So Peter’s witness before the Sanhedrin was not due to his natural boldness or to his brilliant oratory. It was due to the filling of the Holy Spirit. What does this mean?
On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4). Here, again, Peter and John were filled with the Spirit. After they were released, they joined with their companions and had a prayer meeting, at the end of which they were all filled again with the Holy Spirit (4:31). While the baptism of the Spirit happens once at the moment of salvation (it is a fact, not an experience), the filling of the Spirit is repeated often. Someone has said that we need repeated fillings because we leak!
What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? We find a clue in 5:17, where we read that the high priest and his Sadducee associates were filled with jealousy. It means that jealousy so overwhelmed them that it controlled their actions. In Ephesians 5:18, Paul commands us not to be drunk with wine, but to be filled with the Spirit. Just as a drunk is under the influence or control of alcohol, so a Spirit-filled man is under the control of the Holy Spirit. That is the meaning of being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Assuming that you are a believer, the main requirement for being filled with the Holy Spirit is to be cleansed from all sin and to be yielded to the Spirit. A Spirit-filled person is not self-willed, but rather is submissive to God’s will. Also, being filled with the Spirit implies a moment-by-moment dependence on the Spirit, pictured in the metaphor, “walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16). Since the Holy Spirit’s main ministry is to glorify Jesus Christ (John 16:14), a person who is filled with the Spirit will seek to glorify Jesus.
Most of us don’t know much firsthand about persecution for the sake of Christ. The threat of someone rejecting us or thinking that we’re weird is enough to make cowards of us when it comes to witnessing. We don’t know what the council said by way of threats, but 4:21 indicates that they were not vague about the fact that if Peter and John continued to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ, they would pay a severe price. But rather than saying, “Yes sir, we’ll be more restrained in the future,” they said, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard” (4:19). Then they went back to their friends and prayed for greater boldness than they already had (4:29)!
There are two common misconceptions that we need to keep in mind regarding opposition or persecution for our faith. The first is that if we’re faithful to the Lord, He will protect us from persecution. I’ve heard many Christians say something like, “I don’t understand what’s happening. I was faithful to the Lord, but I’m being attacked by my co-workers or friends. Why isn’t the Lord protecting me?”
I don’t know where this idea comes from, because it clearly is not in the Bible. The Old Testament prophets were bold and faithful witnesses, but many of them were persecuted and killed. John the Baptist, the twelve, the apostle Paul, and the Lord Jesus Himself all were faithful witnesses who suffered much because of their faithfulness to God. Paul promised, “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12).
The second misconception is that persecution comes mainly from those outside the church. We expect the pagans to oppose the name of Jesus, but for some reason, we are surprised when those who profess to be Christians that attack us. But it was the religious establishment that opposed the prophets. The religious leaders opposed and crucified our Lord. Here the religious rulers lead the opposition against the apostles.
The Sadducees were mainly wealthy priests who wanted to protect the status quo in order to preserve their wealth and influence over Jewish affairs. Thus they were loyal to the Roman government and opposed any kind of uprising or disturbance among the people that might upset Rome. The chief priest and the high priests were all Sadducees, along with the captain of the temple guard. They denied the existence of angels and spirits, along with the resurrection of the dead and any future life (Acts 23:8; see D. A. Hagner, Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible [Zondervan], 5:211-216).
As then, so it has been down through church history. Opposition to those who preach the gospel and who uphold God’s Word often comes from the religious establishment, whose power and privileges are threatened. In countries where the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church are strong, they are the source of most opposition to the gospel. Their power and wealth would be threatened if they had to submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. In our country, theological liberals, who deny the resurrection, are often our main opponents. But, Spirit-filled witnesses are bold to obey God rather than the religious establishment, even if it means persecution. If we want to be confident witnesses, we must daily be filled with God’s Spirit.
The council was amazed at Peter and John’s boldness, especially since they were uneducated, untrained men (4:13). But they also began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. The boldness of Peter and John reminded the council of the boldness of Jesus Christ, who also was not trained in their schools. What a wonderful compliment, for people to recognize that we are like Jesus because we have been with Him!
We often say that we want to be like Jesus, but we have misconceptions about what Jesus was like. Some years ago, a man who had served as an elder at my church in California and who was on the staff of an evangelical ministry, came to me with his wife. I had just changed my view of Christian psychology and had preached a message explaining why I thought that it was wrong. They, among others, were offended. They told me that I should get out of the pastorate because I was too much like the apostle Paul and not enough like Jesus. When I asked for clarification, they said that Paul was confrontational, but Jesus was always kind and loving!
I’m not sure which translation they were reading! In Matthew 23, Jesus confronted the scribes and Pharisees, calling them hypocrites, whitewashed walls, and a brood of vipers. In Luke 11:37-52, Jesus was invited to lunch at a Pharisee’s house. He deliberately avoided the pharisaical ceremonial washing before the meal, and when His host said something, Jesus pronounced woes upon the Pharisees for their hypocrisy! Another guest, a religious lawyer, pointed out that Jesus’ words insulted them, too. So Jesus pronounced woes on the lawyers for their hypocrisy! He was not a polite dinner guest! On many other occasions, Jesus deliberately did something to provoke controversy (see Luke 6:1-11; 13:10-17; 14:1-24; etc.).
The point is, if we’re going to be like Jesus, we will be bold witnesses who confront religious hypocrisy and false doctrine. We won’t be mean or rude. We will have the fruit of the Spirit, including kindness and gentleness. But we will have spent enough time with Jesus to learn from Him the importance of speaking out when God’s truth is being compromised. We will fear God more than we fear social customs or what others think of us.
The disciples could not stop speaking of what they had seen and heard (4:20). They had seen the risen Lord Jesus. They saw Him ascend into heaven. They had heard Him explain from the Scriptures the many passages about Himself. They had seen Him heal this lame man by His power. And so they spoke confidently about these matters. Our text reveals four things that we know for certain:
Even though the Sadducees were known for not believing in the resurrection, and Peter knew that this would be a sore spot for them, he didn’t hesitate to confront them with the truth. He tells them boldly, “Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this name this man stands here before you in good health” (4:10-11). The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith. If it can be disproved, our faith is worthless (1 Cor. 15:17). F. F. Bruce states,
It is particularly striking that neither on this nor on any subsequent occasion (so far as our information goes) did the Sanhedrin take any serious action to disprove the apostles’ central affirmation—the resurrection of Jesus. Had it seemed possible to refute them on this point, how readily would the Sanhedrin have seized the opportunity! Had they succeeded, how quickly and completely the new movement would have collapsed! (The Book of the Acts [Eerdmans], p. 103).
When we bear witness about Jesus Christ, we can confidently proclaim the fact of His bodily resurrection from the dead.
Peter here mentions one, that Jesus was the chief corner stone (or capstone) that the builders had rejected (Ps. 118:22). In all, there are some 300 Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 are especially clear and detailed in describing Jesus’ death on the cross.
Hebrews 2:3-4 says concerning our salvation, “After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.” The Sanhedrin could not refute the fact that this man had been crippled from birth, but now he was standing in their presence (Acts 4:14). Irrationally, they acknowledged the miracle, but they rejected the implications of it (4:16-17)! Stupendous miracles are not enough to convince those whose hearts are hardened against God. But we can still testify to the credibility of the eyewitness testimony of those who saw these miracles. If people refuse to believe the testimony, it is because they want to continue in their sin, not because evidence is lacking.
Peter and John knew that Jesus had changed their lives. The formerly crippled man knew that the name of Jesus had changed him. Anyone who has called upon the Lord to save him from his sins knows that He is mighty to save even the chief of sinners. So we can confidently offer the good news of God’s salvation to any and every sinner, knowing that, as Jesus said, “the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37b). Often the most powerful witness is someone, like this lame man, whose life has been dramatically changed by the power of Jesus Christ.
We’ve seen that confident witnesses are filled with the Holy Spirit. They have spent much time with Jesus and learned from Him, so that they remind others of Him. They testify of what they know for certain, especially that Jesus is risen.
The Sanhedrin had asked Peter, “By what power, or in what name, have you done this?” (4:7). So, Peter told them: We did it “by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead” (4:10). Furthermore, His name is the only name by which anyone can be saved: “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (4:12).
We live in an age where tolerance has become the primary virtue. People don’t object if you say, “I’ve found Jesus as my personal Savior.” They say, “That’s nice for you, but I’m into something else.” Or they say, “All that matters is that you’re a good person and believe in something. All roads lead to God.”
But Jesus Christ cuts across the “tolerance” of our culture and intolerantly proclaims, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). “There is salvation in no one else …” (Acts 4:12). But what about sincere Buddhists or Muslims or Hindus, who are kind and loving people? They are not saved unless they trust in Jesus Christ alone. What about faithful Roman Catholics, who go to Mass, who pray the Rosary, who pile up good deeds in their efforts to go to heaven? They are not saved if they are depending on any good works or ceremonies or religious devotion to get into heaven. There is no other way to God except through faith in Jesus Christ alone. And before you get angry with me, remember, I didn’t make it up. I’m just telling you what Jesus and the apostles proclaimed.
But while there is salvation in no one else, the good news is, there is salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ for all who will trust in Him alone! To trust in Christ means to abandon your trust in your own good works. It means to let go of your pride and acknowledge that you are a sinner, alienated from God. Like the lame man, there is no hope for you to heal yourself. Only Christ can heal your soul. And He will save you, if you will cast yourself upon Him.
In Ephesians 6:19-20, the apostle Paul shares a startling prayer request: “Pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” Twice he repeats his request, that he might speak boldly. It’s the same Greek word translated “confidence” in Acts 4:13. If Paul had on his prayer list the need for boldness as a witness, then perhaps you and I should add it to our lists! We all should seek to proclaim with confident boldness the good news that there is salvation in no one else except in Jesus Christ, whom God raised from the dead.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
What does the American church need most? Many rightly say, “We desperately need revival.” But how does revival come? Many say that a strong dose of persecution might do the trick.
Persecution has always made the church stronger. It burns impurity out of the church. It drives away the nominal, worldly attenders, and separates the church from the world. It drives the church to prayer. It unites the church in brotherly love. It often causes the church to expand numerically, as seen in China under Communism.
I’m not ready to pray for persecution, because I’m not fond of suffering! I’ll leave it to the sovereignty of God, who knows what we need. But we do need to be ready for persecution in case it comes. Our religious freedom in America is on thin ice. It is not inconceivable that we could face imprisonment or have our children taken from us for insisting on the moral teachings the Bible. So we need to know in advance how to respond to persecution.
I’m speaking here about something that most of us have not experienced firsthand. Sure, I’ve faced opposition as a pastor; but I’ve never been imprisoned or beaten or had my property taken away because I am a Christian. But these principles also apply to the subject of how to respond to trials in general. I’ve encountered many American Christians who do not have an adequate theology of suffering. When trials hit, they rage at God, rather than submit to Him. They think that they have a right to prosperity and good health. So they grow bitter when trials hit.
Our text reveals the response of the early church to persecution. Peter and John had been arrested, put in jail, and then threatened by the Jewish leaders because they had healed a lame man and had preached the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the crowd. This snapshot shows them responding by drawing near to God in prayer. It also shows the care that the church had for its members and their continuing witness to the world. It teaches us to …
Respond to persecution by affirming our commitment to God, to His people, and to His work in the world.
If (as in a recent message) this looks suspiciously like the three priorities of our church purpose statement, it is purely coincidental! Our aim as a church is to glorify God by fulfilling the two great commandments, to love Him fervently and to love one another selflessly; and, to fulfill the Great Commission, which is to proclaim the gospel to the lost. When persecution (or suffering) comes, we need to affirm these three priorities.
Persecution will either drive you away from God and cause you to become bitter, or it will drive you closer to God and cause you to become better. We see four ways that these early Christians affirmed their commitment to God:
When Peter and John were released, they went back to their companions and told them what had happened. Their spontaneous response was to pray. While they all joined together in one accord (4:24), what is recorded was probably the prayer of a leader in the gathering. Much could be said about corporate prayer, but let me just mention three things:
Have you ever been in a prayer meeting where all the requests seem to focus on everyone’s health problems? There is nothing wrong with praying for Aunt Gertrude in the hospital. But if that is the main focus of the prayer time, it reveals that we’re too focused on ourselves, not enough on God’s kingdom.
The remarkable thing about this prayer is that there is not a word about protection from further persecution, other than the passing comment, “Lord, take note of their threats”! Jesus had taught them to pray first, “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Only after that were they to pray for personal needs, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:9-13). Here they spend five verses hallowing the Lord’s name before praying that His kingdom would come by giving them further boldness and power to proclaim the Word. They never do get around to praying for their own needs! It has always been a great joy to me that when I have asked for prayer requests at our evening service, I have often heard, “Please pray for so-and-so. I was able to talk to him about Christ this past week.”
God “made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them” (4:24). This reflects several Old Testament texts (Exod. 20:11; Neh. 9:6; Ps. 146:6; Isa. 37:16). It is a simple reminder that the God to whom we pray spoke the universe into existence. He owns it all and He can provide for us whatever we need to carry on His work. He is able to do far more than we can ask or even think (Eph. 3:20). But we often fail to ask in faith.
God immediately answered by shaking the place where they were praying (that should have gotten their attention!) and with a new filling of the Holy Spirit, enabling them to speak the Word with boldness. God does not always answer so quickly. He knows that sometimes we need to wait on Him longer. Sometimes He has a different plan or way than we conceive of. But God works through believing prayer. When we pray, we should not just mumble through a list of needs and then go our way and forget about what we prayed for. We should ask for specific things that would advance God’s kingdom and we should expect Him to answer. When we face persecution or trials, we should let such problems bring us together with other believers to bring our needs before our Almighty God.
The word used to address God comes from a Greek word transliterated “Despot.” It is only used of God six times in the New Testament (here; Luke 2:29; 2 Tim. 2:21; 2 Pet. 2:1; Jude 4; Rev. 6:10). Despot in English conveys cruelty, but the Greek word means “absolute master,” or “Sovereign Lord.” This view of God is further underscored in the prayer, which affirms that the coalition of evil people who crucified Jesus only accomplished what God had sovereignly predestined to occur.
The Bible clearly affirms the absolute sovereignty of God. Nothing happens apart from God’s ordaining it to happen. The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 (rewritten in modern English as A Faith to Confess [Carey Publications], p. 20) puts it this way:
From all eternity God decreed all that should happen in time, and this He did freely and unalterably, consulting only His own wise and holy will. Yet in so doing He does not become in any sense the author of sin, nor does He share responsibility for sin with sinners. Neither, by reason of His decree, is the will of any creature whom He has made violated; nor is the free working of second causes put aside; rather is it established. In all these matters the divine wisdom appears, as also does God’s power and faithfulness in effecting that which He has purposed.
Some try to argue that God foreknows everything, including our salvation, but He did not foreordain everything. What happens comes from man’s free will. But this passage (along with many others) clearly refutes that notion. As Calvin points out (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts, 1:187), Luke adds the word “hand” here to make the point that this event was not only governed in a passive way by God’s purpose, but also actively by His power. God predestines all things, even the evil deed of crucifying His anointed one, Jesus. And yet He is in no way responsible for the evil that the men who murdered Jesus committed. They intended it for evil, and they will be judged according to the evil intent of their hearts. But God sovereignly overruled it to accomplish His eternal purpose, remaining untainted by their sin.
What practical difference does this make? If you believe, as some teach, that evil events occur outside of God’s sovereign will, then you have great cause for fear and no cause for comfort when evil things happen to you or your loved ones. All you can say is, “It’s too bad that this one slipped by God!” You can hope that it won’t happen again, but you have no guarantee of it. God means well, but sometimes the forces of evil are just too much for Him! What kind of comfort in trials is that? What kind of a God is that?
Rather, it is much better to believe, with the apostles, that God mightily and sovereignly ordains everything that happens, and He orders it all according to His wise purpose. If wicked men persecute His church, God predestined it to occur for His purpose and glory, and we can submit to it, knowing that He is in control.
The one leading in this prayer knew Psalm 2 well enough to quote verses 1 & 2 by memory. He affirms his belief that the Holy Spirit inspired David to write these words. Then he applies this psalm to the current situation. The Gentiles and the peoples correspond to the Gentiles and peoples of Israel who had done whatever God’s hand and purpose had predestined to occur. The kings of the earth and rulers were Herod and Pontius Pilate. These forces were aligned together against the Lord and His Christ. But, as the psalm goes on to proclaim, “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them” (Ps. 2:4). It is utterly futile and foolish to fight against the Sovereign Lord! God’s enemies thought that they won when they killed Jesus. But God triumphed by raising Him from the dead. He is coming again to judge the living and the dead and to reign as God’s anointed on David’s throne.
The best prayers always are based on Scripture, applying it directly to our present situation and needs. But we won’t be able to apply God’s Word in a time of crisis unless we are saturating our minds with it on a daily basis. In Proverbs 1:24-33, God’s wisdom warns fools and scoffers that because they had neglected wisdom when she cried out to them, later in a time of crisis when they cry out to her, she will be silent. In other words, the time to seek God’s wisdom through His Word is before the crisis hits. If we know God’s Word through a daily time with Him, we will be able to apply it when we face persecution or trials.
Thus we reaffirm our commitment to God in a time of persecution through corporate prayer, by having a high view of His sovereignty over all, and by knowing and applying His Word.
Twice this prayer refers to Jesus as God’s holy servant (4:27, 30). Once David is called God’s servant (4:25). This Greek word can also mean “son,” but it is probably best translated “servant.” It is the word used of Messiah in Isaiah 53, where He is the suffering servant who bore our sins. The prayer also refers to the early Christians as God’s servants (4:29), but it does not use the same word. Rather, he uses the word that means “bondservant.” It implies that he did not want to elevate the church to the same level as Jesus, God’s holy servant/son, or even as David, God’s servant/son. Rather, the apostles saw themselves as God’s slaves.
The idea of seeing ourselves as God’s slaves is important if we face persecution or trials, because slaves do not expect to receive wonderful treatment. Slaves had no rights. They were expected to render absolute submission and unconditional obedience to their masters. The owner had the right of life or death. He could give away the few meager possessions that the slave owned if he chose to do so, and the slave had no right to complain. The owner could command the slave to do unreasonable things without giving a reason for his commands. If carrying out the command resulted in the slave’s death, that was too bad. The slave had to obey without question or complaint. (I gleaned some of these insights from Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture [Baker], on Acts 4:25, pp. 169-170.)
In our case, we know that our Master is benevolent and has our eternal welfare in mind in whatever He commands us to do. But we need the mindset of God’s holy servant, Jesus, who came not to do His own will, but the will of the Father, even when that will meant the cross. In a time of persecution or trial, we must respond by reaffirming our commitment to our Lord and Master. We are not our own; we have been bought with a price. Therefore, we must glorify God with our bodies, even if it means martyrdom.
The apostles were a part of a united, caring, generous fellowship. As soon as they were released, they went to their companions and shared what had happened to them. Luke records that the whole congregation (over 5,000 by this time) was of one heart and soul. They were marked by unusual generosity and care for one another. There are three elements here:
They had a corporate mindset. Their first instinct was to share with one another what had happened and this led to corporate prayer, as we have seen. They did not view the church as we Americans often do. We are individualists. We idolize the pioneer who goes it alone. We often go to church and sit next to people we don’t know, leaving without ever getting to know them. Many do not have any meaningful fellowship with another believer in the course of a week. I’ve often asked someone who has come to me for counsel, “Do you know any other Christians with whom you could meet during the week for mutual encouragement and prayer?” They think a minute and say, “No.”
Of course, there are times when a person needs to stand alone, even from the Christian crowd. But we need to develop this sense of community, of belonging to a body of Christians, without whom we are not complete. We need to have a network of brothers (for men) or sisters (for women) that we immediately want to get together with when a difficulty hits us, so that we can share and pray together.
They lifted up their voice to God in one accord (4:24). They were of one heart and soul (4:32). Unity does not mean that we all look alike and think alike. God has made us as individuals, and we will express ourselves differently. On doctrines that are not essential, we may disagree, although we should be striving to grow into the unity of the faith that comes with a deeper knowledge of Christ (Eph. 4:13). But we should recognize that if someone truly knows Christ as Savior and Lord, then we all belong to the same spiritual family. We should stand together against this evil world.
Calvin (p. 190) points out that unity of heart and soul is the root; sharing of personal belongings is the fruit. This passage is not teaching communism, where people are forced to share everything equally. Neither is it encouraging welfare to the lazy or irresponsible person who wants to mooch off of the body. Paul teaches that if a person will not work, he should not eat (2 Thess. 3:10). Rather, it is enjoining the kind of voluntary generosity that sees a brother in need and opens one’s heart and material blessings toward that brother (1 John 3:17).
Persecution often strips us of our materialistic focus. It helps us remember that things do not last. God’s Word instructs those of us who are rich (that means most Americans!) to be generous and ready to share (1 Tim. 6:18). If we see the church as family, members of Christ’s body, then we’ll be more inclined to obey this command. You may not be aware of the fact that our church has an “SOS” fund administered by our elders to help those in need. It is not a budgeted fund; you must designate gifts for it.
Thus when we face persecution or trials, we need to reaffirm our commitment to the Sovereign Lord and to His church.
The apostles did not run away from their persecutors and form monasteries inside of well-fortified walls. They did not fall into self-pity or fear or revenge. Rather, they responded by praying for more boldness in witness, and “with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (4:33). As we saw last week, the resurrection of Jesus was at the center of their witness. No doubt the love of the church as seen in its generosity and the powerful miracles that God granted to the apostles also helped open the door for further witness. But the point is, their focus was not on themselves, but rather on what God wanted them to do to extend His kingdom through their witness, even if it cost them further persecution, which it did.
If we ever catch opposition because of our witness, we must follow their example by not retreating. Of course, Satan wants us to give up or draw back. If he can get us to fall into self-pity or fear, our witness will stop. But the Lord has us here to be a witness of His death and resurrection to those who desperately need a Savior. Often, it is our attitude when we are persecuted that opens the door for effective witness.
I read of a 19-year-old Christian girl in China who was beaten and thrown into a filthy cell. It was dark, but from the smell she knew that the slimy floor was covered with human excrement. There was no bed or chair. She had to sit and sleep in this filth. She squatted down so that as little of her bleeding body as possible would touch the floor and silently gave thanks to the Lord that she was worthy to suffer for Him. She asked Him for wisdom and strength, not to get out of this terrible place, but that wherever He put her, she would be able to continue to preach the gospel.
One day as she quietly sang a hymn, the Lord impressed on her, “This is to be your ministry.” She thought, “I’m all alone. Whom can I preach to?” Suddenly an idea came to her. She stood up and called for the guard.
“Sir, can I do some hard labor for you?” The guard looked at her with contempt, mingled with surprise. No one had ever made that kind of request before. She said, “Look, this prison is filthy. Let me go into the cells and clean up the excrement. Just give me some water and a brush.”
Soon she found herself on her hands and knees cleaning and preaching to people who had lost all hope of ever seeing another human being who did not come to beat them. When they realized that they could have eternal life as God’s free gift, they repented of their sins and trusted in Jesus Christ. Soon all the prisoners had believed in Jesus Christ. The warden was furious. He gave her a sheet of paper and told her to write out a confession of her crimes against the revolution. She wrote out the plan of salvation, so that the warden and even others heard about Christ (from The Church in China, by Carl Lawrence [Bethany House], 1985).
We may never have to suffer for the gospel as she did, but we should follow her example. If we face persecution, we should respond by reaffirming our commitment to our Sovereign God. We should reaffirm our commitment to the fellowship of the saints. And we should be unstoppable in our commitment to the Lord’s work in the world, of proclaiming the good news of Christ to those who are perishing.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
A 12-year-old boy was waiting for his first orthodontist appointment and was a bit nervous. Apparently he wanted to impress the dentist. On the patient questionnaire, in the space marked “Hobbies,” he had written, “Swimming and flossing” (Reader’s Digest [8/94], p. 112).
That’s a humorous example of how we’re all prone to hypocrisy. But spiritual hypocrisy is not humorous; it’s a dangerous and deadly sin. The hypocrisy of professing Christians has served as an excuse for many to disregard the claims of Christ, saying, “The church is full of hypocrites.” The hypocrisy of Christian leaders has caused many believers to stumble. While Jesus was tender with many notorious sinners, He used scathing language to denounce those guilty of religious hypocrisy.
The story of Ananias and Sapphira warns us of the danger of the sin of hypocrisy. It was literally deadly for this couple. Someone has said that if God dealt with all hypocrites in the church as He dealt with this couple, our churches would become morgues!
We are not told whether or not Ananias and Sapphira were true believers in Jesus Christ. Some argue that they were; some that they were not. Perhaps we are not told because if we knew that they were not true Christians, we would shrug their story off as not applying to us. If we knew that they were true Christians, we might say, “Thank God that this was just a one-time occurrence!” We would not pause and ask ourselves, “Is my faith in Christ genuine? Do I need to deal with the sin of hypocrisy?” We do know that Ananias and Sapphira were a part of the early church. Their story applies to us all!
In Acts 4, we saw the enemy attacking the church from without. The Jewish leaders persecuted the apostles and threatened them with more severe measures if they continued to preach in the name of Jesus. But in spite of (or perhaps because of) their threats, the church continued to grow dramatically. There was a spirit of unity, love, and unusual generosity among the believers (4:32-35). In this context, we are given a positive example of a godly man, Joseph, better known as Barnabas (4:36-37). Then we are given the example of this couple, who put on the mask of hypocrisy and were struck dead by God (5:1-11). This threat of seduction from within is much more subtle and dangerous than opposition from without. It is especially a danger when a church is experiencing God’s blessing and power. The lesson is:
Because we are all prone to the deadly sin of hypocrisy, we should diligently pursue godly character.
We need to be clear on the exact nature of the sin of Ananias and Sapphira. Their sin was not that they had sold their property and had given only a part to the church. In fact, Peter makes plain (5:4) that it would not have been a sin for them to have sold their property and not given anything to the church. Their sin was that they conspired together to deceive the apostles and the church into thinking that they were giving the entire amount, when in fact they kept back a portion for themselves. In other words, they were trying to impress everyone with a higher level of spirituality and commitment than they really had.
Have you ever done that? I hope you do not say “no,” or we might need to have a sudden funeral this afternoon! We’ve all been guilty of trying to impress others with our commitment and devotion to Christ, even though we know in our heart that we are exaggerating. A pastor had been preaching on the importance of daily Bible reading. He and his wife were invited over to a parishioner’s home for dinner. His wife saw a note on the kitchen calendar: “Pastor/Mrs. for dinner—Dust all Bibles” (Reader’s Digest [3/90], p. 129). Note four things about hypocrisy:
Liberal commentators are shocked at this sudden, severe punishment. Ananias is not given a chance to repent, even though his sin seems not all that serious. His wife is not even told of her husband’s death and of what will happen to her if she lies. The instant that she agrees with her husband’s lie, she is struck dead. In this age of tolerance, we might think, “What’s the big deal?”
But we need to view this sin from God’s holy perspective, not from our world’s relativistic view. Jesus always hit hypocrisy hard. In Matthew 23, He pronounced many woes on the scribes and Pharisees, whom He repeatedly called hypocrites. He warned His disciples, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1). Like leaven, hypocrisy starts small and unnoticed. It doesn’t seem to be a big deal. But if it is not quickly checked, it spreads. It deceives the person into thinking that things are right between him and God, when in reality, things are very wrong.
The leaven of hypocrisy can soon infect an entire church. The church at Laodicea thought that things were going well. They said, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing.” But the Lord’s perspective was, “You do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17)!
Some ask why God dealt with Ananias and Sapphira so severely when He does not do so with other hypocrites in the church. Probably, it was because the church was in its infancy, and He needed to set before us a sober lesson of the seriousness of this sin among God’s people. He did the same thing with Achan (Joshua 7; see also Lev. 10:1-3; 2 Sam. 6:6-7). The word “church” first occurs in Acts in verse 11 (out of 16 times). The word means an assembly or congregation of people. Luke wants us to know that the church should live in the holy fear of God and especially should be on guard against this serious sin, hypocrisy.
This couple that fell into this sin were professing Christians, “members” of the church in Jerusalem. This means that we’re all in danger of falling into this subtle sin. We don’t want other Christians or those outside the church to think that we have problems. That wouldn’t be a good testimony, would it? So we put on our spiritual mask when we’re around others, even though we know and our family knows that we do not live as we profess to live. When a prominent Christian is shown to be a hypocrite, the world heaves a sigh of relief, thinking, “Christians are really no different than anyone else. If they’re phonies, then Christianity must not be true.”
Notice also that this sin affects both men and women. Some sins may be more prevalent in men, while other sins are more prevalent with women. But both sexes are vulnerable to hypocrisy. Ananias and Sapphira had agreed together to this act of deception (5:9). Whether you are male or female, you need to guard yourself against hypocrisy.
By the way, some argue that a wife should submit to her husband, even if he asks her to join him in doing wrong. This story shows the error of that view. When Peter asked Sapphira whether they sold the land for the amount that her husband had claimed, she should have obeyed God above her husband (5:29) by telling the truth.
Motive is everything in this sin. If Ananias and Sapphira had sold their land and had told the apostles, “We feel led to give half to the church,” it would not have been a problem. Their sin was the evil intent of their hearts, to make others think that they were more spiritual than they really were. They were motivated by love of self, not by love of God and others. God, who always knows the motives of our hearts, judged them on the spot.
Hypocrisy is always motivated by self-love. We want to impress others, to make them think that we are something that we know in our hearts we are not. Kids, by the way, have a built-in antenna to detect hypocrisy in their parents. Nothing turns kids away from the faith as quickly as hypocritical parents. If they hear you put on your spiritual voice around church people, but you verbally abuse them at home, they can see right through you. They will not be drawn to follow the God you profess to follow. That’s why it is crucial for parents to acknowledge their wrongs and ask forgiveness of their children when they sin against them.
Hypocrisy is short-sighted in several ways:
It was an exciting thing to be in the Jerusalem church in those days. There were the large gatherings in Solomon’s portico, where thousands heard the apostles preach about Jesus (5:12; 2:47). The church had an unusual sense of unity and caring (4:32). The apostles were performing extraordinary miracles to confirm the message of the gospel (4:33; 5:16). Every day there were stories of more people getting saved (5:14). Even by those on the outside held the church in high esteem (5:13). It was easy to get caught up in the group dynamic and to ride on the bandwagon of what was happening, but to lack personal reality with God. That’s what happened to Ananias and Sapphira.
It’s always exciting to be a part of a movement of God’s Holy Spirit. Some of us were a part of the Jesus movement of the 1970’s. The church I grew up in couldn’t attract more than a handful for a midweek service! But I used to go out to Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana and thousands of young people would be there for a mid-week service. The singing was not the traditional hymns, sung halfheartedly to the accompaniment of the organ and piano. Everyone enthusiastically sang new praise choruses, accompanied by long-haired musicians playing guitars and drums. It was a great experience to join in with that sort of gathering. And yet, while many young people truly got saved, there were always some that were just riding on the group experience. It was always sad when they would later fall into some serious sin and abandon the faith.
One of the main ways to avoid hypocrisy is to make sure that you are walking in reality with God every day. Have you personally trusted in Christ as your Savior and Lord? Do you spend time in His Word and in prayer on a regular basis? Do you deal with the sin in your life, especially on the heart level, when His Word confronts you with where you are wrong? If not, you have to start faking it when you’re around other Christians, to keep up the appearance that you’re doing fine. That’s the beginning of hypocrisy.
Ray Stedman (transcribed message, “Body Life,” Peninsula Bible Church, 4/26/70) pointed out that the moment we start pretending to be what we really are not, death enters in, because we are cut off from the vital reality of communion with Christ and His body, the church. We lose the reality of walking in the Spirit. To avoid hypocrisy, we must maintain daily reality with the Lord.
Ananias and Sapphira wanted to look good in front of the apostles and the rest of the church. Barnabas had just given the total amount of a sale of some property. Everyone thought highly of Barnabas. Ananias and Sapphira wanted everyone to think highly of them. But, sadly, they didn’t stop to consider what the living God thought about them.
To avoid hypocrisy, you must live daily with the aim of pleasing God above all else. The minute you start trying to look good to others, without being concerned about what God thinks, you are into hypocrisy. Both Peter and Barnabas later fell into this sin. The church in Antioch had both Jews and Gentiles together in one fellowship. When Peter first visited there, he ate together with the Gentiles, contrary to Jewish customs. But when the Jewish circumcision party showed up, Peter withdrew and only ate with the Jews, out of fear for what they would think. Peter’s hypocrisy wrongly influenced Barnabas. Paul confronted him publicly, and to his credit, Peter accepted the rebuke (Gal. 2:11-14). If such godly men as Peter and Barnabas could be carried away by this sin, then certainly we all need to be on guard!
If Ananias and Sapphira had been thinking about the shortness of life and the certainty of judgment and eternity, they would not have done what they did. But whether we get struck down instantly for our sin or have to stand before God at the judgment, in a few short years we all will face God. Scripture reminds us, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13, NIV). Twice our text mentions that great fear came on all those who heard of what happened to Ananias and Sapphira (5:6, 11). Great fear of God should come on us as well! We’re all a heartbeat away from standing before God and giving an account. Keeping eternity in view will keep us from the sin of hypocrisy.
Ananias and Sapphira warn us of the deadly sin of hypocrisy. But our text not only warns us about what not to be; it also shows us, in both Barnabas and Peter, how we should live.
These men show us four aspects of godly character:
We have already seen (2:4) how the apostles were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Again, before he preached before the council, Peter was filled with the Spirit (4:8). In 11:24 we read that Barnabas “was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” It was the Holy Spirit who showed Peter that Ananias was being deceptive. Peter accuses him of lying to the Holy Spirit (5:3), whom Peter also calls God (5:4).
By way of contrast, Peter says that Satan had filled Ananias’ heart (5:3). As we have seen, to be filled means to be controlled. Peter and Barnabas were under the control of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. Ananias and Sapphira were controlled by Satan in their act of deception because they had yielded to his temptation. Being full of the Holy Spirit and of faith does not mean that a believer will be sinless. As we have seen, both Peter and Barnabas later fell into hypocrisy themselves. But it does mean a daily walk of dependence on the Spirit, yielding to Him so that the fruit of the Spirit grows in our lives. To be full of faith means that we daily trust in God and His promises, rather than leaning on our own schemes or on worldly wisdom.
We hardly remember Barnabas’ real name, Joseph, because his nickname is so prominent. Scholars cannot determine the etymology of the name, but Luke translates it for us as meaning, “son of encouragement.” “Son of” was a common Hebrew designation for a dominating characteristic. James and John were “sons of thunder.” Judas was the “son of perdition.” Barnabas was so marked by his encouraging spirit that he was the “son of encouragement.”
You communicate encouragement by your attitude, your actions, and your words. An encouraging person has an attitude of trust and hope in God that makes others look to His promises. He acts in ways that encourage those who are down. This may mean helping a person with some overwhelming task, or just taking the time to listen to the person’s problems. His words are not sarcastic and demeaning, but full of hope and love. He communicates, “I believe that in the Lord’s strength, you will live in a manner pleasing to Him.” All of us should seek to be sons of encouragement.
Barnabas sold a piece of property and gave it all to the apostles to use in meeting the needs of the poor among them. Barnabas was of priestly descent, and according to the Law, priests could not own property (Num. 18:20; Deut. 10:9). Whether this law was no longer observed (after the exile) or whether Barnabas had just inherited some land and was disposing of it, we do not know. But we do know that he could have spent the money on himself, but he chose to give it to the Lord’s work. As I emphasized last week, believers will grow to be like Jesus, who was rich, but for our sakes became poor, that we, through His poverty might be rich (2 Cor. 8:9). No doubt greed was a factor that motivated Ananias and Sapphira to hold back part of the profit from the sale of their land. As believers, we must put all greed to death and grow in generosity by sharing what God has given to us.
I imagine that Ananias and Sapphira’s gift was quite substantial. If Peter had not been a man of integrity, he could have thought, “I dare not offend these wealthy donors.” Even if he suspected some deception, he would have been careful to praise them for their generosity in hopes that they would give more in the future. But Peter was more concerned with purity in the church than he was with taking a gift that was given with the wrong motives. So he strongly confronted their deception.
Liberal commentators castigate Peter because, they say, he did not display the grace that Jesus showed toward sinners. They say that he was more of the spirit of Elijah calling down fire from heaven, than of Jesus who offered forgiveness to sinners. But Peter did not pronounce the death sentence on Ananias. He rebuked him, but I believe that Peter was a bit surprised when Ananias dropped dead in front of him. With Sapphira, he predicted that the same thing that had just happened to her husband would happen to her. But Peter was simply God’s instrument to speak His truth. It was God who cleansed His church of these hypocrites.
Any time we take a strong stand against sin in the church, someone will accuse us of not being loving. But to tolerate sin in the church, sin that will spread like leaven and contaminate and destroy many others, is not to act with love or compassion. We must always offer forgiveness and restoration to those who repent. But we must never tolerate sin under the banner of love. People of integrity hold both to kindness and truth (Prov. 3:3).
George Verwer, the founder of Operation Mobilization, tells of a time when he was about 19. He heard a man deliver a powerful sermon. It moved Verwer to rededicate his life to Christ. He went up to talk with the man at the end of the service. As he stood there, he noticed all of the church people in their expensive clothes. He also noticed that the speaker was very well dressed, exuding an aura of success. He asked him whether he thought that these people would respond to the message of giving everything for Christ. He speaker looked down at Verwer and said, “See here, young man, I’m an evangelist, and this is my living. This is how I make my money, by preaching and doing God’s work. What I was speaking about, that was all true, but I doubt if anyone would really live that way, unless perhaps there was a war on.” Verwer walked away feeling very shaken.
Hypocrisy is a deadly sin. It destroys the hypocrite and it damages many that are contaminated by it. In this New Year, I urge you to allow God’s Word to confront your life. If you’re playing the religion game, quit now! Get real with the living God. Spend time each day with Him. Judge your sins and turn from them. Seek to grow in godly character. Our God desires truth in the innermost being (Ps. 51:6).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
One of my earliest memories comes from when I was about two or three years old. We lived in an apartment in Los Angeles. My parents had instilled in me that I was never to go into anyone’s house unless they were with me. A neighbor named Fanny offered me an Indian hat made up of different colored feathers. But to get the hat, she wanted me to go into her house. I stood outside and loudly scolded her, “No, Fanny, I will not go into your house!”
Every parent wants to instill unquestioning obedience into his child. His safety and very life may depend on it. And God wants to instill the same kind of obedience, no matter what, into His children. Sometimes obeying God will not bring us into a place of safety, but rather, into danger and harm. But, as soldiers of the cross, we must be ready and willing to obey our Commander without question or complaint.
Our text follows on the story of two disobedient people whom God struck dead as a warning to the early church against the deadly sin of hypocrisy. Verses 12-16 show the church recovering from that frightening incident, reporting both the atmosphere in the church and in the surrounding community. No hypocrites dared to join them, for fear of being struck dead! And yet the Lord was adding many more—Luke has stopped counting—to the church. And the apostles were performing extraordinary miracles of healing and deliverance.
It is in this context of great power and popularity that the Jewish leaders rose up against the apostles, putting them in prison. But the Lord sent an angel to deliver them, and in so doing shows us the theme of this story (5:20): “Go your way, stand and speak to the people in the temple the whole message of this Life.” That command was sure to get them into big trouble! They had just been arrested, but now they are to go right back into the most conspicuous place of all and continue proclaiming the gospel. But they didn’t question the command. They didn’t even go out for breakfast first. They obeyed (5:21), leading to their arrest again. When the high priest confronted them for disobeying their earlier commands, filling Jerusalem with their teaching (5:28), Peter again states the theme (5:29): “We must obey God rather than men.” Peter preaches a short sermon to the Sanhedrin, emphasizing again the issue of obedience (5:32).
When the high priest and his cronies wanted to kill the apostles, Gamaliel intervened, resulting in their being flogged and ordered again to speak no more in the name of Jesus (5:40). So what did the apostles do? “Every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ” (5:42)! They were unstoppable in their obedience to God, especially on the matter of proclaiming the good news about Jesus. Thus the lesson for us is,
No matter what, we must obey God by proclaiming and teaching that Jesus Christ is the risen Savior and Lord.
Our text reveals four marks of obedient Christians:
After what happened to Ananias and Sapphira, we read, “great fear came upon the whole church, and upon all who heard these things” (5:11). None of the rest (those outside the church) dared to associate with them (5:13). What an odd thing, a church that unbelievers would not dare to attend! These early saints had not been to a modern Church Growth school, to learn about making the church user-friendly for outsiders! And yet their church was growing by leaps and bounds!
I would to God that the modern American church would fear and hate sin because they fear and love God, who is holy! We live in a day when if a man preaches the fear of God and the holiness of God, he is labeled as a “fundamentalist.” If a church practices discipline, putting sinning members who refuse to repent out of the church, they are labeled “unloving” or “intolerant.” But sin destroys people. It is never loving to let a person go on in sin. While we must always be kind and patient (2 Tim. 2:24-26), we cannot allow sin to permeate the church like leaven. Obedient Christians will fear the Lord and His holiness. They will judge sin in their own lives first, but also in the church (1 Cor. 5:1-13).
The early church experienced the Lord’s power through the many miracles performed by the apostles (5:12, 15, 16), and through powerful witness and the resulting powerful conversions of sinners. Jesus had told the apostles that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them to be His witnesses (1:8). Peter testifies to the Sanhedrin that it was the Holy Spirit in them that was the source of their power (5:32).
Many say that if the church would only repent of her sins and have faith in God, then we would again see miracles on a par with these recorded in the Book of Acts. But I believe such thinking not to be in line with biblical teaching. It was not every church member who was performing these miracles, but rather the apostles and a few other leading men in the church (Philip, 8:13). The purpose for God granting these miracles was to confirm the gospel message and to authenticate these men as God’s messengers in these early days of the church (Heb. 2:3-4; 2 Cor. 12:12).
While God obviously can do mighty miracles in our day if He so chooses (and He often does such miracles on the frontiers of the gospel), to argue that it is His will to do them as a common occurrence is to ignore the overall teaching of God’s Word. Many fail to note that while the apostles performed many great miracles, and the angel miraculously delivered them from prison, the angel did not spare them from being flogged. (There is a bit of humor here: since the Sadducees did not believe in angels, the Lord sent one to deliver the apostles!) God did not deliver James (12:2) or Paul from prison (Acts24:27) or spare them and most of the other apostles from martyrdom. Paul did not heal Trophimus (2 Tim. 4:20) or tell Timothy to claim healing by faith for his frequent stomach problems (1 Tim. 5:23).
On the one hand, we should never limit God’s power by our unbelief or by our rationalistic theology. We should pray in faith, knowing that all things are possible with God. Yet on the other hand, we should submit to the fact that it is not always His will to deliver us from illness, persecution, or death. Above all, we should be people who are “strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light” (Col. 1:11-12). I would point out that you don’t need steadfastness and patience if God miraculously delivers you! We see God’s mighty power in our text, not only in the miracles of healing, but also in the disciples rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name (5:41).
The Bible commands us as Christians to be subject to governing authorities (Rom. 13:1; 1 Pet. 2:13-14), even when these authorities are evil people. But if the governing authorities command us to do something that would be disobedient to God, then we must obey God, even if it results in our being punished. Christians disagree over civil disobedience on the matter of abortion. While it is evil for our government to permit abortion, and we should pray and work to see the evil laws overturned, the government is not forcing us to abort our children (as the Chinese government does). If it came to that, we then should disobey the government. If the government said that we could not meet as Christians or teach what the Bible says about homosexuality, abortion, or other moral issues, we must disobey the government.
Thus obedient Christians will fear the Lord’s holiness. They will know His power through the Holy Spirit. They will obey Him above all other authorities.
God sent an angel to deliver the apostles, but the angel was not sent to preach the gospel! He told the apostles to go, stand, and speak to the people the whole message of this Life (5:20). All of us who have come to know Christ as Savior are charged to go and proclaim the whole message of this life to the people. Note these five aspects of this proclamation:
This is Peter’s second opportunity before the Sanhedrin. God was gracious to give these evil men another chance to respond to the gospel. In his first encounter, Peter had not minced words (4:10-12). He told these men that they had crucified Jesus, but that God had raised Him from the dead. Further, Jesus was the chief cornerstone which had been rejected by them, the builders. And, there is salvation in no one else. When he gets his second chance, Peter again confronts them with putting Jesus to death by their own hands, by hanging Him on a tree (lit., 5:30). Peter was accusing them of despising Jesus as one accursed of God (Deut. 27:26). He was not tiptoeing around the issue of sin!
The modern “seeker service” approach to evangelism argues that we should not hit people too hard with the gospel. We should make the church a place where people feel good about themselves and the message. Eventually, somehow, we slip the gospel in on them. But if people do not come under conviction as sinners who have despised Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross, why would they need a Savior? What is He saving them from: low self-esteem, as some pervert the gospel? It is only when a person sees the magnitude of his sin that he will flee to Jesus as His Savior. We must not dodge the issue of sin and judgment.
The angel tells the apostles to proclaim the whole message of this Life (5:20), which is a reference to the gospel. Jesus proclaimed that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). He also said, “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes” (John 5:21). He also said, “It is the Spirit who gives life” (John 6:63). Thus the Triune God is both the author and giver of both physical and spiritual life. Spiritually dead people do not just need a moral code to follow. The Pharisees and Sadducees had the moral law, but it did not save them. Spiritually dead people need life, and only God can give it.
Peter exalted Jesus as the only one who could give these hardened men new life. He boldly tells them, “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins” (5:30-31).
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is at the heart of the gospel. If He is not risen, our faith is worthless and we are still in our sins (1 Cor. 15:17). In proclaiming Jesus Christ to people, challenge them to consider the proofs for His resurrection. The entire faith rests on that great fact of history.
Not only did Peter proclaim Jesus as risen from the dead. He also made it clear that God has exalted Jesus to His right hand as a Prince and Savior. Prince is the same word Peter used in 3:15, when he told the Jews that they had put to death the Prince of life. The word means “author” or “leader.” Jesus is the rightful Sovereign of the universe, the author of our salvation and faith (Heb. 2:10; 12:2). Before Him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord (Phil. 2:9-11). He deserves our worship and obedience, since He was willing to lay aside His glory and offer Himself as the sacrifice for our sins. Any message that diminishes the rightful lordship of Jesus as the Prince and Author of salvation is not the gospel. We must exalt Him.
Not only is He the Prince; He is also the Savior. This is the first mention of Jesus as Savior outside of the gospels (I. Howard Marshall, Acts [IVP/Eerdmans], p. 120). Part of the problem with these Jewish leaders was that they did not think that they needed a Savior. They saw themselves as good men. They were Jews by birth. They kept the Mosaic laws and ceremonies. What need did they have for a Savior? Isn’t it amazing that even though they had “disowned the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to them, but put to death the Prince of Life” (3:14-15), these men did not think that they needed a Savior! The most difficult people to reach with the gospel are those who pride themselves in being good people. But the Bible is clear that all have sinned and thus all need Jesus as their Savior if they want to escape God’s righteous judgment.
Peter also exalted Jesus by proclaiming that He has the power to grant repentance and forgiveness of sins, which is every sinner’s main need. Sinners are so far gone in their sins (“dead” is the biblical term, Eph. 2:1) that they cannot repent of their sins by their own power or “free will.” Jesus must grant repentance (see also 11:18).
John Calvin defines repentance as “an inward turning of man unto God, which shows itself afterwards by external works.” He argues that God must give us new life by His Spirit to make us new creatures. He says, “It is a thing as impossible for men to convert themselves as to create themselves. Repentance is, I grant, a voluntary conversion, but whence have we this will, save only because God changes our heart …? And this comes to pass when Christ regenerates thus by his Spirit” (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker reprint], p. 218 on Acts 5:31; I updated the English).
Along with repentance, Jesus Christ grants forgiveness of sins. That word should bring hope to every heart, since all have sinned against God’s holiness; thus all need His forgiveness. When Jesus grants forgiveness, it means that He will not bring our sins up against us for judgment, since He has paid the price that we deserved, namely, spiritual death. There is nothing that we can do to atone for our sins. Jesus paid it all! God does not just remove the guilt and penalty of our sins; He also imputes the very righteousness of Jesus to our account, so that we stand before Him completely clean!
If you are here without a repentant heart and without forgiveness for your sins, then ask Jesus to give them to you. They are His gift, and He gives them freely to all who will come to Him. But maybe you’re thinking, “I can see where He would give repentance and forgiveness to normal people. But I’m a really bad sinner.” You need to know that …
Remember that Peter was preaching to the very men who had callously murdered the spotless Lamb of God. He tells them that Jesus Christ will grant repentance to Israel (to them!). And this was not the first time he had made this offer! God’s grace is so great that it extends to those who murdered His Son, and not just once, but again and again! As we know, the student of Gamaliel, Saul of Tarsus, who was not as tolerant toward these followers of Jesus as his teacher was, would one day receive God’s gift of repentance and forgiveness. He called himself the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). If God offered mercy to the Sanhedrin and to Paul, He has plenty for every sinner who will receive it. We err if we think that anyone is too far gone for Christ to save. Thank God that Jesus will grant repentance and forgiveness even to the men that crucified Him!
When the angel let them out of prison, he told them to go to the temple and speak to the people, and they obeyed. After they were arrested again, Peter says to the Sanhedrin, “We must obey God rather than men.” He had said a similar thing in his previous encounter, “We cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard” (4:19-20). Even after their backs were laid open by the 39 lashes, we read, “And every day, in the temple [they didn’t stop going there!] and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ” (5:42).
What does it take to get you to stop proclaiming the gospel? Spurgeon says (“The Former and the Latter Rain,” on Jer.5:24, from “Grace Quotes,” on the internet),
But we are so gentle and quiet, we do not use strong language about other people’s opinions; but let them go to hell out of charity to them. We are not at all fanatical. We would not wish to save any sinner who does not particularly wish to be saved. Neither would we thrust our opinions upon them, though we know they are being lost for lack of the knowledge of Christ crucified. Do not drivel away your existence upon baser ends, but count the glory of Christ to be the only object worthy of your manhood’s strength, the spread of the truth the only pursuit worthy of your mental powers. Spend and be spent in your Master’s service.
This proclamation involves confronting sinners with their sin. It involves exalting Jesus Christ. It involves offering repentance and forgiveness to the worst of sinners. It should be bold and persistent. Finally,
I can only comment briefly. It is important to realize before you proclaim Christ to others that not all will respond positively. Some will be irrationally angry at you, as the Sanhedrin was (5:33). They were motivated by jealousy (5:17), because their power and position were being threatened. Others will respond with reasoned tolerance without acceptance, as Gamaliel did (5:34-39). His thinking reflects some belief in God’s sovereignty, but it is mixed with worldly wisdom. God permits false religions to flourish, and so his thinking is not correct, although God used it to spare the death of the apostles at this point. Thankfully, God will use the foolishness of the message of the cross to save some (5:14). At times of revival, such as Acts records, many will be saved. At other times, men have labored faithfully for a lifetime and yet seen little or no fruit. But whatever the results, we must obey God by proclaiming and teaching the whole message of this Life in Jesus.
Richard Greenham served as a pastor just outside of Cambridge, England, from 1570-1590. He rose daily at four and each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday preached to his congregation at daybreak before they went into their fields. On Sunday he preached twice, and on Sunday nights and Thursday mornings he catechised the children. He was a godly and faithful man who, as he put it, preached Christ crucified unto my self and the country people. Yet his ministry was virtually fruitless. He told his successor that he perceived no good wrought by his ministry on any but one family.
Richard Baxter ministered at Kidderminster, England, from 1641-1660, except for five years during the civil war. It was a town of about 2,000 adults. When he came, he found them an ignorant, rude, and reveling people. Hardly one family on a street professed to follow God. The church held about 1,000, but it proved to be too small. They had to build five galleries to hold the crowds. On the Lord’s Day, as you walked the streets, you would hear hundreds of families singing psalms and repeating the sermons. When Baxter left, on many streets there would hardly be a single family that did not follow the Lord. (These stories told by J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness [Crossway Books], pp. 43-45).
Why the difference between these two men’s ministries? Both men obeyed God no matter what. God’s sovereignty is the only explanation. Both men will receive the Lord’s commendation, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”
What about you? Is there a matter where you know God’s will, but you’re refusing to obey? Whatever the hindrance, whatever the cost, obey Him. Be faithful to His command to proclaim the good news about Christ, and you will someday hear those same wonderful words, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Someone has said, “If you ever find the perfect church, don’t join it because you will spoil it!” I often tell the new members class, “I promise that if you join this church, we will at some point offend you.” Or, as some wag put it, “To dwell above with the saints we love, O that will be glory! But to dwell below with the saints we know, well, that’s a different story!”
To have been in the early church would have been a wonderful experience. God was working in powerful ways. Daily there were reports of new people coming to faith in the risen Savior. It was an exciting time. But the early church was not a perfect church. We’ve already seen the problem of hypocrisy, with Ananias and Sapphira. Now Luke shows us another problem that occurred in the midst of this phenomenal growth: a complaint arose that threatened to split the church.
Luke has followed a pattern from chapter one that alternates between a picture of the church alone and the church in relation to the world (James Boice, Acts [Baker], pp. 103-104, develops this). In chapter one, the church is alone, gathered for prayer in the upper room, where they elect an apostle to replace Judas. In Acts 2, we see the church in the world. Peter preaches and 3,000 souls are saved. At the end of Acts 2, Luke gives another picture of the church life. In Acts 3 through 4:22, we see the church again in the world, with the first instance of persecution. For the rest of chapter 4 and through the first part of chapter 5, we again get an inside view of the church. They gather for prayer, and we learn of their unusual generosity and care for one another. But we also learn of the hypocrisy of Ananias and Sapphira. Then (5:12 ff.) Luke again turns to the church in the world, describing the apostles’ witness before the Sanhedrin, resulting in their being flogged. Now Luke again turns inward, showing us this problem that occurred within the church at this time of unusual growth. By introducing us to Stephen, he sets the stage for the next outward scene, where Stephen is stoned and the church is scattered.
By this alternating pattern, Luke seems to be showing us that the church must maintain a balance. Some churches are so outwardly focused that they fail to attend to problems within. If those problems are not addressed, the church may grow at first, but eventually the internal problems will result in discord and disintegration. Other churches are so inwardly focused that they forget their mission in the world. If they do not recover their sense of mission, they will be consumed with bickering and self-centeredness, leading to demise. Healthy churches maintain the balance of dealing with internal problems, but also staying focused on the task of taking the gospel to the world.
Our text reveals to us some principles for solving problems that arise in the local church. To sum up:
To solve problems in the local church, both leaders and people must be spiritual people in submission to God’s Word.
Since seven is the biblical number of perfection, I want to give you seven principles for problem solving in the church, derived from our text. First, what do I mean by “spiritual” people?
A spiritual person builds his life on God’s Word, in dependence on God through prayer. In the words of Proverbs 3:4-5, he trusts in the Lord with all his heart and does not lean on his own understanding. Rather, in all his ways he acknowledges the Lord. God’s Word permeates all of his thinking and doing. He does not act with human or worldly wisdom, but in accordance with the wisdom revealed in Scripture.
Note our text’s emphasis on these themes: The apostles hear of this problem in the church. Their first response is, “It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God” (6:2). They reiterate this in 6:4: “We will devote ourselves to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.” The result was, “the word of God kept on spreading” (6:7). The requirement for these men who were to deal with the problem was that they be “men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom” (6:3). Stephen, one of the seven men, was “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” (6:5). Before the apostles laid hands on them, publicly setting them apart for this ministry, they prayed (6:6). The whole problem-solving process was oriented to God through prayer and God’s Word.
This is vital to solving any problem in the church! The entire congregation, especially the leaders, must walk in daily, practical reality with the living God, in submission to His Word, in dependence on Him in prayer. There is nothing wrong with conducting church business according to Robert’s Rules of Order, if people are not self-willed, not acting on the basis of worldly wisdom, not grabbing for power or influence. But I’ve been in church meetings where Robert’s Rules were followed, but the Spirit and the Word were effectively absent. Many churches are run like American politics, with influential men forming power bases, working behind the scenes to get enough votes to orchestrate a victory. But they are not seeking the mind of God in submission to the Word and the Holy Spirit. Such power-hungry men know how to use prayer to make their agenda sound spiritual; but they are seeking their will for the church, not God’s will. Spiritual men seek God and His will for His church through prayer and God’s Word.
Today we have many books on church management, conflict resolution, and church growth that are based more on worldly wisdom than on God’s Word. These books give the overall impression of being based on the Bible, but often they are based on the latest secular ideas. If you’re not discerning, you end up swallowing the whole thing. Spiritual people may glean some insights from such books. But spiritual people judge everything by God’s Word, which is our only authority for faith and practice.
Note also that spiritual people are concerned for the total person. In other words, spirituality isn’t limited to the soul, but also to the body. This problem arose in connection with distributing food to needy widows in the church. The Bible has a special concern for widows and orphans (see 1 Tim. 5:3-16). In that culture, widows often were left destitute, with no family and no means of support. The church tried to meet these needs. True spirituality is not impractical and other-worldly. Spiritual people care about people’s physical and spiritual needs. They don’t just dish out pious platitudes, but they offer real help to those in need. As Amy Carmichael once pointed out to some critics of her ministry to the needy people of India, souls are rather securely fastened to bodies!
You may be thinking, “If everyone in the church were spiritual, there wouldn’t be any problems.” But that is overly idealistic.
We have already read of the sense of unity and community in this early church. They had the best leaders imaginable in the twelve apostles. They were growing in a way that can only be attributed to the power of the Holy Spirit. And yet they had this problem.
Whenever you have growth through new conversions, you will have problems. Spiritual babies always dirty their spiritual diapers. They wake you up in the middle of the night with their crying. Like all babies, spiritual babies are usually self-centered at first. Even mature believers are not exempt from self-centeredness, struggles, and sin. So every church, especially every growing church, is going to have problems.
This problem was probably not deliberate. The Hellenistic Jews felt like their widows were being slighted, while the Hebrew widows were getting more than their fair share in the daily distribution of food. The Hellenistic Jews mostly came from outside of Palestine, spoke Greek, and were largely influenced by the Greek culture. The Hebrews were Jews who spoke Aramaic and grew up in a Jewish culture, mostly in Palestine. Both groups in the Jerusalem church had come to faith in Jesus as God’s Messiah and Savior. But getting saved did not erase all of these background factors. It is naïve to think, “Since we’re all born again, we won’t experience any conflicts.” Salvation does not eradicate different cultural assumptions and attitudes. This applies both to the church and to entering a marriage, by the way!
Acts 6:1 is the first description in Acts of Christians as “disciples,” which means “learners,” referring to those who are learning to follow Jesus as Lord. That is a lifelong process. There would not be all of the exhortations to Christians to love and forbearance in the New Testament, if it were automatic. Even spiritual people have problems and conflicts.
Note also that this problem arose out of a ministry. It was because they were trying to serve the Lord by meeting the needs of these widows that this conflict arose, not because they were worldly-minded and doing nothing about the problem. Christians often naively get involved in serving the Lord with the assumption that everyone will get along since “we’re all doing the Lord’s work.” But often it is when we try to serve the Lord together that conflicts erupt, which never would have happened if we had not been serving the Lord. It’s shocking to discover that the Lord’s other servants do not all agree with my way of doing things!
We are not told whether the Hellenistic Jews went directly to the apostles and discussed this problem, or whether the apostles heard about it through the grapevine. We are told that the Hellenistic Jews had a complaint. The Greek word means a “murmuring.” Probably they had grumbled amongst themselves and word spread until the apostles heard about it. But God’s way to deal with a problem is not to grumble amongst the body, and not to leave the church, but to go directly to the leaders who can listen and deal with the problem in a constructive manner. Leaders cannot deal with problems that they do not know about.
When the apostles heard about the problem, they called together the whole congregation. They did not blame anyone or lash out in self-defense. Rather, they explained their philosophy of ministry, laid out some guidelines, assigned the congregation the task of finding seven qualified men to deal with the problem, and gave those men the authority to deal with it.
It is significant that the apostles did not say, “It’s time that we divide the church up into the First Hellenistic Church of Jerusalem and the First Hebrew Church of Jerusalem.” They never considered division as an option. Even though these two groups had diverse backgrounds and even different mother tongues, they wanted to work this problem out in a spirit of unity, not division.
There are legitimate times to separate from professing Christians or churches, although that subject is beyond the scope of this message. But unless there are biblical grounds to separate, God is glorified when people from diverse cultures and backgrounds worship Him together on the common ground of salvation through Jesus Christ. One Church Growth trend today is to plant churches that are targeted to reach only one segment of our society, such as the Generation Xer’s or the Baby Boomers. That’s not biblical. God wants us to reach all segments of society so that those from every walk of life will gather in love and unity to sing His praises. So we must commit ourselves to work through our problems whenever it does not compromise essential truth.
Not even the apostles could do it all. They were gifted and called to the ministry of prayer and preaching the Word. They were not control-freaks, who had to direct every aspect of church ministry. They were willing to delegate responsibility to other godly men who could deal with the problems. The laying on of hands symbolized the apostles giving recognition and approval to these capable men to carry on this aspect of ministry.
One key to solving church problems is to recognize and implement the division of labor on the basis of spiritual gifts. No one man or group of men, however gifted, can carry on the work of the local church. It is only when every member gets involved in serving in accordance with his or her gifts that the church will be strong.
Also, we need to understand that often people grumble about problems that are directly related to their area of spiritual gift. If someone complains that the church does not do enough in outreach, you are probably looking at a person with the gift of evangelism. If she complains that the church is not friendly enough, chances are she has the gift of hospitality. The one who grumbles about how disorganized the church is probably is gifted in administration. The man who laments the lack of discernment of spiritual error is probably a prophet. The key to resolving differences is for each person to recognize the validity of all the gifted members and to use his (or her) gift to work on the problems that he perceives. The church will only be strong when every member commits himself to the ministry that God has gifted him to do.
Acts 6:4 (along with Eph. 4:11-12 & 2 Tim. 4:1-5) has been one of my main directional verses in ministry. It has kept me focused on my major task when many other things pressure me to spend my time in other ways. Prayer and the ministry of the Word are interrelated. You cannot properly preach the Word unless you wait upon God in prayer. If you neglect prayer, all you’re doing is putting together clever sermons that may entertain, but surely will lack God’s power. Also, prayer is essential because even when God has gifted you to preach His Word, you will always be overwhelmed with how inadequate you are for the task (2 Cor. 2:16; 3:5). You must pray that God will bless your preaching of His Word with lasting fruit.
Many pastors get carried away with building the church through management and marketing principles, to the neglect of God’s Word. If a man is not committed first and foremost to the ministry of God’s Word, he should not be the preaching pastor of a local church. It takes time to prepare biblical sermons. That’s why the apostles said, “It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables” (6:2). They could not do both. They were not despising the work of serving tables; it was rather a matter of only having so much time in a week. Their focus was on the prayerful study and proclamation of God’s Word. If a shepherd slights his responsibility to feed the flock, even to do other good things, he fails in the primary biblical responsibility of a shepherd.
Years ago my office was at home. Marla would screen my calls while I was studying for the weekly sermon. One day a woman from the national headquarters of Pioneer Girls called and wanted to talk with me about how that ministry was going in our church. It was only with great difficulty that Marla finally persuaded her that I had no clue how that ministry was going, and if she really wanted to find out, she needed to call the woman who headed that program. The reason that woman couldn’t believe what she was hearing is that so many pastors neglect the principle of devoting themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.
The apostles did not say, “Find seven willing bodies and have them serve tables.” To serve tables, these men had to be of the highest spiritual caliber. The congregation wisely chose seven men with Greek names, who probably were from Greek backgrounds. The Hebrews did not demand equal representation or a majority on this board. There may have been seven Hebrews already on this board, we don’t know. But they let the Hellenistic men minister to the Hellenistic widows. Note the qualifications:
(1) They had to be men, not women. The Greek word refers to males. We do not know if these men were the first “deacons.” Probably they fulfilled that role, but the office did not originate until later. While there is a biblical basis for having female deacons (1 Tim. 3:11; Rom. 16:1), they must be under male elders who have oversight of the church (1 Tim. 2:11-15; 3:1-7).
(2) They were plural in number. Every reference to church leaders indicates a plurality of elders in a singular local church. While one man may be the leader among equals, as Peter was among the apostles, he is not to be an autocratic leader who calls the shots without regard for his fellow elders. We do not know why the apostles here designate seven men. Maybe they knew that the job required that many men.
(3) They were to be men of good reputation. The Greek word (“witness”) means that these men had to be attested by others to be men of integrity. Reputations take time to build, and so it is implied that these men were not new believers.
(4) They had to be full of the Spirit. Someone has pointed out that everybody is full of something, either of self or of God’s Spirit. These men had to be under the Spirit’s control.
(5) They had to be full of wisdom. They needed to know how to apply God’s Word to practical, everyday situations. Such wisdom does not come apart from maturity and experience.
The main thing to note is that to carry out this ministry that involved handling and distributing resources, these men had to be godly. It is a major mistake to put men who are not spiritually qualified into a responsible ministry position.
The church is primarily an organism—the living body of which Christ is the head. But all organisms are organized. It is a mistake to over-emphasize organization to the neglect of organism. It is also a mistake to over-emphasize organism and neglect proper organization. The need for new organization grows as the body grows. The apostles here were willing to change the organizational structure of the church to meet this legitimate need. They didn’t cry, “We’ve never done it that way before!”
Note also the blend between apostolic direction and congregational participation. The apostles did not choose these seven men; they delegated that job to the congregation after giving the necessary qualifications. The congregation brought the seven back to the apostles, who validated the choice by praying and laying hands on them. Later, Paul appointed elders in every church to have oversight. He gave us the qualifications to recognize elders (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). The church is not a democracy, but wise elders will involve the congregation on important decisions. The entire church must be functionally under the headship of Jesus Christ, seeking to honor Him and follow His will.
To sum up all of these principles: to solve problems in the local church, both leaders and people must be spiritual people in submission to God’s Word. Verse 7 shows the result of this problem being solved: God’s Word kept on spreading, the number of disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and even a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. Humanly speaking, they would have been the most difficult to reach. They would have been entrenched in the Jewish ceremonies and customs. They would have been prone toward salvation by works or because of their Jewish birth. They would not have seen that they were sinners in need of a Savior. Yet God worked mightily through the gospel to bring them to salvation!
If you do not know Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, that is your first need. You must come to Him as a sinner, let go of your own good works, and trust in the shed blood of Jesus as the only basis for forgiveness and eternal life. If you are a Christian, but are not using your gifts to serve the Lord, you need to seek God for how He wants you to serve Him. If you’re grumbling about a problem in the church, that may be a clue as to where He wants you to get involved. All of us need to make sure that we are walking daily in reality with Jesus Christ, growing in our knowledge of and obedience to His Word.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
When Ruth Bell, who later would marry Billy Graham, was a little girl, she had a passion for martyrdom. She grew up in China, where her parents were missionaries. She used to pray every night that the Lord would let her be a martyr before the end of the year. She wanted bandits to capture and behead her for Jesus’ sake. Her sister, Rosa, used to think, “How horrid!” So every night when Ruth prayed like that, Rosa would pray, “Lord, don’t You listen to her.” (A Foreign Devil in China, John Pollock [World Wide Publications], p. 174.)
While we should not pray for martyrdom, we should desire to imitate the bold witness of those who have given their lives for the sake of the gospel. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, left us an example of a godly, courageous witness. His name means “victor’s crown.” Today we will look at “Stephen, the Man” (6:8-15); next week we will study, “Stephen, the Message” (7:1-53); and then we will consider, “Stephen, the Martyr” (7:54-8:1a). Today, by studying “Stephen, the Man,” we learn that …
Godly character is the basis for courageous witness for Jesus Christ, no matter what the results.
I am not suggesting that a person should wait until he has developed mature character before he begins to bear witness for Christ. Often brand new believers are the best witnesses for Christ, in spite of their spiritual immaturity, assuming that they have truly repented of their sin. But I am saying that godly character gives the most solid foundation for powerful witness, especially when the witness is persecuted. God often uses the person’s godly character under fire to convict those to whom he is bearing verbal witness.
We met Stephen in our last study, where he was picked as one of the seven men to help distribute food to the Hellenistic widows in a fair manner. We do not know what kind of a time gap exists between the commissioning of these seven prototype deacons and the incident described in our text. Perhaps Stephen had done well in this administrative job, so that he could delegate the daily details to someone else, freeing him up to preach the gospel. As we saw last week, not even the apostles could do both, so it is not likely that Stephen carried on both ministries at the same time. Five inner qualities and one outward quality show Stephen to be a man of godly character.
This was a requirement that the apostles laid down for the seven men who were to serve tables (6:3). They had to have a good reputation, specifically, of being full of the Holy Spirit. This did not refer to an ecstatic experience, but to a daily walk under the control of the Holy Spirit that had continued for a long enough time to produce the evident fruit of the Spirit.
This quality is implied of Stephen in 6:10, where it states that his opponents could not cope with the wisdom and Spirit with which he was speaking. It is debatable whether “spirit” refers to the Holy Spirit or to the powerful manner in which Stephen spoke. But even if it refers to the manner of Stephen’s speaking, the power behind it came from the Holy Spirit. As Jesus had told His disciples, when they would be delivered up before synagogues and rulers, the Holy Spirit would teach them in that very hour what they needed to say (Luke 12:12). Thus Stephen’s wisdom and spirit in arguing with these Hellenistic Jews came from his being full of the Holy Spirit. That Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit in his defense before the Sanhedrin is specifically stated in 7:55.
Biblically, the main evidence of being filled with the Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). Those qualities are not produced overnight or by an ecstatic experience, but over months and years of walking in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16). Being full of the Spirit does not imply sinless perfection. No one achieves that in this life. Even the most godly of saints have their areas of imperfection and weakness. Even after a lifetime of walking in the Spirit, a godly man or woman can fall into sin, even into serious sin (David is a solemn warning!).
The fullness of the Spirit is a matter of progressive maturity. A new believer may be as yielded to the Holy Spirit as he knows how to be, but he will not demonstrate the fullness of the Spirit in the same manner as a man who has walked with God for many years. The main thing is daily to walk in submission to and dependence on the Spirit of God. As we do that, He grows His fruit in our hearts and lives. He will give us the power to bear witness of Christ to those who are lost. Our godly character, as seen in the fruit of the Spirit, will back up our verbal witness. A person who claims to be a Christian, but whose character is ungodly, should keep quiet about being a Christian, because the enemy will use his inconsistent life to mock the name of Christ.
This was the second requirement for the men who served tables (6:3). It is also seen in Stephen in 6:10. The Greek word for “wisdom” is used only four times in Acts, twice of Stephen (6:3, 10) and twice in his message before the Sanhedrin (7:10, 22). Proverbs 2:6 states, “For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.” Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Thus wisdom comes from knowing God, and Scripture reveals His wisdom.
Wisdom comes from a Hebrew word meaning “skill.” It is used of the craftsmen who had the skill to make the tabernacle and the furniture that went in it (Exod. 36:1, 2). Thus it has the nuance of the skill to live a life that is truly beautiful. It refers to right conduct in obedience to God’s will, not just to mastering a body of knowledge. God’s wisdom is summed up in Jesus Christ and the cross. To those who are perishing, the cross is foolishness, but to those who have been called by God, Christ is both “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:18, 24). To be people full of wisdom, we must grow in our understanding of the cross of Christ, where human pride is humbled and God’s grace is exalted. Every system of salvation that mingles human good works with God’s grace nullifies the cross and is opposed to God’s wisdom. Faithful witnesses, like Stephen, will refute the wisdom of this world and will extol the wisdom of Christ and the cross.
Stephen is described in 6:5 as being full of faith, referring to his faith in God. Stephen’s sermon in chapter 7 shows that he believed in a sovereign God who called Abraham out of a pagan country and through His covenant dealings with Abraham and his descendants, brought Jesus the Righteous One to save His people, in spite of their history of rebellion. God is sovereign even in the matter of the cross of Christ (2:23; 4:27-28).
You can only be full of faith if you believe in a sovereign God who uses even the wicked deeds of people to accomplish His eternal purpose. If God’s predestination means, as many say, that God looked down through history and saw in advance who would believe in Him, and put them on His list of the elect, then man’s will, not God’s will, is the sovereign determiner of what happens. Can you imagine, God seeing that I would choose Him, so He says, “Well, good, that’s what I wanted anyway!” Or, when Israel stoned her prophets, God saying, “Well, I’d really rather they wouldn’t do such things, but I guess I’ll have to work it into My plan somehow!” How could we trust a God who did not work all things after the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11)? When we join Stephen in understanding how God is sovereignly working our suffering and perhaps even our martyrdom into His plan, we will be full of faith.
The same thing is said of Jesus Christ, who was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus was God’s grace personified. With regard to Stephen, the phrase implies that he had a personal understanding and experience of God’s grace as revealed in the cross of Christ. He knew that salvation is not by our works of righteousness, but rather by the undeserved favor of God, shown to us while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8; Titus 3:5-6). “If it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Rom. 11:6). Stephen’s Jewish opponents boasted in their observance of the law, although as we will see, they were blind to their own violation of it. But Stephen boasted in the grace of God, freely bestowed on undeserving sinners.
A person who understands and lives God’s grace as seen in the cross also becomes a person who shows grace to others. An inward experience of grace flows outward into a gracious spirit toward others. Stephen’s being full of grace means that he was a gracious man. He did not curse his persecutors as they threw stones to crush his bones, but rather blessed them by praying, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” (7:60). The most effective witnesses have a clear understanding of the gospel of God’s grace and they are gracious toward others, even to those who are rude, offensive, or do them harm.
God gave Stephen the ability to perform “great wonders and signs among the people” (6:8). These works of power are not described so that readers would gawk; they are simply reported. Whether this power came upon him after the apostles laid hands on him or before, we are not told. Except for the 12 apostles, only Stephen, Philip (8:6-7), and Barnabas (15:12) in the early church are reported to have performed miracles. The tense of the verb (“was performing,” 6:8) indicates that Stephen was doing these miraculous works frequently.
As I said in an earlier message, God can do miracles any time He pleases, and we should not limit Him by our restrictive theology or little faith. But the biblical evidence is that gift of performing miracles regularly was limited to this transitional period for the purpose of confirming the testimony of the apostles (Heb. 2:3-4; 2 Cor. 12:12). As I also said, God’s mighty power is shown in our lives when we patiently and joyfully endure trials, not just when we are miraculously delivered from them (Col. 1:11-12). When unbelievers see us going through trials with joy and thanksgiving, it provides the platform for powerful verbal witness.
Thus Stephen’s inner qualities, being full of the Holy Spirit, wisdom, faith, grace, and power, show his godly character.
I’m not sure what the face of an angel looks like, but Stephen had such a countenance as he stood before the council. I presume that Luke got this report from Paul, who was there. Whether it was a radiant glow, like the shining of Moses’ face when he came down from the mountain, or a serene calmness, we can’t say. But his face did not look normal. Howard Marshall says, “The description is of a person who is close to God and reflects some of his glory as a result of being in his presence (Ex. 34:29ff.)” (Acts [IVP/Eerdmans], p. 131).
Bob and Arlene Powers, who now serve in Poland, recently told me that people in Eastern Europe do not smile in public very often. If you just walk down the street with a joyful countenance, and say “hello” to people, you stand out. Our faces should reflect to people that we have been in God’s presence, and that we have His joy and peace in our hearts.
Because of Stephen’s godly character, he was able powerfully and courageously to preach to the Hellenistic Jews from the Synagogue of the Freedmen. The Freedmen were descendants of Jewish slaves captured by Pompey in 63 B.C. and taken to Rome. When they were later expelled from Rome, some went to Jerusalem and formed a synagogue there. Scholars are divided over how many synagogues are represented in 6:9, but probably there were two: the Freedmen, Cyrenians, and Alexandrians on the one hand; and the men from Cilicia and Asia on the other (A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament [Broadman], p. 788). Paul was from Cilicia (a province in southern Asia Minor) and may have been one of the debaters who could not cope with Stephen’s wisdom.
Stephen may have been a member of one of these synagogues. The early Christians did not immediately leave the Jewish worship services until they were forced out by persecution. But when Stephen began to preach that Jesus Christ was the end of the law for righteousness for those who believe (Rom. 10:4), and that Jesus superceded Moses as the prophet of whom Moses spoke (7:37), it was too much for these Hellenistic Jews. First they tried to refute him by debate. When that didn’t work, they used false witnesses, stirred up the people, and dragged him before the Sanhedrin. They accused him of speaking against the temple (“this holy place”), and the Law (6:13). They charged him with claiming that Jesus would destroy the temple and the customs that Moses had handed down (6:14). Stephen’s courageous witness teaches us four things:
Why couldn’t these men see what Stephen saw, that Jesus Christ is God’s Messiah and Savior? Why weren’t they persuaded by the great wonders and signs that Stephen performed? Why weren’t they convinced by his superior logic and debating skills? The biblical answer is, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). They are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart” (Eph. 4:18).
Jesus asked the Jews who did not believe in Him, “Why do you not understand what I am saying?” He answered His own question, “It is because you cannot hear My word” (John 8:44). He also said, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44). Thus when we talk to people about the Lord, we must pray that He would open their hearts to respond to the message (Acts 16:14).
We often think, “Drug addicts, prostitutes, and hardened criminals are blinded and hardened against the gospel. But good, church-going, religious folks are more open.” Not true! These Hellenistic Jews built their whole lives around religion, but they did not know God in a personal way and they did not have their sins forgiven. They are about to lynch an innocent man in the name of their religion. Religion can never save a person from sin, because it relies on human effort and good works. Religion often keeps a person from salvation because it fosters self-righteousness and pride. A religious person must humble his pride and admit that he is a sinner by coming to the cross of Jesus Christ for salvation.
This is especially true when we talk to religious blinded, hardened sinners! The truth that Stephen preached convicted these men of their sins and threatened their pride, so they tried to refute it. When that failed, they attacked the messenger. That is a common ploy of the enemy. When you can’t defeat the message, go after the messenger, either by deceit or by violence. These men used both against Stephen.
Their false witnesses probably were not fabricating lies out of nothing. Rather, they took statements that Stephen had made and twisted them. He had claimed that Jesus superceded Moses and instituted the New Covenant that was better than the old. They did not bother to see if Scripture predicted such things about Messiah. They simply accused Stephen and the Jesus he proclaimed as speaking against the temple and the customs of Moses. When that didn’t stop him, they used force and finally death to silence him.
I have heard a well-known evangelist say, “People are eager to hear about Christ. All we have to do is tell them.” True, God has prepared many hearts to respond. But don’t be surprised if you encounter fierce opposition. Satan doesn’t sit on the sidelines when someone like Stephen boldly proclaims the truth.
Stephen was performing “great wonders and signs.” He had superior logic and wisdom in debating these men. But that did not break through the hardness of their hearts. They were blind to the contradictions in their own logic and behavior. They accused Stephen of speaking against the Law, and yet in violation of the ninth commandment, they used false witnesses to slander him! They did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, so why did they worry about Stephen’s saying that Jesus will destroy this place (6:14)? How could a dead man do that?
I’m not saying that we should not use logic and wisdom to try to convince people of the truth of the gospel. I am saying that logic, wisdom, and even miracles are not enough to convert a sinner. Only God’s mighty power can do that, as He later proved with Paul.
Thus, Stephen shows us that godly character is the basis for courageous witness.
God often works in ways that confound even the logic of His saints. To sacrifice a man of Stephen’s caliber after such a short ministry seems inefficient and illogical. To allow a scoundrel like Caiaphas to rule as high priest over the Jews for 18 years seems wrong. Why not strike that wicked man dead and allow Stephen and other godly men to have long and fruitful ministries? God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform! Through Stephen’s death, Paul got saved. But first the church was scattered through persecution, resulting in a more widespread witness. Whether the godly die young by violent deaths, and the wicked live long and prosper, is God’s sovereign business. Our business is to be faithful to His Great Commission and leave the results to Him.
Years ago the Romanian pastor, Joseph Tson, ran away from his Communist country to study theology in England. In 1972, when he was ready to go back home, he discussed his plans with his fellow students. They pointed out that he might be arrested at the border. One student asked, “Joseph, what chances do you have of successfully implementing your plans?” Joseph smiled and said to himself, “Now this is typically Western thinking.” He later wrote, “Chances of success? I never thought in those terms. My thinking was in terms of obedience. I knew that the king said, ‘Go,’ and I had to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and go.”
Tson turned the question around and asked God, “What if I ask You about success?” The Lord gave him Matthew 10:16, “I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.” The Lord said to him, “Tell me, what chance does a sheep surrounded by wolves have of surviving five minutes, let alone of converting the wolves? Joseph, that’s how I send you: totally defenseless and without a reasonable hope of success. If you are willing to go like that, go. If you are not willing to be in that position, don’t go.” (Pastoral Renewal, [6/86, p. 178).
Ask God to give you the godly character of Stephen so that you will be a courageous witness for Jesus Christ. Leave the results to Him. Whether you lose your life as a martyr or whether God protects you, you will, like Stephen, wear the victor’s crown.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
In 1777, William Dodd, a well-known London clergyman, was condemned to be hanged for forgery. When his last sermon, delivered in prison, was published, a friend commented to Samuel Johnson that the effort was far better than he had thought the man capable of. Dr. Johnson replied, “Depend upon it, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.”
I cannot say whether Stephen sensed that he was about to be stoned to death when he delivered this message before the Sanhedrin, but his mind was wonderfully concentrated! More than just speaking well because of the threat of death, Stephen spoke powerfully because he was filled with the Holy Spirit (7:55). It is the longest sermon in Acts, and so the Holy Spirit thought it to be important enough for Luke to record it to the extent that he did.
Perhaps Luke wanted his largely Gentile audience to get a brief history of God’s dealings with Israel. The sermon also serves as a transition to the Gentile mission that follows this chapter, in that it shows Israel’s continued stubborn rejection of God’s message and messengers. It shows that God had worked in many places and ways with His servants down through the centuries, and so worship is not limited to the land of Palestine or to the temple. Like Abraham, who obediently followed the Lord, so God’s people must go where He leads.
Stephen was charged with speaking against Moses, against God, against the temple, and against the law and the customs handed down by Moses (6:11. 13, 14). While overall his message shows the charges to be false, it is more a sermon that traces God’s historical dealings with Israel, Israel’s history of rebellion against God, and a climax that indicts his hearers of the very charges that they were bringing against him. They were guilty of rejecting Moses and the law, and even worse, they had just killed the Righteous One whom God had sent for their salvation. Thus the overall theme is that …
Stephen’s sermon points us to the sovereign, abundant grace of God toward rebellious sinners, but also to the danger of hardening our hearts against God’s grace.
Stephen’s message focuses on three issues: (1) the patriarchal period (7:2-16); (2) Moses and the law (7:17-43); and, (3) the tabernacle and temple (7:44-50). The conclusion (7:51-53) is a scathing denunciation of the Sanhedrin, who were following in the rebellious pattern of their forefathers. First we will look at the explanation of Stephen’s message, and then at the application of it.
Rather than working through the message in detail, which would take far more time than I have, I want to show you three dominant themes that are woven throughout it. Also, there are several difficult historical problems that I do not have time to comment on. If you are interested in these, you can consult the best commentaries. But I will mention one as an example.
In verse 16, Stephen says that the patriarchs were removed from Egypt to Shechem, where they were laid in the tomb which Abraham had purchased from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. However, Genesis says that Abraham bought the Cave of Machpelah (near Hebron) from the sons of Heth (Genesis 23), whereas Jacob bought a piece of land from the sons of Hamor in Shechem (Gen. 33:19). Also, Jacob was buried in the Cave of Machpelah (Gen. 50:13), whereas Joseph was finally buried on the land in Shechem (Josh. 24:32). Scripture does not say where the other sons of Jacob were buried, although Josephus claims that they were buried in Hebron (Antiquities 2.8.2 [199]).
How do we reconcile all of this? Some say that Stephen simply got confused under pressure. This would not necessarily undermine the doctrine of the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture, which only would require that Luke accurately recorded what Stephen said. But, since Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit and since he obviously knew the Old Testament so well, it is not likely that he erred. There are two possible solutions.
First, it may be that Abraham made the original purchase in Shechem, where he built an altar (Gen. 12:6-7), but that since he did not settle there, the land reverted to the original owner, necessitating Jacob’s repurchase of it. Thus we would be lacking information regarding Abraham’s original purchase that perhaps both Stephen and his audience knew from Jewish tradition.
A second suggestion is that due to the time pressure and duress that Stephen was under, he simply telescoped the two accounts into one. His audience would have known that Joseph and Jacob (“they” of 7:16) were buried in separate places. His telescoped reference was sufficient for his audience to recall the entire account without Stephen going into greater detail about who exactly bought what and which man was buried in which place. If Stephen had made a glaring error, his hostile audience would have pounced on it as proof that Stephen was not a knowledgeable man. The fact that they did not shows that Stephen’s shortened reference was acceptable to everyone concerned.
I’ll leave you to find and delve into the other historical problems in Stephen’s message. Let’s focus rather on three themes:
Stephen demonstrates clearly that God initiated the process of calling out a people for His name and that He continued to pour out His grace on these people in spite of their own rebellion. He began by calling Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran (7:2). Stephen refers to God as “the God of glory,” showing His majesty and separateness from sinful humanity. Abraham was a pagan idolater, living in a pagan culture, with no merit in him for God to appear to him and make a covenant with him. Why did God not call Abraham’s entire family, or why did He not tell Abraham to reach out to the cities of Ur or Haran, rather than to make the long journey to the land of Canaan? We do not know. All we know is that God sovereignly chose Abraham and poured out His grace on him. God’s sovereignty is further underscored in 7:4 where Stephen states that God removed Abraham into this country. The nation of Israel owed its existence to God’s gracious promise to make a great nation out of Abraham’s descendants and to give them the land of Canaan.
Furthermore, God’s hand was on Joseph, in spite of the wickedness of his brothers in selling him into slavery. God sovereignly used the famine in Canaan to get Jacob and all of his descendants into Egypt, where Joseph cared for their needs. God’s sovereignty and grace are seen in the way He protected the fledgling nation during the 400 years in Egypt, in spite of their trials.
When the time of God’s promise to Abraham approached (7:17), He sovereignly raised up Moses, who is the only baby in the Bible called beautiful (7:20)! But, as Stephen notes, Moses was born at the very time that Pharaoh decreed the death of the Jewish infants (7:19-20). Why would God do that? As John Calvin explains, it was to show that “that time is most fit for God to work in, when there is no hope or counsel to be looked for at man’s hands” (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts 1:268). In His sovereign grace, God protected Moses through Pharaoh’s daughter, and provided him with an education “in all the learning of the Egyptians,” so that “he was a man of power in words and deeds” (7:22).
But in spite of his learning and power, the people of Israel did not at first accept Moses as their deliverer. He had to flee for his life and spend 40 years in the wilderness of Midian. Stephen’s sermon is the only place in the Bible that we learn that Moses was about 40 when he had to flee to Midian, and that he spent 40 years there. Then, God again sovereignly appeared to Moses in the burning bush and promised to use him to deliver Israel from slavery. Stephen makes the point that it was the same Moses whom Israel had at first rejected that God sent to deliver the nation (7:35). It was this same Moses who predicted that God would raise up another prophet after him (7:37). Stephen is not so subtly implying that Jesus is that Prophet, rejected the first time!
But in spite of God’s sovereign, abundant grace, Israel rebelled against God and His servant Moses in the wilderness. They turned back to Egypt in their hearts (7:39) and worshiped the golden calf. God gave the nation up to their idolatry, so that later they worshiped the false gods of Canaan (7:42-43). Even so, in His grace God had given them the tabernacle, and later the temple, as the place where He met with them, although as Stephen reminds them by quoting Isaiah 66:1-2, God is not bound by a man-made dwelling, since He made all things. Thus all through his message, Stephen emphasizes God’s sovereign, abundant grace, shown to the nation of Israel in spite of her repeated sins.
We have already seen this theme as we looked at God’s grace, and so I do not need to go over it in detail. But note the repeated pattern of the nation’s rejecting the deliverers whom God had sent. Joseph’s brothers (the patriarchs of the nation) at first wickedly rejected him, but later found him to be their “savior” from death by starvation. Israel in slavery in Egypt at first rejected Moses as their deliverer, but later it was this very man whom God raised up to be both ruler and deliverer (7:35). The parallel with these wicked men to whom Stephen was speaking is obvious. They had rejected the very One whom God had sent as Messiah and Savior. And yet, like Joseph’s brothers and like Israel under Moses, God was offering them another chance to repent and follow Jesus!
The Jews in Stephen’s day were fiercely loyal to the land, to Jerusalem, and to the temple as the only center for worshiping God. So throughout his message, Stephen repeatedly shows them that God historically had revealed Himself to His servants in Gentile territory, apart from the temple. He called Abraham in the land of Mesopotamia. He did not give Abraham any inheritance in the land, “not even a foot of ground” (7:5). God predicted to Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land, but not until they were enslaved and mistreated in a foreign land for 400 years (7:6).
Also, God revealed Himself to Moses in the foreign land of Midian through the burning bush. That ground was holy because the living God was there (7:33). Also, God was with Moses and the nation in the wilderness (outside of the land), and God spoke directly to Moses on Mount Sinai (also outside of the land; 7:38). By calling the law “living oracles,” Stephen shows that the charge of him speaking against the law was not true. He reverenced God’s Law. It was the rebellious nation that had repeatedly despised it.
Stephen brings up the tabernacle and the temple, but not at great length (7:44-50). By his brevity with reference to the temple (7:47) and by the quotation from Isaiah (7:48-50), Stephen is not despising the temple, but he is challenging the mindset that the Jews had toward the temple. They boasted in the temple as if it gave them special access to God, in spite of their wicked behavior. Stephen is showing them that the main issue is not the place where they worshiped, but rather having their hearts right before the Person of the Holy Creator.
The Jews in Jeremiah’s day had done the same thing. Through the prophet, God said, “Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—that you may do all these abominations?” (Jer. 7:9-10). They thought that having the temple gave them special privileges with God, no matter how corrupt their behavior. Stephen is indicting the Jews in his day with the same charge. They thought that worship at the temple gave them a place of special blessing, even though their hearts were wicked and far from God.
Note the repetition in his sermon of the word “hands.” In 7:41, he mentions how in the incident of the golden calf, Israel rejoiced in the work of their hands. In 7:48, Stephen declares, “However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands.” In 7:50, through Isaiah, God declares, “Was it not My hand which made all these things?” Stephen’s point is, men can build idols with their hands, and even temples that they mistakenly think God will dwell in, but the Most High God and Creator is not limited by man-made objects. Whether we worship in a beautiful temple or at a burning bush in the wilderness, we must reckon with His holy presence by cleansing our hearts from all idolatry and wickedness. It is possible to go through the impressive outward motions of worship, but to have stiff necks and uncircumcised hearts and ears (7:51). It is possible to boast in our knowledge of God’s Word, but not to obey it (7:53).
While much more could be said, Stephen’s message reveals these themes. God’s sovereign grace is abundantly shown to rebellious sinners, but we must take heed to the danger of hardening our hearts against His grace. Even though Israel had a history of spiritual privilege unlike any nation on earth, she rejected her Savior and incurred God’s judgment. The temple that she boasted in was destroyed in A.D. 70, and Israel was scattered among the nations for 19 centuries. How can we apply this sermon to ourselves?
This is at least the third time that the Sanhedrin, which was responsible for crucifying Jesus, had heard the gospel and had an opportunity to repent. They heard Peter preach after they arrested him and John in connection with the healing of the lame man in the temple (4:1-12). They again heard Peter and the apostles offer them repentance and forgiveness of sins after they had been arrested, miraculously freed, and re-arrested (5:29-32). Now, again, they hear Stephen powerfully set forth God’s gracious dealings with the nation, in spite of their rebellion. While he never mentions the name of Jesus, he refers to Him as the Righteous One (7:52), and his vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of God testifies to the Council again of His resurrection (7:56). If God had given these murderers just one chance to repent after crucifying Jesus, He would have been abundant in mercy. But to give them three opportunities shows His super-abundant grace!
All of us who have experienced God’s salvation know that it was in spite of, not because of, anything in us! Like Abraham, if God had not sovereignly called him by His grace, he would have lived and died as a pagan in a pagan land. Do you rejoice daily in God’s grace to you, the sinner? If you do, you will want to tell other sinners about His grace toward them.
Paul tells us that Israel’s history should be a warning to us not to crave evil things as they craved, nor to be idolaters, as they were, nor to act immorally, nor to try the Lord, nor to grumble as they did (1 Cor. 10:6-10). It is a gross misunderstanding and misapplication of God’s grace to presume that we can go on sinning and just keep on claiming His grace. As Paul puts it in Romans 6:1-2, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be!” Jude 4 warns us about “ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” In Titus 2:11-12, Paul shows us the proper response to God’s grace. He says that it instructs us “to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age.”
Israel was God’s chosen nation. They had His covenant promises, His pattern of worship given to Moses on Mount Sinai, the tabernacle where His glory was shown, and then the temple in all its splendor. God had dispossessed the pagan nations and given Israel their land. They had received the law as ordained by angels. Yet in spite of all these privileges, their hearts were far from God! They had a history of killing the prophets that God sent them, culminating in their eventually killing the Lord Jesus Christ.
Like Israel, we have had great spiritual privileges. We live in a nation founded upon biblical principles. We have a history of great spiritual opportunity. We have the Bible in our language in multiple translations. We have freedom to worship without persecution. We can hear the Bible taught on Christian radio or through many other resources. And yet it is easy to fall into the trap of going through the outward motions of Christianity, but not walking in reality with the living God. The building that we meet in is not God’s house. Our bodies are the temple of the living God, and so we must walk in holiness before the Lord, beginning in our hearts. To offer worship to God when we have not repented of our sins is an offense toward Him (Mark 7:6-8, 20-23).
As I said earlier, Stephen does defend himself with this sermon. He shows that he reverenced God, he thought highly of Moses, and he did not speak against the temple or the law. But his main thrust was not to defend himself, but to bring God’s truth to bear on the consciences of these hypocrites. He identifies with them repeatedly throughout the sermon. Eight times (7:11, 12, 15, 19, 38, 39, 44, & 45) he refers to “our fathers.” But when he gets to the pointed application at the end, he shifts to “your fathers” (7:51, 52). He isn’t speaking with polite generalities that no one would connect with their own behavior. He wants them to feel the guilt of their terrible sin of murdering Jesus. Only when they have been convicted in their hearts will they see their need for God’s forgiveness and salvation.
While we should treat each person with grace and tact (Col. 4:6), we also should not be so nice, focusing only on God’s love, that the person never comes under conviction of sin. Until a sinner feels the weight of his guilt before a holy God, salvation is a nice idea, but it’s not a crucial necessity. Often we back off from the hard aspects of the gospel because we want people to think well of us. But we have not proclaimed the gospel if we avoid the subjects of sin, righteousness, and judgment.
We are going to conclude our service today by partaking of the Lord’s Supper. It is very easy for something we do so often to become an outward ritual that we go through without getting our hearts right before God. Paul warned us that we must first judge ourselves rightly before God, and then partake. If not, we may incur His severe discipline, even to the point of physical death (1 Cor. 11:27-31). As the elements are handed out, examine your own heart before God. Make sure that your faith is in Christ as your Savior and Lord. Confess any known sin. Pray with David (Ps. 139:23-24), “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
From reading many stories of those who have given their lives for the cause of Christ, I have concluded that God gives special grace to them in their dying moments. The Czech martyr, Jan Hus, whose statue and church we saw in Prague, was promised safe passage to discuss his criticisms against the Catholic Church. But they betrayed him and burned him at the stake. He died, not cursing at his persecutors for their deception and brutality, but singing praise to God as the flames consumed his flesh.
The story has been repeated thousands of times. At the head of the list stands Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Our word “martyr” is a transliteration of the Greek word for “witness.” By their lives and by their deaths, the martyrs have borne witness for “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness” (Rev. 1:5). Stephen’s death is the only death scene and martyrdom described in detail in the New Testament, except for that of Jesus Christ. From it we learn that …
Whatever we suffer due to faithfulness to Jesus, we will be rewarded with His eternal acceptance and the encouragement that He will use our service for His purpose and glory.
I want to draw four lessons from Stephen’s death:
As Paul later put it, “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). Satan does not sit idly by when his realm is challenged. And, in His mysterious, sovereign providence, God does not miraculously protect all of His servants who dare to confront the prince of darkness. He allows this choice young man to be cut down in the prime of his ministry.
The godly manner in which Stephen died is contrasted here with the grisly wickedness of these supposedly respectable Jewish leaders. He was calm, clear-headed, articulate, and kind, even as the rocks were crushing his body. But these normally dignified members of the high council were out of control with rage. They gnashed their teeth, they screamed at the top of their voices, they covered their ears so as not to hear what they considered Stephen’s blasphemy. They rushed upon him, drove him out of the city, and stoned him to death. The Greek word for “rushed” is used of the herd of demon-possessed swine rushing off the cliff into the ocean after Jesus cleansed the Gerasene demoniac. Scholars debate whether the death sentence on Stephen was a judicial decision or mob violence. While there was a semblance of judicial proceedings at first, the end result seems to be that of men controlled by rage and hatred.
Luke notes that the witnesses who began stoning Stephen laid their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul (7:58). He adds that “Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death” (8:1). As a result, that very day a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem. Saul began ravaging the church like a wild boar ravages a vineyard (Ps. 80:13), obviously with the approval of the Sanhedrin. He entered house after house, dragging off to prison both men and women who believed in Jesus. Many of them were put to death (26:10). Saul later described his own behavior as being “furiously enraged at them” (26:11).
When a sinner comes under conviction through hearing the gospel or through the example of a believer’s godly life, he may be broken with repentance and come to faith in Jesus Christ. But, he also can harden his heart and go deeper in rage, as Saul did. Some maintain this fierce opposition to the gospel all the way to their deathbeds. Others, like Saul, eventually repent and become new creatures in Christ. But often those around them have to endure increased hostility and rage before they see the person broken by God’s mercy.
Because we live in a time and place where we have relative freedom from violent persecution, we tend to forget that being a follower of Jesus Christ makes us enemies of the evil prince of this world and his followers. Of course, brute force is not his only weapon. He uses deceit and cunning to lull us into adopting worldly values. A worldly Christian is no threat to his domain of darkness. He gets us to live for the selfish pursuit of comfort, with a little church attendance thrown in to round out the good life. It doesn’t hurt his cause when the pastor gives sermons that make everyone feel good about themselves, teaching them how to use God for personal well-being and overall family happiness.
But the moment a believer moves out of this comfortable Christianity and begins aggressively to go after souls for Christ, or to give radically to the cause of Christ, or to speak out boldly for God against sin, he also moves into the line of enemy fire. Often he catches “friendly fire” from fellow Christians who are threatened by his radical ways. But we should be prepared and not be taken by surprise when we commit ourselves to be 100 percent for the Lord and then suffer for it. It goes with the territory.
Maybe you’re wondering, “Why risk it? Why leave a comfortable, safe way of life to become a target for Satan’s bullets?”
Far better to die with Stephen under a hail of rocks crushing our skulls and be welcomed into heaven by the risen Lord Jesus, than to die peacefully in the midst of worldly comforts, surrounded by family, but then to hear, “Depart from Me, I never knew you!”
Note how the Lord supported Stephen in this grand finale of his short life. First, all three members of the Trinity are mentioned in 7:55. Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit. He gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God the Father, which must have looked like the brightness of the sun. To His right hand, there stood the risen and ascended Jesus. Stephen was so awed by this vision that he could not keep it to himself. He said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (7:56). This is the only time that this title is used other than by Jesus. Except for two times in Revelation (1:13; 14:14), which use the phrase “one like a son of man,” it is the last time it is used in the New Testament.
There were several reasons that this statement was significant. First, it immediately brought to the minds of every member of the Sanhedrin Jesus’ words when He had been on trial before them. The same high priest, Caiaphas, had asked Jesus, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus replied, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61-62). By these words, Jesus claimed to combine in His person the prophetic words of Daniel 7:13-14 and Psalm 110:1. The Daniel passage spoke of one like a Son of Man who received from the Ancient of Days “dominion, glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him.” In Psalm 110, David hears the Lord saying to his Lord, “Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” Here Stephen affirms that Jesus is exactly where He predicted He would be, at the right hand of God, the risen Lord of power and glory! It should have hit these men with full force that Jesus was exactly who He had claimed to be!
F. F. Bruce (The Book of Acts [Eerdmans]) points out that Stephen’s understanding of the exalted role of Jesus was even more advanced than that of the apostles, who were still continuing to go to temple worship, join in the Jewish rituals, and limit their preaching to the Jews. He points out that the Daniel passage means that “Messiah’s sovereignty is to embrace all nations without distinction,” thus effectively doing away with the Jewish temple worship (pp. 166-167). He writes, “And the presence of Messiah at God’s right hand meant that for His people there was now a way of access to God more immediate and heart-satisfying than the obsolete temple ritual had ever been able to provide.” (p. 166).
Normally, the Scriptures speak of Jesus now sitting at the right hand of God, having accomplished the work of our redemption (Heb. 1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2; Eph. 1:20). But here, twice it says that Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Most commentators agree that Jesus was standing to welcome home His faithful witness. Jesus always stands with those who stand for Him. He gave this courageous man on the verge of death a vision of the glory of heaven to support him in the terrible moments to follow.
It reminds me of the story of the three bold Hebrew witnesses who refused to bow down before the image of Nebuchadnezzar. In his fury, the mad king had them bound and thrown into the furnace heated seven times hotter than normal. But to his shock, when he and his men looked into the flames, they saw not three men bound, but four men unbound and walking around without harm. And the appearance of the fourth was “like a son of the gods” (Dan. 3:25). I believe that the preincarnate Jesus had joined these brave witnesses in their moment of trial, to support and encourage them for their faithfulness to Him. He spared them from death, but not Stephen. But He welcomed Stephen home with open arms, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Whenever the Lord calls on you to suffer for His name, He will be with you to support you. Whether you die then or later, He will welcome you into His presence in heaven for eternity.
I am using the words of 1 Peter 4:19, written to a suffering church: “Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.” Stephen did this. As the rocks hit him, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” And, with his dying breath, imitating His Savior’s words from the cross, Stephen did what was right toward his enemies by praying, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Charles Spurgeon (“Stephen’s Death,” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 20, [Ages Software]) pointed out that Stephen’s death was full of Jesus: Jesus seen; Jesus invoked; Jesus trusted; and Jesus imitated. I borrow his outline here.
Stephen looked into heaven and the Lord gave him a literal vision of the splendor of God’s glory and of Jesus standing at the right hand of His throne. If the members of the Sanhedrin had looked up, I think that they would have seen the ceiling of the council chamber. God is not in the business of revealing His heavenly glory to hard-hearted skeptics. In fact, not every saint gets such a literal vision of the Lord. Some dying saints seem to have such a glimpse into glory just before their departure, but many others die without it. For them, it is the vision of Christ through the eyes of faith, through the things revealed of Him in His Word. As Peter wrote to those suffering for His name, “And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:8-9).
To have that kind of vision of the unseen Christ by faith at the moment of death, we have to cultivate it by faith right now. We need to pray as Paul prayed, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to [us] a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him” (Eph. 1:17).
As Stephen died, he called upon the Lord Jesus in prayer. Clearly, he believed in the full deity of Jesus Christ, or he would not have prayed to Him. It would have been mere superstition or a worthless fancy to call out for help to a great teacher who had died and was still in the grave. Spurgeon wrote,
Dying Christians are not troubled with questions as to the deity of Christ. Dear friends, Unitarianism may do to live with, but it will not do to die with, at least for us. At such a time we need an almighty and divine Savior; we want “God over all, blessed forever” to come to our rescue in the solemn article. So Stephen called upon Jesus, and worshipped him. He makes no mention of any other intercessor. O martyr of Christ, why didst thou not cry, “Ave Maria! Blessed Virgin, succor me”? Why didst thou not pray to St. Michael and all angels? Ah, no! The abomination of saint and angel worship had not been invented in his day, and if it had been he would have scorned it as one of the foul devices of hell. There is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. He invoked Christ, and no one else (ibid.).
Whenever we suffer because of our faith, we can call out to the Lord Jesus and know that He is our merciful High Priest, sympathetic to our situation. “For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted” (Heb. 2:18).
Clearly, Stephen trusted Jesus to receive his spirit as it was separated from his body at the moment of death. Although he suffered a terrible, violent, painful death, he died with a supernatural peace. He “fell asleep” (7:60) in the arms of His Savior. Sleep refers to the body, which rests in the grave until the resurrection at the coming of Christ. A believer’s soul goes immediately into the presence of the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). Jesus suffered a violent death on the cross to remove its sting, so that His followers may fall asleep, even if they are brutally murdered, as Stephen was. While it was proper for devout men to grieve over Stephen’s death and to give him a proper burial, it was for their sakes, not his. He was safe in the presence of the Lord, whom he had trusted for eternal life.
We must daily be trusting Jesus in a practical way in every trial that we face in order to have the habit of faith to trust Him at the moment of death. Stephen’s life was all of one piece. He was full of faith and the Holy Spirit in life; he was full of faith and the Holy Spirit as he died. Are you trusting, really trusting, in Jesus right now? Then it will be your habit to trust Him when you die.
On the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). In imitation of His Lord, Stephen’s dying words were, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” That prayer was answered in the conversion of Saul. It was the prayer of a man free from bitterness toward those who were wrongfully killing him. Stephen could pray it because he had practiced a life of forgiving others ever since he had experienced the Lord’s gracious forgiveness of his own sins. We will only be able to show God’s forgiveness toward those who persecute us if we focus daily on how much the Lord Jesus forgave us through His death on the cross.
Thus Stephen’s death teaches us to expect suffering if we follow the Savior. But we also can expect His faithful presence with us and His welcome into heaven when we leave this life. Thus we must entrust our souls to Him and do what is right. Finally,
No one suffers for Christ in vain. Stephen laid down his life, but as Tertullian observed, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The persecution that arose against the church scattered the seed of the gospel. Watching Stephen die had a profound and unforgettable effect on Saul. He continued kicking against the goads for a while, but finally the Lord powerfully saved him. Stephen’s sermon and his courageous, calm death softened the soil of Saul’s heart, preparing him for that later conversion. He later wrote, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58).
Whenever we suffer, whether from persecution or from other trials, we need to keep two things in mind. Number one, “I am not indispensable in God’s work.” If He takes me out now, as He did with Stephen, He can easily raise up many others to continue the work. This will keep us in the proper state of humility. It is Christ who builds His church; I am just a small part of the process. Second, “The Lord is mindful of my service for Him, and He will duly reward even a cup of cold water given in His name.” There are no useless parts in the body of Christ. Whatever you or I do for His name’s sake counts in eternity. Keeping this in mind helps us not to become discouraged and lose heart in the battle.
In his gripping book, Lords of the Earth [Regal], Don Richardson tells the story of Stan Dale, who obeyed God’s call to take the gospel to the fierce Yali tribe of Irian Jaya. They shot him with five arrows, which he plucked out one by one, while shouting at his tormentors, “Run away home all of you! You’ve done enough!” (p. 276). Although arrows had penetrated his diaphragm and intestines, he managed to hike to safety and survive.
At this point, my attitude would have been, “They’ve had their chance. I’m not going back!” But Dale went back. This time, the warriors decided to make sure that he died. A tribal priest moved in and fired an arrow at point blank range, hitting him under his raised right arm as he pled with them to go home. Another priest shot a bamboo-bladed shaft into his back. As the arrows entered his flesh, Stan pulled them out, one by one, broke them and threw them down. Dozens of arrows were now flying at him from all directions. He kept pulling them out, breaking them, and dropping them at his feet, until he could not keep up. Fifty arrows, then sixty, but still Stan stood his ground. The startled warriors began to worry that he might be immortal. “Fall!” they screamed at Stan. “Die!” Finally, Stan fell, and the warriors repeated a similar attack on his comrade, Phil Masters (pp. 302-305).
To make sure that the two white men did not resurrect, the warriors beheaded them and then chopped their bodies in pieces. Normally, the Yali would immediately eat the bodies of their victims, to increase their life force. But in this case, they waited to make sure that the dismembered bodies would not resurrect. An older tribal member convinced them not to eat them, but to cremate the remains.
It would seem that the two men died in vain. No one dared go back into this dangerous valley. But a missionary pilot got confused in bad weather and flew into the same mountainous valley where the two men had been murdered. The plane crashed, killing everyone on board except a missionary’s nine-year-old son. God used this strange twist of providence to get the gospel to these fierce warriors. To find out how, you’ll have to read the book!
John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, spent twelve years in jail because of his faithful preaching God’s truth. He wrote that at the day of judgment, “a smile or a kind look from Christ shall be worth more than ten thousand worlds” (“The Law and Grace Unfolded,” The Works of John Bunyan [Baker], 1:574). Keep that great day in view every day that you live. If you are called on to suffer for Jesus, you will be blessed, “because the Spirit of glory and of God” will rest upon you (1 Pet. 4:14).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Have you ever had something wonderful happen to you, but you didn’t have anyone to share it with? Or, even if you could share it with family and friends, you just wanted to share your good news even with total strangers. When our first daughter, Christa, was born the hospital gave me a pink button that said, “It’s a girl!” I wore it proudly. I decorated the house with a banner welcoming Marla and Christa home. I wanted everyone to know the good news that we had a baby girl.
I read of a Chinese farmer who had cataracts removed from his eyes at a Christian mission clinic. A few days later, the missionary doctor looked out his window and noticed this farmer holding the end of a long rope. In single file holding to the rope were several dozen blind Chinese who had been rounded up and led for miles to the doctor who had worked a miracle on this farmer’s eyes. That’s how we who have received God’s gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ should be. We are so blessed that we want everyone to know, so that they can receive the same good news.
We have just studied the witness and death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. On the heels of his martyrdom, Saul instigated a persecution against the church in Jerusalem, which led to the scattering of its members, especially the Jews of Grecian descent. But rather than stopping the spread of the gospel, Saul’s persecution scattered the seed into new areas. Our text shows the gospel spreading into Samaria, especially through the ministry of another of the seven men chosen to serve tables, Philip. The theme of the chapter is, proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ outside of the boundaries of Jerusalem, first to the Samaritans, then to the Ethiopian eunuch (see 8:4, 5, 12, 14, 25, 35, 40). The lesson is:
Since the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, we should proclaim it in every situation where we find ourselves.
First, we learn why we must proclaim the gospel:
In Acts 1:8, Jesus had prescribed that the apostles would be His “witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” Note four lessons:
For me, this is a strong proof that the gospel is from God. Wherever it goes, whether to the most advanced universities of the world or to the most primitive Stone Age cultures, it has the same effect: It transforms lives as people are reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.
As you know, there had been a centuries-long hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans. By Jesus’ day, the Jews had no dealings with Samaritans (John 4:9). They would even walk around Samaritan territory rather than take the straighter path between Galilee and Jerusalem through Samaria. When Jesus sent out the twelve, He gave them orders not to go into the cities of Samaria (Matt. 10:5), which was probably just fine with them. But in Acts 1:8, He lifted that restriction. But His inclusion of Samaria probably did not change the feelings of aversion that the apostles would have had toward the Samaritans. Perhaps Jesus’ fruitful ministry in the Samaritan village laid the groundwork for Philip’s ministry. But here Philip pioneers the way, and Peter and John not only confirm his work, but do further evangelism among the Samaritan villages on their return to Jerusalem (8:14-17, 25).
The point for us is twofold: First, God wants to reach all people, even those whom we may not naturally like. We have to drop any prejudice that might cling to us and see every person from every race and culture as a candidate for the gospel. People you may not like need Christ. Homosexuals need Christ, and He is powerful to save them. Militant atheists need Christ, and He can save them, too. People of other races need Christ, and He will have some from every people group there before His throne.
Second, while we may need to be sensitive to certain cultural differences, we don’t change the message to fit different cultures. It’s the same gospel for all people. All have sinned; all need a Savior. Jesus Christ is the only Savior for all who call upon Him.
Many of the Samaritans were under the spell of this satanic deceiver, Simon, often called Simon Magus. (Magus either comes from the Latin for “great” or from the Greek for “magic.”) Whether he had satanic power to perform miracles, or whether he was a master magician who used trickery to amaze the masses, he was obviously a tool of Satan. The Bible indicates that God grants Satan the power to effect some miracles through false prophets (Exod. 7:11, 22; 8:7; Deut. 13:1, 2; Matt. 24:24; 2 Thess. 2:9; Rev. 13:13; 16:14; 19:20). A true prophet will direct the glory to God and will encourage people to submit to God’s Word. A false prophet, like Simon, will receive the glory for himself and will not direct people into holy living. But even where there is strong demonic influence over people, God and the power of His gospel is stronger. We should not fear to proclaim it even to those who are blatantly under Satan’s power.
Philip proclaimed Christ to the Samaritans (8:5). His message is summed up as “the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (8:13). Later, he preaches Jesus to the Ethiopian eunuch (8:35). “The good news about kingdom of God” does not just refer to the future millennial kingdom, when Jesus will literally reign on earth. The kingdom of God is the realm where God is King. Thus it refers both to the millennium and to the rightful lordship of Jesus over all creation, especially over the hearts of people right now. Thus preaching the gospel is sometimes called preaching the kingdom (19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31). “The name of Jesus Christ” refers to all that He is.
When you proclaim the gospel, stay focused on the person and work of Jesus Christ. Tell people who He is, God in human flesh. Tell them why He came to earth, to offer Himself as the sacrifice that God’s justice requires as the penalty for our sins. Show people from Scripture that we cannot add our good works to what Christ accomplished on the cross. We can only receive His salvation from our sins by faith in Jesus Christ.
There is no example or command in the New Testament to baptize infants. Every example and command follows the order described here: they believed and then they were being baptized (8:12, 13). (See my sermon, “Why We Do Not Baptize Infants,” 9/8/96, on our church web site, for more.) Baptism does not save anyone. People are saved by grace through faith in Christ, apart from any outward works, such as baptism (Eph. 2:8, 9). Baptism is an outward confession of what God has done in a person’s heart (Rom. 6:3-5; 1 Pet. 3:21).
Obviously, people can make false professions of faith through baptism. Only God knows a person’s heart. Philip baptized Simon based on Simon’s confession of faith which, as time showed, was not genuine. When Luke reports that Simon believed, he is describing what Simon professed, not how God viewed matters (see John 2:23-25; 8:31-47). Just because a person claims to believe in Christ and gets baptized does not mean that he is truly saved. Salvation is not a matter of human decision, but of God changing a person’s heart. Thus the Bible warns us about a kind of faith that does not save (James 2:14-26). That brings us to the second major lesson of this story:
Even though it seems fairly obvious to me that Simon was not truly saved, even as astute a scholar as John Calvin argues that he was. While there is some ambiguity about whether 8:24 points to genuine repentance, I think that his initial profession of faith was clearly not genuine.
Simon was into magical or occult power, and so he was awed by the miracles that God did through Philip. His faith and baptism seem to be an attempt to join up with this new, more impressive “higher power.” He tips his hand when Peter and John come to Samaria and lay hands on people so that they receive the Holy Spirit. Apparently (the text does not say), this was accompanied by the sign of speaking in foreign languages, as at the Day of Pentecost. Simon liked what he saw and, since magicians would often buy tricks from other magicians, he offered to pay Peter and John so that he could add this impressive “trick” to his repertoire. Clearly, he did not understand that the Holy Spirit is not a power subject to human manipulation, but is God Himself.
Peter’s rebuke of Simon was not seeker-sensitive! The literal Greek is, “May your silver and you go to hell!” He goes on to tell him that his heart is not right before God and that he is still in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity (8:21, 23). This is an allusion to Deuteronomy 29:18, where Moses warns about those who serve the false gods of the nations. Peter’s language in 8:22, urging Simon to repent and pray to the Lord that the intention of his heart may be forgiven, indicates that he was not yet saved. The words “if possible” (8:22) do not refer to God’s willingness to forgive, but rather to whether or not Simon would truly repent. Simon’s somewhat lame response, asking Peter to pray for him, but not taking Peter’s advice to repent and pray for himself, leaves us wondering if Simon ever did truly repent and believe in Christ. Church history and later legend are uniformly negative toward him, lending weight to the view that he did not truly repent.
This story reveals four contrasts between those who have genuine saving faith in Jesus Christ and those who have false faith:
Salvation is a matter of God changing your heart (8:21). He takes your heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh, which is tender towards Him (Ezek. 36:26). He makes you a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Rather than living for self, as Simon was still doing, true believers live for God and His glory. Simon wanted this new power so that people would be impressed with how great Simon was. But Peter makes it clear that he has no part or portion in the ministry that he and John shared.
This is not to say that if you do something selfish or even use God for selfish purposes, as Simon was trying to do, that you are not truly saved. Learning to live for God’s glory is a lifelong process. We all struggle against selfish motives every day. But it is to say that if God has changed your heart, when He convicts you of your selfish focus, you repent and seek afresh to live for Him. False believers try to use God or spiritual power for personal aims. By the way, we get our word “simony,” which means to buy or sell church office or influence, from Simon’s name.
Those who take the Book of Acts as normative, rather than as a transitional book from the Old Covenant to the New, have caused much confusion. They claim (based on this and a few other passages in Acts) that not all believers receive the Holy Spirit at salvation, and that we must have a subsequent experience where we receive the Spirit, accompanied by speaking in tongues.
But the clear teaching of the New Testament is that after this transitional period, all believers receive the Holy Spirit through faith at the moment of salvation (Gal. 3:2-5). He seals us as a pledge of our inheritance (Eph. 1:13; 4:30). He dwells in our bodies (1 Cor. 6:19). He baptizes us all into the body of Christ, so that we all drink from the same Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). He gives spiritual gifts to every Christian according to His sovereign will (1 Cor. 12:4-30). Paul says that if anyone does not have the Spirit, he does not belong to Christ (Rom. 8:9).
So why didn’t the Samaritans receive the Holy Spirit until Peter and John came and laid hands on them? I think that God withheld the giving of the Spirit so that the early church would not be split into a Jewish section and a rival Samaritan section. The Samaritan believers had to be subject to the authority of the apostles, even if they didn’t naturally like the Jews. The Jewish apostles and other believers had to accept the Samaritans’ salvation as genuine, as evidenced by the gift of the Holy Spirit, even if they weren’t naturally inclined to put the Samaritans on the same level as the Jews. But the point is, this is an exceptional passage, not a pattern for us to follow. The norm is spelled out clearly in the epistles. True believers receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation.
False believers, however, do not understand the Spirit’s role or power. They think of Him as an impersonal force which they can manipulate for their own selfish ends. They want to use God for personal success or power. But the concept of submitting to God as Sovereign and relying daily on His Spirit is foreign to them.
Peter accuses Simon of being “in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.” All unbelievers, even those who live decent, law-abiding lives, are in bondage to sin (Rom. 6:17). They are unable to break free from sin so as to live in a manner pleasing to the Lord (Rom. 8:7-8). But the Holy Spirit delivers us from bondage to sin and Satan and frees us to become slaves to God (Rom. 6:17-19, 22). Again, this is not to imply that Christians are sinlessly perfect. We struggle against sin as long as we live in this body (Rom. 7). We must learn to walk daily in the Spirit so as to overcome the deeds of the flesh and to produce the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:16-23). But if the general bent of our lives is to be enslaved to sin, the Bible warns us to examine ourselves to see if we are truly saved. Every true Christian will develop a lifestyle of holiness and obedience to the Lord (1 Cor. 6:9-11; 2 Cor. 13:5; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:3-6; 2 Pet. 1:5-11; 1 John 2:3-6; 3:6-10).
Repentance is God’s gift, not man’s effort (Acts 11:18; 2 Tim. 2:25). He grants it at the moment of salvation, and the believer walks in repentance every day, as God’s Word convicts him of sin. Simon’s answer to Peter (8:24) does not reveal personal repentance, but rather just a desire to escape from the consequences of his sin. Repentance is a way of life for all who are born of God’s Spirit (see John Calvin, Institutes [Westminster], 3.3).
Thus the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. We must proclaim it in spite of the fact that not all who profess to believe are truly saved.
I can only briefly mention three observations:
God often uses trials to expand the gospel. Those who had been scattered from the persecution went about preaching the word. That is amazing! They had just seen what could happen if you preached the gospel. You would think that they would have scattered to the best hiding places they could find! But they scattered with the seed of the gospel, sowing it wherever they went.
Think how they must have felt. Many of them mourned the death of Stephen. They all must have grieved over the breakup of the great fellowship that they had enjoyed in the Jerusalem church. Some had loved ones who had been thrown into prison. Their comfortable homes and familiar surroundings were suddenly gone. But still they proclaimed Christ wherever they went. Perhaps people asked them why they were traveling through or settling in a new region. They didn’t pass up the opportunities to tell them. Neither should we. If you are in a time of trial, ask the Lord for the opportunity to use your circumstances to tell others about the Savior.
The big guns, the apostles, stayed in Jerusalem when the persecution broke out (8:1). It was the average, everyday believers who went about preaching the gospel. They didn’t have the mistaken notion that evangelism is the job of “professional” Christians. Wherever they went, they talked to people about the Savior. Some, like Philip, were gifted to preach to crowds. But everyone was a witness. The fact is, you have a mission field through your contacts that I lack. Thus every Christian should be ready to make a defense for the hope that is in him when God gives the opportunity (1 Pet. 3:15; Col. 4:5-6).
We don’t know for sure which city in Samaria Philip preached (8:5), but we do know that “there was much rejoicing in that city” (8:8). When sinners learn that they can receive God’s forgiveness for all their sins by His grace alone, apart from any human merit, they rejoice. When people looking for answers to their personal problems learn that Jesus Christ can deliver them both from sin’s penalty and its power, they rejoice. When people who have tried all of the world’s gimmicks and cures learn that Jesus Christ is the risen Lord and Savior, and that they can have a personal relationship with Him, they rejoice. If we want there to be much rejoicing in our city, we must proclaim Christ to as many people as we can!
Remember, the power of the gospel does not depend on our ability to use persuasive arguments. The power of the gospel does not depend on our winsome personalities. The power of the gospel lies with God, and all we have to do is give it out. In their book, Competent to Minister ([Eastgate], pp. 45-46, Martin and Deidre Bobgan tell the story of a successful man who was on a business trip and decided to attend church. He did not normally go to church, but he was troubled about some problems and hoped to find something at church, although he didn’t know quite what.
The music was pleasing, but it didn’t quiet his heart or give him peace. He listened to the sermon, but his intellect argued the many points. Just as he was ready to leave, a young man approached him and confidently declared, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The businessman didn’t see how God loved the world or how giving His Son could ever be connected with eternal life, but the young man persisted. Rather than answer the man’s arguments, he simply repeated the same words over and over: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Although the businessman was well educated and articulate, his words seemed to have no effect on the young man, who just kept repeating the words of John 3:16. Finally, the businessman realized that this young man was mentally retarded, and he could not respond to his sophisticated arguments. But at last he was struck by the truth of those repeated words. God used the faithful witness of a retarded young man to give new life to that visiting businessman.
If God can use a retarded young man to lead an educated businessman to salvation, He can use you. The only ones He cannot use are those who do not proclaim the gospel at all.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
William Carey, a poor English shoemaker, was born in 1761. After his conversion at age 18, he began preaching in some small Baptist chapels, supporting himself by his trade. Reading Captain Cook’s Voyages sparked his interest in foreign missions. As he continued to study the Bible, he became convinced that the central responsibility of the church should be foreign missions.
That thesis probably does not sound very radical to you, but in Carey’s day, it was revolutionary. The prevailing hyper-Calvinist view of his time was that the Great Commission had been given only to the apostles. It had been fulfilled in previous times. The heathen had rejected the gospel, and so they would have to await their fate on Judgment Day.
But Carey, who was a Calvinist, dared to ask whether Jesus’ command to make disciples of all the nations was not obligatory on all Christians. An older minister accused him of being “a miserable enthusiast” (Mary Drewery, William Carey [Zondervan], p. 31). When he shared his ideas at a minister’s gathering, one pastor retorted, “Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine” (cited by Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya [Zondervan], p. 115). When Carey actually proposed going himself to India as a missionary, his father exclaimed, “Is William mad?” (Drewery, p. 44).
But William Carey went to India, where he labored for 40 years. He supervised and edited translations of the Bible into at least 36 languages. He published grammars and dictionaries, labored to abolish widow-burning and infanticide, and studied botany to promote agricultural improvements. In a sermon that he preached before he left England, Carey uttered his now-famous words, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” He is often called the father of modern missions.
In our study of the expansion of the gospel in Acts, we have seen Philip take the gospel into Samaritan territory. God blessed his efforts as many came to faith in Christ and were baptized. We don’t know for sure the time frame, but it would seem that right in the middle of this revival in Samaria, the Lord sent an angel to tell Philip to leave that region. He was to travel to a deserted road that led south from Jerusalem to Gaza. God arranged a meeting there between Philip and one man, an Ethiopian eunuch who was traveling home after worshiping in Jerusalem. God opened this man’s heart and Philip led him to faith in Jesus Christ.
In biblical times, Ethiopia referred to the region south of Aswan, Egypt, but north of Khartoum, Sudan. So the man was probably a Sudanese eunuch! He was probably dark-skinned. We don’t know if he was physically a eunuch or if it was just the title of a high-ranking court official. He was the equivalent of Treasury Secretary under the Queen. “Candace” was a dynastic title, like Pharaoh or Caesar, not the name of the queen.
This story shows us, as William Carey’s story also did, that God is sovereign in evangelism, but also that His people must be obedient to His command. It teaches us that …
God evangelizes the world through obedient Christians who explain the gospel to seeking souls.
The story reflects four elements in the conversion of a soul: (1) the Holy Spirit’s initiative and preparation; (2) the Word of God penetrating the minds and hearts of sinners; (3) the obedient Christian who explains the gospel message; and, (4) the response of obedient faith in the person hearing the message.
God’s sovereignty in the salvation of this Ethiopian man is a dominant theme. He sent an angel to tell Philip to go to a particular remote place. He arranged for Philip’s and this man’s paths to cross. He prompted Philip (8:29) to go up to the man’s chariot. At that very moment, God had providentially arranged for the man to be reading aloud (most people in the ancient world read aloud) from Isaiah, and not just from any part of Isaiah, but from Isaiah 53. You couldn’t pick a better opening for the gospel from the Old Testament! At the right moment, after the man had trusted in Christ, they came upon some water, and so the man was baptized.
At that moment, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away (8:39). Some do not take this to be a miracle, but it seems to me to be a miracle. The word “snatched” is the same word used to describe the church’s being “caught up” to be with the Lord (1 Thess. 4:17). So God was sovereign in getting Philip to go to this Ethiopian man and in taking him away. As all the Scriptures proclaim, it is God who sovereignly works to save His elect.
Note two things about this process. First, God is not always as efficient as we would want Him to be. This Ethiopian had just made a 1,000-mile journey to Jerusalem. After making this long journey, and considering that he probably stayed in Jerusalem for a period of time, why didn’t the Lord direct one of the apostles in Jerusalem to share the gospel with him there? He could have led the man to Christ and given him a crash course in discipleship before he left. Meanwhile, Philip could have continued his fruitful ministry in Samaria. Later, Philip settles in Caesarea, where a centurion needed to hear the gospel. But rather than send Philip, who was there, God sent Peter, who was not there (chapter 10)!
We cannot view world missions as an efficient, American business enterprise. God’s ways are not our ways. Sometimes He does things that seem to us like a waste of money or personnel. Our job is not to question the Lord, but to be obedient. William Carey must have wrestled with God’s “inefficiency” when, after 19 years of labor, a warehouse fire destroyed ten complete Bible translations, his massive polyglot dictionary, two grammar books, and all of the tediously shaped type fonts. But God used the tragedy to spread the word about the mission, and in two months enough gifts had poured into the mission to pay for the huge losses. “Carey accepted the tragedy as a judgment from the Lord and began all over again with even greater zeal” (Tucker, p. 120).
Second, note that God’s target is the world. Foreign missions was not something that the church or some brilliant strategist cooked up. It is God’s program. He commanded Philip to evangelize this Gentile man from Ethiopia. Someone has observed that in Acts 8 we see the conversion of a son of Ham; in Acts 9, a son of Shem (Paul); and, in Acts 10, a son of Japheth (the Roman centurion). These represent the three divisions of humanity after the flood. Thus Luke is showing us the gospel going out to all the nations, just as Jesus had commanded. In Revelation 5:9, John sees before God’s throne the four living creatures and the 24 elders singing, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” Until all whom Jesus purchased with His blood are brought to salvation, we must, as Paul put it, “do all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
People can discern the existence of God and some of His attributes from creation (Rom. 1:20). But they can only learn how to be saved through the revelation of God’s Word, which tells us the good news about Jesus Christ. Knowledge of the one true God may have spread to this man’s country about 900 years before, when the Queen of Sheba returned from her visit to Solomon. Also, there was a large Jewish colony in Alexandria, hundreds of miles north along the Nile River. The truth about God could have spread south from there.
At any rate, this Ethiopian eunuch was interested enough in seeking God to make the long and difficult journey to Jerusalem. He must have been somewhat let down by what he found there. The Pharisees and Sadducees controlled a religion that was largely legalistic, ritualistic, and highly politicized. They did not know the God whom they professed to follow. As a Gentile, this Ethiopian could not go beyond the Court of the Gentiles in the temple. It is hard to imagine that his experience in Jerusalem had met the hunger of his heart that had motivated him to take this lengthy journey.
But at least he came away from there with a scroll of the prophet Isaiah in the Greek Septuagint version. He was so interested in reading it that he did not wait until he got back home. He started reading it as he sat in his carriage, plodding along the bumpy desert road toward Egypt. No doubt a man of his rank had a large retinue with him, including a driver, so that he was free to read as they traveled. Presuming that he had started at the beginning, he was almost through the entire book. He was reading Isaiah 53:7-8 when Philip came alongside his chariot. Once it was explained to him, God used these prophetic words about Jesus to bring this man to salvation.
Don’t underestimate the power of God’s Word to bring people to salvation! As 1 Peter 1:23 explains, “For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.” James 1:18 states, “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth….” Paul tells Timothy that from childhood he has “known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15). God’s Word is powerful to save sinners.
I read of a Muslim priest who was asked to do a series of character studies on great people from the Koran: Abraham, Joseph, David, and the prophet Jesus. When he came to prepare his talk on Jesus, he wanted more background information, so he borrowed a Bible and began to read the gospels. As he realized that Jesus was more than a prophet, his Muslim friends were appalled and excommunicated him. He continued to read and on his own trusted Christ as Savior. He went to a local Christian and asked if he could be baptized. He now works with Operation Mobilization doing evangelism among his own people (OM India Newsletter, Summer, 1997).
Thus we should encourage people to read the Bible, especially the gospels. Give out Gospels of John or New Testaments. When you share the gospel, have the person read the Bible verses himself. God uses His Word to bring sinners to salvation.
Although God sovereignly works to bring people to salvation, He does not usually do it apart from His obedient people. Here is Philip in the midst of an exciting revival, when an angel tells him to go to a deserted stretch of road where no one lived! I can imagine myself thinking, “Why doesn’t the angel go there himself?” Or, “What about all those apostles sitting around in Jerusalem? They aren’t as busy as I am. Besides, they’re closer. Send one of them.” Or, “I’ll go, Lord, but after things quiet down here.”
But as far as we know, Philip did not raise any objections. The angel said, “Arise and go.” The next verse (8:27) says, “And he arose and went.” When he got there, he was a bit surprised, as seen by the word, “behold” (8:27). What in the world is this Ethiopian official and his entire retinue doing out here in the midst of this forsaken road? The Spirit prompted Philip to go up and join himself to his chariot. It would have been traveling at a slow pace, so Philip could easily catch up to it. When he did, he heard the man reading, and to his amazement, Philip recognized it as Isaiah 53:7-8. Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The eunuch replied, “Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?” He invited Philip to join him.
His question was not about the interpretation of the words, although they are a bit difficult to interpret. The text is speaking about a man who was treated unjustly. Rather, his question was, “Of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself, or of someone else?” Contemporary Jewish interpretation was divided about this matter. Some said that it referred to the nation, some that Isaiah was speaking of himself, and some that he referred to the Messiah. But Philip had no doubts: “Beginning from this Scripture, he preached Jesus to him” (8:35).
Just prior to this, the eunuch would have read, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” Philip thus would have explained that we all have sinned. Because of our sin, none of us can merit eternal life by our own efforts or good deeds. Thus the Lord, to satisfy His holy justice, out of love for us, provided a substitute who bore the penalty we deserve. Jesus Christ bore God’s wrath for our sin on the cross. Perhaps Philip went to other Scriptures as well. But whatever Scriptures he used, Philip told the man about Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and ascended as the only Savior from God’s righteous judgment. He also explained that we must put our trust in Jesus personally as our own sin bearer. The eunuch, prepared by God, responded in faith.
Every Christian should be able to do what Philip did here: Starting with any Scripture or spiritual topic, we should be able to preach Jesus to a seeking soul. If a person brings up evolution, you may need to say, “That’s an interesting subject, and there are competent scholars on both sides of the issue. Sometime maybe we could discuss it at length. But the question that is far more important than evolution is, ‘Who do you think Jesus Christ is?’” Whether the person brings up the problem of suffering or the question about the heathen who have never heard or whatever, after a brief answer, steer the conversation back to Jesus Christ. The person needs to know who Jesus is, what He came to do, his own desperate condition apart from Christ, and how to receive Christ by faith. Everything else is peripheral. If Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be, Christianity is true. If He is not who He claimed to be, then Christianity is a fraud. It all centers on Him.
We have seen that God sovereignly takes the initiative in evangelizing the world. He uses His Word to penetrate the minds and hearts of sinners. He also uses obedient Christians to explain the gospel to seeking souls. Finally,
In Romans 3:10-11, Paul writes, “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.” Isaiah 53:6 puts it, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” John 3:19-20 says, “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” None of us are naturally inclined toward the gospel. Sinners do not seek after God.
Thus salvation is all of God and His grace, and not from any good inclination in our hearts to seek God. Therefore, no one can boast (Eph. 2:8-9). This means that whenever we see a man like the Ethiopian eunuch, who was seeking God by traveling to Jerusalem and by reading God’s Word, God is already at work in his heart, drawing him to Jesus (John 6:44).
We can infer, then, that God graciously imparted new life and obedient faith to this man when he heard Philip present the gospel. Apparently, inferring this was not enough for some early scribe who was copying the manuscript of Acts. So he inserted verse 37, where the eunuch confesses, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” The verse is not in any of the early or best manuscripts, and the style, according to Greek scholars, is not Luke’s style of writing. But even though the verse is not original to Acts, the eunuch must have given some such confession of his faith in Christ, or Philip would not have baptized him. The difference between this man’s genuine faith and Simon’s false faith (8:13) was that the eunuch’s faith came from God, whereas Simon’s faith came from himself.
The act of baptism, as we have seen, is a public confession of what God has done in a person’s heart through faith in Christ. Either the man knew the meaning and significance of baptism, or Philip had explained it. Those who do not believe in immersion argue that there could not have been enough water in the desert to dunk a man. But the words “they both went down into the water” and “they came up out of the water” indicate that it was a deep enough pool to immerse him. The Greek word for “baptize” means to dip, and immersion best pictures what baptism symbolizes, namely, complete identification with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
As the men came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. He couldn’t even do any follow-up! But even though the eunuch never saw Philip again, he went on his way rejoicing. God had met the longing of his heart. He knew that Jesus had forgiven his sins and given him eternal life. We do not know from history if he became an evangelist to his people, but it is not hard to imagine that he did. A life of joy in Jesus is hard to keep to oneself! It is the best advertisement for the gospel. As for his part, Philip found himself at Azotus, about 20 miles north of Gaza. Although he had no direct command from God, he kept on doing what he always did, preaching the gospel to the cities as he traveled north to Caesarea.
If evangelizing the lost, especially those of other cultures and nationalities, were up to our abilities, it would be hopeless. But, thankfully, evangelism depends on our sovereign God working through our obedience. In his book, The Preacher’s Portrait [Eerdmans], John Stott shows that according to the Bible, lost people are both sightless and lifeless, blind and dead. Then he asks, “How can we reach him? Are we so foolish as to imagine that we can somehow, by our own argument or rhetoric, induce within him either spiritual understanding or life? No. It is not given to us to give sight to the blind or life to the dead. God alone is the author of light and life” (pp. 107-108). Later (p. 118) he cites Charles Spurgeon, who used to say over and over to himself as he climbed the stairs into his high pulpit, “I believe in the Holy Ghost, I believe in the Holy Ghost.” Spurgeon wrote,
The gospel is preached in the ears of all; it only comes with power to some. The power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher; otherwise men would be converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preachers’ learning; otherwise it would consist of the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were mysterious power going with it—the Holy Ghost changing the will of man. O Sirs! We might as well preach to stone walls as to preach to humanity, unless the Holy Ghost be with the Word to give it power to convert the soul.
The same Holy Spirit who used Philip to reach the Ethiopian eunuch and who used Spurgeon to reach thousands with the gospel wants to use you and me to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to Flagstaff and beyond. With William Carey, let’s obediently expect great things from God and attempt great things for God as we take the gospel to a lost world!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
There is a lot of confusion these days about what it means to be born again. A recent book by researcher Wade Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion, argues that today’s “born-again” Christians are united by emotions and experiences, not by shared doctrines or moral beliefs. One-third of America’s 77 million baby boomers identify themselves as born-again Christians, but only 5 percent of those have any link to a conservative Protestant denomination. Half say that religions other than Christianity are “equally good and true.” One-third believe in reincarnation and astrology. Nearly half support abortion (from The Watchman Expositor, vol. 18, number 1, 2001, p. 22).
We all need to be clear about what constitutes true conversion. We need to know it for ourselves, so that we are sure about our own conversion. We need to know it for when we talk with others about spiritual matters, since clearly not all who profess to be born again are truly saved.
We come in our study of Acts to the first of three accounts of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, later known as the apostle Paul. Many regard his conversion as the most important event in the history of the church since Pentecost. It also is regarded as second only to the resurrection of Christ as the most convincing proof of the truth of the Christian faith. If this militant opponent to Jesus Christ was truly converted to become Christianity’s most ardent advocate, it demands an explanation. Why would he do so and then endure the terrible suffering that he went through, unless he was convinced that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead? Through the Holy Spirit, Luke saw Paul’s conversion as a watershed event, or he would not have repeated the story three times in this relatively short history of the expansion of Christianity.
The story of Paul’s conversion teaches us that …
God is able to convert the most unlikely of sinners and use them as His chosen instruments in the cause of the gospel.
Let’s look at some of the spiritual lessons of this story.
Humanly speaking, Saul was not a likely candidate for salvation. It would be comparable to hearing that Saddam Hussein had gotten converted and had become an evangelist to the Arabs! There was no human explanation for Saul’s conversion! But there is no human explanation for any true conversion, because salvation is from the Lord, not from man. God is able to do what we cannot imagine.
Luke states (9:1) that Saul was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He was a man consumed with one passion, namely, to eradicate followers of Jesus from the earth. It was not enough that he had broken up the Jerusalem church after Stephen’s death. Now he wanted to go 125 miles to Damascus to find any followers of Christ so that he could bring them bound to Jerusalem. The early Christians had not yet broken away from the synagogues, and so the high priest in Jerusalem had jurisdiction, even in Damascus.
To show Saul’s heartless cruelty, Luke mentions that he was after both men and women. He didn’t care if he took fathers and mothers away from their children. He had such an intense hatred for Jesus Christ and His followers that he felt that any suffering he inflicted on them was right. Perhaps he justified his zeal by pointing to Phinehas, who out of righteous zeal for the Lord, had speared the Israelite man and the Moabite woman whom he had taken into his tent (Num. 25:6-15). Saul was zealous for the Law of Moses, and these followers of Jesus were spreading a pernicious heresy in Israel. And so as Saul and his henchmen approached Damascus, perhaps they were bragging about all of the stupid people that they would round up in their effort to squash this dangerous myth.
Just then a bright light from heaven flashed around them and they all fell to the ground. Saul heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” The other men heard a voice, but could not understand what was said (22:9). In his confusion and shock, Saul replied, “Who are You, Lord?” He knew that it was God who was speaking, but he wasn’t prepared for what he heard next: “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” James Boice puts it, “God spoke, and God was Jesus” (Acts [Baker], p. 151). At the same instant, Saul got a glimpse of Jesus in His glory (9:17, 27), but the brightness of the light caused him to go temporarily blind. The Lord continued speaking, telling Saul to go into the city, where it would be told to him what he must do.
Three days later the Lord spoke to the godly Ananias, who only appears in Scripture at this story. He obediently went to Saul and prayed for him to receive his sight. Then he baptized him. The greatest missionary and theologian of church history had been truly converted. What can we learn?
Everything about Saul’s conversion came from God. Saul was not searching for the Lord or for salvation. He would have told you that he was already one of God’s chosen people: “circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee” (Phil. 3:5). The Lord did not appear to Saul and plead, “Oh, Saul, won’t you please trust in Me as your Savior? I have done everything that I can do to make that possible. Now the rest is up to you. It’s your decision, but I can’t force your will.”
Rather, the Lord knocked the man to the ground and completely overpowered him. He struck him blind. Then Jesus gave him very direct orders about what he had to do next. How much choice did Saul have? Saul was God’s chosen instrument to fulfill a very definite task, “to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (9:15). God already had ordained that Saul would suffer much for His name’s sake (9:16). It did not all hang on whether Saul would exercise his “free will”! God had it all planned from start to finish! As Paul puts it in Romans 9:16, “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.”
God did not choose Saul because He saw something of value in his nature. Saul had not done anything to make him worthy of God’s grace. God didn’t look down through time and say, “I can see that someday Saul will choose Me by his free will and then he will make a pretty good apostle, so I’ll make him one of My elect.” That would make God’s election depend on something good in man, namely his wise choice or his faith or his potential. If God grants salvation because of anything in man, then it is not by His free grace; it is by human merit.
The Bible is clear that if salvation depends on anything in us, then no one would be saved, because no one seeks for God (Rom. 3:10). “Those who are in the flesh cannot [not will not, but cannot] please God” (Rom. 8:8). Since faith and repentance are pleasing to God, the natural man cannot believe in Christ or repent of his sins unless it is granted to him (Eph. 2:8-9; Phil. 1:29; Acts 5:31; 11:18; 2 Tim. 2:25). But this is great news, because it means that God can take a man breathing out murderous threats, a committed enemy of the faith, and change his heart from intense hatred to submission by His mighty power. That change of heart takes place instantly, although the fruits of true conversion develop and deepen over the years. God is able to convert the most unlikely of sinners.
There are many more marks of conversion than I can begin to list here. First John gives a number of tests to determine whether a person truly knows Christ as Savior and Lord. Many other Scriptures do the same thing (e.g., 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:3-6; Col. 1:23; 3:5-6; 2 Pet. 1:5-11; see also Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, or the modern English version, The Experience That Counts). But in our text, I find at least 8 marks of true conversion in Saul:
Before a man becomes a saint, he must first see himself as a sinner. So the Lord asks, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (9:4). The repetition of his name shows the Lord’s tender concern for him, as when He said, “Martha, Martha,” or “Simon, Simon,” or “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” (Luke 10:41; 22:31; 13:34). By the pointed question, the Lord was not trying to gain information! Rather, He wanted Saul to consider what he was doing. He thought that he was zealous for the Lord, but in reality, he was persecuting Jesus Himself. With every Christian he harmed, he was plunging the sword again and again into the wounded side of Jesus!
In response to this traumatic revelation, Saul did not eat or drink for three days. I do not think that he decided, “I need to fast and pray about these things.” Rather, as when a person is mourning over the death of a loved one, he doesn’t even desire food, so Saul, in mourning over his sins, lost his appetite.
While some may be deeply convicted of sin before conversion, to show them their great need, others may experience it more in depth in the years that follow. That has been my personal experience, as it is with many that are raised in Christian homes. But there is no such thing as a truly born-again person who lacks a growing sense of his own sinfulness. The closer we walk in the light, the more that light reveals the dirtiness of our sinful hearts. In lamenting the shallow and spurious conversions of his day, Spurgeon said, “Today we have so many built up who were never pulled down; so many filled who were never emptied; so many exalted who were never humbled; that I the more earnestly remind you that the Holy Ghost must convince of sin, or we cannot be saved” (cited by Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism [Banner of Truth], p. 409).
Pride is the root of all sins, and we all must fight it every day. But no one gets saved who boasts in his own righteousness. No one gets saved who thinks that his good deeds will commend him to God. No one is saved who thinks that his own brilliant choice attained it for him. Saul went storming off to Damascus with authority to arrest Christians. He had power on his side. But after the Lord struck him down, he had to be led by the hand into the city. At first, he was independent and strong; afterwards, he was dependent and weak. No one is truly trusting in Christ for salvation who is boasting in himself.
The Lord no doubt used Ananias, a simple believer, to teach Saul humility. Saul had been educated under the reputed Gamaliel. Before that he had probably studied at the university in Tarsus. But now God forces Saul to receive his sight and instructions for what he should do next from this simple servant, otherwise unknown in Scripture. Humility is not optional. All who are truly saved will freely acknowledge their own sinfulness, and will give all the glory for their salvation to God alone.
Saul asks, “Who are You, Lord?” He got an immediate answer: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Saul instantly realized that Jesus was alive from the dead, as all of His followers had been asserting. He also recognized, to his horror at first, that Jesus was not only alive, but also exalted to the throne of God the Father. It followed that Jesus’ death on the cross, rather than discrediting him as a false prophet, fulfilled prophecy and was God’s provision for man’s sin. His resurrection confirmed Him as being Israel’s Messiah and Lord of all the earth.
When this risen and exalted Lord tells Saul, “Get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do,” Saul does not say, “I think I’d like to accept You as Savior, but I’m not ready to accept You as Lord.” He got up and went into the city! After Ananias prayed for him and he regained his sight, the first thing that he wanted to do was not to eat, but to be baptized in obedience to the risen Lord. Only after that did he eat. Everyone who is truly converted recognizes the exalted authority of Jesus Christ and seeks to live in obedience to Him, no matter what the cost.
Paul began the trip physically seeing, but spiritually blind. He ended it physically blind, but spiritually seeing. What he formerly thought that he saw, he no longer saw. What he formerly did not see, he now did see. What was formerly gain to him now was loss. What he formerly despised, he now cherished. Just as Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, so Saul was three days and nights in the dark. When the scales fell from his eyes, he saw everything in a new light, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in Christ. Every truly converted person can say, “I once thought that I saw, but I was blind. Now, by God’s grace, I see.”
The Lord tells Ananias regarding Saul, “For behold, he is praying” (9:11). “Behold” is left out of some modern translations, but it is in the original. A modern English version would be, “Whoa, check it out, dude!” Before this, as a Pharisee, Saul prayed often every day. But now, “Whoa! he is praying!” For the first time, Saul is really praying. He isn’t just reciting the ritualistic prayers of religion. He is praying from the heart, really seeking God. No doubt he was first and foremost seeking God’s forgiveness for the many terrible things that he had done. He was probably seeking God’s guidance for what he should do next. He was seeking God’s revelation, so that he could really know Him, and Jesus Christ, whom He had sent (John 17:3). Truly converted people begin to pray in the true sense of the word for the first time.
Saul was on a mission to destroy the Lord’s people. But now, he is dependent on one of the Lord’s people to regain his sight. Ananias was a godly Jew who had accepted Jesus as his Messiah. After he receives the confirmation that he needs from the Lord, he goes to Saul and greets him, “Brother Saul.” How wonderful those words must have sounded to Saul! “Brother Saul!” Formerly, he was public enemy number one of the church. But after God transformed him, he immediately became Brother Saul. One reason that the Lord sent Ananias, rather than healing Saul’s sight directly in answer to his prayers, was so that Saul would begin to see what he later taught clearly, that the church is the body of Christ. We are members of one another.
It is interesting how believers are referred to in this story. They are members of “the Way” (a description of Christians found only in Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22), showing the fact that Christ is the only way to God. They are called disciples (9:1, 10), which means followers or learners of Jesus. They are saints (9:13), or holy ones, which refers to our being set apart from the world to God. They are “those who call upon Your name” (9:14), showing our dependence on God in prayer. And, they are brothers (9:17). But best of all, Jesus tells Saul, “You have been persecuting Me!” By persecuting the church, Saul was persecuting Jesus Himself, the Head of His body, the church. An organic and indissoluble union exists between Christ and His people. When someone harms us, he is harming our Lord. Truly converted people love the fellowship of the saints, because we are members of one another and of our exalted Head.
Ananias tells Saul that the Lord has sent him not only so that Saul would regain his sight, but also so that he may be filled with the Holy Spirit (9:17). Every Christian receives the indwelling Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion. He gives us the power to overcome sin and His life in us produces the character qualities that are called the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). If you are seeking to live the Christian life in your own strength, you will be defeated and frustrated. But if you live daily in submission and dependence on the Holy Spirit, you will experience consistent victory over sin and the joy of salvation welling up within you.
A truly converted person is no longer his own; he has been bought with a price. He now lives for God’s purpose. Saul was God’s chosen instrument (or vessel), to bear His name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel. Every converted person needs to ask, “Lord, what will You have me to do with my life?” That leads to the third major lesson:
Formerly, Saul had a mission, but it was self-willed and evil. He thought that he was serving God by eliminating these “heretics,” but he was only feeding his pride and lust for power. He was advancing beyond many of his contemporaries (Gal. 1:14), climbing the religious ladder to prominence. But now, he becomes an earthen vessel, filled with God’s treasure (2 Cor. 4:7), with a new purpose of glorifying God, whether by life or by death (Phil. 1:20). Formerly, he inflicted suffering on others; now, he will suffer much for the sake of Christ. Formerly, he despised the Gentiles; now, he will offer to them the riches of Christ.
If God has saved you from your sins, He has a purpose for your life, and it is not primarily for you to succeed in the American dream. His main purpose has to do with eternal realities. He wants to use you in His great cause of discipling the nations. He may let you fulfill His purpose by staying in America. But, He may call you to go to a country where Christ is not nearly so well known. The main thing is for you to be a willing and clean vessel, “useful to the Master, prepared for every good work” (2 Tim. 2:21).
In 1 Timothy 1:16, Paul says, “And yet for this reason I found mercy, in order that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience, as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.” Paul’s conversion is an example for us all. It is an example of the fact that none are too far gone for God’s mighty power to save. It is an example of what God can do when He takes hold of a life. It is an example to encourage us to pray for and share with every sinner, no matter how wicked. It is an example for us to commit ourselves afresh to whatever purpose God has given us to do for His kingdom. As Paul later wrote, “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf” (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
The United States Navy has over 700 ships that comprise what is called the “Mothball Navy.” These vessels, anchored in various harbors around the country, receive regular maintenance to prevent rust. But they’re just sitting there, doing nothing, even though they require a lot of money and effort to maintain them.
Ask any pastor and he will tell you that one of the frustrations of the ministry is that there are so many mothballed Christians in the church. They sit harbored there, week in and week out. They require maintenance, especially when they have a problem or need. But they’re not doing anything to serve the Lord. Pastors call this the 80-20 rule, that 20 percent of the Christians do 80 percent of the work. But this should not be. If Christ has saved you from your sins, then out of love you should be zealous to serve Him. As Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). If we are growing to be like Jesus, our focus in life should be to serve Him.
Immediately after describing the dramatic conversion of Saul of Tarsus (the apostle Paul), Luke goes on to tell of his initial efforts in serving the Lord. Luke wants us to see that Saul’s conversion was genuine. The persecutor very quickly becomes the persecuted because of his bold proclamation of Jesus as the Son of God and the Christ. But Saul was not a special case.
God wants all whom He has saved to serve Him in whatever situations He puts them.
If God has saved you, He wants you to be involved in ministry in some capacity. It may be, if you are a mother with young children, that at this phase in life, your primary ministry is to rear those children to know and love the Savior. I am not suggesting that you should neglect your family responsibilities to work in the church. At the other extreme, some are so cloistered in their families that they teach their children by example to be selfish and to disregard the need for serving Christ. Surely, this is also wrong. What I am advocating is a ministry mindset, where a person is so thankful to the Lord Jesus for saving him, that he can no longer live for himself, but rather for Him who died and rose again on his behalf (2 Cor. 5:15). This kind of person is always looking for how God wants to use him in whatever situation the Lord has put him. The apostle Paul’s early experiences in ministry picture this kind of life. There are five lessons for us:
Paul did not sit around very long after he got saved before he started to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues of Damascus (9:19-20). He could have thought, “Well, I’m kind of new at this. I had better wait until I get it all together before I open my mouth.” He could have thought, “I’m going to look like a fool. After all, I came here to arrest followers of Christ. People will think that I’m unstable if I let them know that I now follow Him.” Or, he could have thought, “Damascus isn’t my home. I’m just visiting here temporarily. I’ll wait until I get back home to begin my ministry.” But he didn’t make up excuses. He just started proclaiming, “Jesus is the Son of God.” “Jesus is the Christ” (9:20, 22).
Saul didn’t have it all together at first. This is implied by the statement, “But Saul kept increasing in strength” (9:22). The local rabbi might have nailed him the first time he spoke out for Jesus. But that didn’t stop him from trying again and again. The more he bore witness of Christ, the stronger he became.
You learn by doing, not just by head knowledge. Of course you need a certain amount of head knowledge before you speak out for the Lord. But there is no better way to learn than to get involved and get nailed! The first time someone hits you with a question that you don’t know how to answer, you’ll be motivated to get into God’s Word and find the answer. D. L. Moody said, “If you don’t go to work for the Lord because you’re afraid of making mistakes, you will probably make the greatest mistake of your life—that of doing nothing.”
You may wonder, “What would I say?” The answer is, “Speak about Jesus Christ.” Show people from the Bible who Jesus is and what He did by dying on the cross.
Saul began proclaiming, “Jesus is the Son of God.” This is the only time that this title appears in Acts (but see 13:33). For the Jews, it was a clear reference to Jesus’ deity. John 5:18 states that they were trying to kill Jesus because He “was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” Near the end of His ministry, Jesus baited the Pharisees with the question of how the Messiah could be both David’s son and David’s Lord, implying both His own Sonship and deity (Luke 20:41-44). Jesus stated the uniqueness of His relationship with the Father when He said, “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Luke 10:22). At Jesus’ trial, the high priest asked, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus replied, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61-62). People need to know that Jesus is uniquely God’s Son, one with the Father (John 10:30). He cannot save sinners if He is only a great man.
Saul also confounded the Jews by proving that this Jesus is the Christ (9:22). When he went back to Jerusalem, Saul took up with the Hellenistic Jews where Stephen had left off. Scripture was the basis for his arguments. F. F. Bruce says that the word “proving” means literally “putting together,” and adds, “here it implies that the prophetic Scriptures were put alongside their fulfilment, in order to prove that Jesus was the Messiah of whom they spoke” (The Book of Acts [Eerdmans], pp. 203-204, footnote 42). In this regard, Saul had a great advantage over many new believers in our culture, in that he knew the Old Testament Scriptures very well even before he was saved. But that should motivate all of us to devour God’s Word, so that we can make a defense from Scripture for the hope that is within us, that Jesus is God’s Anointed One, sent to this earth as the Savior of all who will trust in Him.
I would encourage every believer, both recent and not so recent, to get the Evangelism Explosion training that we offer. It will help you to be bold in witness for Christ. Every Christian should be equipped to tell others about the Savior.
I am drawing this point not directly from our text, but by piecing together another Scripture that is essential for understanding the history of Saul right after his conversion. In Galatians 1:15-18, Paul says that after his conversion, he did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did he go up to Jerusalem to consult with the apostles. Rather, he went away to Arabia, and then returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later he went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Peter, staying with him for 15 days. He also met James, the half-brother of Jesus. Since the Hebrews considered any part of a year as a year, the “three years” could have been as short as 14 months total. But Paul’s sojourn in Arabia must have taken place between Acts 9:22 and 23. Arabia refers to the area to the east and/or south of Damascus. Some think that he spent time in the Sinai desert, where Moses received the law.
What did Saul do there? We can surmise that he spent time poring over the Scriptures that he knew so well from his upbringing, but this time examining them from the fresh light of his conversion experience with the risen and exalted Jesus Christ. Just as the risen Jesus had taken the men on the Emmaus Road through Moses and all the prophets, explaining to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:27), so the Lord now did with Saul. This is the implication of his testimony in Galatians 1, that he did not receive his message from any man, but from the Lord Himself. Surely the Lord revealed Himself to Saul through the Scriptures, giving him insight into things that he formerly thought that he knew, but did not really know at all.
Also, note that although Saul’s experience on the Damascus Road was very personal and emotionally traumatic, his faith had a strong doctrinal flavor to it. Many of his epistles—Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians—begin with a theological foundation before they move into the practical sections. He did not write these things for seminary students to debate, but for everyday Christians, to help them live for Christ in their daily experience. Go through his Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy & Titus) and note the emphasis on sound doctrine. We see this doctrinal emphasis in our text, in that he was able to confound and argue from Scripture with these knowledgeable Jews.
I emphasize this because in our day, doctrine and theology tend to be despised among those claiming to be evangelical Christians. But this is not a biblical emphasis and it will yield tragic results if we do not stem the tide. Sound biblical doctrine is the only solid foundation for healthy Christian experience. Yes, there is always the danger that knowledge will puff up a person with pride (1 Cor. 8:1). But the antidote is not to be theologically ignorant! My heroes in the faith have always been men like Paul who combine solid doctrine with a fervent heart love for Jesus Christ.
I encourage you to deepen your knowledge of Scripture by reading and studying it until you know it well. Supplement this by reading men like John Calvin, John Bunyan, Richard Baxter (and other Puritans), Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, J. C. Ryle, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Their sermons are widely available and are devotionally rich. In our day, James Boice, R. C. Sproul, John MacArthur, and John Piper all combine solid theology with a fervent devotion for Jesus Christ.
While Saul probably spent much of his time in Arabia studying God’s Word, it is likely that he did not just hide out in seclusion somewhere. Apparently he had been bold enough as a witness in Arabia to incur the displeasure of the king, Aretas. So when Saul returned to Damascus, the ethnarch under Aretas teamed up with the Jews in trying to seize Saul (2 Cor. 11:30-33). He had to escape for his life over the wall of the city in a basket at night. That leads to the next point:
Often new believers naively think that since God loves them, He will protect them from all trials and hardship. But even a casual reading of the Bible shows that this is simply not so.
The Jews were dumbfounded at first when Saul began proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God (9:21). They wondered if it was a case of mistaken identity! But when it continued after he returned from Arabia, their patience grew thin and they sought to kill him. In Jerusalem, he met the same hostility from the Hellenistic Jews who had killed Stephen.
Some argue that Saul was insensitive or inept in his early effort at evangelism, but I disagree with that assessment. He had a group of disciples who had responded favorably to his message (9:25). Besides, the criteria for measuring success in evangelism is never how many respond, but rather, did we give the gospel clearly and without compromise? The Lord Himself appeared to Saul after he returned to Jerusalem and told him that the Jews would not accept his testimony, and that he should quickly get out of town (Acts 22:18). There is nothing wrong or unspiritual with a believer seeking to preserve his own life by fleeing from hostile enemies, as Saul did both from Damascus and Jerusalem.
But the point is, be prepared that not all will welcome your message about Christ, even though it means everything to you. The gospel is an offense because it confronts sinners with their sin, and it robs them of any glory in their own salvation. Our job is to be faithful in presenting the message, and leave the results to God. But don’t be surprised by open hostility.
When Saul went to Jerusalem, all the disciples, including the apostles, were afraid of him and would not welcome him into their circles. This is certainly understandable, in light of his previous track record! They probably thought that he was trying to infiltrate their ranks, so that he could arrest even more of them. But even so, their rejection must have hurt. For a few days, Saul must have felt pretty lonely, cut off both from his former Jewish colleagues and also from those who loved the same Lord that he now loved.
New believers are often naïve about other Christians. They think, “Isn’t it great to be in the family of God, where we all love one another!” But then they encounter jealousy or strife over minor issues. They see gossip and rivalry. If they are not prepared for it, they can become disillusioned with the church and drop out in bitterness. Outside of the flock, they are easy prey for the devil.
At some point (and we don’t know how the connection was made), Barnabas, the son of encouragement, came alongside Saul, listened to his testimony, and was convinced that he was really a disciple of Christ. This leads to the fourth lesson:
Good old Barnabas! Here, he takes Saul to the apostles (only Peter and James, according to Gal. 1:18-19), and convinces them that Saul’s testimony was genuine. A few years later, Barnabas left the thriving work in Antioch to look for Saul and bring him there to help. From there, the two of them were sent out on the first missionary journey.
All too often, older Christians are quick to criticize younger believers, treating them as if they should act like mature believers. Rather than welcoming them onto the team, they are quick to point out how immature and inexperienced they are. Sometimes the older saints are threatened by the zeal of the younger saints. But we ought to learn from Barnabas to err on the side of acceptance and encouragement. If the younger believer needs to have some rough edges smoothed out, the Lord will take care of that over time.
I don’t have any statistics on how many younger believers get discouraged and drop out of the church because no one comes alongside to encourage them. But I have read that out of any given seminary graduating class, 20 percent will quit the ministry within five years of entering it. And the number one reason they leave is not low pay or moral problems. The number one reason they leave the ministry is the pressure of criticism (Ron Lee Davis, Mentoring [Thomas Nelson], p. 157). Those of us who have been around the church for a while should be quick to come alongside younger believers, to encourage and accept their efforts in ministry, even if they are still a bit unpolished.
Saul’s early efforts at serving the Lord teach us that God wants all whom He has saved to serve Him in whatever situations He puts them. This means starting to serve as soon as you’re saved. It requires taking the time to sink down some roots. It means being prepared for opposition, both from within and from without. And, it means that mature believers should come alongside younger believers, to encourage them in their efforts.
Verse 31 is the third of seven progress reports in Acts (2:47; 6:7; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20; 28:30-31). It shows the church, not just in Jerusalem, but now scattered throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, enjoying a period of rest from persecution. Although a few manuscripts read “churches,” the best reading is “church,” singular, showing the unity of the different churches scattered throughout Palestine. The word “so” does not imply, “Good riddance! With Saul gone, the church finally enjoyed some rest!” Rather, it is a commonly used phrase that simply indicates a transition or the resumption of a previous narrative (see 8:4, 25). Luke is probably going back to the dispersion and persecution that began after Stephen’s death, and saying, “After all of this, the Lord granted a period of peace.”
While I would not go as far as Donald Grey Barnhouse, who calls verse 31 “a sad note,” because of the tendency of the church to grow stagnant at such times (Acts [Zondervan], p. 86), I would acknowledge the danger. When the pressure is on, either through persecution or trials, we are more likely to walk closely with the Lord. We are very much aware at such times of our great need for Him, and so we rely on Him in prayer. We are reminded of the shortness of life, and so we make every opportunity count for eternity. But when the pressure is off, the danger is that we will kick back and coast, rather than to be disciplined to seek the Lord.
But we should use such rest periods for spiritual growth, both personally and corporately. Luke summarizes the growth of the early church by saying that it was being built up, and that it went on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Our goal in our relationships with one another as believers should be to build up one another in Christ (Rom. 14:19). The fear of the Lord is not at odds with His love and grace. Paul instructs us to cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God (2 Cor. 7:1). The word “comfort” refers to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in coming alongside to help us. Whether in a time of peace or persecution, we must rely daily on the Holy Spirit as we seek to grow in Christ.
Luke also notes that the church continued to increase. We should use peaceful times to continue reaching out to the lost with the gospel. We dare not get comfortable, and forget about the condition of souls without Christ. Someone has said that secret discipleship is a contradiction in terms. Either the secrecy kills the discipleship, or the discipleship kills the secrecy. If we are followers of the one who came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10), we must commit ourselves to the same goal.
If you are wondering, “What can I do to serve the Lord?” I encourage you to go to Farese.com. It is the web page of John Farese. He is 44 years old and one of the oldest persons to reach that age after being diagnosed from birth with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. He is bedridden and uses speech recognition software to operate his computer system, which enables him to do everything from reading the Bible to creating Web pages for his customers on the Internet.
John writes, “He has turned for me my mourning into laughter, and my desolation into joy; he has led my captivity captive, and made my heart rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. He drew me when I struggled to escape from his grace; and when at last I came all trembling like a condemned culprit to his mercy seat he said, ‘Thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee: be of good cheer.’” John is a charter member of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Boca Raton, Florida.
If a man with severe health limitations like John Farese can find a way to serve the Lord who saved him, so can you. Go and do likewise!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
At a missions conference in 1986, Stuart Briscoe said, “All that’s being done in evangelical Christianity in America can be done with good equipment, modern media, and a few gifted men. Very little that is happening in the church is explainable solely on the basis of God’s activity and authority.” His words should make us pause and ask, “Is that true in our church? Is it true in my life personally? Is there anything that can only be explained by God’s activity and power?”
Some react to such words by seeking miracles, such as speaking in tongues and divine healing. They argue that the church today should be doing the works of Jesus, and even greater works. While I believe that we should pray for the sick to be healed, we also must recognize that often it is not God’s will to heal miraculously. I do not disregard dramatic encounters with the Lord, although I think that 99 percent of what is called speaking in tongues today is not the New Testament gift. Unless a person develops discipline unto godliness and a consistent walk in the Holy Spirit, no experience, however dramatic, will result in lasting change.
We come to two stories where God used Peter mightily, first to heal a man who had been paralyzed for eight years; and, second, to raise a Christian woman from the dead. Since resurrections are rare in Scripture (there are only three such miracles recorded in Jesus’ ministry), this was an extraordinary event.
We need to ask why Luke included these two stories. Did he mean for us to imitate Peter by going out and performing miracles in Jesus’ name? If someone answers affirmatively, I would point out that there were many in these towns who remained sick or who died and were not raised. In other words, God willed for these two miracles to take place, but there were many for whom no miracle occurred. Thus I conclude that these miracles were not recorded to teach us to go out and do likewise, but for some other purpose.
To make it obvious for us who have trouble seeing, Luke repeats his purpose twice. In 9:35, he mentions that all who lived at Lydda and Sharon turned to the Lord as a result of Aeneas’ healing. By “all,” Luke probably does not mean every single person, but rather, a great number. Then, in 9:42, Luke tells us that the result of the raising of Dorcas was that many believed in the Lord. Luke is showing how the gospel of Jesus Christ spread, resulting in the salvation of many.
Thus I believe that he wants us to view these miracles as spiritual lessons of the power of the gospel to transform sinners. The miracles actually happened, but like Jesus’ miracles, they were signs, pointing to something beneath the surface. They show us how God mercifully imparts spiritual healing and new life to those who are helpless and dead because of sin. Thus we learn that …
God’s mighty power causes unbelievers to turn to Him in saving faith and should encourage us to proclaim the gospel.
There are five lessons:
It is clear that Dorcas (Greek), or Tabitha (Aramaic), whose name means “Gazelle,” was a believer. She is called a disciple (the only time this word occurs in the feminine form in the Greek New Testament). We do not know about Aeneas’ background, but the fact that he is only referred to as “a certain man,” not “a disciple,” seems to indicate that he was not a believer. But the physical condition of both Dorcas and Aeneas represents different pictures of the spiritual condition of every person outside of Christ. By nature we all are born as sinners, spiritually paralyzed and dead. We are as unable as a paralyzed man to take a step toward God. We are as unable as a corpse to free ourselves from our many sins and to live in a manner pleasing to God (Eph. 2:1-3). This spiritual inability is what theologians call “total depravity.”
Since this doctrine is taught so clearly and repeatedly in Scripture, it is amazing that there are many Christians who deny it. Dave Hunt, for example, adamantly denies that sinners are unable to choose to believe in Christ. In his “The Berean Call” (March, 2001), he responds to a letter that I had written to him, in which I pointed out that he was advocating the view of the Roman Catholic scholar, Erasmus, whom Martin Luther refuted in The Bondage of the Will. Hunt lists a number of Scriptures that supposedly prove that men can will whatever they choose. Then he states, “Once it is admitted that man has a will, it is impossible to maintain either that it is in bondage or to explain how it was delivered except by its own choice. No one is made willing against his will but must have been willing to be made willing.” Thus he makes man’s willingness to be made willing the sovereign factor in salvation, thereby exalting the will of fallen man above the sovereign will of God!
Contrary to this, Jesus taught that the sovereign factor in salvation is God’s will, not man’s will. He said, “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Luke 10:22). That statement is meaningless if Jesus wills to reveal the Father equally to every person. He said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” In case we missed it, He repeats, “No one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:44, 65). Again, clearly those words are meaningless if God has granted to all the ability to come, but now it’s up to the will of man. Jesus asked the unbelieving Jews, “Why do you not understand what I am saying?” He answered, “It is because you cannot hear My word” (John 8:43). Obviously, they could hear the verbal words that Jesus was speaking. Jesus meant that they were unable to respond positively to the spiritual truth of His words. Many other Scriptures affirm the same truth (John 1:13; 10:26; Rom. 9:16; 1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:4; James 1:18; and many more).
It is crucial to affirm this doctrine because if we deny it, proud men will boast in what their will could accomplish. If salvation hinges on the human will, then it is that will that makes a saved person to differ from an unsaved person. But, as Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, our salvation rests in God’s choice, not in anything in us, “so that no man may boast before God.” It is totally “by His doing” that those of us who are saved are in Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 1:30; see also, 4:7, NIV).
Since it is God who wills our salvation and imparts it to us, how does He do it?
Peter was God’s instrument to bring healing to Aeneas and resurrection to Dorcas. By the way, as far as I know, there are no New Testament examples of believers being miraculously healed, although three believers, Lazarus, Dorcas, and Eutychus, were raised from the dead. From Peter, we can learn three things about the servants whom God uses to bring His powerful cure of salvation to those who are spiritually incapacitated:
Peter did not say, “Aeneas, in the name of Jesus Christ, I heal you.” Rather, he said, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you.” He gave all the glory to Jesus and took none of it for himself. With Dorcas, Peter did not claim to have any power to perform such a miracle. Rather, he humbly knelt down and prayed, depending totally on God’s power to do what only God can do.
Think of how Peter could have abused the power that the Lord gave him to perform these two amazing miracles. He could have set up a tent and held healing services, with big banners reading, “Come and See Peter the Apostle and Evangelist Work Miracles.” Everywhere he went, he could have attracted attention. If he lived in our day, he could have gone on talk shows and written books to tell about how it happened. But Peter was not into miracles to bring glory to himself. No, Peter gave God all the glory and God was pleased to use these incidents to bring many to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
Whether God uses us to perform a miracle or to bring a soul to salvation, we cannot rely on our own ability or take any credit for ourselves. We can only say, with Paul, that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves (2 Cor. 4:7). Alexander Maclaren says, “The first condition of work for the Lord is—hide yourself behind your message, behind your Master, and make it very plain that His is the power, and that you are but a tool in the Workman’s hand” (Expositions of Holy Scripture [Baker], on Acts 9:34, 40, p. 293).
The striking thing about these two miracles is how closely they parallel two miracles that Jesus performed. When four men brought a paralytic man to Jesus, He first forgave the man’s sins. Then, to back up His authority to forgive sins, He commanded the paralytic to do something impossible, namely, to get up, pick up his bed, and go home (Matt. 9:7). With the command, Christ imparted the power to obey. Here, in a similar way, Peter commands Aeneas to do the impossible: “Arise and make your bed” (Acts 9: 34). Those of you with teenagers know just how impossible that command is, unless the Lord grants the power!
The incident with Dorcas also parallels Jesus’ raising of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:35-43). Both incidents happened when the healer was absent and had to be summoned. Jesus put out the noisy mourners, since He was not there to put on a miracle show. Here, Peter hears the weeping of the mourners, but he goes alone into the room where Dorcas’ body lay. Jesus took Jairus’ daughter by the hand and said (in Aramaic), “Talitha kum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” Unlike Jesus, because Peter could not speak in his own authority as Jesus could, Peter knelt down and prayed. Then, when he was assured of God’s will, he spoke to the corpse, just one letter different than Jesus’ words to Jairus’ daughter, “Tabitha, kum.” The parallels are too close to be coincidental. Peter was following the example of the Lord Jesus, in dependence on Him.
Peter was able to imitate Jesus because he had been with Jesus when He performed these other miracles. Although we have not physically been with Jesus, if we have spent much time with Him in His Word, He will use us to be His instruments in bringing His saving power to those who are spiritually dead. Study how the Savior dealt with sinners. Sometimes He asked questions to stimulate a person’s curiosity or to get the person to think about his spiritual condition. Surprisingly, Jesus was not always successful, as we see in His encounter with the rich young ruler. He didn’t always press for a decision. Learn from Him and then follow His example in bringing the gospel to sinners who need His powerful touch.
We don’t know if Aeneas was a Gentile, but we do know that the region where Peter was traveling was heavily populated by Gentiles. In the next chapter, God will strip Peter of his Jewish prejudice against the Gentiles by sending him to Cornelius’ house. But here (9:43) we read that after these things, Peter was staying in Joppa with a certain tanner, named Simon. Luke includes this detail because it gives Peter’s whereabouts in anticipation of the story in the next chapter. But it is also significant in that the Jewish rabbis considered tanners to be unclean because they were constantly in contact with the skins of dead animals. Tanners’ homes were smelly; tanners had to live at least 50 cubits outside of town. Rabbinical law stated that if a young woman discovered that her fiancé was a tanner, she could break the engagement (Kent Hughes, Acts [Crossway Books], p. 143). But here is Peter overcoming this Jewish scruple, staying many days with a tanner.
We all have certain prejudices, but if God is going to use us in proclaiming the gospel, we must lay them all aside. There may be certain races or certain types of sinners that you do not naturally like. If you don’t turn from it, your prejudice will be a sinful hindrance to God’s using you. More of this in chapter 10!
Thus we’ve seen that incapacitating sickness and death are pictures of the spiritual condition of lost people; and, that God uses His servants to bring His powerful cure to such people. But the task seems utterly impossible, and it is if it is up to us.
The name of Jesus is able to do what no amount of human persuasion or human power can ever do. He alone can impart strength and sensation to paralyzed legs. His power alone can raise a corpse from the dead. He alone can call a soul out of spiritual bondage and impart eternal life. We are only His instruments, and if we think that any of the power depends on us, we misunderstand how He works. In fact, it is only when we sense our complete inability, as Peter surely did when he knelt and prayed for Dorcas to be raised, that we are in the place God wants us. If you have any confidence in your ability to lead a soul to faith in Christ, it is misplaced confidence. But if you cry out, “O Lord, who am I to raise the dead? But You can do the humanly impossible through me”—then, God will work wonders.
Don’t misunderstand: I am not saying that you should not be trained in how to share your faith. Such training is useful and God will use it. But if you trust in your training or in your ability to lead someone to Christ, your trust is misplaced. God is not limited in the saving of souls by our training or ability. All the training and ability in the world cannot impart life to dead corpses! Thus our confidence in sharing our faith should be in nothing less than the living God alone. He is able to do what is humanly impossible, to save those who are dead in their trespasses and sins.
Peter commanded Aeneas to get up and make his bed, and Aeneas did it! “All who lived at Lydda and Sharon saw him” (9:35). They saw the evidence of the miracle: this man who had been bedridden for eight years now walked. The people around Joppa heard about Dorcas being raised from the dead. It’s pretty difficult to keep something like that secret! She now resumed doing the many good deeds that she had done before. In fact, now she knew from experience how short life can be, and so she probably abounded even more in doing all that she could for her Savior while there was time. Note that the first sign of life in Dorcas was that she opened her eyes. Matthew Henry (Matthew Henry’s Commentary [Scripture Truth Book Company], 6:122) points out that the first sign of life in the raising of dead souls to spiritual life is the opening of the eyes of the mind (Acts 26:18).
But the point is, there unmistakable evidence when a lame man gets healed or a dead body is raised to life. Even so, when a sinner is raised from spiritual death to spiritual life, it will be evident to all who knew the person before and after. Just as these two miracles resulted in the salvation of many others who saw the evidence, so the evidence of our changed lives should attract many to our Savior.
These two miracles must have taken everyone by surprise. There was no human hope in either situation. But where there was no human hope, God miraculously broke in with His power and accomplished in an instant what no one could ever do.
Sometimes (my experience is, quite often) we view difficult situations and people from our human, horizontal perspective, forgetting that with God, nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37; Jer. 32:17). Sometimes we see a person who seems so far gone in sin that we despair, thinking, “There’s no way that he will ever come to Christ!” It’s true, there is no human way. But God is mighty to save sinners. Whether the corpse is washed and dressed in clean clothes or whether it is smelly and dirty, dressed in rags, it’s still a corpse. It makes no difference to God what the corpse is wearing! He has the power to impart new life to dead sinners. So we should be encouraged boldly to share the gospel with others, knowing that it is not our power or the other person’s will power that will bring about the change. It is God’s mighty power; if He raises the dead, the dead will be raised!
Evangelist Luis Palau answered the phone in Ecuador. On the other end, a woman requested an appointment with him the next morning at 9:30. He had no idea that she was the secretary of the Communist party in Ecuador. She arrived promptly the next day, accompanied by two bodyguards who stood outside. After looking around for hidden recording devices, the woman sat down and without introduction, for 20 minutes poured out a barrage of verbal abuse, attacking the government, Christianity, and Mr. Palau’s character. At first Palau was speechless. He had never seen such hatred unleashed from anyone.
When the woman finally paused for a moment, Palau snatched the silence and asked, “Madam, is there anything I can do for you? How can I help you?” She stared at him and then began to sob uncontrollably. Finally, when she was composed enough to speak, she said, “You know, in the 38 years that I have lived, you are the first person who has ever asked if he could help me.”
Palau asked her name. Her face instantly hardened again. “Why do you want to know?” “Well, you’ve said a lot of things here, and I don’t even know you.” She gave him her name, Maria Benita-Perez, and for three hours she poured out her life story, which reeked with sin and guilt. Finally she paused and asked, “Palau, suppose there is a God—and I’m not saying there is—do you think He would receive a woman like me?”
“Look, Maria,” Palau replied, “don’t worry about what I think; look at what God says.” He opened his Bible and turned it so she could see. “But I don’t believe in the Bi—”
“But we’re supposing there’s a God, right?” Palau interjected. “Let’s suppose the Bible is His Word. Listen to what God says: ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more’” (Heb. 10:17). She went on to tell him more of her sins: she had stabbed a man who later committed suicide. She had led riots where people had been killed. She had been married three times, committed adultery numerous times, and done all sorts of other terrible things. Each time she told him her past sins, 17 times in all, Palau responded by quoting, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”
Finally, after a long silence, she said softly, “If He could forgive me and change me, it would be the greatest miracle in the world.” Within ten minutes, Palau witnessed that miracle as she confessed her sins, asked for God’s forgiveness, and received the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior (told in tract, The American Tract Society).
God’s saving a sinner, whether a notorious sinner or a more respectable sinner, is always a miracle, no less than His healing a paralyzed man or raising a dead woman to life. He wants to use us to bring that miraculous cure to the sinners we meet. We need to remember that the gospel is nothing less than the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Have you ever noticed that the guy driving slower than you is always a jerk, whereas the guy driving faster than you is always a maniac? By fallen nature, we’re all prone to justify ourselves and to condemn those who are different than we are. We’re prone to judge others according to outward characteristics, rather than to accept them as individual human beings on an equal par with us.
The ancient Greeks divided up the human race into two categories: Greeks and barbarians. The barbarian was literally a man who could not speak Greek, and so his words sounded to the Greek ear like “bar bar.” One Greek historian asked rhetorically, “How can men who can only bark ever rule the world?” Prejudice is not eradicated with brilliance, since Aristotle believed that the world’s climate maintained the difference between Greeks and barbarians. He explained that those who lived in the cold lands to the north had plenty of courage and spirit, but little skill and intelligence. Those who lived in the warm south had plenty of skill, intelligence, and culture, but little spirit and courage. Only the Greeks lived in a climate designed by nature to produce the perfectly blended character (Aristotle, Politics [7:7:2], cited by William Barclay, Flesh and Spirit [Baker], pp. 40-41).
We may chuckle at Aristotle’s theory, but we’re all prone toward prejudice in some form or another. But for God to use us effectively in His purpose, He must break us of our prejudices. To be prejudiced is to pre-judge someone without sufficient information. The story of the gospel spreading beyond Jewish boundaries toward the Gentiles teaches us from the life of Peter that …
We all have built-in prejudices that God must break down if we are going to be effective in His service.
Peter was staying at Joppa on the Mediterranean coast. It was the city where the prophet Jonah had fled to board a ship to Tarshish. He was trying to run from the Lord’s command to go and preach at Ninevah, the capital city of Israel’s arch-enemy, Assyria. About 30 miles north of Joppa and some 65 miles northwest of Jerusalem, was the Roman provincial capital, Caesarea, where the governor lived. Under his authority were some 3,000 troops, including the Italian cohort. Serving with this unit was Cornelius, a centurion who commanded 100 soldiers. The Jews despised the Roman occupation of Palestine; they hoped that Messiah would come and deliver them from the Roman oppression.
And so the stage is set: you have a Gentile Roman soldier, representing the despised occupation of Israel, residing in the main city of the Roman occupation. Thirty miles south you have a Jewish apostle, temporarily residing at the spot where Jonah had taken off in disobedience to his commission to preach to Israel’s enemy. And behind the scenes, God is orchestrating the events to bring these two men together in a way that shocked both of them by breaking down the wall of prejudice between them. The result of the story is that today you and I who are Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the church with the Jews, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (Eph. 3:6). The story brings out five lessons:
I know what you’re thinking: “Yes, Steve, you’re right. Most people are prone to prejudice. But, thank God, that’s not one of my weaknesses! I am very unbiased, accepting, and loving.” But the fact is, even committed Christians, even godly men like Peter, have prejudices. Like Peter, we’re probably blind to those prejudices until the Lord shocks us into seeing them.
To prepare Peter to go to Cornelius’ house, He gave him a vision of a sheet being lowered from heaven. In the sheet were all kinds of animals and insects and birds that the Old Testament forbade the Jews from eating. Peter was hungry, waiting for his lunch. A voice said, “Arise, Peter, kill and eat.” But Peter was shocked, as seen by his reply, “By no means Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean” (10:14).
I thought about shocking you into seeing some of your prejudices by putting a cigar into my mouth, but I was afraid that we would have to call the paramedics to revive a few souls, and that some might actually pass from this life into glory at the sight! But the fact is, many godly men of past generations smoked. They did not have the modern knowledge that we possess about the health risks of smoking. But the godly pastors Charles Spurgeon and G. Campbell Morgan both smoked cigars. Jonathan Edwards smoked a pipe. Martyn Lloyd-Jones smoked cigarettes early in his ministry, as did C. S. Lewis all through his life. Many American Christians would question the spirituality of a man who smoked, if not his salvation: “Doesn’t he know that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?” Yet many of these judgmental American “temples” are noticeably overfed and under-exercised!
Many American Christians also would say that a Christian who drinks beer could not be spiritually mature, even if he never disobeys Scripture by getting drunk. My parents used to know a German Christian who lived here in America who would say in disgust, “You Americans say that we should not drink beer, and yet you go to bowling alleys!” For him, to go into a bowling alley was the epitome of worldliness, but drinking beer was something all Germans did. I am not endorsing drinking alcohol or smoking; in fact, I would advise against such practices. But I am pointing out how we are quick to judge those who do things we do not approve of, and yet we do not judge ourselves for things we do that may be harmful to our health. Sometimes, like Peter, we are more scrupulous than the Lord is!
I could point out many other ways that we are prone to be prejudiced. We all tend to group people by race or occupation, and then we pigeonhole individuals and judge them because they belong to the group. Peter easily could have thought, “Centurions are Roman soldiers and are wicked, sensual, worldly pagans.” He would have badly misjudged Cornelius. Cornelius could have thought, “I’m supposed to learn from an uneducated Jewish man who is staying with a tanner? He probably has never been outside of Palestine. What could he teach a well-traveled Roman like me?” He would have missed God’s blessing.
Like Peter, most of us use the Bible to justify our prejudices and to read it through the lens of our prejudices. After all, the Bible warned Israel about associating with the pagan idolaters of the nations around them. The Bible showed them that they would be contaminated by contact with these “uncircumcised dogs.” Peter and the other apostles had heard Jesus give the Great Commission on more than one occasion. Yet up to this time, they were still reaching out primarily to Jews. They probably thought that reaching those in the uttermost parts of the earth referred to Jewish families who were scattered abroad. But to reach out to pagan Gentiles was simply unthinkable! They could quote chapter and verse out of the Old Testament to back up their views.
Don’t miss my point: I am not saying that we should be tolerant or accepting of practices the Bible calls sin. Neither am I saying that we should join in carousing with sinful people as if there is no difference between them and us. But I am suggesting that if we do not face our prejudices and allow God to root them out, we will not be effective in reaching across cultural and personal barriers with the gospel. If you are prejudiced against Native Americans or blacks, how will you reach them with the gospel? If you hate homosexuals (the people, not the sin), how will you lead them to Jesus Christ? If you steer clear of young people with body piercings and tattoos, how can God use you to bring the gospel to them?
God sent an angel to Cornelius, and the angel knew the gospel perfectly well. He could have explained the way of salvation to Cornelius and left Peter out of the loop. But instead, he gave instructions to Cornelius on how to contact Peter so that Peter could go and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Isn’t it just like God, that when He is pleased to open the gospel to the Gentiles, He picks a Gentile who represents something that every loyal Jew hated—a military commander from the occupying Roman forces! Peter had to break out of his comfort zone in order to obey God. And Cornelius would have had to overcome any prejudice that he may have had against contacting an uneducated Jew to explain spiritual truth to him. He might rather have had a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin come, but he would have missed the way of salvation.
Note also how the Lord worked gradually with Peter. First, as we saw last week, Peter was staying at the home of a Christian brother who was a tanner. The Jews viewed tanners as unclean, since they had daily contact with dead animal skins. And, their houses were smelly places. The party from Cornelius easily could have found Simon the tanner’s house: Go to Joppa and follow your nose! But Peter was staying there.
Then, the Lord repeated the vision three times for Peter, in order to impress the point on him. No sooner had the vision ended than the three visitors from Caesarea arrived. Peter could have told them where the local Gentile motel was located, but he invited them in and gave them lodging (10:23). The prejudices were coming down gradually. When Peter arrived at Cornelius’ house, he was surprised not only to find just a handful of Gentiles, but a whole house full! Peter’s opening comment, about it being unlawful for a Jew to associate with a foreigner (10:28) was not a rude comment, as some think. Rather, he was just acknowledging the obvious and explaining why he was deliberately violating the commonly understood customs.
Later, of course, Peter fell into the sin of prejudice again in Antioch, the first prominent multi-racial church. When he visited there, he commonly ate with the Gentile Christians until certain Jewish men came from Jerusalem. Then he withdrew and ate with the Jews only. The apostle Paul had to confront him in front of the church, and Peter repented (Gal. 2:11-14).
Thankfully, the Lord works gradually and gently with us in spite of our many shortcomings and sins. He teaches us by putting us in uncomfortable situations, where we have to challenge our blind assumptions and grow to be more like the Lord Jesus, who was the friend of sinners that others were prejudiced against.
It is obvious that God was the prime mover in this story. His purpose is to be glorified among the nations, and He accomplishes that purpose by preparing both the hearers and His preachers. He revealed Himself to Cornelius, and just at the right moment, gave Peter the necessary vision to prepare him.
It would be against other Scriptures to conclude that Cornelius was a basically good man who was naturally inclined to seek after God, and that because Cornelius sought God, God responded by revealing Himself. The Bible is clear that there are none who seek after God (Rom. 3:10). Any time you find a person like Cornelius who seeks after God, you can know that God is first seeking the person. We don’t know for how long Cornelius had been a devout man, but we do know that the timing of this event was according to God’s purpose.
I confess that one of the mysteries of God’s ways for me is why He allows whole nations to go on in their spiritual darkness for centuries, but then in His timing opens them up to the gospel. Until 12 years ago, Mongolia was a closed, completely unevangelized country. Then the Communist government fell and missionaries were able to get into the country. Now there are many churches throughout the country, and people are coming to the Savior daily. We know that around His throne in heaven there will be some from every tribe and tongue and people and nation that the Savior purchased with His blood (Rev. 5:9). If we do not have a heart to reach out with the gospel across cultural, racial, and national barriers, we do not have the heart of the Lord Jesus.
So what are we to do when God confronts our prejudice?
At first Peter was a bit confused by the meaning of the vision, since it was so shocking to his understanding of biblical matters. His response was the oxymoronic phrase, “By no means, Lord!” (10:14). In his defense, Peter was responding as the prophet Ezekiel had done when the Lord commanded him to eat unclean food as a prophetic drama to show Israel how terrible the captivity would be (Ezek. 4:14). When the prophet protested, the Lord allowed him to substitute another method of preparing the food. But here, the Lord followed Peter’s protest by saying, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy” (10:15). After the vision was repeated three times, Peter was left greatly perplexed as to what it all meant. But as soon as he was clear about the fact that God had done away with the ceremonial laws of defilement for eating unclean food, Peter overcame his lifelong scruples and obeyed the Lord.
Jesus had taught that the Jewish laws of ceremonial defilement were fulfilled in Him, but this was such a radical thing that the disciples did not fully understand it until after Peter’s vision. In Mark 7, some Pharisees observed that Jesus and the disciples did not observe the traditional hand washing ceremonies before their meal. Jesus exposed their hypocrisy for their fastidious outward washing when their hearts were full of sin. Then privately He explained to the disciples that it is not what goes into a man’s stomach that defiles him, but rather that which comes out of a man’s heart. Mark adds the parenthetical comment, probably supplied by Peter, “Thus He declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19). But now Peter had to make the logical step from the fact that Gentile food would not defile him to the fact that neither would the Gentiles themselves defile him. For a Jew, it was a radical concept!
But, as I said, Peter put it to immediate application by offering food and lodging to the three Gentile visitors, and then by accompanying them to Caesarea in obedience to the Spirit’s direction. He took with him six brethren from Joppa (11:12), who later could testify to what God had done among this group of Gentiles. As we will see, some in Jerusalem called Peter on the carpet because he ate with these Gentiles. They were more concerned about his keeping the Jewish ceremonial law than they were pleased with the fact that these Gentiles had gotten saved! But Peter did what he did in obedience to the Lord, and we must do the same.
The first thing he encountered in Caesarea was this Gentile centurion falling at his feet in worship. Peter did not say, “Thank you for recognizing my high spiritual office,” and offer him his ring to kiss! Rather, he pulled Cornelius to his feet and said, “Stand up; I too am just a man” (10:26). One way to overcome prejudice is to treat other people, whatever their race or background, as equals. We should view ourselves as beggars whose job is to show other beggars where to find God’s free bread.
Thus we’ve seen that we all are prone to prejudice, but that God is gracious to gently break us of this sin so that He can work through us. His purpose is to spread the gospel among the nations for His glory, and He does it through His servants who are willing to cross cultural barriers. When He confronts our prejudice, we must yield in obedience to Him. What is the result?
As we’ve seen, God had prepared the listeners and He had prepared the preacher. Cornelius had invited in all of his friends and neighbors, who had gathered, as Cornelius puts it (10:33), “before God to hear all that [Peter] had been commanded by the Lord” to say. That’s a ready situation for God to work, when the hearts of the people are prepared and the heart of the speaker is prepared and they gather in God’s presence to hear a message that God commanded him to give! As we’ll see, Peter didn’t even get a chance to finish his message before the Holy Spirit fell upon everyone there and they all got saved. And, of course, this was just the beginning of the gospel moving out into Gentile territory. The same gospel that saved the apostles was mighty to save the Gentiles who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of Peter’s obedience in putting to death his prejudice, the gospel has come to us who otherwise never would have known God.
As you know, in the late 1960’s there was a lot of cultural upheaval that resulted in a wide gap between the younger and older generations, both in attitude and appearance. Hudson Armerding was the president of Wheaton College at the time. He had fought for our country’s liberty during World War II, and as a member of that generation, was conservative in his grooming and attire. He also despised the counter-culture movement, because to him it represented unpatriotic draft-resisters, flag burners, and the like. So he did not like it when students dressed in the grubby counter-cultural fashion. Also, he thought that it was biblically inappropriate for men to have long hair. But the staff at Wheaton was trying to permit a degree of liberty among the students on this matter.
One day Armerding was scheduled to speak in chapel. Just before the service, they gathered for prayer. Just before they began, a young man walked in who had a beard and long hair, and was wearing a sash around his waist, with sandals on his feet. Armerding looked at him and was sorry that he had come in. Worse yet, the student sat down right next to the president. When they started praying, Armerding did not have a very good attitude.
Then the young man began to pray: “Dear Lord, you know how much I admire Dr. Armerding, how I appreciate his walk with you. I am grateful for what a man of God he is, and how he loves you and loves your people. Lord, bless him today. Give him liberty in the Holy Spirit and make him a real blessing to all of us in the student body. Help us to have open hearts to hear what he has to say, and may we do what you want us to do.”
As Armerding walked down the steps to go into the chapel, the Lord spoke to him about his attitude. After giving his message, he asked the young man to come to the platform. A ripple of whispering went through the students, many of whom thought that the president was going to dismiss the young man from school as an example to the rest of the students. But rather than rebuking him or dismissing him, everyone including the young man was surprised when Dr. Armerding put his arms around him and embraced him as a brother in Christ. It broke up the chapel service, as students stood and applauded, cried and embraced one another. God used that simple act of one man laying aside his prejudice to turn the mood on campus to greater love and acceptance of one another. Dr. Armerding later learned that this young man had adopted his appearance in order to reach some of his generation who were alienated from God and the church (Hudson Armerding, Leadership [Tyndale], pp. 166-168).
Here’s a radical prayer request: Ask God to show you your prejudices. When He does, obey Him by putting your prejudices to death and by showing His love and offering His gospel to those whom you might not naturally be inclined to like. He will use it to exalt His name among the nations!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Since life is short and uncertain and eternity is forever, the most important question anyone can answer is, “How can I be saved?” How can I know for certain that I am right with God? Sadly, even among professing Christians there are different answers to that crucial question. Many think that if a person is sincere, it really doesn’t matter what he believes. But you can sincerely believe that you are swallowing medicine that will make you well, but if it really is poison, your sincerity does not matter. It does matter greatly what you believe!
Another common belief is that to be saved, we must be good people. If we try to do our best, if we don’t hurt anyone, if we help others, then we will get into heaven. Often faith in Christ is combined with good works. If we believe in Jesus and do the best we can, the combination will get us into heaven.
As most of you know, the Bible teaches clearly that we are saved by grace (God’s undeserved favor) through faith in Jesus Christ, apart from our own goodness or good works (Eph. 2:8-9). But sometimes even those who know and believe that truth personally do not live it in terms of its practical application. For example, we may think that God can save someone who is a notorious sinner, but surely that person must first clean up his life a bit. But to say that is to deny God’s free grace.
Peter and the other apostles knew that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by our good works or efforts. But practically speaking, up till now they also believed that to be right with God, a pagan Gentile had to become a Jew in the sense of obeying the Jewish laws regarding circumcision and ceremonial issues. The thought of a Gentile getting saved without coming through the door of Judaism was foreign to them. But as we’ve seen, God has been breaking down Peter’s Jewish prejudices on this matter. Now they are all swept away in an instant, as the Gentiles in Cornelius’ house clearly get saved and receive the Holy Spirit in the same manner as the Jews had on the Day of Pentecost.
This was a radical turning point in God’s economy of salvation. For almost 2,000 years since Abraham, salvation had been from the Jews (John 4:22) and through the Jews. A Gentile had to become a Jewish proselyte in order to know and worship God in the way that God ordained. God had promised Abraham that through his descendants, all the nations would be blessed (Gen. 12:3). But up till now, the blessing of salvation was pretty much bottled up with the Jews. But now a radical shift takes place. The door of salvation swings wide open to the Gentiles, and it does not require them first to become Jews. It surprised Peter’s Jewish traveling companions (10:45), and although Peter had come to understand it intellectually (10:34), it probably startled him, too. The wonderful truth is:
Everyone who believes in Christ receives God’s salvation.
Peter’s sermon and its surprising result teach us five lessons:
Peter begins his sermon by saying, “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right, is welcome to Him” (10:34-35). The first part of that statement is easy to understand; the second part may cause some trouble.
By the first part, Peter means that God does not show favor to anyone based on the person’s nationality. That was not always the case. That God was not partial was taught in the Old Testament (Deut. 10:17), but it was in a decidedly Jewish context. Moses had just pointed out (Deut. 10:15) how God had chosen the Jews above all other peoples. In that context, he used God’s impartiality to exhort Israel not to accept bribes, to show equal justice to everyone, and even to treat aliens with love by meeting their basic needs. But the Old Testament clearly shows God’s favoritism for the Jews above other nations during the 2,000 years from Abraham to Christ. So you can see how difficult it would be for any Jew to shift his thinking on this matter.
But now God was doing a new thing. Through his vision of the sheet being let down from heaven and the subsequent events, Peter has come to this radical conclusion, that God is not partial to anyone on the basis of nationality. Now God could bring Gentiles directly into a relationship with Him apart from their becoming Jews. This insight would change the history of the world.
The application for us is that people from every racial and national background are on equal footing when it comes to receiving the gospel. They don’t have to become “Americanized” to become Christians. They can keep cultural traditions that do not violate Scripture. They can sing songs that fit with their culture, even if they don’t sound like American hymns. They can dress in their native styles, as long as they are modest. American missionaries need to be careful not to imply that to become a Christian is to become an American. God forbid!
The second part of Peter’s statement is more difficult to understand. At first glance, it seems to contradict the first part, that God does not show partiality. It sounds like God is partial to those who fear Him and do what is right. And it seems to imply that God accepts people based on good character and good works, which goes against salvation by grace through faith apart from works.
We need to interpret it in the context of this chapter. Cornelius was a God-fearing man who did many good deeds (10:2, 22). In his introduction, Peter seems to be courteously acknowledging this, much as an evangelist might find something in his audience to compliment as a way of building a bridge to them. But we need to understand that although Cornelius was a good man, his goodness had not saved him. Peter came to explain the way of salvation to him because he still needed to be saved (11:14). He still needed to receive forgiveness for his sins (10:43). The whole point of the narrative is to show how this man came to salvation.
As I have said in earlier messages, whenever a man is seeking after God, it is because God is working to draw that man to Himself (Rom. 3:10; John 6:44, 65). Cornelius has not yet come across the line of salvation, but his fear of God and his good deeds show that God is drawing him toward that point. Before Peter’s sermon is over, he crosses the line and gets saved.
God works differently with different people. He saves some right out of the cesspool of sin. They are wallowing in it, not seeking after God, when He dramatically enters their lives and rescues them. At that moment, they turn from their sins to follow Christ. But with others, like Cornelius, God puts the hunger in their hearts to know Him. They begin to seek Him and they try to please Him with their lives. But they’re still sinners and they do not get saved until they hear the gospel and believe in Jesus Christ.
Here’s the lesson to be learned from Cornelius: If you want to know God and have your sins forgiven, you’re more likely to succeed through reading the Bible and going to a Bible-preaching church than by going to the local bar. In other words, God uses certain means to save people. If a person keeps on in his sinful ways, he is not using the means that God has given to reveal His salvation. By reading God’s Word and by listening to the preaching of the Word, the seeking soul will be rewarded as Cornelius was, by obtaining eternal life. But in every case, salvation is not by nationality or by any righteousness of our own. It is by God’s grace.
Luke probably gives us just a synopsis of Peter’s sermon. Many commentators point out that it follows the pattern of Mark’s gospel, beginning with John’s baptism, telling of Jesus’ ministry of doing good and healing, both in Galilee and Jerusalem. He briefly mentions the crucifixion, but camps more on the resurrection and the witnesses who had been chosen beforehand by God to tell of these things. He emphasizes that the risen Lord had commanded them solemnly to testify that He has been appointed by God to be the Judge of the living and the dead. He concludes by saying that all the prophets bear witness that through His name, everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.
Note several details from Peter’s sermon. First, God took the initiative in sending the gospel. He sent the word to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (10:36). Men may come up with various ways to approach or appease God, but they all fall short. Only God could initiate the way of peace by sending His Son to this earth as the One who would bear our sins. The fact that Christ preached peace implies that there is hostility and alienation between sinful men and the holy God. Many people are oblivious to such hostility. They do not understand God’s absolute holiness and His hatred of all sin. While they admit that they aren’t perfect, they see themselves as basically good. They compare themselves with criminals and other evil people, and conclude that God will let them into heaven someday because they are not like these overtly wicked people.
But the Bible plainly declares that we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). If we have broken only one of God’s holy commandments, we are guilty of breaking the whole law (James 2:10). Those who think that they are righteous enough to enter God’s holy presence are guilty of pride of the worst sort. Thus there is hostility between them and God, even if they do not realize it. Jesus Christ is God’s only means of peace.
Also, notice that Peter states plainly that Jesus is Lord of all, meaning, not only Lord of the Jews, but also of Gentiles. This emphasizes both Jesus’ deity, since the Lord is God, and His absolute authority. This ties into the end of his sermon, where he states that God has appointed the risen Lord Jesus to be the Judge of the living and the dead. Everyone who has ever lived will stand trial before the Lord Jesus, who will judge every thought and intent of the heart.
Further, Peter emphasizes how God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him (10:38). Christ (or Messiah) means anointed one. In His humanity, Jesus showed us how we as humans should live, in dependence upon God, doing good to others, and overcoming Satan’s oppression. This also shows the cosmic battle that rages between God and Satan. To preach the gospel is to engage in combat with this evil enemy.
Jesus’ death on the cross (Peter uses the word “tree” to bring up the nuance of the curse) was God’s means of making peace between Himself and sinners. Jesus paid the debt that we deserve. God took our sin and laid it on Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb, who had no sin of His own (Isa. 53). Because He is God, His death has infinite value; because He is man, His death is the perfect substitute for the sins of humans.
But had Jesus died and remained in the grave, His death would not have sufficed. God raised Him up on the third day and substantiated His resurrection by making Him visible to certain chosen witnesses (10:40-41). Peter mentions that they ate and drank with Him to underscore the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, and to show that it was not merely a spiritual resurrection, but physical. This risen Lord Jesus is the One whom God appointed to be the Judge of everyone who has ever lived. Peter concludes with the good news, that all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.
Peter’s sermon offers several applications for us. First, people need to understand the basic facts about the life and ministry of Jesus before they can make an intelligent decision to repent and believe in Him. If they have never read the Gospels, they may need to start there to gain enough information to respond to Christ.
Second, we need to stay focused on the person and work of Christ when we talk to people about spiritual things. It’s easy to get distracted and talk about evolution or predestination or some moral or social issue. Keep bringing the conversation back to who Jesus is and what He did on the cross. Jesus is the issue!
Third, we have not adequately proclaimed the gospel if we leave out the lordship of Jesus and the solemn fact of the coming judgment. Peter lets his audience know that Jesus is Lord whether they acknowledge Him as such or not, and that He is the coming Judge of everyone. Unless people realize that they have been in rebellion against the rightful Lord of the universe and that they will stand before Him as guilty someday, they have no reason to repent and flee to the cross for forgiveness. If we skim over the bad news in an attempt not to offend someone, they might “try” Jesus to see if He makes them happier. But if He “doesn’t work,” they will turn to something else. They won’t have what it takes to endure hardship or persecution.
Peter repeatedly emphasizes this point. He says, “We are witnesses of all the things He did” (10:39). He repeats that they were witnesses of His resurrection, chosen beforehand by God (10:41). He adds that Jesus ordered them to preach to the people and testify about Jesus as the coming Judge (10:42). And, he adds how all the prophets bear witness of Jesus as the One we must believe in to receive forgiveness of sins (10:43).
The point for us is that if God has saved us from our sins, then He has appointed us as witnesses to others of the salvation that is available through Jesus Christ. God’s method is not to proclaim the gospel through the angels or to shout it from heaven. His method is to use His people to tell others.
The name of Jesus refers to all that He is and all that He did. Even though Cornelius was a good man, he still needed to hear about Jesus Christ and to put his trust in Him. As Peter proclaimed in 4:12, “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” This means that there is no salvation for good Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists apart from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no salvation for good Americans who live in a supposedly “Christian” nation, apart from personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no salvation for good Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses as long as they continue to believe in a false Jesus rather than the person of the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in the Bible. But there is salvation for everyone who believes in Him.
Believing in the name of Jesus does not refer to a general, vague sort of belief. Rather, it is specific and personal. To believe in Jesus means that I believe He is the Lord who gave Himself on the cross for my sins. I believe the promise of God, that whoever believes on Him receives eternal life as God’s gift, not based on any human merit, but only on God’s free grace. To believe in Jesus means that I no longer rely on anything in myself to commend myself to God. Rather, I trust only in what Jesus did on the cross as my hope for forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
Thus Peter’s sermon teaches us that salvation is not based on national identity or good works. It centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ. It spreads to others through the faithful proclamation of God’s witnesses. It comes to everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. Finally,
Peter didn’t even get to finish his sermon before everyone responded! In fact, in recounting it, he says, “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them” (11:15). He was just warming up when God intervened and everyone got saved! I can only touch on them, but note these four evident results:
Since Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in the believer at the moment of salvation (Rom. 8:9; Gal. 3:2). This is not something that we feel experientially, but rather a fact that God’s Word declares. As a believer learns to walk in the Spirit, over time the deeds of the flesh will diminish and the fruit of the Spirit will increase (Gal. 5:16-23), thus making the Spirit’s presence evident.
This text does not teach that speaking in tongues is the normal experience of those who get saved and receive the Holy Spirit. This was a unique situation. God gave this miraculous sign to the Gentiles so that the Jewish Christians would realize that they were on equal footing (11:15, 17). As I’ve said before, this gift was not ecstatic utterances, but rather speaking in translatable foreign languages that the speaker had not studied. This fact alone shows that most tongues-speaking today is not the New Testament gift.
Water baptism is the outward profession of what God has done spiritually, and thus it follows salvation. Peter did not baptize these people himself, but let those Jews who had traveled with him do it to involve them in what had happened. Everyone who has believed in Christ as Savior and Lord should obey Him by being baptized in water.
They asked Peter to stay on for a few days, and the implication is that he did stay on to instruct them in their new faith. Everyone who is truly saved will desire to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 3:18). Like newborn babes, we will long for the milk of the Word, that by it we may grow in respect to salvation, if we have tasted the kindness of the Lord (1 Pet. 2:2-3).
Dr. A. C. Gaebelein, a Bible teacher who lived early in the 20th century, was holding evangelistic meetings at a YMCA. As you know, the Y used to be distinctly Christian in focus. One day the director of the Y showed Gaebelein a card that he was in the habit of handing out. It read, “I promise faithfully henceforth to lead a religious and Christian life.” There was a place to sign one’s name. The man said, “How do you like that? Isn’t that a pretty good way of putting it?”
Dr. Gaebelein replied, “How on earth can a dead man live any kind of a life? What is the use of putting a card like that into the hands of a dead sinner and having him sign it and say, ‘I promise faithfully henceforth to lead a religious and Christian life’? You cannot live a life for God until you receive a life from God.” (Told by H. A. Ironside, In the Heavenlies [Loizeaux Brothers], p. 102.)
Salvation does not come to anyone through his or her efforts to live the Christian life. Even good, religious people need the forgiveness that Jesus offers. He will be either your Judge or your Savior. He offers salvation to everyone who will believe in Him.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
I have a book on creative thinking that is titled, A Whack on the Side of the Head (by Roger von Oech [Warner Books]). We all get into mental ruts and often need a whack on the side of the head to jar us into new and better ways of thinking. Also, we all bring a lot of wrong-thinking baggage with us into the Christian life. If we are to grow into being more like Jesus, every once in a while God has to take a 2x4 and gently whack us on the side of the head to help us change our thinking.
We’ve seen how the Lord whacked Peter in preparation for his going to the house of the Gentile centurion, Cornelius. No Jew would think of going into a Gentile home, much less eating with Gentiles, for fear of contracting ceremonial defilement. The Lord Jesus had clearly told the apostles to go into all the world to preach the gospel to every creature. But in their centuries-old Jewish way of thinking, the disciples thought that Jesus meant for them to go and preach to Jews who were scattered all over the world. But the thought of preaching the gospel to pagan Gentiles and of those Gentiles coming to salvation without first becoming religious Jews was simply unthinkable.
But now the unthinkable has happened for Peter. He wisely had taken six Jewish believers with him to Cornelius’ house, who witnessed what God was doing. They all saw the Holy Spirit fall upon the Gentiles in just the same way as He had fallen upon the believing Jews on the Day of Pentecost. But now Peter goes back to Jerusalem and the Jewish believers there call him on the carpet because he “went to uncircumcised men and ate with them” (11:3).
A lot of pastors just skip over these verses, since they repeat the story of chapter 10. But whenever Scripture repeats something, we need to take notice. There is an important lesson here that we might be prone to miss. Our text shows how God changed the thinking of these Christians on a matter that was essential for the spread of the gospel. If the Gentiles had been required to adopt Jewish rituals and ceremonies to be saved, the gospel would not have spread around the Gentile world as it did, and it would be a different “gospel.” The Holy Spirit inspired Luke to include this story twice so that the Jewish believers especially would see that salvation is not a matter of adopting Jewish rituals, but rather of God saving people of every race through faith in Christ alone.
But these Jewish Christians needed to change their thinking. The story shows how God began that process, and how He works to change our thinking:
To accomplish His sovereign purpose in salvation, God has to change the wrong thinking of His people.
First we need to understand God’s sovereign purpose:
God prophesied His purpose to Abraham in the first book of the Bible, Genesis 12:3, where He told him, “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” Later God told him, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 22:18). That seed of Abraham was not just the Jewish race, but specifically Jesus Christ, God’s promised Redeemer. In the last book of the Bible, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fall down before the Lamb and sing, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5:9-10). Thus God’s purpose is to glorify Himself through the salvation of His elect from every nation through the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ.
That purpose in its beginning stage is acknowledged in 11:18, where the Jewish believers say, “Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life.” The Greek word for “Gentiles” is ethne, often translated “nations.” While the Jewish Christians did not yet grasp the full ramifications of what God was doing, the apostle Paul would later expound on it in Ephesians 2 & 3. He calls it “the mystery of Christ,” and acknowledges that it was not made known in previous generations. But now it has “been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit, to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph. 3:5-6). While for 2,000 years the nation of Israel had been God’s chosen people, now all the nations are on equal standing before God through the cross of Jesus Christ. Everyone who comes in faith and repentance to Christ becomes a part of God’s kingdom of priests, made up of Jew and Gentile in the body. This concept was nothing short of revolutionary!
I could spend the rest of the message elaborating on what I am about to tell you, but I will limit myself to three brief implications that you can chew on more on your own:
A major theme in this story is that God took the initiative in the salvation of the Gentiles. It’s all through the story: God gave the vision to Peter of the sheet being lowered from heaven with the unclean animals and the command to eat. Peter wasn’t trying to come up with some new theology. God, not Peter, originated this process. Further, God sent His angel to Cornelius with instructions as to how to get in contact with Peter. He orchestrated the arrival of the Gentile messengers from Cornelius with Peter’s vision, and specifically told Peter to go with them without any misgivings. He sovereignly saved the Gentiles and sent the Holy Spirit upon them even before Peter finished his sermon. As verse 18 states, He granted to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life. No one can work up or will repentance by his own free choice. God must grant it as His gift to sinners who do not deserve it. Thus salvation comes totally from the Lord.
At the same time, He uses us fallible humans to further the gospel. The angel did not preach the gospel to Cornelius, but rather told him that Peter would speak words by which he would be saved (11:14). We see this same emphasis in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, where Paul makes it clear that salvation is due to God’s choosing and God’s working, and yet He is pleased to use the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. This point is important because some wrongly conclude that if salvation depends on God’s sovereignty, then we don’t have to do anything. That is simply unbiblical! God sovereignly takes the initiative and He sovereignly grants repentance to those whom He chose before the foundation of the world. But He does it through His people obediently preaching the gospel.
World missions is not just an optional program in the church for some to be involved in. Missions is what God is doing! Not all are called to go, but every believer should be interested and concerned enough to educate himself or herself about the task. Out of that interest, we all can and should be praying for missions. We all should be giving to missions. If world missions is at the heart of God’s purpose, then apathy about missions is inexcusable!
If God’s purpose is to save some from every nation (ethnic group), and we have many diverse nations (ethnic groups) in our city, then we are not fulfilling God’s purpose if our church is not reaching some from every group. As a church, we should be thinking of ways that we can reach across cultural barriers and see people from different racial and cultural backgrounds coming to faith in Jesus Christ.
As I said, I could spend the whole message on this point, but hopefully I’ve said enough for you to get a glimpse of God’s purpose. Maybe also you have begun to see how your thinking needs to change. But I need to say more on that:
By nature, we all are ethnocentric. We all bring wrong theological views into our Christian experience. Spurgeon (C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography [Banner of Truth], 1:164) said that we’re all by nature born Arminians, so that at first we think that we came to the Lord ourselves. Only later we learn from God’s Word that He first sought us. Part of the process of sanctification is God’s transforming our minds (Rom. 12:2) as we begin to assimilate the truths of His Word. Here are three ways that Peter’s critics in Jerusalem were thinking wrongly:
Peter had seen this remarkable response, as a whole house full of Gentiles had believed in Christ and were saved. But rather than rejoicing over what God had done, these saints were grumbling about the matter of Peter’s eating with Gentiles! The Old Testament did not forbid Jews from having social contact with Gentiles, although it did specify what sorts of foods they could eat. But these Jewish Christians were more concerned about Peter violating kosher laws than they were happy about the Gentiles getting saved!
But before we try to remove the mote in their eye, let’s deal with the beam in our own eye! We often do the same thing. We elevate certain traditions or ways of doing things above the salvation of lost souls. We are all for seeing young people getting saved, but they had better make sure that they not delay in looking and acting like those who have been in the church for 50 years!
When Marla was a young believer, she went to a church of hippies that met in a park. (She was the only non-hippie in the church, of course!) They met in a park because a youth pastor had seen a large number of young people from the counter-culture come to faith in Christ, but the church he served did not want that sort of young person coming to that church. After all, they might wrongly influence our clean-cut (but spiritually dead) youth! Sadly, he went to several churches in the area, asking if he could bring these young people into these churches, but he was refused. Finally, he took them and started meeting in the park.
If any of your cultural baggage (and I’m including your spiritual culture) is getting in the way of your enthusiastic commitment to reaching people from different cultures with the gospel, drop your baggage! Our main focus should be the salvation of lost people to the glory of God. If you see someone come into church who is not “your kind of person” and you don’t go out of your way to make that person feel welcome, your heart is in the wrong place! In the early 1970’s, I was able to visit Peninsula Bible Church where Ray Stedman was pastor. You would see little old grandmas sitting next to long-haired hippies worshiping together. That’s how the local church should be!
We all are prone to think that the church is for folks just like us, but not for those who are much different than we are. There is even a principle espoused by the Church Growth movement, “the homogeneous unit” principle. It states that people are attracted to churches that have “their kind of people,” and advocates that we should be targeting a certain segment of the society. So you have churches that state that their target is to reach the Baby Boomers, or the Generation Xers. They aim their whole church service to make these kinds of people feel comfortable.
I believe that this approach undermines God’s purpose for the church (see Eph. 3:4-11). God is most glorified when a local church is made up of culturally and racially diverse people who would never get together apart from the saving grace of Jesus Christ. I think it’s biblically wrong to have a contemporary service for the younger generation and a traditional service for the older folks. We all need to learn from one another and learn to get along with one another. The church is God’s adopted family, made up of children from every conceivable background, to His glory.
These Jewish Christians probably would have said that it’s okay for God to save the Gentiles, but first they need to become Jews. But for God to save them just as they are? That doesn’t fit with my way of thinking! He has to do it my way!
Church members are notorious for saying, “We’ve never done it that way before!” For example, there are many in evangelical churches who think that if you don’t give an altar call, you haven’t preached the gospel. Yet neither John Wesley nor George Whitefield nor Charles Spurgeon gave altar calls, and they were some of the most effective evangelists in the history of the church. It was Charles Finney who popularized the idea, based on some bad theology. But because it is the dominant method in our day, people think that we have to do it that way. The test of any method or any way of thinking must be God’s Word, properly interpreted and applied.
Sometimes God surprises us as He surprised Peter by saving people even before we finish our sermon and give an invitation! And the people He saves aren’t the kind of folks we would think He would save! We need to allow God’s Word to confront our wrong thinking so that we can grow in Christ and be more usable in His purpose.
If Peter had stuck to his protest, “By no means, Lord,” God couldn’t have used him to preach to Cornelius’ household. If we want God to use us in His great purpose of being glorified through the salvation of the nations, we must let Him change us. How does He do it? In many ways, but here are six from our text:
It was while Peter was praying that the Lord gave him this life-changing vision. If Peter had skipped his prayer time, he might have missed what God wanted to do through him. God will not change your thinking if you rarely spend time alone with Him.
Peter didn’t start out his prayer time thinking that he needed to come up with a creative new ministry idea. Rather, God sovereignly intervened with His ideas and His agenda! And God’s agenda shocked Peter, as seen by his startled reply, “By no means, Lord!” It was the Lord’s whack on the side of Peter’s head!
The Lord often has to whack us to get us to change. If we’re comfortable, we don’t feel any need to change. But if we’re suddenly hit with a new situation that’s outside our comfort zone, we realize that our old ways of thinking won’t do. We have to listen to the Lord and trust Him to do something we can’t do in our own strength.
The Lord had to repeat the vision three times for Peter. He repeats this story twice for every reader of Scripture, so that we get the point. And, the process of God’s changing their thinking was not finished with Peter’s explanation here. A party of Jews who professed to be Christians insisted that a person had to be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses to be saved. The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) had to work through this important issue, and Paul wrote Galatians to refute this serious error. Even Peter later fell into this wrong thinking, as Paul mentions in Galatians 2:11-15. But God often has to whack us again and again until the truth sinks in. In my own life, I’ve looked back on some issues and thought, “Why didn’t I see it sooner?”
Peter wins over his critics by relating in orderly fashion his experiences of how God worked. He could have asserted his apostolic authority: “I’m an apostle and you all need to submit to what I did.” But he would not have convinced the thinking of those who needed to change. Lasting change has to take place in the mind, and we must be convinced that the new way of thinking is in line with Scripture. So he shared the process that God took him through to change his thinking.
But if Peter’s experiences had contradicted Scripture, then they would not have been from the Lord. Granted, he had to take a new look at Scripture (such as the Abrahamic Covenant), because he thought that he understood it before. The Old Testament has much to say about the Gentiles sharing in God’s salvation, but Peter had missed it. Here, as far as what is recorded, he does not go into a biblical defense. But he does square his experience of the Gentiles receiving the Spirit with what the Lord had said about that subject (11:16). No doubt Peter became even more clear as he later read and interacted with Paul’s epistles. But change comes as our thinking changes through God’s Word.
There is a basic lesson that we all need to learn, although we’re all slow to learn it. Repeat it after me: “I am not the Lord of the church; Jesus is!” This is not my church; it’s His church. He is in charge and He can do as He pleases, and He doesn’t even need to consult with me! If we’re not careful, we can end up standing in God’s way (11:17).
These things happened about seven years after the Day of Pentecost, and the gospel was still bottled up pretty much among the Jews! Philip had seen the Samaritans get saved and the Ethiopian eunuch. But the apostles were pretty much still in Jerusalem ministering to the Jews. God had to jar Peter and use some persecution (11:19) to get the message flowing to the Gentiles.
But, sadly, the Jerusalem church never really caught on. Their Jewish identity was so dominant that they did not launch a mission to the Gentiles, even after Peter’s experience. Maybe they figured that the Cornelius experience was an interesting one-time event, but they didn’t take it beyond there. In time, the significance of the Jerusalem church waned. The rest of Acts is mostly taken up with the Gentile mission through the church at Antioch and the missionary journeys of Paul. The lesson for us is that if we do not respond to the opportunities that God gives us, He will set us aside and use others.
The reason that the Trout family is in our church is that I received a phone call from a man in Phoenix working with the Southwest CBA. He said that he had a man in Flagstaff who wanted to reach out to the Spanish speaking community here, but he couldn’t find a church that would share that vision. I asked him how much financial support we had to commit to. He said, “None. They just need a church to be behind their vision and to provide a place where they can meet.” I said, “Send him here!” I knew that if we shut the door to reaching out to this segment of our city, the Lord would not bless this church.
God’s purpose is to be glorified as His people reach out to those from every people group with the good news of His saving grace. If your thinking is not in line with God’s purpose, I pray that He will use this message to whack you on the side of the head!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
We live in a day when many evangelical churches seek to build their attendance through gimmicks and entertainment. Years ago, when this trend toward church growth was beginning to take hold, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones told a group at Westminster Chapel in London, where he was pastor, that he knew a way to insure that every seat would be filled the following Sunday. To understand this story, you need to know that Dr. Lloyd-Jones was a very proper Welshman who always wore a suit. In his biography, there is a picture of him at the beach with his little daughter, and he is wearing a suit as he sits on the sand! I think he was born wearing a suit!
Anyway, the people in his church said, “Tell us, tell us,” and “Let’s do it!” “It’s very simple,” he said. “Put a notice in the Saturday edition of The [London] Times that I shall appear in the pulpit the next day wearing a bathing suit!” After a shocked silence on the part of the group, Dr. Lloyd-Jones went on to talk about the biblical basis for proper worship, as opposed to the approach of using entertainment to entice people to attend church (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, by Iain Murray [Banner of Truth], 2:112).
Pastors today flock to seminars that tell them how to market the church in today’s world. They learn how to make the church user-friendly for outsiders. They are taught how to shorten the sermon and make it non-threatening to the unchurched, while using drama and multi-media to get the message across. And, the methods “work”! Some of the largest evangelical churches in America use these methods and teach them to thousands of pastors who see dramatic results.
In our text, we see an example of impressive church growth. From a small group of persecuted refugees, the church in Antioch saw large numbers of people come to Christ. In fact, three times Luke underscores the large numbers (11:21, 24, 26). But the reason this church experienced such remarkable growth was not that the leaders employed the latest church growth principles. They didn’t study the demographics of Antioch and come up with a strategy to market the church to the masses. Rather, the reason for the growth was simple: “The hand of the Lord was with them” (11:21). This was a church that God was blessing. That should be our aim, that the hand of the Lord would be with us.
To be a church that God blesses, we should learn from the church of Antioch.
Employing the principles that this church followed will not necessarily result in numerical growth, since God does not always grant numerical growth along with His blessing. And, we would be mistaken to conclude that God is blessing every growing church, since as I’ve said, churches can grow by using marketing techniques. But we would certainly hinder God’s blessing if we knowingly violated the principles embodied in this church. If we want the hand of the Lord to be with us, then we would do well to study and follow the example of this church at Antioch. There are seven principles I want to point out:
The founding and prospering of the church at Antioch was arguably one of the most significant events in the history of Western civilization. It led to the distinctiveness of the Christian church apart from the Jewish synagogue, in that it blended together in one body both Jews and Gentiles. It was here that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. From Antioch, the church launched the first mission to Europe. You and I conceivably would not be Christians today had it not been for God’s blessing on this church.
One remarkable feature of this church was how it started. It was not founded by apostles or pastors or trained missionaries. Rather, some unnamed men who were scattered because of the persecution that arose in connection with Stephen came to Antioch and began talking, not just to the Jews, but to the Greeks (Gentiles), telling the good news about the Lord Jesus (11:20). The Greek word for “speak” (11:19, 20) is the word for normal conversation. The implication is that these men didn’t preach as orators in the marketplace. Rather, in their everyday contacts, they told others about Jesus Christ. There is reason to believe that Luke himself was a native of Antioch. Perhaps as a doctor, he was treating a man who told him about Jesus Christ, leading to his conversion.
But surely Luke either knew or easily could have found out the names of these evangelists. He mentions where they were from. Yet they remain unnamed, I believe, for a reason. If they had been named, we would hold them up as missionary heroes, and view them as men a notch above the average church member. We would think that what they did was something that we could never do. But their remaining unnamed tells us that they were common men who had met the Lord Jesus and who wanted others to know Him, too. We all can do what they did.
Note also that even when Barnabas and Saul later rose to positions of leadership through their teaching ministry, this church did not depend on them in order to function and grow. They could send both of them off on a relief mission to Jerusalem, which would have taken at least a couple of months, and keep operating. Later, when the Holy Spirit set apart Barnabas and Saul for the first missionary journey, the church could send off these two key leaders and keep right on rolling. This was because this church knew the principle of the body, that God has gifted every member and each one is expected to exercise his or her gift in ministry.
If the spreading of the gospel or the functioning of the church depends on the labors of full-time missionaries or pastors, ministry will be severely limited. But if every person who has trusted in Christ as Savior and Lord feels the obligation of serving Him and of telling others the good news about Him, the gospel will spread and the church will be built up. Every Christian should sense his or her responsibility to serve Christ and bear witness of Him.
To understand our text, you need to know something about Antioch. It was located 300 miles north of Jerusalem and was the third largest city in the Roman empire, behind Rome and Alexandria, having more than 500,000 residents. It was a center for commerce and a crossroads for travel and trade between Europe and the Orient. This made the city a melting pot of various races, including the Romans, the local Syrians, Jews, and others.
The city was proverbial for sexual immorality. Five miles outside of town was the grove of Daphne, where worshipers of Artemis and Apollo pursued their religion of pleasure with temple prostitutes. The Roman satirist Juvenal criticized the moral pollution of Rome by saying that the sewage of the Orontes (a river flowing through Antioch) had for too long been discharged into the Tiber (flowing through Rome). He “meant that Antioch was so corrupt that it was impacting Rome, more than 1,300 miles away” (Stanley Toussaint, The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books], 2:383).
It is significant that when God picked a city that would become the center for missionary endeavor, He picked a cosmopolitan, morally corrupt city like Antioch. In this secular, pagan environment, common Christians began telling the simple gospel message that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, that whoever believes in Him receives eternal life and forgiveness as God’s free gift. The same gospel that is the power of God for salvation to the Jews proved to be the power of God for salvation to these pagan Gentiles as well.
The end of verse 20 literally reads, “telling [or preaching] the good news [of] the Lord Jesus.” But in telling the good news, they didn’t dodge the hard matters of sin and repentance, since we read that a large number who believed turned to the Lord. This means that these former pagans gave up their idols, their sexual immorality, their lying, and their corrupt business practices when they put their trust in Jesus as Lord. When Barnabas came, he witnessed the grace of God (11:23). You can’t see God’s grace, but you can see the effects of it in a person’s life. He could see that God had changed these people. Faith in the good news about Jesus as Savior cannot be divorced from repentance from sin.
One remarkable proof that the gospel is from God is that wherever it goes, it has the same powerful effect. The message does not need to be changed when it is taken to a tribe of primitive headhunters. It does not need to be intellectualized when it is taken to a sophisticated university crowd. Whatever their culture or background, people are all sinners who need to know how to be reconciled to God before they face Him in judgment. If we will tell the simple gospel message to the people we come into contact with, God will bless us with conversions.
Not only I, but also many commentators, sense that there was a note of concern behind the Jerusalem church’s sending Barnabas to Antioch. Word had gotten back to Jerusalem, “Have you heard what’s going on in Antioch?” “No, what?” “A bunch of laymen are sharing Christ with the pagans, and they’re all meeting together, Jews and Gentiles, as one church!” Alarms went off! Red lights started flashing! It was one thing when the God-fearing Gentile, Cornelius, had become a Christian through the preaching of the leading apostle, Peter. That stretched the limit. But when raw pagans from a notoriously immoral place like Antioch started coming into the church through the witness of a bunch of laymen, it was time for the mother church to check things out! So they sent Barnabas. Some of the circumcision crowd might have said, “Make sure that Barnabas gets that Antioch situation under control!”
Note what Barnabas saw and how he responded: He saw the grace of God and he rejoiced (11:23). If the apostles had sent a legalistic member of the circumcision party, he might have seen something else and had a very different response. He would have seen Jews and Gentiles eating together (Gal. 2:12), not keeping the ceremonial laws. Instead of rejoicing, he would have been horrified.
But Barnabas was a man who lived by God’s grace, and so he saw the grace of God and rejoiced. No doubt he also saw a lot of imperfection in these new converts. New believers do not drop all of their pagan baggage the day they get saved. A church made up of people from such different backgrounds as those in Antioch was bound to have some irritations and conflicts. But rather than focusing on the imperfections and problems, Barnabas focused on God’s grace in saving these people. Instead of slapping a bunch of Jewish rules on them, he rejoiced at what God was doing, and then began to encourage them to remain true to the Lord.
What do you see when you see a new convert? Let me describe him: He’s 20 years-old, he wears a baseball cap on backwards, a T-shirt, and jeans to church. He has a tattoo and an earring. But here he is in church, lifting his hands in praise to God as he sings of God’s salvation. Do you see a young man who doesn’t look like what you think a Christian young person should look like, and grumble in your heart? Or, do you see the grace of God who has saved that young man, and rejoice?
Howard Hendricks tells of the time he brought his neighbors, whom he was trying to reach with the gospel, to the Dallas Seminary Founder’s Banquet. The Founder’s Banquet is a major fund-raising event. The seminary wants their supporters to come and see the kind of quality young leaders that Dallas is producing. When Hendricks got there with his neighbors, he discovered that his table was front and center. When they dimmed the lights, the spotlight on the stage shined right over their table. His neighbor’s cigarette smoke curled up through the light for everyone in the hotel ballroom to see. Hendricks says that he could almost hear some dear old supporter in the back grumbling, “That’s how liberalism gets started in the seminary!”
God’s grace teaches us to accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God (Rom. 15:7). We need to treat others as God has graciously treated us.
God’s grace also teaches us to deny worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age (Titus 2:12). Barnabas could see that these new believers needed to grow in their faith. Every pastor knows that it’s one thing to make a profession of faith, but it’s another thing to persevere and grow in holiness when temptations and trials hit, as surely they will. God’s grace in Christ is what motivates us to live holy lives (Gal. 2:20).
Genuine conversion is a matter of the heart. Thus Barnabas, true to his name (“Son of Encouragement”) began to encourage these new Christians with purpose of heart to remain true to the Lord (lit., 11:23). Steadfastness in the Christian life is not an accident, but a matter of resolute purpose. I can hear Barnabas preaching to these new believers, “Because God has been gracious in saving us, we must resolve in our hearts to follow Him and cling to Him no matter what kinds of hardships we encounter. We must purpose to deny ourselves and follow the Lord Jesus. Abide in Him! He is the all-sufficient One who can meet your every need. He has done the greatest thing by loving you and giving Himself for you on the cross. He will not abandon or forsake you, even if He calls you to go through persecution or even martyrdom. Let His grace motivate you to resolve in your heart to follow Him and walk with Him no matter what!”
Thus the church that God blesses is made up of members who see themselves as ministers of Christ. They proclaim the gospel as the power of God to save sinners from every kind of background. Grace, not legalism, permeates this church, and grace is the motivation to go on in holiness with the Lord.
Luke states that Barnabas “was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith” (11:24). I hope to explore Barnabas’ character more next week, so I will be brief here. But note that he was a man of integrity. He practiced what he preached. Those who knew him well said, “He is a good man.” The reason he was a good man was that he was full of the Holy Spirit and full of faith in the living God.
Barnabas’ heart was to seek the glory of God through the building up of His church, not to seek a name for himself. At some point, he began to realize that the work in Antioch was more than he could handle. Maybe he realized that he did not have all the gifts that were needed to see this church prosper. So he left Antioch and traveled the 100 miles to Tarsus to search for Saul. Barnabas was not threatened to bring this gifted man back to Antioch to share in the work with him. Eventually, he took a back seat to Paul’s leadership in their missionary endeavors.
God will not bless a church in the true sense of the word if the leaders are not setting a godly example. I say, “in the true sense” because I know of many large, seemingly thriving churches where it has come out that the pastor was not living a holy life. So we need to be careful not to mistake a large church with God’s true blessing. I hope you pray for all of our pastoral staff here, that we will walk in holiness with the Lord Jesus every day.
Barnabas and Saul met with the church for an entire year and taught considerable numbers (11:26). Then we read, “and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.” Probably this was a nickname that the pagans in town gave them. It meant, “Christ-men.” It’s only used in the Bible three times: here; in Acts 26:28, where Agrippa chides Paul for trying to make him a Christian; and, in 1 Peter 4:16, where Peter urges his readers not to be ashamed if they suffer as Christians.
F. F. Bruce imagines a group of two or three of the unofficial missionaries in the streets of Antioch, with a small group gathered around them, listening to the gospel. Someone watching asks another bystander, “Who are these people?” The other answers, “O, these are the people who are always talking about Christos, the Christ-people, the Christians” (The Book of Acts [Eerdmans], p. 241). The nickname stuck, just as Jesus people or Jesus freaks was the description that came out of the Jesus movement in the 1970’s. While it may have been meant as a term of derision, it really was a supreme compliment for the pagans to notice that these men were “Christ-men.”
It is implied that the reason people could identify these men as Christians was that they lived in accordance with Barnabas’ and Saul’s teaching of God’s Word. The point of all Bible teaching should be to change the way we think, our attitudes, the way we talk, and the way we act, beginning at home and extending into the world. Others should recognize that we are like Jesus Christ because we obey His Word. Finally,
The apostles and prophets were the foundation of the New Testament church (Eph. 2:20). Once the foundation was laid and the canon of Scripture was complete, those gifts passed off the scene. The function of a prophet was to edify, exhort, and console from God’s Word (1 Cor. 14:3), and also to receive direct revelation from God to impart His message to the church. A group of prophets came to Antioch, and one of them, Agabus, predicted a coming famine. The church’s response was spontaneously to give toward the relief of the believers living in Judea, and to send the gift with Barnabas and Saul. Luke shows that they didn’t just come up with this great idea; they actually did it (11:30), without any pressure or organizing from the leaders.
God will bless a church that sees a brother or sister in need and quietly, spontaneously, without pressure, gives to meet that need. The famine easily could have hit Antioch as well as Judea. The church members in Antioch could have said, “We need to look out for our own needs; let the Jewish brethren take care of themselves.” But they trusted God and gave to meet the needs of others. God will pour out His blessing on a generous church.
So Antioch is set before us as an example. It was a church founded by simple believers who knew that God has called every Christian to serve Him. They proclaimed the gospel as the power of God for salvation to every one who believes. They operated by God’s grace, not by legalism. They saw grace as the motivation to go on with the Lord. Their leaders set the example and taught them from God’s Word. They were generous givers, trusting God to meet their needs. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and considerable numbers were brought to the Lord.
I covet that for our church! I want to be a part of a church, like Antioch, where growth clearly comes from the Lord and where, also like Antioch, we become a center for worldwide impact for Jesus Christ. Then the glory won’t go to church growth principles or to any man, but to the Lord of the church, who strongly supports those whose hearts are completely His (2 Chron. 16:9).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Perhaps you saw the title of this message, “How to Become a Good Person,” and thought, “I’m not even sure that I want to become a ‘good’ person!” The word “good” is used so often and widely that it almost becomes a meaningless description. I heard recently that the mother of a convicted killer said that her son was “a good boy.” He didn’t really mean any wrong when he shot that other man and took his money!
Most people in the world would say, “The way to get into heaven is to be a good person.” Again, the definition of “good” in the minds of those who say this is so vague and broad that almost everyone qualifies. If you’ve ever done a good deed for someone, even if it was to earn your Boy Scout badge, you’re in!
But the Bible teaches that no amount of human goodness can qualify a person for heaven, because God is absolutely good and He cannot and will not allow even a single sin into His perfect heaven. Thus the apostle Paul builds his argument that “there is none who does good, there is not even one” (Rom. 3:12), because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). As Jesus replied to the rich young ruler, who called Him good, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone” (Luke 18:19). Jesus knew that the young man was using the word in the relative human sense, not in the absolute sense of referring to God. Since none are good enough for heaven, we need a perfect Savior to bridge the chasm between us and God.
In light of this, when the Bible calls a man “a good man,” we should sit up and take notice. Although it is speaking relatively, not perfectly, here is a man whose life we should study and learn from. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Luke says that Barnabas “was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith” (Acts 11:24). The description starts on the surface and works inward. He was a good man—how so? He was full of the Holy Spirit. How so? By being a man of faith.
By studying Barnabas’ life, we will look at what a good person is, namely, a person who loves God and others (the two great commandments). Then we will look at how a person becomes good in that sense, namely, by walking by faith in the Holy Spirit. Finally, to be honest in our look at Barnabas, we must note that even a man whom the Bible calls good is not perfect. Even good people have their weaknesses and failures.
To be a good person, you must love God and others through a walk of faith in the Holy Spirit.
The whole Bible is summed up in the two commands, that you should love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and, that you should love your neighbor as yourself (Mark. 12:29-31). There is no command in the Bible to love yourself. Rather, the Bible assumes that we all love ourselves quite well. If we would just love others as much as we do love ourselves, we would fulfill God’s holy law. A study of Barnabas’ life shows that, while far from perfect (as we all are), the bent of his life was to love God and others.
Barnabas was a religious man. By birth he was a Levite (Acts 4:36), who was obligated to serve at the Jewish temple. But his religion did not, because it could not, reconcile him to God. At some point (we don’t know when), perhaps on the Day of Pentecost, Barnabas recognized that he was a sinner and that Jesus is the Anointed Savior that God sent to bear our sins. Barnabas put his trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and was born again.
We cannot even begin to love God until we are reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. We must begin by realizing that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Any love that we show toward God is a response to His great love for us in sending His Son to die for our sins. But once we have received God’s gift of eternal life in Christ, we show love to God in two main ways: heartfelt devotion, and willing obedience.
In Acts 13:2, we see Barnabas, along with the other church leaders in Antioch, “ministering to the Lord and fasting.” That unusual phrase, “ministering to the Lord,” has always captured my attention. Most of us minister for the Lord, but how many of us know what it means to minister to the Lord? The Greek word translated “ministering” is almost always used of discharging one’s service in public ministry. It was used of the service of the priests at the temple in Jerusalem (Luke 1:23). But here Luke applies it to the leaders of the church who are serving in the newness of the Spirit, not in the oldness of the law. Their fasting would seem to point to a special occasion where they were seeking God’s direction as they waited upon Him in prayerful devotion. Spending time in heartfelt devotion to God is one way that we show love for Him.
Stemming out of our devotion to God should be obedience to Him. “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). We see this instant and unquestioning obedience in Barnabas. When the apostles in Jerusalem needed someone to go to Antioch, they sent Barnabas (Acts 11:22). The text assumes that he went without any question. Then, when the leaders in Antioch were ministering to the Lord and fasting, and the Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (13:2), the two men obeyed by going out on the first missionary trip. It was no small commitment to make!
All human goodness must begin in this God-ward direction. We receive God’s love through faith in Christ; we return God’s love by devotion and obedience from the heart. Any other motive for our good deeds is ultimately self-serving, not God-glorifying.
This is the second greatest commandment. Biblical love is not just warm feelings toward someone. Rather, it is a self-sacrificing commitment to seek the highest good of the one loved. The highest good for every person is that he or she be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ and be growing in holiness and in conformity to Christ. Barnabas’ love for people is seen in four ways:
We saw this last week, so I will only touch on it briefly. Barnabas was a nickname that meant “son of encouragement,” and he was true to form when he saw the new Gentile believers in Antioch. Although he was a Jewish priest, raised with the Jewish strictness about separation from Gentiles, Barnabas could see God’s saving grace at work in Antioch. So rather than grumble about the Jews and Gentiles eating together, he rejoiced and then encouraged them all with purpose of heart to remain true to the Lord (11:23). The explanation given for why he rejoiced and encouraged these new believers, rather than treating them in the expected Jewish fashion, was that he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith (11:24).
Barnabas had already shown this loving acceptance toward Saul when Saul returned to Jerusalem as a relatively new believer. The Christians there were afraid of Saul, thinking that he was just faking his Christian faith to get on the inside, where he would continue his murderous ways. But Barnabas talked to Saul and became convinced that his testimony was genuine. He risked his reputation (and even his life) by taking Saul to the apostles and convincing them to accept him as a brother in Christ (9:26-27). No doubt Saul was still pretty rough around the edges, but Barnabas accepted him and by accepting him, encouraged him in the Lord.
Biblical love sometimes must confront and correct, or it is not real love. But the foundation for any correction must be our love and acceptance, which the person feels.
It is significant that when the work in Antioch grew to be more than Barnabas could handle, he did not turn back to Jerusalem for help. Instead, he went looking for Saul and brought him back to Antioch. Eventually, Saul eclipsed Barnabas in their work together, but Barnabas didn’t mind. His focus was not on making a name for himself, but rather on seeing God glorified and His work furthered through young men like Saul using their gifts.
I just finished reading The Life of William Farel (by Frances Bevan [Bible Truth Publishers]), where (p. 367) I was reminded of a scene similar to that of Barnabas bringing Saul into service, and eventually being eclipsed by Saul. Farel was a courageous Reformer and evangelist for many years before John Calvin was even converted. He had suffered much to bring the gospel to Geneva. One evening in July, 1536, a young man rushed into Farel’s quarters and told him that Calvin was in town for one night only, on his way to Strasburg. Farel had read Calvin’s Institutes, which had just been published, and he knew that Calvin was the man to help him with the work in Geneva.
He immediately went to the inn where Calvin was staying. He found a pale, thin, and frail 27-year-old man, who also was shy, timid, and reserved. But Farel implored Calvin to stay in Geneva. He told Farel that his calling was to be a reclusive scholar, not a teacher or pastor in the public eye. Farel continued imploring, and Calvin continued to come up with reasons why he was not the man that Farel was looking for. Finally, with fire in his eyes, Farel warned Calvin about what happened to Jonah and then thundered, “May God curse your rest, and curse your studies, if for their sake you flee from the work He would have you do!”
Calvin trembled, sat speechless, and finally concluded that God’s hand reached down from heaven and laid hold of him to keep him in Geneva. Except for one period when he was banished from town, Calvin spent his remaining 28 years as a pastor in Geneva. Today almost every Christian has heard of Calvin, but few know about William Farel, who pioneered the work in Geneva.
Barnabas had a bent toward grabbing hold of men who were rejected by others and bringing them into a place of usefulness in God’s kingdom. He not only did this with Saul. Later, when his cousin, John Mark, deserted Barnabas and Saul on the first missionary journey, Barnabas wanted to give him a second chance. Paul insisted that a man who deserted them should not go with them again, but Barnabas with equal vehemence insisted that he should go. Both men dug in their heels, and it led to a split between them. I think that both men were wrong in some ways, and both were right in other ways. Barnabas was right in that his stubborn love for Mark resulted in his later being used to write the second Gospel. Later Paul himself requested Mark’s coming to him in prison in Rome, adding, “He is useful to me for service” (2 Tim. 4:11). Biblical love delights to see others serving the Lord.
When we first meet Barnabas, he is selling his property to lay the proceeds at the apostles’ feet to meet the needs of the early church in Jerusalem (4:36-37). Years later, the apostle Paul referred to Barnabas as one, like him, who labored with his own hands to support himself in the ministry of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:6). Perhaps if he had kept his land, he could have used the income to support his ministry. But Barnabas’ generosity toward those in need took precedence over his thinking about his own future. Later, when the famine threatened not only Judea, but also Antioch, the church in Antioch gave to help the needy saints in Judea. Although the text does not say, I’m sure that Barnabas contributed to that gift, and he gave his time to deliver it to Jerusalem. The church could trust him with the money, because he was a generous man, free from greed and obedient to God.
The Bible is clear that love is much more than saying, “I love you.” Love means opening our hearts to those in need by sharing with them the abundance that God has given us (1 John 3:17). When we cling to our money and work hard to get even more, we’re being selfish. The more we love God and others, the more we will trust God by giving to further His work. The most needy people in the world are those who are perishing without Christ. God calls us to love them by giving to missionaries so that they may hear the good news about Jesus Christ. That leads to the fourth mark of Barnabas’ love for people:
God used Barnabas in Antioch to reach considerable numbers for Christ (11:21, 24). Then, with Paul, he went out on the first missionary journey, and they saw many more come into God’s kingdom. Even after the rift with Paul, Barnabas did not get mad and quit serving the Lord. He took Mark and continued reaching out to the lost with the gospel. The most loving thing you or I can do for a lost person is to tell him about the grace of God in Christ so that he may be saved. Not all are called to work at it full time. But it should be always in our thoughts as we have contact with lost people. We always should be praying for opportunities to tell others about the Savior. Not to have a heart for the lost is not to love them.
So a glance at Barnabas’ life shows us a man who loved God and others. I believe that that is the essence of a good man. But how did he get that way? Was it just his natural inclination? No.
Barnabas was “full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” This was the source of his being a good man. We see the same connection in Galatians 5:16 & 22. There Paul exhorts us to walk by the Spirit so that we do not carry out the desire of the flesh. One of the fruits that the Holy Spirit produces in the believer is “goodness.”
We walk by the Spirit by faith. A walk is a step by step process in which you commit your weight to your legs and trust them to sustain you. A walk in the Spirit is a step by step dependence on the indwelling Spirit of God. You rely upon Him in every situation for power to overcome temptations that stem from the world, the flesh, or the devil. You yield control of your life to Him, rather than being self-willed. As that walk becomes a daily habit, the fruits of the Holy Spirit are gradually formed in your life. Your good deeds, then, are not something that you do for God, but rather, something that God does through you.
Early in my Christian walk, I was taught that the filling of the Holy Spirit is an all or nothing proposition. Either you are totally filled or you are not filled at all. But I now think that to be filled with the Spirit is an ever-expanding process that is never completely finished in this life. I yield all of myself of which I’m aware to all of God that I know. As I grow in faith and knowledge, I learn of more areas in my life that need to come under the Spirit’s control. I also learn more of God, which leads me to trust Him more. As He controls more and more of my life, His goodness shines through me more and more. Thus to be full of the Holy Spirit and of faith is the key to being a truly good person.
It would be nice to stop here, on a positive note. But to do so would not give you the full picture of Barnabas. The Bible lets us see its heroes warts and all. But this helps us to see that there is hope, even for someone like me, since God is pleased to use imperfect people.
Even though Barnabas was the champion of God’s grace in Antioch, as seen in his rejoicing in the salvation and acceptance of the Gentiles, he later fell into sin in this very matter. We read of it in Galatians 2:11-13, where Paul tells of what happened once when Peter had come to Antioch. Before certain men from the circumcision party in Jerusalem came to town, Peter ate with the Gentiles, contrary to Jewish custom. But when these legalists came, Peter feared them and held himself aloof. As a result, the rest of the Jewish Christians joined him in hypocrisy, “with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.” Since this error involved the very truth of the gospel (2:14), Paul publicly confronted Peter and those who had followed his bad example.
The phrase, “even Barnabas,” shows how out-of-character this behavior was for this godly man. It also shows us that we all, even those who are spiritually mature, have our weaknesses and are prone to failure. Usually, our greatest strengths are also the source of our greatest weaknesses. Barnabas’ acceptance of people in spite of their faults led him in this instance to accept their sin, when it needed to be confronted. He compromised essential truth about the gospel because he didn’t want to offend these men from the mother church. So even good men are not perfect men. And yet, God’s cause will triumph and He is glorified by using imperfect people to accomplish His sovereign plan.
Other than from reading and studying the Bible, I have found more help in my Christian walk through reading the biographies of great Christians than from any other source. If you have never read the stories of John Calvin, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, William Carey, Hudson Taylor, George Muller, and the many other saints who have gone before us, you are impoverished as a Christian!
Thankfully, the Bible is not just a book of doctrines and moral principles, but also a book of biographies. While we might wish to know more detail about some of the characters in the Bible, we are given these stories so that we will consider “the result of their conduct” [or, the outcome of their lives] and “imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7). While we all have differing gifts and personalities, we all can learn from the heroes in the Bible. By applying the lessons of their lives to ourselves, we will grow in godliness.
So having considered Barnabas, I ask, can it be said of you, as it is said of Barnabas, that you are a good man or woman, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith? Is your love for God vital and growing? Is your love for people becoming more tender and compassionate? Do you seek to help others grow in their faith? Do you ask God to use you to reach the lost for Christ? Are you aware daily of your need to depend on the Holy Spirit to produce His fruit of goodness in your life? When you do stumble, do you turn from it and go on with the Lord? That is how you can become a truly good person before God.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
“Have you heard the news? Herod beheaded James!”
“No way! Not James! He was one of the inner circle with Jesus! Peter, James, and John. I thought for sure that God would protect James!”
“But that’s not all. The latest polls show that Herod’s approval rating went up after he killed James. So now he also has Peter in custody. Word has it that tomorrow, after the feast is over, he is going to execute him! There’s a prayer meeting tonight at Mary’s house.”
“I’ll see you there.”
There are times when evil seems to be winning the day. Wicked men get away with murder and their popularity goes up, not down. The righteous suffer terribly. Their loved ones are bereaved. It’s easy at such times to wonder, “Where is God in all of this? Why did He allow this to happen? How can any good come out of such awful wickedness?”
James and John had been close. They had worked together in their father’s fishing business. They had spent three years in close contact with Jesus. They had hopes and dreams of how God would use them in spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth. But now, James was suddenly gone. John was left wondering, “Why?”
At the beginning of Acts 12, we have James dead, Peter in prison, and the tyrant Herod basking in his popularity and power. At the end of the chapter, we have Peter free, Herod eaten by worms and dead, and the Word of God growing and multiplying. Luke is showing us that the gospel is unstoppable. If you oppose the gospel, you may temporarily win, but you will finally lose and lose big. If you stand for the gospel, you may temporarily lose, but you will finally win and win big.
Since God is almighty, no force can stop the spread of His gospel according to His purpose.
I want to share four lessons that will help us when it seems that the bad guys are winning and the good guys are losing:
There is a marked contrast between the love of the racially mixed church in Antioch for the famine-afflicted Jewish church in Judea (11:27-30) and the hatred of Herod and the Jews in Jerusalem for the church there (12:1-3). Luke notes that Herod’s mistreatment of the church happened during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), and that the Jews were pleased. When someone’s religion allows him to be pleased with the death of a righteous man, his religion is worse than useless.
The Herod of Acts 12 was Agrippa I. He was born in 10 B.C., the grandson of Herod the Great, who slaughtered the infants in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. “Grandpa” Herod assassinated his son, Agrippa’s father, when Agrippa was only three. He went to Rome with his mother and grew up on close terms with the imperial family. He was a playboy and had to flee Rome to escape from his creditors. He spent some time in prison, but the emperor Caligula released Herod and assigned him as king of the northernmost provinces of Palestine. Later he was given all of the territory that had formerly belonged to his grandfather, which he ruled until his death in A.D. 44. The apostle Paul would later stand trial before his son, Agrippa II.
Herod was a quintessential politician who when in Rome lived like the Romans and when in Palestine knew how to court the Jews. He observed the Jewish feasts and sacrifices. He used his influence to keep Caligula from erecting a statue of himself as god in the Jewish temple. He helped the Jews of Alexandria receive more humane treatment. He moved the seat of government from Caesarea to Jerusalem, and had begun reconstruction of the city’s northern wall. He knew that to keep Rome happy, he had to keep the Jews happy. He viewed the Jewish Christians as disruptive. He didn’t want this upstart sect to disturb the peace that he had worked so hard to establish (the above gleaned from Richard Longenecker, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 9:407-408). So he arrested a number of the Christians and had James beheaded. When he saw the favorable response among the Jews, he planned to repeat the process on Peter.
So we see mingled together the wickedness of an evil tyrant and the sovereignty of God who allowed this tyrant to operate on a leash. We would be greatly in error if we thought that somehow God could not prevent Herod from his evil deeds. As David says:
Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them (Psalm 2:1-4).
No wicked act, not even the slaughter of the righteous, takes place apart from the sovereign will of God. God did not lose control when Herod Antipas got drunk and gave the head of John the Baptist on a platter to the sensuous Salome. Even the terrible deeds of the Antichrist in the end times are under God’s control: He will remove him when it is His time, but before then many godly people will suffer and die (Rev. 6:9-11). There are three practical lessons that we should draw from this:
The so-called “Word of Faith” teachers say that deliverance from any trial is ours if we simply claim it by faith. They brazenly state that God must obey us when we speak a word of faith! If you are not healed, then obviously the problem is your lack of faith. I cannot understand why these arrogant charlatans get such a large following. None of them are able to avoid disease and death!
He loved James and John just as much as He loved Peter. But He allowed James to die and John to mourn the loss of his brother, but He delivered Peter. And He offered no explanation! Perhaps He was teaching the church that no man is indispensable to His cause. The death of James did not hinder the spread of the gospel. Perhaps He was teaching them to trust Him when they did not understand what He is doing. But whatever the lessons, John and the rest of James’ family would have been greatly mistaken to conclude that somehow God did not love them as much as He loved Peter. As someone has observed, we must always interpret our circumstances by God’s love, not God’s love by our circumstances.
It seems remarkable that the death of this great man, James, is passed over in a brief sentence. Stephen, the first martyr, got a long chapter on his death, and he wasn’t even one of the apostles! James, one of the inner circle and the first apostle to die, doesn’t even get a decent obituary! It doesn’t seem right!
But the seeming wrongfulness of it stems from our temporal perspective. James was welcomed into heaven by Jesus with the victor’s crown and the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the eternal joy of your Master!” He went instantly from this life of pain, sorrow, and trials into the place of eternal joy. John, of course, had to remain for another 50 years on earth, and I’m sure that he missed his brother often. But as soon as John passed over into glory, he realized how short even his relatively long life was in light of eternity. He knew that all of his suffering and grief was worth the eternal joy of being with Christ.
So the death of James at the hand of Herod teaches us that although God is almighty, He does not prevent the untimely deaths of some of His choicest servants.
No prison can shut God out or keep His servants in if He wills to free them. God easily could have spared James, if it had been His will. It was no big deal to God to get Peter out of the most secure prison that Herod could devise. Maybe Herod had heard from the Jewish leaders how Peter and John had mysteriously escaped from custody a few years before (Acts 5:17-20). He wanted to make sure that it did not happen this time, so he assigned four squads of four soldiers each to guard him around the clock. Two soldiers were chained by the wrist to each of Peter’s two arms. Two more stood guard at the door of Peter’s cell. Then there were two more guards, plus an iron gate that led into the city (12:10). But to get Peter out of there, the Lord didn’t need to send a squad of angels. Just one easily did the job!
He appeared at night, when it would have been pitch black. Whether from the countenance of the angel or a light from heaven, suddenly the cell lit up. But the guards did not wake up, even when the chains fell from Peter’s wrists. Even though he would be executed the next day, Peter was so sound asleep that the angel had to strike his side to rouse him. With David, Peter could say, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You alone, O Lord, make me to dwell in safety” (Ps. 4:8).
The angel said, “Gird yourself and put on your sandals.” Peter groggily responded. Then the angel said, “Wrap your coat around you and follow me.” As they walked out of the prison, Peter thought that he was just having a pleasant dream! When they got to the final locked door, it was like walking out of Wal-Mart—the door swung open automatically! Peter didn’t fully realize what had happened until the angel suddenly left him standing in the street. But the whole operation was a piece of cake for God, even though it was humanly impossible. Three applications:
If Peter had engineered his own escape, he would have been praised for his ingenuity and daring exploits. But what could he say about his part in this escape? He wasn’t even thinking about escaping—he was sleeping! Can you imagine him boasting, “Yeah, I had to gird myself and put on my own sandals and coat. The angel didn’t fly me out! I had to walk out of there on my own two legs.” Peter had nothing in himself that he could boast about! His testimony was, “The Lord led me out of prison” (12:17).
Peter’s deliverance is a picture of how God saves sinners. Probably Charles Wesley had this scene in mind when he wrote the verse of his great hymn, “And Can It Be?”:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose, went forth and followed Thee.
Before God saves us, we are like Peter, sleeping in the darkness, insensitive to our sin, and not able to see the light of the glory of the gospel of Christ. Our sins chained us so that we could not escape, even if we had wanted to. We were under God’s sentence of death. While we were in this desperate and helpless condition, God broke in with the light of His glory, woke us out of our spiritual slumber, and caused our chains to fall off so that we could willingly and joyfully follow Him out of this prison of death. Since our salvation was totally from the Lord in His great mercy, He gets all the glory. We can only praise Him because He saved us. We had nothing to do with it.
The text does not say whether the church was praying for James, but I assume that they were. There is no hint that they were somehow at fault for his death because of their lack of prayer. But the camera zooms in on the church at the eleventh hour with Peter. It was the very night before Herod was planning to execute him that we see the church gathered in this all-night prayer meeting, praying fervently (12:5). Fervently is an athletic term that pictures an athlete straining every muscle as he puts everything into a race. Luke 22:44 uses the same word to describe Jesus’ fervent prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.
There is nothing like an eleventh hour crisis to get us praying as we should be praying the rest of the time! If we only could see it, we’re always on the brink of disaster and death, because our adversary, the devil, is prowling about as a roaring lion, seeking to devour us. So at all times we should be a praying people! But the Lord often delays the answers to our problems or crises so that we will recognize how much we really do need Him.
I say that God is not limited by our prayers because clearly, although the church was praying, they were not praying in faith. If they had been expecting God to work, they wouldn’t have been so surprised when He answered! They would have been jubilant, as Rhoda was when she recognized Peter’s voice on the other side of the door. But they would not have said, “You’re out of your mind! It couldn’t be Peter. It must be his angel!”
Prayer is a mystery. Why do we need to pray when God already knows our needs? A major part of the answer is, so that we will recognize that we are totally dependent on Him. And yet, He can work even if my prayers fall short in their form or in their faith. Sure, I should believe in Him with a strong faith. But even if my faith is weak, He is able to do far more than I can ask or even think (Eph. 3:20). His answers do not depend on any merit in my prayers, but only on His sovereign grace and mercy.
We’ve seen that although God is almighty, He does not prevent the untimely deaths of some of His choicest servants. And, since God is almighty, He can easily deliver us from humanly impossible situations.
The angel struck Peter and he woke up so that he could be delivered. The angel also struck Herod, but he was eaten with worms and died. After Peter’s escape, Herod mounted an intense manhunt, but he could not find him. Peter told the gathering at Mary’s house to report these things to James (the half-brother of Jesus) and the brethren, who may have been hiding out elsewhere. He was not directed this time to go and stand in the temple and preach (as in 5:20), and so he wisely used common sense and went into hiding. Perhaps he went to Antioch at this time (Gal. 2:11-13). Meanwhile, Herod assumed that the guards had taken a bribe, so he had them all executed. After these embarrassing events, he needed a vacation, so he went to his beach quarters at Caesarea.
Due to some falling out, he was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, to the north, and had cut off their food supply. They gained an audience through Blastus, his chief of staff. On the appointed day, Herod took the rostrum and began delivering a speech. Josephus, the Jewish historian, gives an interesting parallel account of this event (Antiquities of the Jews [19:8:2]). He says that Herod put on a garment made entirely of silver. When the sun’s rays hit it, it was so resplendent that the people were awestruck. Either being carried away or perhaps to flatter him, they cried out that he was a god. When he did not rebuke them, he immediately got a severe and violent pain in his belly. After five days of awful suffering, he died at age 54.
Herod knew enough about God that he should have seen God’s hand in Peter’s deliverance and realized that he was fighting against God. He should have remembered the story of King Nebuchadnezzar, whom God humbled for his pride (Daniel 4). But instead, Herod foolishly accepted the adulation of these people that were under his power. Since he did not give God the glory, God used a lowly tapeworm to bring down this humanly powerful and proud man. Note two lessons:
God will not give His glory to another (Isa. 42:8; 46:11). If we seek to exalt ourselves, the Lord will surely humble us. We must all beware of the temptation of pride, of taking credit for ourselves when it is God alone in His mercy who deserves the praise.
Herod’s glory was short-lived, and his misery is eternal. Even the Antichrist and the false prophet will only enjoy three and a half years of glory before God casts them into the lake of fire, where Satan himself will end up. All who never submitted to God will be thrown into that cauldron, to be tormented day and night forever and ever (Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 15).
Luke closes this section by telling how the word of God continued to grow and be multiplied, and then mentions the return of Saul, Barnabas, and John Mark to Antioch. This sets the stage for the expansion of the gospel among the Gentiles that comprises the rest of Acts. Herod and the Jews opposed God’s Savior and came under His judgment. The apostles and early church suffered much, and many died violent deaths, but the word of God continued to grow and be multiplied. God rewarded them abundantly and eternally in heaven.
So the bottom line is, whether the Almighty God delivers us from persecution or whether we die for our faith, we must commit ourselves wholly to the furtherance of His gospel.
John Paton was born in Scotland in 1824. As a young Christian, he labored as a city missionary in the slums of Glasgow. But he felt God’s call to take the gospel to the fierce cannibals of the New Hebrides islands in the South Pacific. John Williams and James Harris made the first attempt to take the gospel there in 1839. They were clubbed to death and eaten within a few minutes of their landing. Paton and his new wife landed there on November 5, 1858. On February 12, 1859, she gave birth to a son, but on March 3rd, she died from complications after childbirth. On March 20th, the baby died. Of course Paton struggled with his grief and loneliness. Just before his wife died, she expressed her wish that her mother could be there with her. Then she added,
“You must not think that I regret coming here, and leaving my mother. If I had the same thing to do over again, I would do it with far more pleasure, yes, with all my heart. Oh, no! I do not regret leaving home and friends, though at the time I felt it keenly.
Her dying words were, “Not lost, only gone before to be for ever with the Lord.” Paton lived into his seventies, devoting himself to the cause of the gospel among these cannibals, experiencing many divine deliverances. At the end of his life he exclaimed, “Oh that I had my life to begin again! I would consecrate it anew to Jesus in seeking the conversion of the remaining Cannibals on the New Hebrides” (John G. Paton Autobiography [Banner of Truth], pp. 84-85, 496).
Whatever the cost, may we all commit ourselves to the cause of the unstoppable gospel of Jesus Christ!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Some years ago, an article in the Harvard Business Review called “Market Myopia” talked about how some people didn’t understand what business they were in. For example, the railroad people didn’t understand that they were in the transportation business. Had they realized it, they would have invested in the airplane. The telegraph people thought that they were in the telegraph business. They failed to realize that they were in the communications business. In 1886 or so, they could have bought all of the telephone patents for about $40,000. But they didn’t know what business they were in.
What is the main business of the church? Some would say that it is to care of its members. The church is here to visit the sick and pray with them, to take care of people at important transitions in life, such as marriage, childbirth, and death. It’s here to provide guidance and comfort for people at important times. No doubt, these are all functions of the church. But I would argue that these functions are not the main business of the church, and if we start acting as if they were, we will miss our main business.
We are always in danger of slipping into a maintenance mentality in the church, where we focus on maintaining our religious club and preserving its sacred traditions, and we forget about the lost. Erwin McManus, a pastor in Los Angeles, said, “We somehow think that the Church is here for us; we forget that we are the Church, and we’re here for the world.”
John Piper, a Minneapolis pastor, says, “The book of Acts is a constant indictment of mere maintenance Christianity. It’s a constant goad and encouragement and stimulation to fan the flame of Advent—‘The Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.’” (www.desiringgod.org, Sermon on Acts 13:1-12, 12/8/91). As Piper elsewhere articulates (e.g., chapter 1 of Desiring God [Multnomah Books]), the main goal of evangelism and missions is not just to reach the lost, but to glorify God. The glory of God is the supreme goal of history. He saves sinners “to the praise of the glory of His grace” (Eph. 1:6, 12). Thus,
The main business of the church is to obey the Holy Spirit in promoting God’s glory among the nations by sending out workers called by God to preach the gospel.
The scene in Acts shifts back to the church in Antioch, where some men who had been scattered by the persecution in Jerusalem had the audacity to speak the gospel to Gentiles (11:19). The hand of the Lord was with them, and many got saved. At the end of chapter 12, Luke reports that Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, where they had taken the gift for those affected by the famine. They brought back John Mark with them. This sets the stage for a major shift in the focus of Acts. From now on, it is the Acts of the Apostle Paul. It is the story of the missionary thrust of the church in Antioch, resulting in the planting of many churches in the Gentile world. Just as the founding of the church in Antioch was a radical turn, with Jews and Gentiles getting saved and joining together on the basis of the cross, so Acts 13 is another turning point. The gospel goes out into Gentile territory, as the church in Antioch responds to its rightful business. Note three things:
G. Campbell Morgan notes that the central feature of these verses is “the declared activity of the Spirit of God” (The Acts of the Apostles [Revell], p. 305). The Holy Spirit speaks, and He does not give suggestions, but orders: “Set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (13:2). He tells these leaders what to do, and when they obeyed, Luke notes that Barnabas and Saul were “sent out by the Holy Spirit” (13:4).
The idea of world missions originates with God, not with men. These leaders weren’t brainstorming on how to pep up their church program when one of them said, “I know what we should do! Let’s send out some missionaries!” Rather, the Holy Spirit broke in and told them what to do.
How did the Spirit speak to them? Was it an audible voice? It could have been, or it could have been one of the prophets speaking out a revelation that God had just given him. But I’m inclined to think that rather, these leaders were spending time in prayer and fasting because they sensed the need for God’s direction for the work. No doubt they were burdened with the thought that many had never heard of Jesus Christ and His salvation. As they spent time in prayer and praise, one of the men said, “I sense that the Lord wants Barnabas and Saul to be set aside for the work that He has called them to.” The rest of the men strongly affirmed that impression, and so they saw it as the Holy Spirit speaking to them. But the point is, the cause of world missions originates with God. We can only obey His directive.
This occasion was not the first time that Barnabas and Saul knew anything about God’s calling them to be missionaries. Barnabas had already responded in obedience by leaving Jerusalem for Antioch. When the Lord sent Ananias to open Saul’s eyes just after his conversion, He told Ananias that Saul “is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (9:15). No doubt, Ananias relayed those words to Saul. Later, Paul tells how when he first returned to Jerusalem after his conversion, he was praying in the Temple when he fell into a trance. The Lord told him to get out of Jerusalem, saying, “I will send you far away to the Gentiles” (22:21). So Paul knew about God’s calling him to be a missionary to the Gentiles many years before this commission in Acts 13.
I have heard some missions advocates say that we all are called to be missionaries; it’s just a matter of whether or not we are obedient. I would agree that missions should weigh heavily on the heart of every Christian, since it is at the heart of the main business of the church. Thus it is on God’s heart. As John Piper puts it, “There are only three possibilities in life: to be a goer, a sender, or disobedient” (Mission Frontiers [Jan.-Feb., 1998], p. 8).
But I would disagree that every Christian is called to leave his or her native country and take the gospel to those in other cultures. That takes a special calling from God and requires spiritual gifts that not all believers possess. I also believe that a man should not go into pastoral ministry unless he senses God’s call to do so. Otherwise, he will grow discouraged and quit when the battle gets intense. By a call, I do not mean a hearing a voice from heaven. Spurgeon defined a call as an intense and all-absorbing desire (mentioned by Rick Gamache, in a sermon by John Piper, “Exultation on Education,” on Acts 13:1-5, www.desiringgod.org). In my case, it was a strong sense that I could not be satisfied doing anything else with my life. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “I have always felt when someone has come to me and told me that he has been called to be a preacher, that my main business is to put every conceivable obstacle that I can think of in his way” (Preaching and Preachers [Zondervan], p. 108). In other words, he wanted to make sure that the young man was sure that his calling was from God, not from some emotional experience or idealistic view of the ministry. So a calling from God is essential.
Thus the Spirit is sovereign in initiating missions; and, He is sovereign in calling workers.
The Spirit had a distinct work in mind for Barnabas and Saul to do (13:2), namely, “to bear [His] name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (9:15). Before these men left Antioch, they had another session of fasting and prayer (13:3). Presumably, they were seeking the Lord’s direction for where He wanted them to begin. This is further implied in verse 4, “being sent out by the Holy Spirit [not by the church], they … sailed to Cyprus.” Thus from start to finish, the Spirit is sovereign over the church and the work that He calls us to do in taking the gospel to all peoples.
It’s easy to get so busy in serving the Lord that you fail to take the time to meet with the Lord in worship and prayer. I think that behind all of the talk about burnout in our day is this basic failure, to block out adequate time to draw near to the Lord and seek His will for His work. With the great numbers in the church at Antioch (11:21, 24, 26), many of them from pagan backgrounds, undoubtedly there were many needs crying for attention. But if church leaders spend all of their time responding to needs and not enough time seeking the Lord, they will miss His direction for the work. Note several necessary qualities for church leaders:
We’ve already studied Barnabas, who is described as “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith” (11:24). The remaining chapters of Acts, as well as his many epistles, reveal the godly character of the apostle Paul. While we do not know anything more of the other three men listed here, they must have been godly men to have worked side by side with these two men. They had to step into the huge void left when the Lord called Barnabas and Saul to leave Antioch.
In First Timothy 3 and Titus 1, Paul gives the necessary qualifications for church leaders. Almost all of the qualities relate to godly character, none to leadership skill or personal charisma. Also, although God gifts women and calls them to serve in many capacities in the church, the role of elder and the task of preaching and teaching God’s Word to the church at large is limited to men (1 Tim. 2:11-15; 3:1-7). On the mission field, women have done some admirable and courageous work, often going where men could not go. But if they follow biblical truth, those women missionaries will aim at establishing godly men over the churches that they see God raise up.
These leaders are described here by their gifts as prophets and teachers. Although there is much difference of opinion about the description and function of New Testament prophets, it would seem that their main role was to proclaim to the church direct revelation that they received from God. Sometimes it would be to predict a future event (11:27-28; 21:10-11). At other times, it would be a word of edification, exhortation, or consolation (1 Cor. 14:3). Paul states that the church was “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). Thus there is a sense in which these gifts ceased once the foundation was laid. There is debate about whether there is another sense of prophecy that is valid for today (see Wayne Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today [Crossway Books]). But whatever we say about that, these men knew God and knew how to discern His voice so that they could communicate His truth to His church.
Teachers explain and apply God’s Word of truth to His church. In our day, we are privileged to be able to take advantage of gifted Bible teachers in a way that was not possible in earlier generations, namely, through the radio, tapes, the internet, and Bible conferences around the country. On the other hand, there seem to be fewer pastors who are willing to put in the hard work necessary to do an adequate job of teaching the Word week in and week out on the local church level. Many pastors buy into the view that sermons should be short, inspirational pep talks filled with moving stories, rather than an exposition of what Scripture teaches. But the solid teaching of God’s Word is one of the most important tasks for church leaders.
Five leaders are mentioned from this church in Antioch. They may have ministered in different meeting places, since a large church such as this may not all have met in the same place. But when the word “elder” is used with reference to a local church, it is always in the plural, “elders of the church” (11:30; 14:23; 20:17).
These five leaders were a diverse bunch. We’ve already met Barnabas and Saul, who were both from strict Jewish backgrounds. Simeon had the nickname of Niger, which means “black.” He was probably dark-skinned. Some think that he is the Simon of Cyrene who carried Jesus’ cross, but that cannot be proved. Lucius was from Cyrene in North Africa, and probably was one of the original evangelists who helped found the church in Antioch (11:20). Manaen, which is a Greek form of the Hebrew name Menahem (meaning “comfort”), was brought up with Herod the tetrarch (Antipas, who executed John the Baptist). It is interesting that these two men, raised in the same setting, would go in such opposite directions. Manaen had to turn his back on wealth and a possible position of power to follow Christ.
These five different men learned to wait upon the Lord together and work together in leading the church. When the Lord sent out these first missionaries, He did not send out one, but two. While team ministry is sometimes difficult (as we will see with Barnabas and Paul), it is God’s way. Even the strongest of leaders (like Paul) need other men who are strong enough to confront them at times and to help them to see other points of view. God designed the church to be a body, not a single member. The leaders should complement one another and learn to work through differences in a spirit of humility.
They were ministering to the Lord and fasting. All ministry should be first and foremost to the Lord. The Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me” (13:2). The Greek word translated “set apart” means to devote something to a special purpose. These men were to be devoted to the Lord first, then to the work to which He called them. Jesus told the woman at the well that the Father seeks worshipers who worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). It was while these men took the time to worship that the Lord gave them this history-changing directive.
Fasting is somewhat neglected in the modern church, but it should not be. In the Bible, it is often connected with a need to seek God’s direction or to get an answer in prayer on important matters. I have never gone on a long fast, but I have seen God use times of fasting in my life. It can be as short as skipping a single meal and devoting the time to prayer and seeking God through His Word. The hunger pangs remind you of your purpose!
These leaders sought the Lord and He answered them, but they might not have liked what they heard at first. Barnabas and Saul were two of the most gifted men in that church, and God sent them out on this missionary journey. They would have left a gaping hole in the ministry there! The other leaders would have been burdened with more work. But they obeyed and trusted God to make up the difference.
It’s interesting that these men were sent out and there isn’t a word about what is usually foremost in our minds: how will they be supported? Whether the church got behind their ongoing support or gave a one-time gift to cover their living expenses or whether they assumed that they would work to support themselves, we don’t know. But the impressive thing is, without a word of protest, the church obeyed the Spirit’s directive and released these gifted men for ministry outside of Antioch.
Thus the Holy Spirit is sovereign over the church. To be obedient to the sovereign Spirit, godly church leaders must take time to worship God and seek His direction.
Habakkuk 2:14 states, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” In Psalm 46:10, God says, “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” John Piper rewords the first answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy himself forever” (Desiring God, pp. 33, 42, italics his). He states, “This is why God has done all things, from creation to consummation, for the preservation and display of his glory” (p. 45). Thus salvation is not God’s ultimate goal, but rather a means to His goal of glorifying Himself.
In Revelation 5:9-10, John hears the heavenly chorus singing, “Worthy are You to take the book, and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” When the church preaches the gospel to all the nations, God will use it to save His elect to the glory of His name. Thus as Piper again puts it, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. The glory of God is the ultimate goal of the church—because it’s the ultimate goal of God…. Missions exists because worship doesn’t” (Mission Frontiers, p. 13).
Some years ago, Stan Mooneyham wrote (“World Vision,” July, 1980),
The other day when I was reading about a certain church, I came upon the fact that it “seats 900.” That’s a common enough way of describing size. The Houston Astrodome seats 50,000; the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 91,000. But, I wondered, is seating power the way a church should be measured? Wouldn’t sending power be more relevant? I’d like to know if that church sends 900. Or even 90.
Perhaps we’ve gotten in the habit of lumping churchgoing with spectator sports, where it is the coming and not the going that is important. That may help to explain why we attach such importance to glossy, fast-paced church services in which even ushers are expected to perform with the choreographed precision of the Rockettes.
The entertainment industry knows all about slickness and image, and if we are trying only to fill seats, that’s probably the route. But it seems to me that the church might better be trying to empty its seats. The church is, or ought to be, a sending agency. A recruiting office, as nearly as I can tell, doesn’t talk about the number of recruits it can hold, but the number it has sent. Come to think of it, I have never seen a very big or a very plush recruiting office. They don’t have to be, because the action is somewhere else.
Let’s keep our main business in focus: To obey the Holy Spirit in promoting God’s glory among the nations by sending out workers called by God to preach the gospel. As Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest” (Matt. 9:37-38).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Whenever I do premarital counseling with couples, I always talk about expectations. It underlies the whole process, because if a couple has unrealistic expectations about any aspect of marriage, they are sure to be disappointed when it does not work out as they had hoped. While a certain amount of infatuation is inevitable, the closer to reality that a couple is in their expectations before marriage, the less potential for severe problems later.
The same is true spiritually. Many people enter the Christian life with false expectations. They were told that trusting Jesus as their Savior would solve many, if not most, of their problems. They heard that the Christian life is an abundant life, full of joy and peace. What they didn’t hear is that it also is a life of mortal combat with the enemy of our souls, who is not only powerful, but also incredibly crafty. And, the combat intensifies when a person engages in some sort of ministry.
In our text, Barnabas and Saul head off on the first missionary journey. They had been sent out with the blessing of the church in Antioch; Luke expressly states that they were sent out by the Holy Spirit. No doubt there was a certain sense of adventure and excitement about the mission. It may be that this sense of adventure was part of the reason that John Mark signed on to accompany the two leaders. But they weren’t very far into the mission when they encountered a battle with the spiritual forces of wickedness. From this encounter, we learn that …
When we share the gospel, we engage the enemy of souls in spiritual combat, so we must be prepared for spiritual battle.
When we go out to do the Lord’s work, we should expect and be prepared for satanic opposition. Leading someone to Christ involves more than giving a sales pitch or using logical arguments. We are engaging in battle with Satan himself, who wants to keep the person in his kingdom of darkness. So the Holy Spirit sent Barnabas and Saul directly into this spiritual conflict. It reminds us of the early ministry of Jesus, where the Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (see Luke 4:1, 2).
Before we jump to the spiritual lessons that are here, we need to understand Luke’s reason for including this incident here.
We have begun a new section in Acts (13:1 ff.) that shifts the focus to the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Here and in the next two chapters, we will see Paul and Barnabas leading this Roman proconsul to Christ. They go on to preach to the Jews at Pisidian Antioch, who reject the gospel, prompting the apostles to turn to the Gentiles. Then they preach directly to the Gentiles at Iconium and Lystra. On their return, they appoint elders at the churches in the cities where they have preached. They then return to Antioch and report what God had done with them, and especially “how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (14:27). This sets the stage for the Jerusalem Council (15:1-29), which approved this matter of the Gentiles becoming Christians without first becoming Jews. Then Paul and Barnabas split over the matter of taking Mark along on the second journey. Luke is establishing two important facts by narrating these events:
Although Peter had witnessed to Cornelius and the Gentiles in his home, the Jerusalem church never seemed to pick up on this as a precedent for further outreach to the Gentiles. It was left to the church at Antioch to see this direct approach bring many Gentiles to the faith without coming through the door of Judaism. When Barnabas and Saul begin their mission, they start by witnessing to the Jews in the synagogues of Cyprus. This was always Paul’s approach, to take the gospel to the Jew first, and then to the Gentiles (Rom. 1:16). Perhaps he did this because of his intense desire to see his own people saved (Rom. 9:1-5). He may have been following Jesus’ approach, of first taking the good news to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and only later mandating that the message go out to all the nations (Matt. 10:5-6; 28:19). Also, the Jewish synagogues would be a place where God-fearing Gentiles may be found, who already had a foundation, but just needed to hear about Jesus Christ.
But Luke quickly passes over the early ministry in the synagogues of Cyprus and focuses on this incident where the Gentile proconsul (the governor appointed by the Roman senate) gets saved. Ironically, he is almost prevented from believing by a Jewish false prophet. As a Jew, Elymas should have been helping this proconsul to know the one true God, preparing him to look for the Messiah. Then Paul’s ministry would have completed the process. But actually it was in spite of this Jew that the proconsul got saved. His conversion seems to be a turning point in Paul’s whole ministry (Richard Longenecker, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 9:420-421). Even his name changes from the Jewish Saul to the Gentile Paul (the same name as his first recorded convert), and the Gentile name is used from here on.
Thus Luke is showing that because the Jews rejected the gospel and even opposed it, Paul was legitimate in preaching directly to the Gentiles. This is further underscored by the fact that God was pleased to save the Gentiles apart from their becoming Jews.
Since Paul was not one of the twelve, critics (especially Jewish critics) attacked his apostolic credentials. If he were discredited as a legitimate apostle, then his entire ministry to the Gentiles would be discredited as well. This would undermine the message of salvation by grace through faith apart from any works, such as the Jewish rite of circumcision. So it was important to establish Paul’s credibility as a true apostle.
Luke does this in several ways in these chapters. First, Paul was clearly called and sent out by the Holy Spirit, with the full backing of the church in Antioch (13:1-4).
Second, Paul performed the signs of an apostle, namely the ability to do miracles (see 2 Cor. 12:12). Striking Elymas blind was Paul’s first recorded miracle, and it was done in conflict with a Jew over preaching the gospel to a Gentile (Stanley Toussaint, The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books], 2:388).
Third, we will see in the material to follow that Paul’s preaching was identical to Peter’s. Also, there are striking parallels between the ministry of Peter and that of Paul. Just as Peter confronted Simon the sorcerer, so here Paul confronts Elymas the sorcerer. Just as Peter’s success caused Jewish jealousy (5:17), so Paul’s success caused Jewish jealousy (13:45). Just as Peter healed a man lame from birth (3:1-11), so does Paul (14:8-18). Just as Peter’s shadow falling on people healed them (5:15-16), so handkerchiefs and aprons carried from Paul healed people (19:11-12).
Fourth, Luke establishes Paul’s apostolic credentials by signaling the shift from “Barnabas and Saul” to “Paul and Barnabas.” In 13:7, it is Barnabas and Saul. In 13:9, the name change is given, from Saul to Paul. In 13:13, it is “Paul and his companions” who put out to sea, and from then on, with just a few exceptions that can be explained in context, it is Paul and Barnabas (13:42).
Fifth, although it is more subtle, the defection of Mark, Paul and Barnabas’ split over taking him on the second journey, and Mark’s subsequent mission with Barnabas, establish the credibility of Paul as an apostle. Why Mark left is never stated, and so we must be a bit tentative here. There probably were multiple factors. But it is not difficult to surmise that a main factor may have been Mark’s disagreement over the strategy of Paul’s direct approach to the Gentiles. After the proconsul’s conversion, the team moved on to Perga, but did not preach there. It can be plausibly argued that they discussed the new approach of going directly to the Gentiles, and that Mark’s disagreement led to his departure. He may have been worried about how this approach would be received back in Jerusalem. This would explain Paul’s later strong opposition to taking Mark along on the second journey (15:37-39). Paul was not just opposed for personal reasons, but for doctrinal reasons (Longenecker, p. 421). The record of Acts stands with Paul, who along with Silas was “commended by the brethren,” whereas no such commendation is given for Barnabas and Mark (15:39-40).
So Luke’s purpose is to establish both the validity of direct witness to the Gentiles and the credibility of Paul as an apostle. What spiritual lessons can we learn from our text?
This is the second of four encounters with and victory over demonic powers in Acts (8:9-23; 16:16-18; 19:13-17). Luke also mentions Satan two other times in Acts (5:3; 26:18). Satan (= adversary) or the devil (= accuser) is an angelic being who rebelled against God and took with him many (perhaps one-third, Rev. 12:3-4) of the angels, who are now called demons. Satan and the demons are an unseen spiritual army that is at war against God and the holy angels. They can inhabit human hearts (5:3; Luke 8:26-39; and others). As believers, we are to put on the full armor of God so that we can stand against these evil forces (Eph. 6:10-20). Jesus taught that Satan is active in snatching away the seed of the gospel when it is sown, so that it does not take root in hearts (Luke 8:11-12). So here he uses Elymas, one of his sons (13:10), to try to keep Sergius Paulus from believing in Christ.
Note three tactics of the devil:
Paul calls him “the god of this world” and says that he “has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4). We do not know why God allows Satan this amazing power of holding people in spiritual darkness and snatching away the seed of the gospel when it is sown. We do know that Satan’s power does not absolve people of their own responsibility for their spiritual blindness. Paul makes it clear that unbelievers will be judged because they did not love and believe in the truth, but rather took pleasure in wickedness (2 Thess. 2:10-12).
Since Satan holds people in spiritual blindness and tries to prevent them from being saved, we know that anyone or anything that keeps a person from receiving Christ is from the devil. A young woman is seriously considering the claims of Christ, when along comes a nice unbelieving young man who steals her heart (they’re always nice!). She falls in love with him and never solidifies her commitment to Jesus Christ. No matter how nice that young man may be, he is an instrument of the devil!
A young man has heard the gospel and perhaps has even professed faith in Christ. But along comes the job opportunity of a lifetime. He will make a pile of money and he can do what he has always dreamed of doing. The only catch is, the job will require him to set aside his commitment to Christ and it will compromise his Christian testimony. That job is from the devil!
Paul confronts Elymas as being full of deceit and fraud, an enemy of all righteousness. He makes crooked the straight ways of the Lord (13:10). “Deceit” is used of a snare to catch an animal, or of bait to trick a fish (G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament [Scribners], p. 120). Fraud has the nuance of recklessness (Abbott-Smith, p. 396), or the loosening of all ethical restraints (Bauernfeind, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [Eerdmans], 6:973). Elymas had posed as Bar-Jesus, which means in Aramaic, “son of Jeshua,” or son of salvation. He may not have taken the title with reference to Jesus Christ, but he was posing as one who could point people to the way of salvation. But he was a deceiver. By diverting people from the true righteousness that is found only in Jesus Christ, he was an enemy of all righteousness.
Satan uses deceit to undermine the necessity of the cross of Jesus Christ. In our day, there is a resurgence of “spirituality,” but it is a spirituality devoid of the substitutionary death of Jesus on behalf of sinners. It is a spirituality where each person makes up “truth” according to his own likes and dislikes. It even “works.” An article in the May, 2001 Reader’s Digest gives evidence that faith contributes to physical healing. But it doesn’t matter what your faith is in. For example, Hindus in India who pray regularly have 70 percent less heart disease than those lacking such faith. This is satanic deception, causing people who read it to think that it doesn’t matter what you believe, just so you believe in something. That road leads straight to hell!
Elymas had a position of influence, and probably financial profit, with the proconsul. He quickly realized that if Sergius Paulus accepted the gospel, he was out of a job and his access to this important and powerful man was over. So out of selfish reasons, he sought to turn the proconsul from the faith.
Most people who oppose the gospel do so out of selfish reasons. Often the person realizes that if the gospel is true, then he must repent of his sin, and he doesn’t want to repent because he enjoys his sin. He knows that if he becomes a Christian, he will have to give up his shady business practices, and it will cost him a bundle. Since he likes the things he can do and buy with his money, he rejects the gospel. Often those who argue militantly for evolution are not doing so out of purely intellectual reasons. If God is the creator, they know that they’re in big trouble because of their sins; so they use whatever arguments they can, however ridiculous (and some of them are simply ludicrous!), to defend evolution. Whatever the surface objections to the gospel, the root reason is always that the person wants to be his own god.
Thus when we share the gospel, we engage the enemy of souls in spiritual combat. Because of this, we need to be ready:
We could launch off at this point to Ephesians 6, but that would lead to a whole series of messages! Instead, I will point out five aspects of spiritual battle from our text:
Luke states that Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit before he launched into his denunciation of Elymas (13:9). This refers to a special empowering of the Spirit for the task of confronting this deceiver and for the power to strike him temporarily blind. To be filled with the Spirit means to be under the Spirit’s control. It means that we are not acting in self-will. Since we all are so prone to act in self-will, we need to be very careful, especially before confronting someone, to check our hearts. Our motives should be concern for the glory of God, the truth of the gospel, and for the souls of those who are lost. Any motives for our own glory, to prove that we are right, or to tear down someone else so that we will look good, are not from the Holy Spirit.
Not everyone who holds wrong doctrine is a false prophet. A false prophet is one who deliberately deceives other. Not all errors need strong confrontation. Some errors are more serious than others. Sometimes, a person in error just needs gentle guidance and time in order to come to the knowledge of the truth. But any error that keeps a person from believing in Jesus Christ for salvation is a serious error that needs correction.
The level of confrontation is a judgment call. In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Paul instructs us to admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help (lit., “hold on to”) the weak, and be patient with all men. To obey this, we must have discernment as to whether a person is being unruly, fainthearted, or weak. Jesus reserved His most severe confrontation for spiritual leaders who professed to know the truth, but were actually hindering others from the truth (Matthew 23). If we see someone using false teaching to keep others from salvation, we are not being loving to remain silent. By the way, I would understand the prerogative of striking someone blind to be limited to the apostles! But the obligation to confront serious error falls on every believer when the occasion arises.
This is one reason Paul and Barnabas started in the synagogues. At least the people there showed enough interest in the things of God to be there. Luke describes the proconsul as “a man of intelligence.” Every other time that word is used in the New Testament, it refers to those who are shut out from the gospel because they thought themselves to be wise (Matt. 11:25; Luke 10:21; 1 Cor. 1:19). But here Luke seems to mean that Sergius Paulus was thinking carefully about spiritual matters, and that this was why he summoned Barnabas and Saul. Since no one seeks for God on their own (Rom. 3:11), whenever a person shows an interest in spiritual things, we can assume that God is doing something in that person’s heart, and we should be quick to talk about the gospel.
“The faith” (13:8) and “the teaching of the Lord” (13:12) both refer to Paul and Barnabas’ presenting the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. When Luke says that the proconsul was amazed at the teaching of the Lord, he may be including his amazement at the miracle of striking Elymas blind. But also he was amazed because God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” had now shone into his heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). When his eyes were opened to the simplicity of “the straight way of the Lord,” he was amazed at the grace of God and the love of Christ in going to the cross. The gospel is our great weapon that God uses to save all who believe. We must wield it accurately and clearly.
We don’t know what kind of response Paul and Barnabas received in the synagogues as they worked their way across the island, since Luke does not say. Probably they encountered others who opposed them. Apparently there was not a widespread acceptance of the message, or Luke would have noted it. But throughout Acts we see that some vigorously oppose the gospel, others are apathetic, and others believe unto salvation. But whatever the response, our job is to present the message as clearly and convincingly as we can and leave the results to the Holy Spirit.
Gary Larson has a Far Side cartoon picturing two deer. One has a giant target on his chest. The other deer says, “Bummer of a birthmark, Ernie!” You might be thinking, “If I’m going to get into a battle with Satan by presenting the gospel, I’m not sure that I want to do it! It’s like putting a target on me for Satan to aim at!”
Of course, that is precisely the response that Satan wants you to have! He does not want the gospel to go out, because he knows that God will use it to open people’s eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Jesus Christ (26:18). But your only real option is to go into battle, armed with the gospel of truth. With Paul at the end of his life, you will be able to say, “The Lord will deliver me from every evil deed, and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom; to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (2 Tim. 4:18).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
In October, 1940, Presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt promised, “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” In October, 1964, candidate Lyndon Johnson promised, “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves” (both quotes in No Matter How Thin You Slice It, It’s Still Baloney [Quill], ed. by Jean Arbeiter, p. 85). We’re so used to politicians not keeping their campaign promises that those outrageous quotes hardly bother us.
But it does bother us greatly when someone we love and trust fails to keep an important promise. “I promise to love you in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, and to keep myself ever and only for you, till death do us part.” When those kinds of promises are broken, it leaves a trail of grief and pain. If I were leaving on a long trip and I entrusted to you a rare family treasure, which you promised to keep safe for my return, I’d be a bit stunned to return and find that you had sold it at a yard sale (even if it was for missions!). We’re hurt when people fail to keep important promises.
If you’re going to entrust your soul for eternity to God, it is important to know that He keeps His promises. Most of us have had the experience of being disappointed with God. We trusted Him for something that we thought He had promised, but it did not work out as we had hoped. Whenever that happens, it is we, not God, who were mistaken. We somehow failed to understand or properly apply His promises. But on the matter of our eternal destiny, it is crucial that we properly understand and apply God’s promise of salvation. To be mistaken here would be eternally fatal!
The apostle Paul’s first and longest recorded sermon deals with the theme of God’s promise of salvation: “From the offspring of this man [David], according to promise, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus” (13:23). “To us the word of this salvation is sent out” (13:26). “And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children [or, to us, their children] in that He raised up Jesus, as it also is written …” (13:32-33). The sermon falls into three parts, each beginning with Paul’s direct address to the congregation: The promise given (13:16-25); the promise kept (13:26-37); and, your response (13:38-41). We have here only a synopsis of what undoubtedly was a much longer message. His main idea is:
God’s promise to send a Savior and His fulfillment of that promise in sending Jesus demands a response.
The sermon was delivered at the synagogue in what is called Pisidian Antioch, in modern Turkey. It was about 100 miles inland, at 3,600 feet elevation. To get there, Paul and Barnabas had to go through some dangerous mountain passes, infested with robbers. Some think that the danger was one factor in Mark’s deserting the team and returning to Jerusalem. Since Paul was a disciple of the renowned rabbi, Gamaliel, the synagogue officials gave him the opportunity to bring the sermon. They had to be surprised at what he said!
Paul begins by addressing both the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles in the congregation. He starts with facts that every Jew would have known and agreed with: God chose the patriarchs; He delivered their descendants from Egypt; He gave them the land of Canaan; and, He chose David as their king (13:17-22). In all of this rehearsal of Israel’s history, Paul’s very words are almost taken directly from the Old Testament (F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts [Eerdmans], p. 272). Up through verse 22, every head in the synagogue was nodding in agreement with Paul.
Then Paul skips the rest of Israel’s history and jumps from David to David’s descendant, Jesus, proclaiming Him to be the fulfillment of God’s promise of a Savior (13:23). Perhaps observing a ripple of shock sweep through the room, Paul quickly goes back to John the Baptist, the forerunner of whom Malachi prophesied. Since John was highly regarded in most Jewish circles, Paul shows that John did not regard himself as Messiah, but rather affirmed that he was not worthy to untie the sandals of the one coming after him. Paul weaves three themes into this brief sketch of history:
Paul’s sermon centers on God and His sovereignty over all of history, especially the history of salvation. God began the process by choosing Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was not their choice of God, but God’s choice of them, that is significant. Then, God made the people great during their stay in Egypt. God led them out of Egypt with an uplifted arm (emphasizing God’s power). God put up with them in the wilderness for 40 years. There is a textual variant of one Greek letter that changes the meaning to, “God carried them in His arms as a nurse in the wilderness.” It is difficult to determine which reading is original, but both were true: God put up with Israel’s sin and He bore them gently in His strong and loving arms in spite of their sin.
Continuing, Paul mentions that God destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan (Deut. 7:1). Israel didn’t conquer the land by her own strength. God distributed their land as an inheritance. The 450 years refers to the 400 years of captivity in Egypt, the 40 years in the wilderness, and ten years of conquering most of Canaan. Then God gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. In response to their request to be like the other nations, God gave them Saul as king. This is the only biblical reference to the length of Saul’s kingship, agreeing with the Jewish writer Josephus. The Old Testament text is obviously corrupt when it reports on the chronology (1 Sam. 13:1). It was God who removed Saul and God who raised up David. It was God who brought to Israel from David’s offspring, according to His promise, a Savior in the person of Jesus.
Paul continues the same theme throughout the rest of the sermon. In verse 26, it is clearly God who sent out the word of this salvation. In verse 27, the wicked rulers in Jerusalem, who did not recognize Jesus or the words of the prophets, nonetheless fulfilled those very words of God by condemning Jesus. The point is that even wicked men who are bent on carrying out their own will actually fulfilled God’s sovereign will. History is God’s story, and no one can do anything to thwart His plan. Verse 29 makes the same point: Jesus’ death, their taking Him from the cross and laying Him in a tomb all simply fulfilled all that was written concerning Him. The specific events of the crucifixion and burial, such as the soldiers gambling for His robe, their offering Him gall to drink, and His being buried in a rich man’s tomb, all fulfilled specific prophecies. Paul continues with God’s sovereign working: God raised Him from the dead (13:30). God has fulfilled this promise (13:33). He hammers the theme home: God is in control of history.
All of this should give us great comfort, especially when things in our world seem to be running out of control. Nothing thwarts God’s sovereign purpose in history! He promised to send the Savior, and He did it in spite of the many failings of His people and the strong opposition of His enemies. That leads to the second theme that Paul weaves through his sermon:
God’s grace is seen in His sovereign choice of the patriarchs. Why did He choose Abraham? Scripture is clear that it was not because Abraham first decided to choose God. No, Abraham was a pagan idolater, living in a pagan nation, when God in sovereign grace revealed Himself to Abraham and called him to move to Canaan (Josh. 24:2-3). There was nothing of merit in Abraham to make him the recipient of such grace. The same is true of Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s sons, the twelve patriarchs of the nation. As Paul makes clear in Romans 9, God’s choice of Jacob and His rejection of Esau had nothing to do with anything in either man. Rather, it was “so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls” (Rom. 9:11). If grace is contingent on anything in us, including our choice of God, it is no longer grace (Rom. 11:6).
God’s grace is further illustrated in the exodus and the time in the wilderness. Israel didn’t even want to be delivered from Egypt, and more than once after they were delivered, they wanted to go back. But God graciously brought them into the land and destroyed the nations that were living there. In spite of the wickedness of His people, God graciously gave them judges and then sent His word through Samuel the prophet. While they were wrong to ask for a king, God graciously both granted their request and chastened them by giving them Saul. Then He graciously raised up David. Although over the course of his life, David was a man after God’s heart, we all know of his terrible failure in murdering Uriah and committing adultery with his wife, Bathsheba. But in spite of these failures, God graciously sent the Savior through the offspring of this man, according to His gracious promise. This extended emphasis on grace is why Luke sums up Paul and Barnabas’ exhortation to those who responded in faith, that they should “continue in the grace of God” (13:43).
If you think that your standing before God is because of anything in you—your choice of God, your basic goodness, your religious practices—you do not understand the gospel of God’s grace. God’s sovereign grace means that we are saved in spite of, not because of, anything in ourselves. God initiated the process with His promise, He moved all history to accomplish it, and He brings it to individuals who are rebels deserving of His judgment. It is all from His grace, to the praise of the glory of His grace!
This should be obvious by all that I’ve said so far. Paul is showing that Jesus Christ is the goal and culmination of history. God purposed to sum up all things in heaven and earth in Christ (Eph. 1:11). “All things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything” (Col. 1:16b-18). Paul sums this up in his great doxology in Romans 11:36: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”
Anyone or anything that diminishes the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ is not from God. All of the Old Testament was written to point forward to Jesus Christ. He fulfilled hundreds of prophecies, some of which Paul cites in the next section of his sermon. All of the New Testament centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ. As the Book of Revelation makes clear, God is moving history toward the grand climax of Christ’s defeat of Satan and His eternal reign.
Thus Paul’s first point is that God graciously promised His chosen people to send a Savior, and that Jesus, the son of David, is that promised Savior. He elaborates on the fulfillment of God’s promise in Jesus in his second point:
Paul here anticipates and answers two questions that he knew his audience would be thinking. The first is, If Jesus is God’s Savior and Messiah, why did the Jewish leaders reject Him? Second, When the Jewish leaders rejected and killed Jesus, did they somehow thwart or nullify God’s purpose?
In answer to the first question, Paul shows that the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus because they did not recognize Him when He came (13:27). They were looking for a political Messiah who would deliver them from Rome’s domination. Surely, he would be a great soldier or statesman. He would be trained in the rabbinic schools. He would come from a prominent family and have prestige and influence in society. Jesus had none of these and so they did not recognize Him.
The reason they didn’t recognize Him is that they did not hear the voices of the prophets who spoke to them every Sabbath as God’s Word was read aloud (13:27). They heard the words and they even memorized great portions of Scripture. But they did not understand it. As Jesus charged, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). Or, as Jesus quoted Isaiah with reference to the people, “You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them” (Matt. 13:14-15).
In answer to the second question, Paul shows that the Jews’ rejection and killing of Jesus did not in any way thwart God’s plan, but rather fulfilled it in exact accordance with Scripture. Here he echoes both Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:23), and the prayer of the early church (Acts 4:27-28), which show that the crucifixion of Jesus only fulfilled what God’s hand and God’s purpose predestined to occur. This is not to absolve the wicked men who killed Him of their responsibility. But it is to exalt God, who is able to use the most wicked deeds of the most wicked men to accomplish His sovereign purpose, and yet hold them guilty for all the terrible things that they do.
Paul also emphasizes that God overruled their wicked killing of Jesus by raising Him from the dead. As with all apostolic witness in Acts, the resurrection of Jesus is central. Paul mentions the many witnesses who saw the risen Jesus over many days (13:31). In 13:33, the word “raised up” probably refers not only to the resurrection, but also to Jesus’ exaltation on high. The quote from Psalm 2, “You are My Son; today I have begotten You,” predicts the enthronement of God’s Messiah over all His enemies. Some take the word “today” to speak of the “day” of God’s eternal decree, when Christ was declared to be the Son of God and begotten (John Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord [Moody Press], p. 41). Since the decree is eternal, Christ’s Sonship is eternal. Others, such as John Calvin (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts, pp. 535-536), think that “today” refers to the resurrection, when Christ was exalted by His eternal identity as God’s Son being most clearly manifested. Support for this view is Romans 1:4, which states that He was “declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.”
Paul (13:34-37) further underscores Jesus’ resurrection by quoting two Old Testament prophecies. First he cites Isaiah 55:3, “I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.” The “you” is plural, pointing to God’s people, but the holy and sure promises were mediated to them through David’s promised descendant, the Messiah. A dead Messiah could not fulfill the promised blessing to David, to have one of his descendants sit on his throne forever (2 Sam. 7:16). Only a perpetually living Messiah could do that. Then, as Peter did at Pentecost, Paul cites Psalm 16:10, showing that it could not have applied to David, who died and did undergo decay, but rather applied to David’s descendant, the Messiah.
Thus Paul’s argument so far is that God had given His promise to send a Savior to His chosen people, Israel. He had kept that promise by sending Jesus, the son of David, in fulfillment of the prophecies given hundreds of years before. The fact that the Jewish leaders rejected and killed Jesus did not thwart, but actually fulfilled, God’s promises. God raised Jesus from the dead, also in accordance with several prophecies. Then comes the bottom line:
Again Paul addresses them as brethren, meaning, “fellow Jews.” First, he proclaims two great promises to them (13:38-39); then, he ends with a solemn warning from the prophet Habakkuk (13:40-41).
Both promises are “through Him.” Paul’s audience was trying to gain God’s acceptance through keeping of the Law of Moses. But Paul boldly states what he develops at length in his epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans, that right standing with God can never come through the law. The law brings condemnation to all, because all have sinned and violated God’s holy law. If anyone had tried to keep it, it was Paul (Phil. 3:4-6), but it had not brought him into right standing before God.
Then Paul uses twice the word that became the center of his gospel, “justified” (I don’t understand why the NASB translates it “freed”). It refers to more than our sins being taken away through forgiveness. It refers to God declaring us righteous in His sight through the merits of Jesus Christ. We stand before Him just as if we had never sinned, because the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us through faith. What a wonderful promise, that our standing before God can change instantly from guilty sinner to justified saint at the moment we put our trust in Jesus as the one who paid our penalty on the cross!
Paul quotes Habakkuk 1:5, which warned Judah of the impending judgment that God would bring on them through the Babylonians because of their unrepentant hearts. The implication is, just as God surely carried out that judgment, so He will bring destruction on you if you scoff at His gracious promise of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
We live in a day that scoffs at the thought of God’s judgment. Even many who profess to know Christ say, “My God is a God of love, not a God of judgment.” But what matters is not how you speculate God to be, but rather, how He has in fact revealed Himself in His Word. Some who claim to be evangelical theologians argue that hell will not be eternal punishment. Rather, they say that God will annihilate the wicked after they have served an appropriate sentence. While appealing to the flesh, that view contradicts the very words of Jesus, who quoted Isaiah, that hell will be a place “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (see Mark 9:42-48). Just as eternal life is forever, so eternal punishment is forever (Matt. 25:46).
The God who keeps His promises is also the God who carries through with His warnings! Paul’s sermon gives abundant evidence that God faithfully kept His gracious promise to send Jesus as the Savior of all who will believe in Him. The word of this salvation is sent to you (13:26). Through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you (13:38). Through Him everyone who believes is justified in God’s sight (13:39). But also, all who scoff at Him or ignore Him “will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thess. 1:9). Remember, Paul was speaking here to a religious audience. Everyone present believed in God. But they needed personally to put their trust in His promise of salvation through Jesus Christ so that the words of His warning did not come upon them.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Although there may be a few people who really enjoy conflict and division, most of us do not. We like peace and will go to great lengths to avoid confrontation. It’s always difficult when you need to talk to someone about a problem and you know that he probably will not welcome your insights. Most of us put off that kind of encounter as long as we possibly can.
Maybe that’s one reason that most of us are afraid to tell others about Jesus Christ. We know that the other person may not respond favorably, and we’d rather not create conflict. And we know that Satan will oppose the one who tells others about Christ. Who wants to engage in combat with the prince of darkness?
It was in the context of our confessing Christ before others that Jesus said,
Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household (Matt. 10:34-36).
If we take a stand for Jesus Christ, we will encounter opposition, sometimes even from our own families. While we should always be sensitive and gracious to each person, and be careful not to be personally offensive, there is an inherently divisive quality about the very message we proclaim. The gospel is good news, but it is good news that divides.
We see this in our text. Everywhere that Paul and Barnabas went, they caused division. In 13:42-52, we see the reaction to Paul’s sermon in Pisidian Antioch: Some believed and followed Paul and Barnabas; others rejected their message and created such strong opposition that they drove the evangelists out of the region. The same thing happened at the next town, Iconium (14:1-7): A great multitude believed and sided with the apostles; but others stirred up strong opposition, so that eventually the apostles had to flee for their lives. The gospel is good news that divides.
Why would we want to proclaim a message that is inherently divisive? There are a number of reasons. We know that the gospel is the truth, and that those who do not respond to it in faith will face God’s eternal judgment, but those who believe will be eternally saved. But these are not the main reasons that we should proclaim the gospel. The main reason that we should proclaim the gospel is that God is glorified through it when He saves sinners. Our text shows this when it says, “And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (13:48).
Since God is glorified in the salvation of His elect, He wants us boldly to proclaim the gospel, even though it divides people.
The glory of God is to be our supreme aim in everything: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Thus,
God created us in His image to reflect His glory. The fall of the human race into sin blocked God’s glory from shining through us. Sinful people do not glorify God. But what man lost in the first creation, God recovered in the new creation of the new man (Eph. 4:24; 2 Cor. 5:17). Thus our salvation, which God purposed before time began, results in the praise of the glory of His grace (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14). The main reason we should desire to see people get saved is not so that they will be happy, but so that God will be glorified through their lives. To grasp this, we must understand two truths:
This truth is taught often and plainly throughout the Bible, and yet many Christians try to dodge it. Jesus spoke plainly about the elect (Matt. 24:22, 24, 31; Luke 18:7). Paul began his sermon at the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch by referring to God’s choice of the fathers of the nation Israel (13:17). Later in Acts, Paul was in Corinth and was afraid. The Lord appeared to him in a vision and told him to go on speaking, promising His protection. Then He added, “for I have many people in this city” (18:10). Paul had not yet seen these people get saved. But they were God’s elect. He knew who they were and wanted Paul to keep preaching, so that they would be saved.
We see God’s election in our text at the end of verse 48, “and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” Ray Stedman (Acts 13-20, The Growth of the Body [Vision House], p. 33) says,
Now do not turn this around. The verse does not say, “And as many as believed were ordained to eternal life.” Paul began this message by showing them that God is active, trying to reach out to men; it is not men who are trying to find God. When men believe, they are simply responding to the activity of God, who is already reaching out to them.
Stedman’s warning, not to turn this around, is important, because many do turn it around. They assert that the reason God elects people is that He knows in advance that they will believe, and so He ordains them to eternal life!
But Scripture is abundantly clear that election is unconditional on God’s part. It is based on His sovereign choice, totally apart from anything that He foresees us doing. As Paul so plainly states it in Romans 9:11-12, speaking about Jacob and Esau, “for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice [election] would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, ‘The older will serve the younger.’” He goes on to mention God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart, and then concludes, “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (9:16). Our choice to believe the gospel is not why God elected us. His electing us is why we chose to believe the gospel.
You may be thinking, “Why bring up such a controversial matter, especially in a sermon about the gospel?” A main reason is that our text brings it up! Why does Luke do that? I believe that he does it because it is important to believe in the doctrine of election if you are going to engage in the work of evangelism, as we all should. If you go out thinking that salvation depends on man’s decision, you have no guarantee that anyone will decide to trust in Christ. In fact, you have the Bible’s guarantee that none will trust in Christ, because it plainly states that none seek after God of their own free will (Rom. 3:11). None come to Jesus unless the Father draws them (John 6:44). Satan has blinded their minds (2 Cor. 4:4) and holds them captive to do his will (2 Tim. 2:26). And, the people you are trying to convince to trust in Christ are dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1). So, lots of luck trying to evangelize them!
But, if God has an elect people whom He chose for salvation before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4); if He has ordained that they will be saved by the proclamation of the gospel (Rom. 1:16); if He has the power to raise them from the dead and impart repentance and saving faith to them (Acts 11:18; 2 Tim. 2:25); then, you can share the gospel with the confident faith that He will use the foolishness of the message preached to save some (1 Cor. 1:21). As Spurgeon put it (The Soul Winner [Eerdmans], p. 165; I have updated his English),
O preacher, if you are about to stand up to see what you can do, it will be your wisdom to sit down speedily. But if you stand up to prove what your almighty Lord and Master can do through you, then infinite possibilities lie around you!
We see this in the Gentiles’ response to the gospel: they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord” (13:48). Luke repeats the theme of joy in verse 52. Sinners who have been saved by God’s grace are filled with the joy of salvation. They extol Him for His goodness and love. His praises are continually in their mouths, as they sing, “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together” (Ps. 34:3). “Exalted be the God of my salvation” (Ps. 18:46). Paul exults in God’s salvation in Ephesians 1:3-6,
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
God’s glory is the beauty of His perfect attributes, and that glory shines supremely at the cross, where His perfect love and justice meet. Thus as we glory in His salvation, we will be filled with joy and want others to know and glorify Him. God’s glory should be our supreme motive in sharing the gospel.
Many draw an erroneous conclusion. They say, “If God elected some to salvation, then they’re going to get saved no matter what. So why should we have to share the gospel with them?” The answer is, Because God ordained that the means by which His elect get saved is the preaching of the gospel. In 2 Timothy 2:10, Paul says, “For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen [the elect], so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.” Paul suffered all of the beatings, imprisonments, hardships, and abuse that he went through so that God’s elect would obtain salvation. The message that we proclaim is the gospel.
Luke repeatedly emphasizes this. He refers twice to “the word of God” (13:44, 46); twice to “the word of the Lord” (13:48, 49); and, once to “the word of His grace” (14:3). In other words, the gospel did not originate with religiously clever men thinking up how we can be reconciled with God. All of the world’s religions that originate with man (or from Satan) involve a system of human works that supposedly will bring us into harmony with God. Whether Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or whatever, all these systems have one thing in common: they bring glory to man because salvation is by human works or merit.
But the gospel is altogether different. It wipes out all ground for our boasting. It takes away every human work, and attributes salvation to God alone, who chose us before the foundation of the world, before we ever did any good work, including choosing Him. This is why the doctrine of election is crucial, because it alone humbles human pride. John Calvin often made this application, both in his Institutes, and in other places. In a sermon on 1 Timothy 2:3-5, “The Salvation of All Men,” (The Mystery of Godliness and Other Sermons [Soli Deo Gloria], p.103; I updated the English) he says,
Thus we see how profitable this doctrine of election is to us: it serves to humble us, knowing that our salvation hangs not upon our deserts, neither upon the virtue which God might have found in us: but upon the election that was made before we were born, before we could do either good or evil.
No man would invent the doctrine of election, because it yanks the rug out from under human pride. We cannot glory even in our faith, which is also the gift of God. Joel Beeke writes, “The very act of faith by which we receive Christ is an act of utter renunciation of all our own works and righteousness as a condition or ground of salvation.” He then cites Horatius Bonar, who remarks, “Faith is not work, nor merit, nor effort; but the cessation from all these, and the acceptance in place of them of what another has done—done completely, and forever” (Justification by Faith Alone, ed. by Don Kistler [Soli Deo Gloria], pp. 65-66). Thus the gospel comes to us as the word of God, not the invention of man.
Luke refers to it as “the grace of God” (13:43), and as “the word of His grace” (14:3). It is obvious that Paul’s message was different than anything these people had ever heard before. They were begging that these things might be spoken to them again (13:42) because the grace of God in offering forgiveness of sins and justification by faith, rather than by the Law (13:38-39) was like water to their thirsty souls.
I find that there are many who have gone to religious services all their lives, and yet they have never heard of God’s grace that is offered to them in Jesus Christ. I once talked with a man who had been a lifelong Lutheran. He was in his early forties; he had been a deacon in a Lutheran Church. But he thought that the way to be right with God was by going to church and trying to be a better person. I told him, “That is exactly what Martin Luther thought before he got saved!” I explained to him that trying to keep God’s Law would only condemn him, because no one can keep it perfectly, and God requires perfect righteousness.
What Luther discovered after much agony of soul was that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to guilty sinners by faith, apart from any works or human merit. I asked him, “Have you ever heard this before?” He said, “No.” I asked him, “Would you like to put your trust in Jesus as the one who bore your sins and who fulfilled the Law in your behalf?” He prayed to receive Christ.
The Bible plainly declares that even the best of us have sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23). Even those who strive to be righteous are filled with pride. They think that they can commend themselves to the holy God, which pulls Him down and elevates them. When we come to the cross of Christ as guilty sinners and simply receive what the Son of God did on our behalf, He saves us by His grace, and He gets all the glory.
You would think that everyone would welcome such good news. But the fact is, many hate it. Thus,
Ray Stedman (ibid., pp. 40-41) rightly observes,
One of the marks of true evangelism is always that those who are being affected by it are divided. They are either for it or against it. No neutrality is possible when the gospel is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit.
That is the picture we get here. In Pisidian Antioch, some eagerly responded to Paul’s message, but others vigorously opposed it. The opposition finally marshaled enough support to drive them out of that region. The same thing happened in Iconium: “The multitude of the city was divided” (14:4). God worked through their preaching so that a great multitude believed (14:1). But others not only opposed, but also rallied others to oppose (14:2).
Why do people oppose the wonderful news that God offers forgiveness of sins and justification apart from any human merit? The root reason is always pride. The gospel robs people of any ground for boasting. Another reason was jealousy (13:45). They wanted everyone to stay in their system of works, because they gained status by having everyone think how religious they were. When people repudiated their system of works and turned to the grace of God, it threatened their pride. Note that it was primarily the religious crowd that opposed Paul’s message (13:45, 50; 14:2, 4, 5). Isn’t it ironic that these religious Jews, who normally would keep themselves separate from the pagan Gentiles, would join together with them in order to fight against the gospel!
Note also that those who reject the gospel are responsible for their sin of unbelief. They judged themselves unworthy of eternal life (13:46). There is a sense, of course, in which no one is worthy of eternal life. Paul is not here contradicting the message he just proclaimed, that we are justified apart from our works. What he means is, “You have condemned yourselves by repudiating the gospel and blaspheming God Himself, who is the author of the gospel. By condemning Jesus, you condemn yourselves. Your own rejection proves that you are not the heirs of eternal life.”
The Bible teaches that while no one can come to Christ apart from God’s grace, everyone who goes to hell is responsible for his own unbelief and disobedience to God. No one will be able to blame God for not electing him to salvation. Rather, he will be condemned by his own stubborn unwillingness to believe and obey Jesus Christ (John 3:36; 2 Thess. 1:8; 2:10-12). Just as we err if we deny God’s unconditional election to salvation, we also err if we deny that sinners are responsible for their own condemnation.
When the Jews rejected the gospel, Paul and Barnabas didn’t quit and go home. Rather, they turned to the Gentiles, in obedience to God (“commanded,” 13:47). God intended that the Jews and their Messiah should be a light for the Gentiles, that they should bring salvation to the ends of the earth. So even though their lives were threatened, Paul and Barnabas continued boldly preaching the gospel (14:7). There is a difference between boldness and stupidity. When it looked like they were about to be stoned, Paul and Barnabas fled to some other cities. But the point is, they didn’t let opposition or even the threat of death stop them from proclaiming Jesus as the light of the world.
This is not just the task of the apostles or of those in “full time” Christian work. Luke tells us that “the word of the Lord was being spread through the whole region” (13:49). Paul and Barnabas could not have done this by themselves. The only way it happened was that those who had received God’s grace in Christ went around telling others. Evangelism is the responsibility of everyone who has tasted of God’s grace. Our task is not done until the ends of the earth have heard the good news.
It seems to me that we are in danger in our day of taking the offense out of the gospel. We’ve made it a safe, palatable message that would offend no one. “If you’re unhappy in life, try Jesus. He will make you happy. You don’t have to worry about your sin—no repentance required. Just believe and live as you’ve always lived!” That is not the gospel. Augustine pointed out, “If you believe what you like in the gospel and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”
The gospel confronts every sinner with his sin. It confronts the religious sinner with his pride. It confronts the immoral sinner with his immorality. It confronts the greedy sinner with his love of money. It convicts every sinner of his guilt before the holy God. Then it offers to every sinner the free grace of God, who sacrificed His own Son as the just substitute for sinners. It shows that no sinner can save himself, but that God will save everyone who casts himself on Jesus alone. If we are saved, it is because God chose to save us, and all the glory goes to Him. If we are lost, it is because of our stubborn pride and disobedience. That message is divisive because it confronts human pride and glorifies God alone. It is the only message that we are to proclaim.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
I don’t know whether Jesus will speak English when I stand before Him someday, or whether He will give me the ability to understand Hebrew or Aramaic, or whatever language is spoken in heaven. But if He is speaking English, I will be watching His lips and hoping that I see them forming a “W.” I want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master” (Matt. 25:21). It would be absolutely tragic to hear, “I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matt. 7:23)!
The apostle Paul wrote, “Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful” (1 Cor. 4:1-2, New KJV). We who know Christ should view ourselves as His servants and our aim should be to be faithful in that role. Our text shows the faithfulness of Paul and Barnabas in some great victories and in some difficult trials as they complete the first missionary journey. Their experiences are recorded so that we can follow their example:
We should learn from and imitate Paul and Barnabas as faithful servants of Christ, no matter what the cost.
The faithfulness of the apostles is contrasted with the fickleness of this pagan crowd. God used Paul to heal a man who had been lame from birth, and the crowd was ready to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas as gods. Shortly after, some Jews from Antioch and Iconium who hated Paul’s message easily persuaded the same crowd to stone Paul as an imposter. They dragged the unconscious apostle out of the city and threw him on the trash heap as dead. Some think that Paul actually died, but Luke’s words indicate that he was not dead, but supposed to be dead (14:19). Some think that Paul may have had his out-of-body experience of being caught up into the third heaven at this time (2 Cor. 12:1-7), but the chronology doesn’t fit.
But even though Paul was not dead, he was seriously wounded. He later reminds the Galatians (these very churches) that he bore on his body the brand-marks of Jesus (Gal. 6:17), probably referring to scars that he suffered from this harrowing incident. God miraculously raised him up and gave him the strength to begin the 60-mile journey to Derbe the next day. Through it all, Paul kept on faithfully serving the Lord Jesus and preaching the gospel. We could probably come up with a dozen or more marks of faithfulness, but I will limit myself to seven:
Lystra was a small town about 20 miles south-southwest of Iconium. Since there was no synagogue, Paul probably preached the gospel in the open marketplace. During one of his messages, he noticed a lame man, and the Lord gave Paul the insight that this man had the faith to be healed. Sometimes in the Bible, God healed people apart from any faith on their part. At other times, He healed in response to their faith. So Paul loudly commanded this man who was lame from birth to stand upright. When he leaped to his feet and began to walk, the crowd was amazed.
They began to speak in their native Lycaonian language (which neither Paul nor Barnabas understood), excitedly telling one another, “The gods have become like men and have come down to us.” They called Barnabas, who was older than Paul and the more quiet, stately man, “Zeus” (Jupiter); and they called Paul “Hermes” (Mercury), who was the orator god.
They were basing their identification on a legend that the Roman poet Ovid wrote about. According to Ovid’s story, Zeus and Hermes had once visited a valley near Lystra. They went from door to door, but no one invited them in. Finally they came to a cottage where a poor couple took them in, fed them, and gave them a bed for the night, not knowing that they were gods. Because of their kind hospitality, the two gods turned this poor couple’s cottage into a golden-roofed temple, but they destroyed the selfish people who had refused to take them in (see James Boice, Acts [Zondervan], p. 255). The people of Lystra didn’t want to make the same mistake again! So they ran to the local temple of Zeus, told the priest what had happened, and he quickly brought oxen to sacrifice to these two powerful visitors.
At some point, someone, perhaps Timothy, who was one of the converts from Lystra, told Paul and Barnabas what was happening. The apostles were horrified! They tore their robes as they ran into the midst of the crowd and with great difficulty restrained them. Luke reports the gist of what either Paul or Barnabas shouted out to the crowd (14:15-17). It would seem that they did not get to finish the sermon, since it does not give the gospel. The impression I get is that Paul was moving toward the gospel, but he got interrupted as the crowd noisily and, probably, angrily dispersed. They had been hoping that this was the rare experience of the centuries that would put their city on the map forever. People would flock from miles around to the place where the gods came down to earth as men. Think of what it would do for the local economy! So when these mysterious visitors insisted that they were mere mortals, not gods, the people were really bummed out!
Paul began by telling them that Barnabas and he were men of the same nature as they had. He preached the gospel to them so that they would turn from the worship of vain idols to the living God who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. When he spoke to the Jews, Paul could argue from Scripture, since they already believed it. But with these uneducated pagans, he began with creation, appealing to their sense that a living God, the Creator, stood behind all that they saw in the world.
In verse 16, Paul anticipates an objection from his audience: “We have served what you call ‘vain idols’ for centuries, and life has not been so bad. Why should we now turn from them to this God that you call ‘the living God’?” Paul explains that in the generations gone by, God permitted the nations to go their own ways. In His patience, God did not destroy them in their sin. Although God did not give them His written revelation, as He did with the Jews, yet He did not leave Himself without a witness. He did good towards them, giving them rain and fruitful seasons, satisfying their hearts with food and gladness.
Paul’s line of reasoning here is similar (although simpler and more abbreviated) to his comments in Romans 1:18-32 and his sermon to the Athenians (Acts 18:22-31). Through creation, every person should know that there is an almighty Creator and we are accountable to Him. Men invent myths, like the ancient Greek mythology and the modern myth of evolution, to dodge their accountability to the Creator. As he puts it in Romans 1:18, they “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”
The testimony of creation is sufficient to condemn people for their rebellion against God, but it is not sufficient to save them. To be saved, people need to hear the gospel, which tells of God’s provision of a Savior, Jesus Christ, who offers forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all who will put their trust in Him. If he had been allowed to continue, I believe that Paul would have urged his audience to repent of their idolatry and would have told them of the Savior who died and rose from the dead (see Acts 18:30-31), but he got cut off when they angrily dispersed.
His words in verse 16 raise the thorny questions: “Will God judge the heathen who have never heard the gospel? Why did God let all of these nations go for centuries without hearing the gospel?” Without digressing for too long, consider the following. First, God does not owe mercy to any nation or human being. We all have rebelled against God’s rightful rule and we all deserve His judgment. He is perfectly just in letting the nations go their own ways without giving them the revelation of the gospel, since they all have suppressed in unrighteousness the truth of creation.
Second, God in His inscrutable wisdom knows how people would have responded if they had had the revelation that others have had, and He will judge each person according to His wise justice. In Matthew 11:20-24, Jesus reproached the cities where He had performed miracles, but they did not repent. He tells them that it will be more tolerable for places like Tyre, Sidon, and even wicked Sodom in the day of judgment than for them, because if they had seen His miracles, those people would have repented. The mind-boggling thing is that these cities did not receive this revelation, and they perished in their sins. But God knows how they would have responded if they had received such revelation, and He will judge them accordingly!
When I am sharing the gospel and people raise this objection, I try to bring it back to this bottom line: “You now have heard about God’s sending Jesus Christ as the Savior who gave Himself on the cross as the sacrifice for sinners. How are you going to respond? If you do not repent of your sins and trust in Christ, God will judge you according to the light that He has shown you!”
To come back to the point, Paul and Barnabas could have heard that these people were about to offer sacrifices to them and thought, “Well, it’s about time that we got some respect. What will a little mistake like that hurt for a while? Maybe we can use it later to tell them about Christ, since they will then respect us.” If that temptation flitted through their minds, they immediately cut it off. As faithful servants, their spontaneous response was to point people away from themselves and toward the living God, to whom we all must one day give an account.
Paul and Barnabas had been forced to flee from Antioch and Iconium. But when they came into the region of Lycaonia, they continued to preach the gospel (14:7). Even after getting stoned, Paul didn’t give up. I would have thought that a short vacation would have been in order about then! But he got up, walked to the next city, and preached the gospel there (14:21). On the way back through Perga, where for some reason (perhaps the controversy over Mark’s departure, 13:13) they had not been able to preach on the outward journey, they spoke the word when they went back through there (14:25). Their persistence in preaching the gospel in spite of intense opposition was nothing short of amazing!
Most of us have never known any persecution that compares to what Paul and Barnabas went through. But you will catch criticism if you attempt to serve the Lord. How you respond will be a test of whether you are a faithful servant of Christ or not. If you’re prone to get hurt and quit, you need to learn the lesson of courageous persistence from these two servants of the Lord.
The journey out to Derbe was more evangelistic in nature; the journey back through the same cities was more pastoral in focus. Probably the apostles knew that if they preached openly again in these cities where they recently had been driven out, they would be killed and their missionary labors would come to an end. Besides, they now had groups of converts in each city, and these new believers could carry on the work of evangelizing their own cities if they got grounded in the faith. So Paul and Barnabas concentrated on “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, ‘Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God’” (14:22).
One of Satan’s most effective tools that he uses to cripple new believers is to send trials. That’s why Peter warns (1 Pet. 5:8-10),
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
The fact that Jesus Christ is King does not mean that His people will be free from severe trials. Sometimes He permits the enemy to afflict us to teach us to put on the full armor of God and stand firm. Through trials we learn to trust God more fully and not lean on the arm of the flesh. Trials strip us of worldly attitudes that have attached themselves to us like barnacles to the hull of a ship. But whatever the lesson, no disciple of Christ will be exempt from trials. It is important for you to learn to submit to God’s mighty hand in them, and then He can use you to strengthen and encourage newer believers, so that they will continue in the faith in the face of trials.
On the return journey, Paul and Barnabas “appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting” (14:23). As the body of Christ, the church is a living organism. It is the very life of Christ flowing through the members of His body that gives vitality and direction to the church. All of the members, but especially the leaders, need to walk in daily reality with the living Lord, abiding in Him. If we don’t, the church can turn into a dead organization rather than a living organism.
But at the same time, we need to remember that every organism is highly organized; if it’s not, it won’t survive for very long. Churches need adequate organization so that the life is preserved. The apostles were traveling evangelists who established new churches through their preaching. Elders were long-term residents who were responsible to give oversight to the local churches.
Three terms are used somewhat interchangeably to describe these leaders. “Elder” looks at the spiritual maturity of the man. Their maturity will be in relation to a particular local church. These elders that Paul and Barnabas appointed were fairly new in their Christian experience, but they were the most spiritually mature men in those churches. Usually there is a correlation between physical age and spiritual maturity. Elders should normally be old enough to have the wisdom that comes from years of living.
“Overseer” looks at the work itself. Elders are to have oversight of the flock, to make sure that people are growing in godliness and that the church is doctrinally sound. The third term, “pastor,” looks at the job from the analogy of a shepherd. Some of the elders should devote themselves to the ministry of the Word, and to that end Paul directs that they be financially supported (1 Tim. 5:17-18).
The word “appointed” (Acts 14:23) in Greek meant “to approve by a show of hands in a congregational meeting” (Simon Kistemaker, Acts [Baker], p. 525). Although Paul and Barnabas appointed these men, and that only after fasting and prayer, and no doubt based on the spiritual qualifications that Paul later enumerated (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9), they probably did so in conjunction with the participation of the local members.
We seek to follow the biblical guidelines in the selection of elders. We screen men to make sure that they are in line with the biblical qualifications. We also invite congregational input, so that if anyone knows a reason why a man should not be an elder, they can bring that to our attention. The congregation ratifies the elders each year at our annual meeting. One of the biggest mistakes that churches make is to put men into leadership who are not spiritually qualified, mature men of God.
Paul and Barnabas sailed back to Antioch, gathered the church that had sent them out, and reported all the things that God had done with them (14:26-27). It must have been thrilling to hear their stories, as they told how God opened a door of faith to the Gentiles! No doubt the church in Antioch had been praying during the year or more that these men had been gone. They didn’t have email or probably even snail mail to let them know the progress of the work as it unfolded. But eventually the men reported back and the church rejoiced to hear what God had done.
Faithful servants welcome accountability, because they know that ultimately they will answer to the Lord who knows everything that they have done. Besides, it is great to know that a sending church is praying for you and your work. The church has a responsibility to pray for and support missionaries, and the missionaries have a responsibility to the church to let them know what God is doing through them in the work. I hope that you come out whenever we have missionaries giving reports of their work (usually on Sunday nights). In that way, your interest in missions will grow, and you will have a part in extending God’s kingdom worldwide.
This is somewhat similar to my first point, that a faithful servant points people to the living God, not to himself. But that was especially with reference to unbelievers. This point is in the context of Paul and Barnabas’ reporting to the church. They did not report on all the things that they had done, and how they had the brilliant insight of taking the message to the Gentiles. Rather, they reported on “all things that God had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (14:27).
Faithful servants make sure that all the credit goes to the Lord. If He does not work, there will be no fruit. In some places Paul and Barnabas did not see as much response as in other places. But whatever the response, they were depending on the Lord, and when He worked mightily, they gave Him the glory. It was only by His grace (14:26) that they had gone out, and it was by His grace that they had accomplished anything.
I trust that I’m not reading too much into the text here, but Luke notes that Paul and Barnabas “spent a long time with the disciples” (14:28). It was probably a year to a year and a half before Paul left on the second journey, although this included the visit to Jerusalem for the council. We can be sure that they were actively serving at the home church during this time, but I think they were also getting recharged for the next term of service. After a time of worshiping and fellowshipping together with their old friends in Antioch, they were ready to go back into the battle again.
You can’t give out more than you take in or you will run dry. I need time off each week and every year to recharge. I need adequate time to read and think and pray, or I begin to feel drained. Each of us is wired differently, but you need to know yourself and watch yourself so that you don’t burn out. Schedule time each week and each year for renewal in body and soul.
Andrew Murray, the well-known devotional writer, had a brother who labored all his life in an African country with no visible fruit. He did not see any converts. But shortly after his death, revival broke out there and many were converted. He had broken the hard ground by his years of labor, but others saw the visible fruit. Being faithful, not necessarily being outwardly successful, is the important thing.
Paul and Barnabas are given to us as examples of faithful servants. May we imitate them so that someday we will hear our Savior welcome us into heaven with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
There is a strong movement toward Christian unity in our day. In 1994, a number of evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders signed the document, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” which sought to emphasize what Catholics and Evangelical Protestants believe in common, and to encourage greater cooperation between the two camps. In October, 1997 a second document, “The Gift of Salvation,” was signed. According to one evangelical who signed it, the signers were committed to unity in the truth (Christianity Today online, 12/8/97, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: a New Initiative”). But the Catholic Church has not budged an inch from their statements in the Councils of Trent that condemn those who hold to the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
The Promise Keepers movement has also encouraged this movement toward unity between Catholics and Protestants. One of the seven promises that every Promise Keeper commits himself to is, “reaching beyond any racial and denominational barriers to demonstrate the power of biblical unity.”
Someone sent me a tape of a message that the popular author, Max Lucado, delivered at the 1996 Promise Keepers Pastors Conference in Atlanta. Lucado compares the church to a large ship, with Jesus at the helm. On board, the passengers are arguing over all sorts of doctrinal issues. He implicitly ridicules any doctrinal disputes as if they are petty and inconsequential, since we’re all headed for the same destination on the same ship. At one point, he exclaims, “Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have the labels ‘Methodist,’ ‘Presbyterian,’ and ‘Baptist’?” His audience of 40,000 pastors cheers. He continues, “Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have the labels ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’?” The pastors cheered again!
He then urges every pastor who has ever criticized any other man’s denomination to get up, find someone from that denomination, and ask his forgiveness before they all took communion together. If Martin Luther and John Calvin had been in the audience, Lucado would have had them asking forgiveness of the pope for criticizing the Roman Catholic Church!
The famous evangelist, Billy Graham, for many years has also played down any differences between evangelicals and Roman Catholics. He has said, “I have no quarrel with the Roman Catholic Church.” Speaking of the difference between evangelicalism and Catholicism, he said, “I don’t think the differences are important as far as personal salvation is concerned” (both quotes in Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided [Banner of Truth], p. 68).
Because of the powerful influence of Graham, of Promise Keepers, and of the evangelical leaders who signed the two evangelical-Roman Catholic accords, there is immense pressure on pastors today to drop all doctrinal differences and join together with all who call themselves “Christian.” One evangelical leader dogmatically states, “It is sin to refuse to join in ecumenical dialogue and processes with other Christians who confess Jesus Christ as God and Savior. It is a sin to send our missionaries to other lands with long Christian traditions without first consulting with the churches already there.” In the context, he is referring to countries where Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church are strong (Ron Sider, World Vision [April/May, 1994], p. 9).
I will readily admit that there have been many sinful and shameful divisions among Christians over petty issues. While we should avoid such selfish squabbling, our text shows that there are times when it is a sin not to divide over doctrine. When the doctrine concerns how a person gets saved, there can be no compromise.
Unity is wrong when it compromises the doctrine of salvation by God’s grace alone through faith in Christ alone.
Some men came from Judea to Antioch and began teaching, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (15:1). Paul and Barnabas did not say, “They will know that we are Christians by our love, not by our doctrinal agreement, so we won’t judge you brothers for your personal beliefs.” Even though these teachers hailed from the mother church in Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas did not begin with ecumenical dialogue. They began with “great dissension and debate.” Since this matter threatened to undermine the gospel itself, the church sent Paul, Barnabas, and some others to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem to get the matter resolved.
The issue at stake was huge: Must Gentiles be circumcised and keep the Mosaic Law in order to be saved? Or, are Gentiles and Jews both saved by faith in Jesus Christ, apart from any observance of the Law? The answers to these questions have ongoing relevance for us, not only in upholding the true gospel of salvation, but also in the current movement toward unity between evangelicals and Roman Catholics. We will look at Peter’s response to these issues, which Luke records after stating simply that “there had been much debate” (15:7). Peter’s words establish that …
The issue here is salvation (15:1, 11), which refers to how a person can be delivered from God’s eternal judgment; or, with how a person’s heart can be cleansed from sin (15:9).
Grace means “undeserved favor.” If in any way you deserve it, it is not grace (Rom. 4:4-5; 11:6). Peter makes it clear that the salvation of the Gentiles originated with God’s choice, that through Peter they would hear the word of the gospel and believe (15:7). He further underscores that God made no distinction between the Jews and the Gentiles (15:9). In other words, He saved the Gentiles apart from their becoming Jews or any other merit on their part. And, Peter sums up, “We believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are” (15:11).
That’s quite a statement for a Jew to make! You would have expected, “They are saved in the same way as we are.” But, rather, Peter is saying, “We religious Jews are saved in the same way as these pagan Gentiles are, namely, through the grace of the Lord Jesus.” In other words, their Jewish religion didn’t chalk up “Brownie points” with God. Their keeping all of the ceremonial and moral laws didn’t move them an inch closer to salvation, because salvation is not based on any goodness in us or any religious activities on our part.
You may have been raised in the church, as I was. You may have devoted your whole life to service in the church. You can even serve as a missionary and suffer greatly for your religious work. None of it weights the scale of heaven even a little bit in your favor. The pagan murderer on death row is just as close to salvation as you are. In fact, he may be closer, because he is more likely to see his need for God’s grace than the religious person who takes pride in his good deeds. The Bible says that we all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. Thus we all need to be justified as a gift by God’s grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 3:23-24).
Peter says that God proclaimed the gospel through him to the Gentiles so that they might believe (15:7). He made no distinction between the Jews and the Gentiles, in that He cleansed the Gentiles hearts by faith (15:9). The proof that the Gentiles had believed and were saved is that God, who knows the heart, bore witness to their faith by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did with the Jews (15:8). Even before Peter finished his sermon at Cornelius’ house, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they began speaking in unlearned foreign languages, just as the Jews had done at the Day of Pentecost. It happened right after Peter had said, “everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins” (10:43).
Peter’s argument is that God would not give His Holy Spirit to those who were unclean in their hearts. The fact that He sent the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles the instant that they believed, apart from their being circumcised, shows that salvation is by faith alone, not by faith plus circumcision or some other act of keeping the law. Circumcision is not the means to a clean heart before God; faith in Jesus Christ is! It is obvious that the instant that the Gentiles believed, they were cleansed totally and completely from all their sins. It was not the beginning of a process of purification that had to be completed by their good works. Nothing remained to be added. God saved them by His grace through their faith plus nothing.
It is important to emphasize that we are saved by faith alone, not by faith plus our works. And, as John Calvin makes clear, “faith does not make us clean, as a virtue or quality poured into our souls; but because it receives that cleanness which is offered in Christ” (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts, vol. 2, pp. 50-51; I updated the English). The Roman Catholic Church teaches that we are saved by God’s grace through our faith. But the catch is, they say that we must add our works to our faith in order to bring the process of justification to completion. The Canons and Decrees of Trent, which represent the official Catholic teaching to this day, state:
If any one says, that by faith alone the impious is justified, in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, ... let him be anathema. (Session 6, Canon 9, in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom [Baker], 2:112.)
If any one says, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified: let him be anathema (Session 6, Canon 12, ibid., 2:113).
If any one says, that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof: let him be anathema (Session 6, Canon 24, ibid., 2:115).
If any one says, that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened [to him]: let him be anathema (Session 6, Canon 30, ibid., 2:117).
In other words, the Catholic Church declares that we are justified before God by grace through faith, but not through faith alone, but that our good works must be added to that faith in order both to preserve and increase our right standing before God. Justification is not completed at the initial point of faith in Christ, and not even in this life, but only, hopefully, in Purgatory. Thus the Catholic Church denies the sufficiency of the guilty sinner’s faith in Christ’s sacrifice as the means of right standing with God. (For further treatment, see Justification by Faith Alone [Soli Deo Gloria], ed. by Don Kistler, especially pp. 7-14, by John MacArthur, Jr.) The Bible clearly declares that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone (Romans 4).
Jesus Christ, by His perfect life, fulfilled the Law of God. By His substitutionary death on the cross, He paid the penalty that we as guilty sinners deserved. Thus, as Paul puts it in Romans 10:4, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” He paid it all; there is not one thing left for us to pay. It is not our righteousness in any degree that qualifies us for heaven, but rather the righteousness of Christ applied to our hearts through faith in Him. This means that …
Peter calls the Law of Moses “a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear” (15:10). Certainly he is referring to the hundreds of ceremonial laws that were so complex as to be almost impossible to keep. But some Pharisees had done a pretty decent job of keeping those regulations, at least outwardly. Many of these same men had also kept the moral law of God outwardly. So I agree with John Calvin, who argues that Peter is referring to the human inability, even of the most godly of the fathers of the faith, to keep God’s law on the heart level (ibid., pp. 50-55). Note three things:
Paul says, “By the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). As he goes on to argue in Romans 4, even Abraham, the father of faith, was not justified by his good deeds, including circumcision, but rather by faith in God’s promise of salvation. God has always offered two ways of salvation: (1) Keep His holy law perfectly, including your thought life, from birth to death; or, if that fails, which it always does, (2) come to Him as a guilty sinner, confessing your need of His grace, and trust in His provision of a substitute to pay the penalty you deserve. In the Old Testament, the sacrificial system looked forward to the perfect sacrifice God would provide in Jesus Christ. Since then, our faith looks back to Christ. But the law was never given to save sinners. It cannot do that because of the weakness of our flesh (Rom. 8:3).
Jesus pointed this out in the Sermon on the Mount. The Pharisees prided themselves on keeping the Law, but they were viewing it externally. They had never been unfaithful to their wives. But Jesus said that if they had ever lusted in their hearts after another woman, they had broken God’s law. They had never murdered anyone. But Jesus said that if they had ever been angry with their brother, they had violated God’s commandment (Matt. 5:21-32). God looks on the heart, and thus all of us are guilty many times over of breaking His holy law.
As Paul argues in Galatians 5:3, if a person argues that circumcision is necessary for salvation, he puts himself under obligation to keep the whole law. As James 2:10 states, you can keep the whole law and just stumble in one point, and you become a law-breaker, guilty of the whole law. So if you wish to be saved by your good deeds, lots of luck! One strike and you’re out! If we add anything to faith as being necessary for salvation, then it is by works, not by grace alone.
Thus we’ve seen that salvation is by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Salvation by keeping God’s law is not possible, since the Law demands purity in the heart, not just outward observance.
We need to understand that these Judaizers professed faith in Jesus Christ, but to their faith they added the necessity of being circumcised and keeping the Law of Moses (15:5). If you had asked them, they would have said, “We believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior. But, we also believe that in order to be saved, a person must also keep the Law of Moses.” For that error, Paul states that they were preaching another gospel, which is not really another, and that they should be accursed (Greek, anathema, which means, eternally damned; Gal. 1:6-9).
The Roman Catholic Church teaches precisely the same error as the Judaizers. They believe that a person is saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But, they add, faith in Christ alone is not sufficient to save you; you must add to it your good works. Further, they pronounce anathema on the one who says that faith alone is sufficient to save. You must either believe their word or the word of the apostle Paul. The two are completely opposed to one another.
This is to say that sound doctrine on the matter of salvation is absolutely essential! Don’t drift into the postmodern thinking that truth is relative and doesn’t matter. Don’t fall into the simplistic error that love, not sound doctrine, is the main thing, and that somehow we are unloving if we hold firmly to the biblical doctrine of salvation. You do not love another person if you see him heading for eternity under God’s condemnation because he is trusting in his own good works, and you don’t confront him with his fatal error. That is like watching a person about to drink poison, and saying, “I love you, brother,” but not warning him.
Peter makes it clear (15:7-8) that the gospel of grace to all people who believe originated with God, not with men. Peter didn’t think it up; in fact, he would have sided with the Judaizers prior to his vision and experience with Cornelius. James reinforces the same point and supports it with Scripture (15:14-18). The doctrine of the gospel cannot be based on human wisdom or tradition, but rather on God’s Word and on His clear confirmation of the salvation of the Gentiles by faith alone, as evidenced by Peter and by Paul and Barnabas (15:12).
The point is, the Jerusalem Council did not decide that love and unity are more important than truth, and so we must set aside our quibbles. They didn’t say, “Whether a person is saved by grace through faith in Christ, or whether he must add circumcision and keeping the Law of Moses, aren’t the main thing. The main thing is to affirm one another as brothers in Christ, and not to divide over doctrine.” No! The foundation for Christian unity is the truth of the gospel, that we are saved by grace through faith apart from any good works. Good works inevitably follow saving faith. If a person claims to have faith, but has no good works as a result, his faith is not genuine (James 2:14-26). But it is faith alone in Christ alone that saves a person from God’s judgment.
Many do not like messages like this one, because they stir up controversy, and we all like peace. I’ve had people leave the church over similar messages that I’ve preached in the past. But as John Calvin wrote, “The name of peace is indeed plausible and sweet, but cursed is that peace which is purchased with so great loss, that we suffer the doctrine of Christ to perish, by which alone we grow together into godly and holy unity” (ibid., p. 38).
J. C. Ryle, a 19th century Anglican bishop, wrote,
Controversy and religious strife, no doubt, are odious things; but there are times when they are a positive necessity. Unity and peace are very delightful; but they are bought too dear if they are bought at the expense of truth…. It is a pity, no doubt, that there should be so much controversy; but it is also a pity that human nature should be so bad as it is, and that the devil should be loose in the world. It was a pity that Arius taught error about Christ’s person: but it would have been a greater pity if Athanasius had not opposed him. It was a pity that Tetzel went about preaching up the Pope’s indulgences: it would have been a far greater pity if Luther had not withstood him. Controversy, in fact, is one of the conditions under which truth in every age has to be defended and maintained, and it is nonsense to ignore it (source unknown).
The Jerusalem Council teaches us that unity is wrong when it compromises the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. May we join Martin Luther in saying, “Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
We live in a day of much spiritual and moral compromise, even among evangelical Christians. For that reason, many of us abhor any thought of concession or compromise. Those words imply a weak, wishy-washy, kind of Christianity that isn’t worth following. We value men of conviction who stand firm no matter what. We want nothing to do with concession.
But I have seen people who are so strong on their convictions, even about minor issues, that no one can get along with them. If you don’t agree with them on every minor point of doctrine, they write you off as being a liberal or a heretic. If you confront such a man with his lack of love, he will write you off as a person who does not stand for God’s truth.
Spiritual maturity requires discernment, so that we stand firm when it comes to essential truth; but, on matters not essential to the faith, where godly men may differ, we elevate love over our rights. In other words, as we saw last week, there are times when unity is wrong, namely when it compromises the essentials of the gospel of salvation by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. But, also, there are times when concession is right:
Concession is right when it does not compromise essential truth and it is done out of love to avoid offending others.
We see both sides of this important principle in our text, which reports the conclusions of the Jerusalem Council. The main issue at stake was, must a person be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses to be saved (15:1, 5). Peter powerfully showed that we all, Jew and Gentile alike, are saved in one way only: by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, through faith in Him (15:9, 11). To add our works to faith alone is to pervert the gospel and put ourselves under God’s eternal condemnation, as Paul argues in Galatians 1:6-9. As we saw, Paul and Barnabas did not set aside this crucial truth in the name of love and unity. Rather, they had great dissension and debate (15:2) with those who taught the necessity of works being added to faith for salvation.
The force of Peter’s argument silenced even those who had disagreed, at least for the moment. Then Paul and Barnabas began to relate how God had worked through them as they preached the gospel to the Gentiles, confirming their message with signs and wonders (15:12). Paul could have launched into a defense of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as he does in Romans 3 & 4. But here his emphasis was on what God had done through them, so that their opponents would know that the spread of the gospel among the Gentiles was God’s doing. The miracles that He granted confirmed His will through them (Heb. 2:3-4).
After Paul and Barnabas finished speaking, James took the floor. This was not the brother of John, who was killed by Herod (12:2), but the half-brother of Jesus, who later wrote the Epistle of James. He was the presiding elder of the church in Jerusalem. It seems to me that in some ways, James never did come to the depth of understanding of God’s grace that Paul had (see 21:18-25). When he stood up to speak, the Judaizers were hoping that he would champion their cause. But they were taken aback when he affirmed Peter’s message, backing it up with Amos 9:11-12. And, without mentioning them by name (until the letter, 15:25), he backed Paul and Barnabas’ view that the Gentiles need not be circumcised (15:19). Then, out of concession, he enumerated four things that the Gentiles should abstain from so as not to offend the Jews (15:20-21).
When everyone agreed with James’ judgment, the church chose two leading men to return with Paul and Barnabas to relate verbally to the Gentile churches the outcome of the Council (15:22). This would protect Paul and Barnabas from any false charges by the Judaizers that they slanted the report in their favor. Also, the final resolution was put into a letter that was to be circulated among the Gentile churches (15:23-29). The outcome was that the Gentile churches were greatly encouraged and the unity of the churches, made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers, was preserved (15:30-35). There are three main lessons that we can learn from our text:
There are several difficult interpretive issues in James’ use of the quote from Amos 9:11-12. For one thing, he does not cite the Hebrew text, but rather the Greek Septuagint version, and even there he differs at several points. Perhaps he was citing it from memory and modifying it to give the sense of it as it related to his application. Also, it has been pointed out that James’ citation agrees exactly with one of the Jewish Essene sect texts of Amos 9. If some of the scrupulous Jewish Christians in his audience came from this sect, James may have been showing them that their own version supported the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s purpose (Richard Longenecker, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 9:447).
The main difficulty concerns the interpretation of the quote from Amos. Most premillennial commentators interpret it to refer to the second coming of Christ and the future restoration of David’s throne, followed by worldwide witness to the Gentiles in the millennium. Thus James would be arguing that since Amos predicted the future inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s purpose apart from their becoming Jewish proselytes, there is therefore no need for them to become Jewish proselytes in the present situation (John MacArthur, Jr., Acts 13-28 in The MacArthur New Testament Commentary [Moody Press], p. 69).
It seems to me, however, that James is using the quote from Amos to refer to what God was doing in the present, not to what He would do in the future. This is not to deny a future aspect and greater fulfillment of the prophecy in the millennial kingdom. But I think James uses the quote to establish that God’s purpose in the present age includes the calling of the Gentiles apart from their becoming Jews (Ray Stedman, Acts 13-20, The Growth of the Body [Vision House], pp. 64-65).
Another problem concerns the interpretation of verse 18. The quote from Amos 9:12 ends with “says the Lord, who does these things.” The rest of the verse is James’ comment. The problem is, his comment is so elliptical (incomplete) that it is hard to make sense of it. This resulted in a number of textual variants introduced by scribes who expanded the phrase into a complete sentence (Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament [United Bible Societies], second ed., p. 379). Probably James’ brief comment means, “The Gentiles’ inclusion in the gospel was no surprise to God, who knew it from eternity.”
All the interpretive problems aside, the bottom line is that James was using Scripture to support Peter’s argument, that salvation for all people, Jew or Gentile, is by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The quote from Amos and James’ concluding comment support what Peter emphasized in verse 7, that the salvation of the Gentiles originated with God, not with man. It was not something that Peter or Paul and Barnabas dreamed up. God purposed to do it from eternity, and He revealed it through His prophets centuries before.
As we saw last week, the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is not to be set aside or compromised in the name of love and unity. It is the only way of salvation, both for Jews and for Gentiles. If we compromise the gospel, we have given up the very essence of the Christian faith. Any unity that is achieved through such compromise is not Christian unity in the biblical sense of the word. Included under the term “the gospel” are the essential truths of the sinfulness of all humanity, of the inability of people to save themselves, and of our need for a spiritual new birth that can only come from God.
Beyond the matter of the gospel and how we are saved, there are several other biblical truths that we cannot yield or we compromise the essence of the Christian faith. The inspiration, authority, and total trustworthiness of Scripture must never be compromised or we have no objective, authoritative basis for our faith. The nature of God as a Triune being, one God who subsists in three equal and co-eternal persons is another essential. We must affirm both the full deity and the full humanity of Jesus. It is also essential to affirm His sacrificial death on the cross, His bodily resurrection from the dead, His bodily ascension into heaven, and His bodily return in power and glory to judge all the living and the dead. Any concession on these essentials, even if it is for the sake of unity, is wrong because it is to join with those who are Christian in name only, but not in God’s sight. Concession is never right if it compromises essential truth from God’s Word.
James sums up his judgment first by affirming that the Gentiles should not be forced to adopt circumcision and the keeping of the Law of Moses (15:19). Some think that James’ conclusion and the letter are weak in that they never state directly that these things are not required (James Boice, Acts [Zondervan], p. 266). Perhaps James and the Council were trying to be diplomatic, while still making the point, which the church at Antioch understood (15:31).
Then (15:20-21) James mentions four things that the Gentile Christians should abstain from for the sake of not offending the Jews. Three of these were not essential doctrinal matters, but rather matters that took into consideration the social situation and sought to avoid needlessly giving offense. There are several views of verse 21. Without going into all of the possibilities, it seems to me that James is saying, “The reason that the Gentile believers should abstain from these four behaviors is that almost every city has adherents to the Jewish faith. So as not needlessly to offend Jews who need to believe in Christ as Savior, and so as not to offend recently converted Jews who are in the churches and thus cause divisions, Gentile Christians need to abstain from these four things.”
The four things are repeated, although in slightly different order, in the letter (15:29), which James probably drafted with the approval of the whole body. The tone of the letter is not authoritative and demanding, with warnings of judgment if it is not obeyed. Rather, the overall tone is kind and encouraging toward the Gentile believers, and supportive of Paul and Barnabas and their outreach to the Gentiles. It also makes it clear that the false teachers had acted without the approval of the leaders in Jerusalem.
The fact that three of the requirements seem to be related to the Jewish ceremonial law, whereas the other seems to be moral, has led to many textual variants and interpretations. Some take them all to be moral; others take them all to be ceremonial. I think that three of the items related to Jewish ceremonial laws, and the other (fornication) related to a moral issue toward which many Gentiles would be insensitive because of their culture.
The first item, “things contaminated by idols,” or “sacrificed to idols,” referred to meat that had been offered to pagan gods, but then was sold in the marketplace. It would be offensive to most Jews if Gentile Christians ate such meat. “Blood and things strangled” referred to eating meat that had not been killed by draining the blood from it, thus violating Jewish dietary laws (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 3:17; 7:26; 17:10-14; 19:26; et. al). While the Gentiles were not subject to these laws, the Council requested that they abstain from these practices so as not to offend the Jews.
The last item, “fornication,” has been variously interpreted. Since the other three items are ceremonial, and since the prohibition against sexual immorality would apply to every believer as a moral absolute, some understand it to refer to the levitical prohibition of marriage to a near relative (Lev. 18:6-18), which the rabbis described as “porneia” (Metzger, p. 380). The problem with this view is that it is an unusual use of this Greek word, and most Gentiles would not have taken it in this sense.
I think that we must understand the word as the Gentile recipients would have, to refer to sexual relations outside of marriage. But, why did this even need to be mentioned, since it is a part of God’s moral law? Sexual immorality was so commonly accepted among the Gentiles that there were probably some who professed faith in Christ, but did not yet understand God’s moral standards. They came out of a background where temple prostitution and having a mistress for sexual gratification were shrugged off as standard practice. If they professed faith in Jesus Christ, and yet continued these practices, unbelieving Jews who held to the sanctity of marriage could never be reached with the gospel.
From these four prohibitions, we can draw three applications:
Paul deals with this at length in 1 Corinthians 9:19-22:
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.
Paul was always sensitive to the cultural backgrounds of those he was trying to reach with the gospel, and he tried not to do anything that would put up a barrier between them and their need for Jesus Christ. Every missionary needs great wisdom to discern which issues are merely cultural, that he can go along with, and which issues are biblically essential, that he cannot compromise.
Some matters may need to be set aside temporarily, until people come to saving faith, and then introduced later. For example, if you are trying to reach Muslims, you probably should not begin by emphasizing the equal standing of the sexes before God. While that is a biblical principle (Gal. 3:28), it would probably keep most Muslim men from believing the gospel, since male dominance is a major cultural issue with them. But if a Muslim man comes to faith in Christ, he then needs to be taught to treat his wife as a fellow-heir of the grace of Christ (1 Pet. 3:7), and to respect women as co-laborers in the cause of the gospel (Phil. 4:3).
Paul deals with this in 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14. Some Christians felt free to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols, and in Christ, they had such freedom. It was not violating any moral command of God to eat such meat. But, there were some weaker Christians whose consciences would be violated if they ate such meat. They had come out of pagan idolatry, and to eat such meat might lead them back into their former practices. Out of love for their brethren, Paul tells the stronger Christians to give up eating such meat so as not to cause their brothers to stumble.
There is a lot of confusion over this principle in our day. Often, legalistic church members set up their own unbiblical standards and impose them on newer believers. For example, they require that these newer believers adopt a certain manner of attire for church, although the Bible does not stipulate such. If a newer believer does not conform, he is told that he needs to conform so that he doesn’t cause this older believer to stumble. But “causing your brother to stumble” does not mean that. It refers to doing something that is morally permissible for you, but it would be sin for another Christian, and your behavior would lead him to join with you and thus to sin.
I might add that it is impossible to live so as not to offend anyone. This decree from the Council no doubt offended many of the Jewish believers, who still found it difficult to accept any Gentiles in the church who did not live as Jews. So we can’t get too hung up about not offending anyone. We should seek to live in good conscience before God, seeking to please Him. If we know that we are offending another Christian, we should go to him and seek to get the matter resolved if possible.
We live in a day when many who profess to be Christians are ignorant of God’s holy standards for His people. I have met college students who say that they know Christ, but who do not feel that it is wrong to have sex outside of marriage. Divorce has become so widespread, even in evangelical circles, that many professing Christians walk away from their marriages as if divorce were just an unfortunate event, rather than a grievous sin. God’s moral standards do not change over time or from culture to culture. We must not be so influenced by our culture that we violate God’s holy standards. This leads to the final section of our text:
Judas and Silas, who accompanied Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch, “strengthened the brethren with a lengthy message.” I like that! And Luke reports that Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch, “teaching and preaching, with many others also, the word of the Lord.” In Acts 11:26, we saw how these men “for an entire year met with the church and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.”
We often forget that the Great Commission is not just evangelism. That’s the first part of it; but the Great Commission also requires “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). Churches today are starved because pastors are expected to do all sorts of things, with teaching and preaching God’s Word low on the list. It should be at the top.
Also, the church has always been plagued with false teachers like these Judaizers, whose words unsettled the souls of the saints (15:24). The Greek word “unsettled” occurs only here in the New Testament. It was used outside the Bible to refer to going bankrupt or to a military force plundering a town (James Moulton & George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament [Eerdmans], p. 37). Paul later warned the Ephesian pastors that from among their ranks, men would arise, “speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:30). So we always need to be growing in our knowledge and application of God’s Word, so that false teachers do not plunder our souls.
During 1977, millions of people lined up at museums across the United States to view the treasures from the tomb of King Tutankhamen of Egypt. It is interesting that Ali Hassan, the curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, discovered that some of the jewels in the tomb were not genuine, but were only colored glass. When he was asked how this could go undetected for so many years, Mr. Hassan answered, “We were blinded by the gold. One just assumes that real gold and real gems go hand-in-hand. This is a case where they don’t” (“Our Daily Bread,” Fall, 1978).
Satan mixes truth and error to deceive Christians. He gets us to compromise and unite over doctrines where we should not budge an inch. And, he gets us to fight and divide over issues where we need to concede our rights out of love. We need God’s wisdom and discernment to know essential truth where we must never concede, and to know areas where it is right to concede out of love so as not to offend others.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Leslie Flynn wrote a book titled, Great Church Fights. I have never seen a copy of it, but the title makes me want to read it. I did read a story that he tells in it of two porcupines in the freezing north woods that huddled together to keep warm. But when they got close, their quills pricked each other and they had to move apart. They needed each other for the warmth, but they needled each other with their sharp quills.
Church members often are like those porcupines: we need each other, but we needle each other! As Vance Havner observed, there are many “porcupine” Christians—they have their good points, but you can’t get near them!
We all know that we are called to love one another. It doesn’t sound very spiritual to admit that there are Christians that we just don’t like. Their personalities grate on mine. The way that they do things is always counter to the way I do things, which of course is the right way! You cannot get involved in serving the Lord through the local church for very long before you run into someone whose personality clashes with yours.
It is important that you learn to deal with such situations for several reasons. First, the command to love one another is not a minor one! It is the second great commandment and it is inextricably linked to the greatest commandment, to love God. John tells us that if we do not love our brother whom we have seen, we cannot love God whom we have not seen (1 John 4:20). Also, Christian unity is not a minor matter. Jesus prayed just before His death that we would be perfected in unity so that the world would know that the Father had sent Him (John 17:23). We can’t just shrug it off!
Also, I have seen many Christians who get discouraged and quit serving the Lord as a result of a clash with another believer. Sometimes they even grow disillusioned or cynical about the Christian life because of the clash that they either observed or experienced in the church. They get hurt and wrongly conclude, “Christianity doesn’t work. Christians are just hypocrites.” And they fall away from the Lord. So it’s important to learn what the Bible teaches about dealing with personality differences so that the enemy does not derail you from following the Lord Jesus.
For our instruction in these matters, Luke honestly reports a clash that occurred between two great men of God, Paul and Barnabas. Frankly, it’s not a pretty picture. I wish that he reported that they both repented of their anger and asked forgiveness of one another, but he does not. I assume from a few later brief references that that did happen, or at least that there was no lingering bitterness. But the clash led to a rupture in the close working relationship between these two godly men. Barnabas here passes off the record of Acts. Both Paul and Barnabas must have grieved over this in the years after this incident. The lesson for us is that …
Christians must be diligent to maintain unity and to continue serving the Lord in spite of personality clashes.
I want to make four observations about our text:
We often naïvely think that if we all were just spiritually mature, we would never clash with one another. I agree that generally our clashes should be less frequent and less severe in proportion to our spiritual maturity. But until we are perfectly sanctified in heaven, I’m afraid that the little ditty will always be true,
To dwell above with the saints we love, O that will be glory. But to dwell below with the saints we know, well, that’s a different story!
Note three things about the men involved in this clash:
Paul and Barnabas had just come away from the Jerusalem Council, where the core issue of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone had been affirmed. Both men firmly agreed about this and other central doctrines of the Christian faith. But their personalities clashed over a practical matter of ministry, whether to take Mark along on the second journey.
Paul and Barnabas were not new believers. Both men had walked with God for years. They were both fully committed to doing the will of God, no matter what the cost. They had risked their lives for the sake of Christ (15:26), and yet they clashed.
Paul and Barnabas had a long history of serving together. It was Barnabas who had gone to Paul and listened to his testimony when every Christian in Jerusalem was holding him at arm’s length. It was Barnabas again who went to Tarsus to look for Paul and brought him back to labor with him in the ministry at Antioch. The two men had been set apart and commissioned together to go out on the first missionary journey. On that historic mission, they had suffered together for the cause of Christ.
Also, this clash erupted out of godly concern on Paul’s part to revisit the churches that they had seen God establish on that first journey, to see how they were doing in the Lord. Both men had a heart for the wellbeing of the churches. And yet these two teammates, who had labored together and suffered together for many years in the cause of Christ, clashed. Spiritual maturity does not erase personality differences that can lead to strong clashes.
The question always comes up, “Who was right in this clash?” Since Luke, who was obviously close to Paul, did not blame Barnabas or Paul, we need to be careful. The slight nod goes to Paul as being right, since it is stated that the brethren commended Silas and Paul to the grace of God, but nothing is said about Barnabas and Mark, except that they sailed away to Cyprus.
In light of the rest of Scripture, I think we can say that both men were right, but also, both men were wrong. Paul was right in that he was a rugged pioneer, venturing into enemy stongholds, and he didn’t need someone on his team who would run in the heat of the battle. He needed committed warriors who would not flinch in the face of hardship and adversity. Mark had not proven himself to be such a man. He should not have gone with Paul.
Barnabas was right in that he saw the undeveloped potential in Mark, and he wanted to extend God’s grace to this young man in spite of his earlier mistake in deserting the cause. History proved him right, in that Paul himself later told the Colossian church to welcome Mark (Col. 4:10). In his final imprisonment, Paul told Timothy to pick up Mark and bring him with him, because he was useful to Paul for ministry (2 Tim. 4:11). So Barnabas’ efforts to reclaim Mark for the cause paid off. Both men were right.
But, also, both men were wrong, and I believe they fell into sin in the way they dealt with this disagreement. They both stubbornly dug in their heels and refused to give in at all to the other man’s point of view. I’m sure that they both would have said that they were standing on a matter of principle. But they could have graciously agreed to disagree and have parted ways in a spirit of mutual respect. Instead, they had a “sharp disagreement.”
Paul uses the verb form of the Greek noun translated “sharp disagreement” in the great love chapter, where he states that love “is not provoked” (1 Cor. 13:5; see also Acts 17:16). At the very least, Paul and Barnabas were very provoked with one another. I think that we’re not going too far to say that both men crossed the line into sinful anger. Neither man was following Paul’s later directive, to put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience toward one another (Col. 3:12). It may have been God’s will for the two men to separate, but it was not His will for them to separate through a heated quarrel.
Two practical observations here:
Paul’s strength was his resolute commitment to follow Christ no matter what the cost, and to stand firm in his convictions. He even publicly confronted a powerful man like Peter. You could beat Paul, throw him in prison, stone him, or whatever, but you couldn’t stop him from proclaiming Jesus Christ and Him crucified as the only way of salvation. Paul’s weakness was his inability to accept and work with a weaker man, like Mark, who had potential, but just wasn’t there yet. Paul’s later comments regarding Mark, as well as other Scriptures that he wrote (e.g., Rom. 15:1, 7) show that he overcame this weakness.
Barnabas’ greatest strength was his ability to encourage the fainthearted and help the weak. He was the champion of the outsider and fringe person. He knew how to show grace to those who had failed. But he erred on the side of showing grace to those who needed to be confronted. As Paul mentions in Galatians 2:13, even Barnabas was carried away with the hypocrisy of Peter and the other Jews who withdrew from eating with the Gentile Christians out of fear of offending the Judaizers.
So the lesson is, know yourself. Where, by God’s grace, are you strong and gifted? Exercise that strength for His glory. But also, be careful, because your strength may lead you into sin if you are not on guard. A man who is strong in discernment can easily become judgmental. A man who is strong in accepting others can easily err by tolerating serious sin or doctrinal error.
You cannot find two more godly, dedicated servants of Jesus Christ than Paul and Barnabas, and yet here they are, clashing with one another. Noah was the most righteous man on earth, and yet after God’s deliverance through the flood, he got drunk and shamefully exposed himself to his son. Job was the most righteous man in his day, and yet he wrongly contended with God for afflicting him. David was a man after God’s heart, and yet he fell into terrible sin. As Solomon lamented, there is no man who does not sin (1 Kings 8:46). While there is a proper place for trust in the leaders that God puts over us, there is an improper trust that elevates them too high. If we are trusting in men rather than in the Lord Himself, we will be shaken when those men let us down.
Also, the fact that God uses imperfect men and women in His service should encourage all of us to get involved in serving Him. As long as we are not tolerating known sin in our lives, He can and will use us in His purpose in spite of our imperfections.
There is a lot of muddled thinking about Christian unity. Some try for organizational union, but if you have any knowledge of the World or National Councils of Churches, you know that organizational union means nothing. Others try to get all the churches together for a unity worship service. They argue, “They will know that we are Christians by our love, not by our doctrinal agreement.” But they ignore that Jesus also said in the same context, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17). There can be no true unity with those who deny the core truths of God’s Word.
Unity does not mean that we all have to work closely with one another. While we need to be careful not to go our separate ways too quickly, without working through differences, there are times when two strong leaders need to recognize that God is calling them to different spheres of service. Any parting of ways should be done in a spirit of mutual respect and without bitterness or acrimony. While I wish that there was some word here about Paul and Barnabas patching things up before they parted ways, at least later Paul did speak in a supportive way of both Barnabas and Mark (1 Cor. 9:6; 2 Tim. 4:11).
Unity does not mean that we all have to agree on every doctrinal or practical matter. As I mentioned several weeks ago, there are a few core doctrines that every Christian must hold to or he is denying the faith. But there are many issues where godly Christians, committed to the Scriptures, disagree. We must be charitable toward one another on these matters. And, there are many differences over the methods we use to do the Lord’s work. We should seek to follow biblical methods. We aren’t free to do things without biblical warrant. Some methods are so unbiblical that they deserve criticism. But as with doctrine, godly men disagree over which methods are biblical. We must be charitable toward those whose methods we do not agree with, even though we could not work closely with them.
The Bible recognizes two kinds of unity. In Ephesians 4:3, Paul mentions the unity of the Spirit, which he says we must be diligent to preserve. This implies that it is a spiritual fact, based on shared life in Jesus Christ. If a person has been born again into the body of Christ, then we are members of one another, and we must be careful not to damage that unity. Then, in verse 13, he mentions the unity of the faith, which he says we are to attain to as we mature in Christ. This is the oneness of shared light regarding biblical truth. It is the fellowship that deepens as we mutually grow to understand and love the great doctrines of the faith.
I might add that we need the Lord’s wisdom in picking compatible teammates in ministry. Paul was wise to choose Silas, a man endorsed by the Jerusalem church, who could back up Paul in delivering the decisions of the Council to the various churches. Silas was a Roman citizen, as Paul was, which was to their advantage in ministering in cities under Roman jurisdiction (Acts 16:37 ff.). He was a gifted prophet who could boldly proclaim God’s truth in a way that encouraged and strengthened believers (15:32). While no two men see eye to eye on everything, there should be a basic compatibility in approach to ministry.
We’ve seen that spiritual maturity does not erase personality differences. Such differences can lead to clashes that cause us to sin, if we’re not careful. Christian unity does not require that we all work closely, but rather shared life and shared light in the Lord.
The work of Christ is greater than any one of us, and we should keep on serving Him even if we’ve had a clash with another Christian. Neither Paul nor Barnabas let this clash stop them from serving the Lord. They didn’t even take a time out. Instead of one missionary team, now in the providence of God, there were two.
Also, we do not read, “Paul was traveling through Syria and Cilicia, telling all the churches how wrong Barnabas was.” Rather, he went around strengthening the churches (15:41). There is no indication that Paul and Barnabas became rivals or competed with each other after this. Both men were committed to know Christ in a deeper way and to proclaim Christ to every person. As I said, every time after this that Paul mentions Barnabas or Mark, he does so in a kind and supportive manner.
Sometimes it is necessary to warn other Christians about someone who is unethical or whose doctrine is off base. Paul did that on occasion. But our main emphasis needs to be on proclaiming Christ, not on hauling out our complaints against others to vindicate ourselves and to run down the other person.
When you face a personality clash with another Christian, as you surely will, try to disengage your emotions and objectively think through the answers to these four questions:
This is not an easy question to answer, but you must face it as honestly as possible. We all need to be careful here, because we have a built in tendency to push personality differences into the realm of doctrine or sin. It sounds far more spiritual to say that the other person is doctrinally off base or that he sinned against me than to admit that his personality grates on mine. It is especially difficult because our feelings usually get hurt in these situations. Sometimes a more objective third party can help us work through these matters (Phil. 4:2-3).
Again, be careful here! Is there more than one principle that applies? I can hear Paul quoting Jesus: “No one after putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.” And, Barnabas probably countered, “Yes, but God is the gracious God of the second chance. Look at Jonah. Look at Peter. Mark deserves a second chance.” Both men had Scripture to back up their opposing views! Sometimes, because of personality differences, one man elevates one biblical principle, while the other man elevates a different biblical principle. Sometimes in such cases, if the principle is basic to one’s approach to ministry, it may be better to agree to work separately.
Some of you may be thinking, “What if you can’t separate from the person that you clash with because you’re married to him (or her)?” That leads to the third question you need to ask:
Sometimes God in His grace (and in His sense of humor) throws us together with people who grate against us in order to sandpaper our rough edges. Let’s face it, I don’t need patience, forbearance, gentleness, and kindness when the other person sees everything my way! I don’t need to learn to deny myself when the other person thinks that I’m a wonderful guy. But when there is a clash, God often confronts me with my selfishness and stubbornness. If I submit to Him and don’t bail out of the difficult relationship, He will use it to develop those Christlike qualities in me.
In the case of two Christians who are married to one another, it would not further the cause of Christ to divorce over incompatible personalities. They need to learn to appreciate one another’s strengths, to affirm each other in love, and to agree to disagree over certain matters of daily life. Divorce harms the work of Christ.
In the case of Christian workers, if they can learn to affirm one another’s strengths, the beauty of the body of Christ can be demonstrated through their working relationship. God gives us differing gifts, and the hand has no right to reject the foot because it is not a hand (1 Cor. 12:12-30). But, there are times where two workers have to spend so much time ironing out matters between them that it hinders their getting on with the work of the ministry. At such times, it is probably better to seek different spheres of service in a spirit of mutual respect and affirmation.
The British admiral, Lord Nelson, once came on deck and found two of his officers quarreling. He whirled them around, pointed to the enemy ships, and exclaimed, “Gentlemen, there are your enemies!”
When we face personality differences in the church, we need to be diligent to guard the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We need to seek to work out our differences if possible in a spirit of love and kindness. If we must part ways, we should continue serving the Lord and not let the enemy get us to attack those whom God has given different personalities than He has given us.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Over 30 years ago, a friend of mine that I have long lost touch with wrote a paper that I have often thought about. I have modified and shortened it considerably, but it ran something like this:
That fateful week began and progressed as normal for the majority of Christendom. Oh, this week was quite different, but only a few Christians would notice—far too few.
One pastor arose early on Sunday to review the sermon that he had prepared. He would begin his three-point evangelistic message with a funny story. Then he had included a few Bible verses, the quote from Time magazine, and a story about a dramatic conversion. And, of course, he would conclude with an emotional appeal to come forward and make a decision. “Yes,” he thought, “this one has been planned perfectly. It ought to produce great results.” As he reread the sermon for the last time, it was obvious that he didn’t notice the difference.
Sunday morning services throughout the country went exactly as planned. Each sanctuary was full of smiling, well-dressed Christians. The services began with the doxology, prayer, announcements, a couple of hymns, and special music during the offering. Although the hymns sounded rather dead, it was no worse than usual. In fact, people responded to the ministers’ pleas, and the offerings were larger than usual. Even the invitations were a success. As the congregation finished the third verse of “Just As I Am,” many came forward for rededication, salvation, or church membership. As the people filed out the door to get home in time for the football game on TV, it was obvious that none of them had noticed the difference.
The week continued on flawlessly. The banquet Tuesday night was a huge success, as the church raised enough pledges for the down payment on the new sanctuary. The Wednesday evening prayer meeting also went on as usual. The few who came prayed that God would bless all of the missionaries. For the Friday night high school social, the youth pastor had come up with some crazy new games that made it a roaring success. But no one noticed the difference.
A few church members even got to witness at work that week. Rick, for example, had been feeling guilty about not talking with Don. So at lunch he took a deep breath, pulled the booklet from his pocket, and read the laws to Don. Although Don didn’t seem very interested, Rick plowed through the entire presentation. He left the booklet with Don and encouraged him to pray the prayer at the end to invite Christ into his heart. Rick felt a sense of relief that he finally had shared the laws. But Rick didn’t notice. In fact, few Christians would have noticed, even in an entire year.
But there were a few Christians that had a most frustrating week. One pastor sat and stared at his Bible, but couldn’t get anything out of it. He knew the Bible and he knew how to prepare biblical sermons. But the Bible had become a dead book to him. He was frustrated and perplexed. But he noticed the difference!
Some other believers also noticed. One man kept succumbing to lusting after an attractive woman at work. He couldn’t get the victory, no matter how hard he tried. Another man angrily snapped at his wife and yelled at his kids. When he felt a twinge of guilt, he justified himself by blaming them for being insensitive to his needs. A small group that normally was overflowing with joy in the Lord and love for one another found themselves depressed and bickering. Several other Christians found themselves doubting their salvation, and even wondering if God existed. These believers were defeated, frustrated, and confused. But, they definitely noticed the difference!
When those at the church who had experienced a normal week heard about those who were having trouble, they weren’t surprised. They knew that something like this would happen sooner or later. They knew that these other Christians were just too radical. Those whose week had gone well smugly thought, “It serves those fanatics right! You can’t be excited about Jesus week in and week out!”
What was there to notice as different about this week? God decided to see which Christians were living in dependence on His Holy Spirit, and which ones were just depending on their own intellect and human plans to live the Christian life. So, He completely withdrew His Holy Spirit from the earth for the entire week! Think about it—would you notice the difference?
My friend was making the point that it is easy to fall into routine Christianity, where we function in the flesh instead of walk in vital dependence upon God’s Spirit. One of the main lessons of the Book of Acts is that the expansion of the early church was due to the working of the Holy Spirit. He was directing, moving, and empowering the apostles as they responded to His leading. If we want to see God working today in a similar fashion, we need to fight routine Christianity and rather, seek daily to submit to and follow the sovereign Spirit. The message of our text is,
Since the Holy Spirit is sovereign over His work, we must seek to follow Him as we labor for the Lord.
The text assumes that we, with Paul and Silas, are already seeking first God’s kingdom and righteousness (Matt. 6:33). If you are not living with that focus, you need to stop and confess it to the Lord, and yield yourself in obedience to His will for your life. Undergirding and woven through our text is the fact that the Holy Spirit is sovereign, and these men were obediently following His lead as they sought to do His work. There are four lessons:
We read that Paul came to Derbe and to Lystra (16:1). That was a radically courageous thing to do! Lystra was where Paul had been stoned, dragged out of the city and thrown on the garbage heap as dead. If I were he, I would not be inclined to go back to Lystra. But here, where he had suffered so terribly, and while he was still grieving over the falling out with Barnabas, God graciously brought into Paul’s life this young man, Timothy, who would become like a faithful son to Paul.
Timothy’s mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois (2 Tim. 1:5) were Jewish women who had become believers in Jesus Christ. Although Timothy’s father was an unbelieving Greek, these women had taught Timothy the Scriptures from his childhood (2 Tim. 3:15). On Paul’s first visit to Lystra, these women and the young Timothy had gotten saved. By Paul’s second visit, Timothy, who would have been in his late teens or early twenties, had established a good reputation among the believers in Lystra and Iconium. Just as witnessing the stoning of Stephen had made an indelible impression on Paul, so watching Paul get stoned had made a profound impression on young Timothy. As a result, he had resolved to follow Jesus Christ, no matter what the cost. So now Paul saw Timothy’s commitment and invited him to join the missionary team. It was the start of a lifelong and life-changing friendship.
Not only Timothy, but also Luke soon joined the team. In verse 10, the first of the “we” sections of Acts begins. It ends at the end of chapter 16, as Luke stays in Philippi to shepherd the new church there, while the team moves on. It resumes again, six or seven years later, in 20:5 and runs to the end of Acts. Luke, the beloved physician, a Gentile, became a faithful worker with Paul.
These new relationships did not happen by chance. The Lord knows that we need fellow Christians of a kindred spirit to encourage us and to work with us in the cause of Christ. We need older believers like Barnabas had been to Paul. We need contemporaries, like Silas and Luke. And, we should ask God for some younger believers, like Timothy, that we can bring along in the faith. Ask the sovereign Spirit to lead you to the right people to be not only your friends, but also your co-workers in the cause of Christ.
Paul circumcised Timothy because of the Jews in those parts, who knew that his father was a Greek. Why did Paul do that? Many have criticized him for violating his own convictions against keeping the Jewish ceremonial law.
But Paul acted consistently with his convictions, even if it caused his critics to misunderstand him. In Galatians 2:3, Paul states that Titus, a Gentile, was not required to undergo circumcision. So why circumcise Timothy, but not Titus? With Titus, it was a question of whether a man is justified by grace through faith alone, or whether he must also keep the Law of Moses. It would have compromised the very gospel to circumcise Titus. But with Timothy, who was half-Jewish, it was a matter of causing needless offense to unbelieving Jews. Circumcision would allow Timothy to accompany Paul and Silas into the synagogues where they often preached. So it was a matter of becoming a Jew to the Jews, so that he could win the Jews (1 Cor. 9:20). Paul did not want anything to hinder Jewish people from hearing and believing the gospel.
We all need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom from God’s Word so that we know which convictions to take a stand for, and which areas we need to yield out of love. All too often, we stand firm where we ought to yield, and we yield where we ought to stand firm. Only the Holy Spirit can impart the wisdom we need as we grow to understand God’s Word.
The missionary team traveled throughout the region, delivering the decrees of the Jerusalem Council. As a result the churches were being strengthened in the faith and were increasing in number daily. The Jerusalem decrees, as we saw, affirmed two things. First, they affirmed that salvation is not by keeping the Law of Moses, but rather is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Second, they asked Gentile believers, out of consideration for the Jews, not to engage in four things that were especially offensive to Jews: eating things sacrificed to idols; eating meat with the blood, or meat that had been strangled; and, fornication, which was commonly accepted in the pagan culture (15:29).
It strengthens churches to hear the gospel affirmed, that we are saved by God’s grace through faith alone in what Jesus Christ provided for us on the cross. And, it strengthens churches to learn to walk in love, in submission to proper spiritual authority. These churches were not free to vote on whether or not to submit to the apostolic decrees. They willingly submitted to them. The aim behind the decrees was to show love and to avoid offending the Jews so that lost Jews could get saved, and believing Jews would not divide from the Gentiles in the churches.
We who are pastors and elders should seek to strengthen the church by helping every person understand the gospel clearly. And, we should help each member joyfully submit to God’s Word and to act in loving regard for others so as not to cause needless offense. Then the church will be strong and increase in numbers.
We’ve seen that the sovereign Spirit leads us to the right workers, gives us wisdom for the right strategies in ministry, and enables us to strengthen the churches. Finally,
I can only touch briefly on each point. Note six things:
Sometimes people don’t serve the Lord because they’ve never experienced a dramatic “call” to ministry. But this Macedonian call did not come to people who were doing nothing; it came to men who were actively serving the Lord. It was not a call to begin serving the Lord or to become a missionary, but rather a clarification of direction in an existing ministry. You can turn the steering wheel of your car all day long, but if the car isn’t moving, you won’t get anywhere. You can sit around and pray for God’s direction for service, but you won’t get it if you’re not already serving Him. Start doing something to serve Jesus Christ, and He will redirect you if He needs to.
We read (16:6) that these men were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia” (a province in western Turkey). Next, they tried to go north into Bithynia (near the Black Sea), but “the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them” (16:7). What’s going on here? Didn’t the Lord want those in Asia or Bithynia to hear the gospel? Yes, later He did (18:19-21, 24-19:41; 1 Pet. 1:1), but not now. All we know is that the Holy Spirit is sovereign over His work, and that He stopped these faithful men from going into these two regions and redirected them into Europe at this time. He did not do it because of anything that He saw in the Europeans that was more worthy than what He saw in the Asians or Bithynians. The gospel does not come to people based on their merit, but rather based on God’s sovereign, unmerited grace.
I’m going to raise a couple of questions that I cannot answer, but you can chew on them with me. First, how did the Holy Spirit forbid these men from going into these areas? It could have been through an audible voice. It may have been through circumstances that blocked the way. It may have been a lack of inner peace. It may have been physical illness on Paul’s part, which was why he linked up with Luke at this point. The bottom line is, we don’t know how the Spirit communicated these prohibitions, since the text does not say. But He uses many different ways of hindering us from heading in the wrong direction. We’re not talking here about doing something that is against God’s Word, but rather about doing good things that simply are not His will for us at this time.
The second question is, how did these men know that the hindrances were from the Holy Spirit and thus to be obeyed; and not from some other source and thus to be overcome? In 1 Thessalonians 2:18, Paul says that Satan had hindered him from visiting the Thessalonians. But here, it was the Spirit of God who hindered them. How did he know the difference? Sometimes God wants us by faith to keep knocking until closed doors are opened. At other times, the closed doors are His way of saying no. All I can say is, we need His wisdom and discernment to know the difference. I don’t have any formulas for figuring it out!
Paul was feeling his way along at this point. After these two hindrances, if you had asked him what his plans were, he probably would have said, “I honestly don’t have a clue!” In The Tapestry [Word], Edith Schaeffer says that she and Fran did not move to Europe with a plan to start L’Abri, which became a world-famous ministry. They moved there to minister to children. When their own children got into the university, they started bringing unsaved friends home to talk to their father about Christianity. It soon developed into the L’Abri ministry as they followed God’s sovereign leading. Usually, knowing God’s will is like driving in the fog. God just gives us enough light to see the next few feet. As we follow, He gives us the light we need to keep moving ahead.
The word “concluding” (16:10) indicates that the missionary team discussed the meaning of Paul’s vision before taking action. The word means to join or knit together, or unite. As they talked, it all came together. As soon as they were sure of what God was saying, immediately they sought to go into Macedonia. They didn’t form a committee and deliberate for months. They figured out what God wanted and went down to the harbor to buy tickets.
Does God direct us through visions in our day? The answer is, He can, but be careful! There are all sorts of crazy visions that people have that are not from the Lord. Benny Hinn told an audience on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (10/19/99) that the Lord had revealed to him that thousands of people from all over the world would be raised from the dead when people put their caskets in front of their TV sets tuned to that station. I don’t know of any funeral homes that have been lacking for business yet!
On the other hand, Bill Bright tells of how late one night as he was studying with a friend for a Greek exam in seminary, he suddenly sensed God’s presence in a way that he had never known before. He had the overwhelming impression that the Lord had unfolded a scroll of instructions of what he was to do with his life. Specifically, he knew that he was to devote his life to help fulfill the Great Commission by winning and discipling the students of the world for Christ. When he shared it with his Bible professor, Dr. Wilbur Smith, he paced back and forth in his office, saying, “This is of God. This is of God. I want to help you. Let me think and pray about it.” The next day, Dr. Smith handed Bill a piece of paper on which he had scribbled, “CCC.” He explained that God had provided the name for Bill’s vision, Campus Crusade for Christ (Come Help Change the World [Revell], pp. 26-27).
The balance we need is on the one hand not to quench the Spirit, but on the other hand to examine everything carefully and hold fast to that which is good (1 Thess. 5:19-21). An obstinate apostle Paul could have plowed ahead into Asia or Bithynia against God’s promptings not to do so. But the obedient apostle obeyed God’s promptings and waited until the Spirit showed him where to go. Then he went immediately. The world has never been the same.
Paul saw a man of Macedonia calling for help. He got there and found a small group of women gathered by the river, and one of these became the first convert. The second convert was a demon-possessed slave girl. Her conversion landed Paul and Silas in prison with their backs shredded by whips. It wasn’t a glorious beginning, to say the least! But it’s how the gospel began to take root in Europe, and we now know that the history of Europe has been forever different. Often when we obey God’s leading and launch out into His work, the reality doesn’t match the vision. But we must continue to obey what we know He called us to do.
“Come over to Macedonia and help us” (16:10). Paul went and gave them the best help in the world: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (16:31). That is the most helpful message that we can give to anyone. It is the most helpful thing that we can do for anyone. We may have to feed a hungry man and provide for his other physical needs, before we can tell him. But if we only provide for his physical needs and neglect the spiritual, we have not given him the most important help.
If you were walking down the street and heard someone cry, “Help me! Help me!” you would be stirred to action. If you could not provide help yourself, you would at least make sure that the proper help got to this needy person. Ask God to burden your heart with the cry of the lost: “Come over and help me!” If you cannot go yourself, at least you will give and pray for missionaries to go. That’s the best help we can give to a desperately lost world.
Let me leave you with the questions I asked at the beginning of this message: Are you seeking first God’s kingdom and righteousness? If not, you need to do some serious thinking about your priorities. Would you notice if God withdrew His Holy Spirit from your life this week? If not, you need to get in tune with Him and seek to follow His leading for how He wants you to labor for His kingdom.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
God uses some unusual means to bring people to salvation. Charles Spurgeon tells of a man who once went to a chapel to listen to the singing, but he didn’t want to hear the preaching. So as soon as the pastor began speaking, the man put his fingers in his ears. But after a while, an insect landed on his face, and so he had to take one finger out of his ear to brush it off. Just as he did, the pastor said, “He that has ears to hear, let him hear.” The man listened, and God met him at that point to his soul’s conversion (Spurgeon’s Sermons [Baker], 1:306).
A missionary to Africa many years ago told of a woman who came to every service, accompanied by her dog. She would sit on the outside, next to the aisle. At the end of the service, when the pastor gave the invitation to come forward for prayer, she would go forward, and the dog would come along beside her.
The woman’s husband was a hard, abusive man. In fact, he beat her so severely because of her Christian lifestyle that she died. There must not have been any law enforcement in that part of Africa then, because the man was not arrested. So he was left alone with the dog. He began to notice that every Wednesday evening about 7 p.m. the dog would disappear for about two hours. Also, every Sunday morning, the dog would leave about 9 and return about noon. Sunday evening, again the dog would leave for a couple of hours and then return.
The man’s curiosity was so aroused that he decided to follow the dog. He followed it to the church and he took a seat in the back to watch. The dog sat down near the aisle, in his usual place. After the service, he watched the dog go forward and take his place at the altar, where his wife had prayed. The man was so touched in his spirit that he, too, went forward and gave his life to Christ. So God used a dog to lead a hardened sinner to repentance!
We may not have any stories quite like that here today, but if we went around the room, we would hear some very different ways that God worked to bring each of us to salvation. Our text shows us three very different people who had different encounters with God. We cannot be sure that the second person, the slave girl, actually got saved, since the text does not say. But we can hope that she was saved, since God delivered her from demonic forces. But these three encounters with God teach us that …
God providentially works to draw very different people to Himself through the same gospel.
These three encounters may seem insignificant, but actually they were the beginning of a movement that changed world history. I’m sure that the Roman Emperor, Claudius, would have shrugged his shoulders in apathy if he had learned that a little Jewish man named Paul had set foot on European soil to tell people about Jesus Christ. Claudius had more important matters to attend to than this! And yet this was the beginning of Christianity in Europe, and its influence there changed the world. These three encounters should encourage us to be faithful to share our faith as we see how God uses the gospel to save different people.
God’s providence refers to the fact that He is sovereignly working behind the scenes, even when we are not aware of it, to work all things after the counsel of His will. In other words, nothing happens by chance, even though it may seem to us to be by chance. Certainly the salvation of a soul, whom God has predestined to salvation before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4-5), is not left to chance!
Take the case of Lydia. She was from Thyatira, in western Turkey. The town was noted, among other commercial ventures, for its trade in expensive purple cloth. Emperors and Roman senators, as well as the wealthy, wore purple garments as a status symbol. Lydia, who was probably a widow, had moved from Thyatira to Philippi to do business there. The term translated “a worshiper of God” (16:14; see 10:2; 13:16, 26, 50) means that she was a Gentile who had come to believe in the God of the Jews, although she was not yet a full proselyte to Judaism.
You may recall that Paul would have preached in Lydia’s home region, but the Holy Spirit forbade him at that time (16:6). Then he wanted to go into Bithynia, but again the Spirit said no. Finally, through the vision of the Macedonian man calling for help, Paul and the missionary team went to Europe. Luke reports that they ran a straight course, which means that the wind was favorable, and got to their destination in two days (later it would take five going the other direction, 20:6). Surely, God was with them now! They landed at the port city of Neapolis, walked the ten miles to Philippi, and no doubt wondered when God would introduce them to this Macedonian man who was ready to receive Christ.
They stayed in Philippi for some days, but no Macedonian man materialized. On the Sabbath, Paul said, “Let’s find out where the Jews gather for worship.” Philippi lacked the ten Jewish men in a town that it took to form a synagogue. As the missionary team wandered down by the river, they came upon a small group of women praying. Paul and his team sat down and explained the gospel to this small group of women. The Lord opened Lydia’s heart, along with the hearts of those in her household, to respond to the gospel (16:14), and they got saved.
So the Lord brought Lydia from western Turkey to Philippi and Paul from wanting to go into western Turkey to Philippi, and brought them together here so that she could get saved! If you had asked Paul if his intention was to start a church with a group of women, I’m sure he would have said, “No way!” But it was God’s way to begin the church in Europe. The Macedonian man turned out to be an Asian woman!
Then God orchestrated another “coincidence.” As the team was going to this place of prayer, probably to give further teaching to these new believers, a slave girl with a spirit of divination met them. The Greek term is that she had a “Python spirit.” This referred to the legendary snake that guarded the Delphic Oracle in central Greece. Apollo supposedly killed this snake, and the snake’s spirit dwelled in the priestess there. So a “Python spirit” referred to a spirit that enabled someone to predict the future. This slave girl was being used by her owners for fortune-telling, much to the fortunes of the owners!
This girl kept following after the missionaries, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation” (Acts 16:17). As this continued for many days, Paul became greatly annoyed, so he commanded the spirit in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her, and it did so instantly. Luke does not tell us if this girl got saved, but we can hope that since her owners had no further use for her, the church would have taken her in and that she did meet the Lord Jesus.
Luke is interested in the story because it shows how the Lord got Paul and Silas to their next divine appointment, with the Philippian jailer and an entire jailhouse full of prisoners. Again, he does not tell us if any of the prisoners trusted in Christ, although it is not unreasonable to assume that some did. But the jailer and his entire household believed in the gospel and got saved. Advocates of infant baptism use the story of the jailer to argue that surely there were some infants among the household that got baptized. But the story does not say any such thing, and it specifically states that those who got baptized had believed in God (16:34). You have to assume infant baptism and read it into this text to find it there, because it simply is not there!
Notice how different these three individuals were. Lydia was a respectable businesswoman with religious convictions. She had a home large enough to offer lodging to the four missionaries, and so she must have been fairly well-to-do. The slave girl was a piece of property to be used and discarded by her masters. Rather than seeking after God, she was actively serving Satan. The jailer was a hardened military man. He could take prisoners with their backs bleeding, throw them into the prison, fasten their feet into the stocks (which were not designed for personal comfort!), lock the door, and go get a good night’s rest, except for being awakened by an earthquake.
Also notice how different the circumstances were in which these three people encountered the Lord. God had already worked in Lydia’s heart to make her a seeker after Him and so she was in a prayer meeting. The slave girl was on the streets, with absolutely no knowledge of the one true God. The jailer was saved in connection with doing his job. He was suddenly awakened by this powerful earthquake, and when he saw the prison door opened, he was ready to fall on his sword and die, since he would be tortured and executed if any of the prisoners had escaped. Out of this extreme crisis, he met the Lord.
Isn’t it interesting that the Lord picked these three very different types of people to form the nucleus of the infant church in Philippi? Lydia didn’t start a seeker church for Yuppie businesspeople. The slave girl didn’t join the hippie church for former street people. And the jailer didn’t join the military chapel. They all had to learn to accept and love each other in the same church in Philippi. The Lord works through His providence to draw very different people from different backgrounds to Himself, and He wants them to learn to love one another as a testimony to the world of His saving grace. And even though these three people were very different, it was the same gospel that saved them all.
God providentially orchestrated the circumstances that led to the salvation of these people, but His messengers had to faithfully deliver the message. Some will say, “If salvation is totally of the Lord, then He will save whom He is going to save, and we don’t have to do anything.” That is a perversion of Scripture! God’s normal means of saving people is to use His servants to proclaim “the way of salvation” (16:17) to those He intends to save.
Paul and his team were probably looking for men to preach to. It would have been counter to Paul’s pharisaic background to teach women about spiritual matters. But if he had been operating on that basis, he would have missed this opportunity to explain the gospel to this small group of women by the river. And yet this was how God intended to start the church in Europe.
The lesson for us is not to despise any person as unimportant in God’s sight. We can easily think, “This person is not a ‘key’ person. It would be a waste of my time to share with him (or her).” Not so! “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God” (1 Cor. 1:27-29).
Paul and Silas bore witness not only by their proclaiming the gospel verbally, but also by their example. Their rights had been violated, their backs were ripped open by the rods that beat them, and they were thrown into the stocks in prison. But rather than complain, they sang hymns and prayed (16:25). If their focus had been on their own well-being, as soon as the prison doors flew open they would have said, “All right! We’re out of here!” Or when they saw the jailer about to fall on his sword, they would have said, “Go for it! It serves you right, you barbarian!” But their focus was not on themselves. It was on glorifying God and seeing other people, no matter how undeserving, experience God’s saving grace.
Don’t miss the application: If you ever are treated unfairly, you are probably being given a major opportunity for witness. If you rejoice in the Lord and keep your focus on the salvation of those who are mistreating you, your life and words can lead them to the Savior. If your focus is on yourself and getting your rights or getting revenge, you will miss the opportunity.
Sometimes Satan will use outright aggression against the Lord’s people, such as unjust beatings and imprisonment. But his more dangerous strategy, because it is more subtle, is not aggression, but alignment. “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation” (16:17). Those were perfectly true words! Why would Paul get irritated? If the girl had been shouting out a half-truth, I can see why Paul would be upset. But why was he upset with her shouting out the truth?
As Paul put it (2 Cor. 2:11), he didn’t want any advantage taken of him by Satan, because he was not ignorant of his schemes. One of Satan’s subtle strategies is to align himself with the truth. He is doing it in our day through the Mormon Church declaring itself to be just another evangelical denomination. When they say, “We are one with you; we believe just as you do. We’re Christians, too,” the world wrongly thinks that their message is no different than the gospel. When Protestants publicly confirm that they are one with Roman Catholics, the world mistakenly thinks that both groups are just different flavors of Christianity. You can take your pick in accordance with your preferences. But the truth is, the Roman Catholic Church and the Mormon Church both proclaim different ways of salvation than the gospel.
Paul’s gospel always centered on Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). The Christ he preached is the Christ revealed in the Old Testament and the Gospels. Note that he explained the way of salvation, both to Lydia and her group, and to the Philippian jailer and his household (16:14, 32). People need adequate understanding in order to believe. They must know who Jesus is and what He claimed. The Jesus Christ that Paul proclaimed is clearly eternal God in human flesh, who came to bear on the cross the just penalty that God requires for our sins. He taught that we are justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 3:24). He plainly stated, “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5).
There are some in evangelical circles who say that since salvation is by faith alone, that to tell people that they must accept Jesus not only as Savior, but also as Lord, is to mix faith and works. But Paul told the jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (16:31). When he adds, “you and your household,” he means that the same promise applied to his household: If they would believe in the Lord Jesus, they, too, would be saved. There is no such thing as group salvation based on someone else’s faith. But you can’t come to Jesus as Savior and make His Lordship an optional package to consider later. You must trust in Him as Savior and submit your life to Him as Lord. Of course you grow in both faith and obedience as you mature as a Christian. The initial evidence that these converts submitted to Jesus as Savior and Lord is seen in their obedience through baptism and in the good deeds that followed their faith (16:15, 33, 34).
We’ve seen that God works providentially to draw very different people to Himself. He does it through the same gospel message, proclaimed by His servants.
Even though Lydia was a religious woman who feared God, she was not converted. She did not have it in herself to believe in the gospel. Rather, “God opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul” (16:14). Many, if not all, in her household also believed, since they confessed their faith in baptism (16:15). The jailer and his family also believed and were baptized (16:33-34). That is always the order in the Book of Acts: belief first, then baptism as a public confession of faith. The New Testament is clear that if we believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, it is not because we were so brilliant as to make that decision. It is because God graciously opened our hearts to respond. Saving faith is the gift of God (Acts 11:18; Eph. 2:8-9; Phil. 1:29).
There were some in this story who could have met God, but they missed Him. The owners of the slave girl missed God because of their greed and anger toward Paul for taking away the source of their income (16:19). They also lied to the city magistrates, trumping up false charges about Paul and Silas. The city magistrates could have listened to Paul’s defense, which surely would have included the gospel. But they missed their opportunity to meet God, because as good politicians, they wanted to keep their constituency happy. The crowd in Philippi missed meeting God because they swallowed the accusations of the slave owners without hearing Paul’s message and thinking carefully about it. Probably some anti-Semitic prejudice inclined them to reject Paul and his gospel.
Those who reject Jesus Christ cannot blame God for not opening their hearts to the gospel. They are responsible for their own sin. God does not owe them salvation. If they perish, they perish because they are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness” (Eph. 4:18, 19).
I once knew a man who was living as an immoral, drug-using hippie in one of the canyons leading to the beach northwest of Los Angeles. One morning a pastor and his wife prayed that God would direct their day and perhaps lead them to someone who needed to hear about the Savior. As this pastor was driving down this canyon, his muffler fell off his car right in front of this hippie’s shack. He went up to the door to ask if he could use the phone, and through this contact, he led this man to Jesus Christ.
Is God behind bugs that land on someone’s nose, and dogs that go to church, and mufflers that fall off cars at precisely the right place along the road? Is He providentially behind your being here today and hearing this message about your need for salvation? I think so!
The question is, how will you respond? In your hardness of heart, will you cling to your greed and sin and respond in anger to the message, as the slave owners in the story did? Or, will you join Lydia and the jailer and their households by responding in faith and giving glory to God for opening your heart to the good news, that Jesus Christ will save every sinner who believes in Him?
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
We Americans have a thing about standing up for our rights. If our rights are violated, we don’t take it sitting down. We will protest, we may sue, we’ll write to our congressman, take courses in assertiveness training, or whatever it takes to get our rights. We don’t do well when we are wronged.
The fact is, most of us as Americans have never experienced any serious violation of our religious rights. We do not know firsthand the true meaning of the word “persecution.” Perhaps some of you may have felt ostracized at work or have been passed over for a promotion because you are a Christian. Maybe your mate or a family member treats you with contempt because of your Christian convictions. But few of us know the kind of persecution experienced by those in former or present communist countries, or those in strongly Muslim countries They could more effectively preach from the story in our text than I can.
As Roman citizens, Paul and Silas had a right to a trial before any punishment. Romans were exempt from public beatings. And yet the two missionaries were falsely accused, beaten, and thrown into the inner prison, with their feet locked into the stocks, without any semblance of a trial. Their rights had been violated. If anyone had a right to be angry, they did. If it had been America, they would have sued and had the magistrates removed from office. Their response teaches us how to be right when we are wronged.
When you are wronged, entrust your soul to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.
I am using the wording of 1 Peter 4:19, which is one of two times in the New Testament God is called the Creator (Rom. 1:25 is the other). The term emphasizes His omnipotence and sovereignty. We see His mighty power here in the earthquake that rocked this prison. Either the quake or God’s miraculous power loosed all of the prisoners’ chains. And yet the same mighty power that sent the quake could have prevented the beating and imprisonment in the first place, but did not. So the first lesson is:
As Peter tells his persecuted readers, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you” (1 Pet. 4:12). Don’t be surprised! Just because God is the omnipotent Creator does not mean that He will spare you from intense trials. It is false teaching that Christians are exempt from the common trials that come upon the entire human race: sickness, poverty, tragedies, and death. And, in addition to these common trials, we can expect even more trials because we are Christians.
Note some of the ways that Paul and Silas were mistreated. First, there were the false accusations. The real reason for the anger of the slave girl’s owners was that they had just been deprived of their source of income (16:19). But they didn’t mention that when they dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities. Rather, they accused them of throwing the city into confusion and of proclaiming customs that were not lawful for Romans to accept or observe (16:20-21). Those charges were simply not true. At some time you will be falsely accused.
Further, there was racial prejudice behind these false charges. The phrase, “being Jews,” was no doubt said with a slur. The Roman emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome in A.D. 49. The incident in Philippi took place probably in the fall of A.D. 50, and so anti-Jewish sentiment was running high. The Jewish religion was tolerated, but Jews were prohibited from proselytizing Romans. Many of you have experienced or will experience prejudice simply because of your racial background.
Also, Paul and Silas’ legal rights were violated. They were assumed guilty without a hearing or trial. They were not given an opportunity to defend themselves. They were physically attacked in an inhumane way. And, they were then locked into the stocks, which was a painful torture in and of itself, let alone when your back was ripped open from a beating. While in this country at this time, such physical torture from government authorities is rare, you may face times when your legal rights are violated.
Increasingly, our religious rights are being violated in the interest of so-called “neutrality.” Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nude dancing was entitled to considerable legal protection as “expressive behavior,” but they struck down student elections permitting speech that might be used for prayer prior to high school football games. This led Theodore Olson, a leading critic of the Supreme Court, to suggest that the students should dance nude before their football games, since the court prefers naked dancing to prayer as a form of expression (Kathleen Parker, The Washington Times [9/11/00], p. A12)!
Whatever form it takes, you should not be surprised when you are treated wrongly. God does not give Christians an exemption, even when they are in the middle of doing His will and pursuing His kingdom and righteousness. As you know, a missionary wife and her baby were recently shot to death and the pilot of their plane was badly wounded when a Peruvian air force plane opened fire on them. That couple was in Peru to serve Jesus Christ. They were in, not out, of God’s will. Paul and Silas did not sit in jail lamenting, “Maybe we missed the signals! Maybe God didn’t mean for us to come to Macedonia. Are we out of the will of God?” Being in the will of God is not a guarantee of protection from trials.
Peter warns those going through suffering to be on the alert, since the devil prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour us in such times (1 Pet. 5:8). In times of trial, Satan tempts us to think things like, “If God exists and if He is good, why didn’t He protect you from this extreme situation?” As Peter goes on to show, and as Paul and Silas here exemplify, the solution is to resist the devil by being firm in our faith in the Almighty God. Our trials do not mean that He does not exist or that He is not loving and good. He has a greater purpose that we often do not understand. Our responsibility in such difficult times is to trust and obey Him.
Paul and Silas show us four aspects of a right response to wrong treatment.
Paul and Silas, their rights having been violated and their backs torn open, their feet in the stocks and locked in the dark inner prison, were praying and singing hymns of praise to God at midnight (16:25)! That convicts me of my lack of joy and my grumbling over the minor irritations in my life!
As John Piper rightly states, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. Thus if we want to glorify God, which is the highest goal for the Christian, we must focus on finding joy in Him. Scripture commands us, “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Ps. 37:4). “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together…. O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:3, 8). “Praise the Lord” is not a nice suggestion; it’s a command! Although I have not verified it, I have heard that the most frequent command in the entire Bible is, “Sing!” And you can’t rightly obey the command to praise God and sing for joy unless your heart is full of joy in Him.
Paul and Silas would not have been rejoicing in the Lord in the dungeon at midnight under these awful circumstances if it had not been a regular part of their everyday lives. They had a daily habit of mentally focusing on how great and wonderful God is, and on the many blessings that He daily heaps on His children. The greatest blessing is His gift of salvation by His free grace. Thus Paul could say that the life he now lived in the flesh, he lived by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave Himself for him (Gal. 2:20). As you know, when he later wrote to this Philippian church from a prison cell in Rome, the major theme of that letter was joy in the Lord in spite of our circumstances. “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord” (Phil. 3:1). “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4).
I wish that Paul had said, “Rejoice in the Lord as a general rule.” But, always? Come on, Paul, get realistic! He also wrote to the Philippians, “Do all things without grumbling or disputing” (Phil. 2:14). All things? I could handle, “Try not to grumble too much.” “Rejoice always;… In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:18). Always? In everything? The man must not have lived in the same world I live in! O, but he did! He was a man who had learned to focus on the Lord and His abundant grace in every situation, and so he was filled with joy in the Lord in every situation, even in severe trials.
He wrote, “We exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5). He told the Colossians, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake” (Col. 1:24). Was he a masochist, or what?
No, in this he was simply obeying the words of Jesus, “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great” (Matt. 5:11-12). Or, as James wrote, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (James 1:2-3). Peter echoes this: “But to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation” (1 Pet. 4:13). It’s not enough just to grit your teeth and endure trials; God wants us to rejoice in them!
We need to keep in mind that Paul and Silas did not know the end of this story when they began singing at midnight in the dungeon. For all they knew, they would be executed the next day, or left to die a slow death in prison. Their singing was not based on their knowledge of a happy outcome. It was based on their knowledge of a good and sovereign God. While in this instance, His will was to send a powerful earthquake and free them, it doesn’t always work out that way. Many of God’s faithful saints have died for their faith, but like John Hus, who was betrayed and burned at the stake, they die singing.
A cheerful, joyous spirit does not depend on having wonderful, trouble-free circumstances. It depends on daily cultivating joy in the Lord. As G. Campbell Morgan observes, “He did not sing because he was to be let out of prison. He sang because prison did not matter” (The Westminster Pulpit [Baker], 9:314-315). The only way that prison and mistreatment and a raw back do not matter is when the delight of God matters more. As George Muller put it, the chief business of every day is first of all to seek to be truly at rest and happy in God (A. T. Pierson, George Muller of Bristol [Revell], p. 257).
I emphasize this first point because it is foundational to everything else. So many professing Christians are grumbling, discontented people. Like the children of Israel in the wilderness, they think that they would be happier back in slavery in Egypt than to be with God and His provision in the wilderness. Cultivating joy in the Lord every day is not optional. It is mandatory for all who know His salvation.
Paul and Silas were not singing so that they could be good witnesses in this difficult situation. They were singing because their hearts were full of praise toward God and the joy of His salvation. But the overflow of their worship was witness. That’s how it always should be. The world should see (or hear) our joy in the Lord from the dungeon and ask, “What’s with these people, anyway?” Then we tell them. Our lives back up the reality of the message.
Luke notes that “the prisoners were listening to them” (16:25). They always are, of course! Those who are prisoners in Satan’s domain of darkness are always listening to and watching the Lord’s people, especially in times of trial. If Paul and Silas had been having a pity party because their rights had been violated and they had been treated wrongly when they were just trying to serve the Lord, they would have been depressed and complaining. They would have missed this great opportunity for witness.
As I mentioned last week, any time that your rights have been violated and you have been mistreated, you are probably looking at a wonderful opportunity for bearing witness of Christ. Years ago, in the former Soviet Union, a criminal who later got saved and became a church leader, wrote about his experience in prison:
Among the general despair, while prisoners like myself were cursing ourselves, the camp, the authorities; while we opened up our veins or our stomachs, or hanged ourselves; the Christians (often with sentences of 20 to 25 years) did not despair. One could see Christ reflected in their faces. Their pure, upright life, deep faith and devotion to God, their gentleness and their wonderful manliness, became a shining example of life for thousands (in Christianity Today [6/21/74]).
Not many of us will ever go through what Christians in communist prisons had to endure. But we will be treated wrongly, at work and at home. With Paul, we should aim at doing all things for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:23), because the prisoners will be listening. Focus on joy in the Lord and don’t forget your witness.
I have a hunch that if most of us had gone through what Paul and Silas suffered, if we were praying at midnight it would be, “God, get me out of here!” I can’t prove it, but I also have a hunch that Paul and Silas were not praying that way. If they had been praying that way, as soon as God sent the powerful earthquake, they would have said, “All right! We’re out of here!” And they would have run for their lives.
I think that if they were offering any petitions mixed in with their praise, it would have been, “Lord, use this situation for the greater furtherance of the gospel.” Paul and Silas knew that God could have prevented them from being beaten and thrown in prison in the first place, but He did not do so. They trusted that He had another purpose in mind, and so He did, namely, the conversion of the jailer and his family. As Paul later wrote to the Philippians, his aim was that with all boldness, Christ would even now, as always, be exalted in his body, whether by life or by death (Phil. 1:20). Paul trusted God to work for His purpose and glory, whether Paul got delivered or whether he died in the process.
The real issue, when you’re treated wrongly, is, Do you trust in a sovereign, omnipotent God who could have prevented this situation if He had so willed? If you do, then the next issue is to pray, “Lord, use this difficult situation for Your glory to further Your purpose.” Whenever Paul wrote as a prisoner, he never said, “Paul, a prisoner of that scoundrel Caesar who has unjustly put me in prison!” No, it was always, “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus.” He trusted in the sovereign and all-powerful God, who easily could overrule Caesar if He so chose.
Maybe you’re wondering, “Does trusting God mean that we should never stand up for our rights? Do we just lay down as doormats and take whatever happens passively?” That leads to the last point:
We don’t know why, but for some reason the next morning the magistrates sent to the jailer and told him to release Paul and Silas. Maybe they thought that the beating and night in prison would send these guys packing, never to return. But at this point, Paul says, “No way! They have violated our rights as Roman citizens. We demand that they personally come and bring us out” (16:37). Why did Paul do that?
There were at least two reasons. First, Paul was concerned for justice for all people, and what these magistrates had done was grossly unjust. He knew that by making them come and personally apologize and escort them out of prison, word would spread through the community of what had happened. It would be a very long time before these officials would beat a man without a trial. Paul’s action helped hold these men accountable to carry out justice for others who would be accused of some crime. The next time, they would follow the Roman law!
Second, Paul was concerned about the future of the church and the gospel in Philippi. By making these officials realize that they had committed a serious offense against Roman citizens, Paul insured that they would not trouble the Christians in Philippi. Also, if he wanted to come back again, he knew that they would not prevent him. So he stood on his rights in order to protect the church and the cause of Christ in that city.
In line with that, Paul’s action showed the entire city, which would have heard about this incident, the spirit of Jesus Christ. By rights, Paul could have had their heads if he had taken his case to a higher authority. But he let their wrong go unpunished and by his actions showed that Christians are not out for personal vengeance. The spirit of Christ is to forgive those who sin against us, while at the same time holding them accountable to change their behavior.
This one incident does not exhaust the biblical teaching on when to stand up for your rights and when to let them go. Some wrongly teach that we should never defend ourselves, either legally or against aggressive attacks against our character or person. But Paul wrote Second Corinthians to defend his character and his apostolic ministry. All I can say here is, when you are treated wrongly, your response should be motivated by the furtherance of God’s glory and the gospel, and by the administration of God’s justice through law and government, which He has appointed for the well being of society. It is wrong to act out of personal vengeance, greed, or other selfish motives.
The main application of this story for me is to work on having joy in the Lord in every situation. Everything else flows from that. If I radiate His joy because I have entrusted my soul to Him, the faithful Creator, then even when I’m wrongly treated, He will be glorified and others will be drawn to the Savior.
The late Romanian pastor, Richard Wurmbrand, spent 14 years in prison for preaching the gospel, three in solitary confinement in a dark cell. His captors smashed four of his vertebrae and either cut or burned 18 holes in his body, but they could not defeat him. He testified, “Alone in my cell, cold, hungry, and in rags, I danced for joy every night.” During this time he asked a fellow prisoner, whom he had led to Christ before they were both arrested, “Have you any resentment against me that I brought you to Christ?” The man responded, “I have no words to express my thankfulness that you brought me to the wonderful Savior. I would never have it another way.” (In “Our Daily Bread” [2/85].)
May God enable us all, when we are mistreated, to imitate these men of God in entrusting our souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
A four-year-old boy was outdoors when a bee starting buzzing around a table nearby. He became very upset, and his mother tried to calm him. “Nathan, that bee is more afraid of you than you are of him,” she said. “Look how much bigger you are. Besides, if that bee stings you, his stinger will fall out and he will die.”
Nathan considered this for a moment and then asked, “Does the bee know that?” (Reader’s Digest [6/93], p. 20.)
Sometimes we get stung in life because we don’t stop to ask the important questions. We are so focused on things that we think are important that we fail to consider the really urgent and important matters. In our text, the Philippian jailer asks Paul and Silas the most important and urgent question that anyone can possibly ask: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
That may not strike you as a very urgent question. You may think that the most urgent question you can answer is, “How can I get a boyfriend (or girlfriend)?” Or, “How can I get a job?” Or, “How can I deal with my difficult marriage?” Or, “How can I communicate with my rebellious teenager?” While these may be important questions, none are nearly as urgent as the question, “What must I do to be saved?”
This was not an academic question for this jailer. He had just been awakened by a powerful earthquake. If that’s ever happened to you, you know that it’s a pretty good adrenaline rush! Then, when he rushed to the prison, he confirmed his worst nightmare—the doors were open. He assumed the worst, that all the prisoners had escaped. Instant death would be better to him than the torture that the authorities would inflict before they killed him. So he was ready to fall on his sword, when he heard a voice from inside calling, “Do yourself no harm, for we are all here!”
He couldn’t believe his own ears! Calling for lights, he entered the prison and saw that it was true. Overwhelmed with all that had happened, he fell down before Paul and Silas. We don’t know what words were exchanged at this point. Probably, as with Peter and Cornelius (10:26), Paul and Silas said, “Stand up; we too are just men.” Perhaps then Paul explained that the living God, whom he served, was behind the earthquake and the prisoners not leaving. These events had made the jailer see that he must come to terms with the God proclaimed by Paul and Silas. He knew that the servant girl had been shouting all over town that these men were bond-servants of the Most High God and were proclaiming the way of salvation (16:17). So after he brought them out of prison, he asked this urgent question, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
“Lost” is a frightening word. I don’t know if you’ve ever been lost, but it can be a harrowing experience. One time when our oldest daughter, Christa, was seven, we were standing in line at the Dumbo ride at Disneyland. Marla was holding on to one of the younger children, and I had the other. Suddenly we realized that Christa was gone. We quickly searched in the sea of people, and could not find her. This was during a time when rumors were circulating about Southeast Asian gangs who would kidnap kids, sell them into the Asian sex industry, and you’d never see them again. For about ten scary minutes that seemed like ten hours, we frantically searched for our lost daughter, until a security guard told us that they had found her in a shop about 100 yards away.
Even more frightening than being lost at Disneyland is to be spiritually lost, separated from God. Ironically, probably like our lost daughter, many lost people don’t even realize that they are lost! They’re going through life pursuing all of the things that make life enjoyable, but they’re oblivious to the impending reality of eternity and the fact that they will stand before the Judge of all the earth. But whether they feel it or not, it is a fact. The Bible declares, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23); and, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), which means, eternal separation from God.
The Philippian jailer was in the dark until lights could be brought to see into the prison. Darkness is another biblical picture of being alienated from God. People who are lost and are in the dark need help! They can’t see where they’re going and they don’t know the way even if they could see. God must make a person aware of his desperate condition so that he will cry out for help: “What must I do to be saved?”
We all just hang on to life by a thread. A few weeks ago, a professional football player suited up and went out for his afternoon workout with the team. Before dinner that evening, he was dead from heatstroke. If you had eaten breakfast with him that day, you would have thought, “This guy is on top of the world!” He was making mega-bucks as a pro football player. He was in great physical condition. He had a wife and child. Millions of young men in this country would have traded places with him in an instant. But he was a corpse before the day was over!
We’re all so frail, and yet we think that we’re invincible, especially when we’re young. But we’re not! Not one of us is guaranteed of being alive tomorrow morning. Novelist John Grisham said that when he was in law school, he got a call from one of his best friends in college. They got together for lunch, and the friend told Grisham that he had terminal cancer. Grisham was stunned. He asked, “What do you do when you realize that you are about to die?”
The friend replied, “It’s real simple. You get things right with God, and you spend as much time with those you love as you can. Then you settle up with everybody else.” That friend’s death at age 25 left a lasting impression on Grisham (Christianity Today [10/3/ 94], p. 16).
DeWitt Talmage (20 Centuries of Great Preaching [Word], 5:311) points out that for the jailer, this was an immediate question that demanded an immediate answer:
You can see by the torch the jailor [sic] holds in his hand the startled and anxious look. He had no time to prepare himself in especial apparel, no time to comb his hair, no time to fix himself up. He must have that question answered before the earthquake has stopped rocking, or never perhaps have it answered at all. Is that the way you propound the question of your salvation, or do you drawl it out as much as to say: “Any time without fifteen years I would like to have it answered”? Do you know that thousands of souls have been ruined because they did not ask the question in time? If the door of the lost world could be opened, and … they could utter only one word of warning, that word would come sounding up like the howl of the everlasting storm: “Now!”
It is an urgent question because apart from Jesus Christ, all are lost, and because we all are just a breath away from eternity.
Money matters a great deal to most of us, and we spend our lives trying to get enough to live comfortably. But you can pile up a fortune as large as that of Bill Gates, but it won’t get you in the door of heaven. You can work out and eat healthy meals to make your body fit, and you might (or might not) extend your life for a few years. But it won’t do you a bit of good when you stand before the Righteous Judge. You can devote your life to piling up good deeds, but they all will be consumed in the burning heat of the holy presence of Almighty God. You can enjoy the love of a family that cares for you deeply, but even that will not matter when you stand before God. The only thing that will matter on that soon-coming day will be, “Are you saved?” Are you reconciled to God?
The jailer asked it personally, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul answered as it pertained both to him and to his entire household: If he would believe in Jesus Christ, he would be saved. The same thing applied to his household: If each of them believed, each one would be saved. Thankfully, we read that each member of his household did believe in Christ that night (16:34), because there is no group plan of salvation. Each of us has sinned; each of us needs to be saved personally. Coming from a Christian home won’t do. Attending a Christian church won’t cut it. It is incumbent on each person, and therefore urgent, to answer this crucial question.
Thankfully, even though it is a profound question, it is one for which even young children can understand the answer. Paul didn’t say, “You’ll need to enroll in my seminary course in advanced theology, and by the end of the semester, if you study hard, you will discover the answer.” He didn’t haul out a list of 20 steps, with the promise that if he worked hard at following them, by the end of his life he would be saved. Rather, Paul answered the jailer in a simple sentence, and then, because this was all so new to him, Paul sat down with the entire household and explained things more thoroughly (16:32).
That simple answer stands apart from all of the religions in the world. They all offer complex plans of how a person can work his way into heaven. His answer even stands apart from many claiming to be Christian, who say, “Get baptized, receive the sacrament of communion, give money to the church, and do good works and you may get in.” Many pastors in our day who claim to be Christians would say, “What is all this talk about being saved? There is nothing to be saved from! God loves everyone; He would never condemn anyone. Just try to be a good person, and you have nothing to fear.” But Paul’s simple answer stands apart: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved.” Paul’s answer and the results that we see in the jailer and his family imply four things:
The verb, “you shall be saved,” is passive, meaning that the subject is acted upon. No one can save himself by any amount of effort or sincerity. No one can pile up enough good deeds to tip the scale in his favor. Paul didn’t tell the jailer that he would have to keep the Ten Commandments and reform his life before he could be saved. We can’t save ourselves. But God will save everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus.
The numerous biblical pictures of people who are apart from God show us how impossible it is to save ourselves. We are dead in our sins (Eph. 2:1-3). We are spiritually blind (2 Cor. 4:4). We have natural minds that cannot perceive spiritual truth apart from God’s Spirit revealing it to us (1 Cor. 2:14). We are enslaved to sin, unable to free ourselves unless the Son of God frees us (John 8:34-36) We have spiritual leprosy and only Jesus can cleanse us. God alone can save a person from his sins.
This is great news! If salvation depended on us, then the best among us might have some hope of saving themselves, but the worst among us wouldn’t have a chance. But since salvation depends on Almighty God, not on weak man, and since God has sent His Son to be the Savior of sinners (not of pretty good people), there is hope for everyone! Many are clearly too lost for any human approach to save them. But none are too lost for God’s mighty arm to save them.
The jailer asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul did not answer with something to do, but rather with someone to believe in. Believing is not a matter of human effort, but rather of ceasing from our efforts and relying on God alone. As Paul wrote (Rom. 4:4-5), “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.” Saving faith, then, is a matter of ceasing from my own efforts to save myself, and trusting in Jesus Christ to save me.
What does it mean to believe in the Lord Jesus? Next month, Marla and I hope to fly to Europe where we will minister to some missionaries. We could drive down to Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix and inspect the planes. We could watch the crews servicing them. We could ask to see the maintenance records, to make sure that the planes have been regularly serviced. We could watch the crew put fuel in the tanks. We could interview the pilots and make sure that they know what they are doing. We could watch other planes take off and land safely. And we could stand there and tell you that we believe these airplanes could safely fly us to Europe, but that would not get us to Europe. To get to Europe, we’ve got to commit our lives to those planes.
Believing in the Lord Jesus for salvation is like that. Intellectual assent is necessary, but not sufficient. You must commit your eternal destiny to the Lord Jesus as your only hope. You must rely on Him to bridge the chasm between you as a sinner and God as absolutely holy.
Saving faith relies on Jesus Christ alone. Can you imagine me getting on board and then going up and knocking on the pilot’s door and saying, “Move over! I’d like to help you fly this baby to Europe”? I don’t think he would appreciate my offer! I would be questioning the pilot’s ability! All I need to do is get on board and let him do it all. That will get me to my destination. Trusting in Jesus Christ is all that we need to do to be saved.
When we do that, it is not a matter of maybe you’ll be saved, but “you shall be saved.” It’s a done deal, and it is done instantly. Even though the jailer had no religious background, even though he had never darkened the door of a church or read a Bible, he believed and was saved that very hour. Salvation is a matter of believing, not of doing. But, our faith must be in the proper object:
Paul did not say, “Just believe and you shall be saved.” He did not say, “Believe in a Higher Power, however you conceive him to be, and you shall be saved.” He said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.” (Some manuscripts add “Christ,” but it is probably not in the original.) Since the jailer and his family had almost no knowledge about Jesus, Paul and Silas “spoke the word of the Lord” to them in more detail (16:32). “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word concerning Christ” (Rom. 10:17, NASB margin). Paul probably gave them a quick course on key Old Testament prophecies about Messiah, and how Jesus fulfilled them. He probably told them about the life and ministry of Jesus. He probably explained that as Lord, Jesus is God, but also, He is man. No doubt Paul explained Jesus’ death on the cross as the substitute for sinners, and His bodily resurrection from the dead.
Faith is only as good as its object. I could have great faith in a defective airplane, but my faith would only plunge me to my death if it led me to get on board. There are millions of people who believe in a Jesus of their own understanding, rather than in the Jesus of the Bible. Their Jesus is not fully God, and He did not shed His blood to satisfy God’s wrath in the place of sinners. To believe unto salvation, a person must have some basic understanding of who Jesus is and what He did when He died on the cross. You don’t have to be a theologian, but you do need to have some basic knowledge. That knowledge comes from God’s Word.
There is such a thing as faith that does not save. The demons believe in God, but they aren’t saved (James 2:19). How can a person know if he truly believes?
If a person claims to believe in Christ as Savior, but his life is no different, his claim is suspect. While no one is perfectly sanctified in this life, everyone who has believed in the Lord Jesus will be different. Salvation is not just a human decision; it is God’s imparting new life and changing our hearts, so that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature (2 Cor. 5:17).
We see several changes in the jailer and his household. First, they were all baptized after they believed (16:33-34). Paul had explained to them that baptism is the outward confession of our faith in Christ. We’ve wrongly replaced baptism with walking the aisle in our day. Baptism is the way to confess that you have trusted in Christ. It is an act of obedience to Jesus Christ, showing that He has cleansed you from sin and that you are identified with Him in His death, burial, and resurrection. It signifies a break from your former life of sin, and a commitment to follow Jesus as your Lord.
Not only were they baptized, they immediately began ministering to Paul and Silas, washing their wounds and setting food before them. Before he was saved, the jailer could throw these wounded men into prison, lock their feet in the stocks, and go to bed without any concern. But now, he humbly served them in these practical ways. Salvation always reorients a person so that rather than living for himself only, he begins to be sensitive to the needs of others. His attitudes and deeds begin to change out of gratitude to the Lord for His gift of salvation.
Also, the entire family rejoiced greatly because of their new faith in God (16:34). Salvation affects our emotions. A short time before this jailer was suicidal. Now, he’s overflowing with joy in the Lord. No doubt the entire family was terrified by the earthquake. Now they were singing praises along with Paul and Silas, even if there were strong aftershocks. True salvation changes us from the inside out, affecting every area of our lives. Thus,
The most urgent question in the world is:
How can I be saved?
The biblical answer is:
Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved.
Is that the most urgent matter in your life today? After the capture of Syracuse during the Second Punic War, the Greek mathematician Archimedes was absorbed in working on a math problem. He had drawn some diagrams in the sand, and he was so absorbed in solving the problem, that when a Roman soldier intruded, Archimedes offended the soldier by merely remarking, “Do not disturb my diagrams.” The soldier ran him through with his sword.
Like Archimedes, we can easily become focused on some present problems and ignore the most urgent matter of eternity. It is only when you are ready to die that you are ready to live properly. The most urgent question in the world is, “How can I be saved?” The biblical answer is, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved.”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
In America, we live in comfortable times. Most of us have far more material possessions than the vast majority of the world’s population. We live in spacious homes or apartments. We own at least one car, if not more, per family. We have telephones, computers, TV sets, VCR’s, and many more modern gadgets to make life comfortable. If we need something, we go to stores stocked with many choices of goods and buy what we want. Our supermarkets overflow with many varieties of food and drink.
Living in such a world, it is easy to fall into a comfortable, convenience style Christianity. We shop around for a church that provides the services that we want. If it meets our needs and makes us feel good, we attend, unless, of course, we have something better to do on the weekend. A cartoon (Leadership [Summer, 1983], p. 81) poked fun at the way the church has played down commitment to attract attenders. It showed a billboard in front of a church that read, “The Lite Church: 24% fewer commitments, home of the 7.5% tithe, 15 minute sermons, 45 minute worship services; we have only 8 commandments—your choice. We use just 3 spiritual laws and have an 800-year millennium. Everything you’ve wanted in a church … and less!”
We may chuckle, and yet George Gallup contends that fewer than 10 percent of evangelical Christians could be called deeply committed. He says that the majority that profess Christianity don’t know basic teachings and don’t act differently because of their Christian experience (cited in SWCBA briefing, 9/94).
Jesus called people to take up their crosses and lose their lives if they wished to follow Him (Mark 8:34-35). The life of the apostle Paul gives us a concrete example of what that means. In our text, having just been mistreated in Philippi, he comes to Thessalonica and has the boldness to speak to them the gospel in the face of much opposition (1 Thess. 2:2). Driven out of Thessalonica, he does the same thing in Berea. Driven from Berea, he moves on to preach to the intellectuals in Athens. In Thessalonica, an angry mob accuses him and Silas of upsetting the world, or as some translations put it, of turning the world upside down and of proclaiming a king other than Caesar (17:6, 7).
In one sense, both charges were exaggerated and false. It was Paul’s accusers that were upsetting the world by stirring up mob violence. Paul exhorted his followers to live quiet and tranquil lives in all godliness and dignity (1 Tim. 2:2). And he also instructed believers to be subject to the governing authorities (Rom. 13:1-7). But there is another sense in which both charges are true, or at least ought to be true. Christians should upset the world or turn it upside down by confronting it with the gospel. And Christians do proclaim that Jesus is King or Lord of all, even of Caesar. Thus God wants us to upset the world for Jesus Christ.
To upset the world for Jesus Christ, we need to be men and women who are committed to Christ and the gospel.
Ever since the fall of the human race into sin, people have been in rebellion against the Creator and Lord of the universe. We are born in sin and we continue in sin unless we are upset by the gospel that confronts our sin. Sin has made the world stand on its head, and only Jesus Christ can turn it upside down, which makes it right side up again.
We live in a world that has brazenly cast off God. We have cast Him off as the Creator, insisting that science proves that we all evolved from pond slime through sheer chance billions of years ago. If God is not the Creator, then He does not need to be obeyed (Rom. 1:18). If man is the product of millions of years of chance, then he need not fear judgment or eternity ahead, because at death he simply ceases to exist. And so we can determine for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. There is no absolute moral truth, binding on everyone, except for the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth! Thus tolerance becomes our chief virtue.
On the common man’s level, “Dear Abby” epitomizes the world’s so-called “wisdom” apart from God. It is an evolving wisdom, blowing with the winds of the times. Years ago, Abby was against divorce, until the world voted for no-fault, easy divorce. Now, Abby even calls it a necessary good at times, and counsels women to leave their husbands out of self-respect. Forty years ago Abby would never have defended homosexuality. But when public opinion shifted toward tolerance, she now defends it and chastises any narrow-minded people who think that it is wrong. Just last week, I noticed that Abby was defending some people who invited their neighbors over to go nude into their hot tub. She acknowledged that a few may think that group nudity is morally wrong, and that others are hung up about the appearance of their bodies. But the implication was that those who are mature and sensible shouldn’t have any problem with it!
On a more intellectual level, the ACLU and the U.S. Supreme Court reflect a world in rebellion against God. These dear folks have made it legally acceptable to dance nude as an expression of free speech, but not to pray at high school football games! They have made it legal to kill perfectly good babies in the womb right up to the moment of birth, but to spare murderers on death row! A world that is so complacent in its brazen sin and rebellion against God needs to be upset or turned upside down!
As you know, the apostle Paul was a man committed to stamping out Christianity as a false cult until, he was confronted by Jesus Christ. After that day, he was fully committed to Christ and to proclaiming the gospel of grace that had transformed his life. Christianity is first and foremost not a commitment to a religion or a bunch of religious rules; rather, it is a relationship with the person of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said that he had counted as loss everything in his life that had formerly been gain in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord (Phil. 3:8).
As a result of knowing Jesus Christ personally, Paul said that he did all things for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:23). He got beat up in Philippi, and rather than taking a break, he traveled 100 miles to Thessalonica, went into the synagogue, and began arguing that Jesus is the Christ. When he was forced to leave Thessalonica, he moved on to Berea and did the same thing! The man was unstoppable in his commitment to preach the gospel of Christ!
Many have a false idea that there are two optional tracks in the Christian life. One track is the committed discipleship track. This track is for gung-ho types who have a masochistic bent. They give up the comforts of life, they live without many of the gadgets and toys that the rest of us enjoy, they give large portions of their income to the cause of Christ, and they devote themselves and their time totally to Jesus.
If that track is a bit much for you, then you can choose the comfortable Christian track. Comfortable Christians usually go to church on Sundays, unless one of their hobbies has a big event that day. They give a bit to help out the church. They volunteer some of their time to the cause, when time permits. For them, Christ and the church are a nice slice of life that help to make life more pleasant. But Christ and the church aren’t the center of life, touching every area. These folks wouldn’t think of being inconvenienced for the sake of the gospel. But I never find Jesus offering this second track to any of His followers.
We’re not all gifted to preach the gospel in the same way that Paul was. We’re not all called to serve as missionaries in foreign lands. But we all are called to be fully committed to Jesus Christ. He commanded us all, not just missionaries and pastors, to seek first His kingdom and righteousness (Matt. 6:33). He warns us about the church in Laodicea, which He will spew out of His mouth because they are lukewarm in their commitment (Rev. 3:14-22). To be nominal in our commitment to Jesus is not to be His followers at all!
But notice how much the Lord can accomplish with just a few committed followers! Paul, Silas, Luke, and Timothy were just four men traveling in an almost completely pagan world. They left behind fledgling churches that were decisively in the minority. And yet they upset the entire world for Jesus Christ! As John Wesley put it, “Give me fifty men who love nothing but God and fear nothing but sin, and I’ll change the world!”
Paul said, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). Here, as was his custom, Paul went first to the Jews in the synagogue. When they rejected the message, he turned to the Gentiles. His heart’s desire was for the salvation of his own people, the Jews. If they repented and believed in the gospel, then they would fully embrace his efforts to reach out to the Gentiles. If they rejected the gospel, as they often did, then they had no basis for criticizing Paul for taking the message to those who would welcome it.
The gospel by its very nature is divisive. As Jesus said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). When the gospel is clearly proclaimed, it draws a line in the sand. People cannot be neutral. So here, as everywhere Paul went, he stirred up controversy and divided people. Some believed and followed Paul; others rejected the message and out of jealousy stirred up opposition. In fact, they were so vehement in their opposition that they followed Paul the 46 miles to Berea to stir up that city against him. They were especially jealous because Paul was drawing away from the synagogue the God-fearing Gentiles who were formerly attending the synagogue.
Before a person can believe in the gospel, he first must understand the content of the gospel.
Paul reasoned with the Jews from the Scriptures (17:2). The word “reasoned” indicates a dialogue, where Paul presented the truth and then responded to questions or challenges from the congregation. He explained and gave evidence “that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead” (17:3). “Explained” means to open. Luke used the same word of God opening the eyes of the men on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:31). “Giving evidence” literally means “to place before or alongside.” Paul would take one Scripture and place it alongside another Scripture to support and prove his point.
We learn several useful things here. First, the Scriptures are the sole basis for the gospel. When you witness, take people to the Bible. Sometimes we share a gospel booklet with people, and that’s okay. But make sure that they know that the verses come from the Bible. Have them read the verses out loud. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). If a person has never done so, encourage him to read the gospels, and as he reads to ask, “Who is Jesus Christ?”
That’s the second thing, that Jesus Christ is the center of the gospel. Jesus’ question to the twelve is the key question for every person, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). That is the main issue that people need to face. If Jesus is who He claimed to be, everything else follows. If He is not, then nothing else follows. It’s easy when you’re witnessing to get distracted with extraneous matters: What about the heathen who have never heard? What about evolution? Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world if God is good and all-powerful? Etc. But the answers to those questions will not get a person saved. To be saved, a person needs to understand who Jesus is and what He came to do.
Paul reasoned with them from the Scriptures, which in his time was the Old Testament. Could you take your Old Testament and show a person that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and demonstrate that Jesus is the Christ? Paul probably took them to Psalm 22, a description of crucifixion written hundreds of years before that was known as a means of execution. He probably went to Isaiah 53, where the prophet shows Messiah despised and forsaken of men, pierced through for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. The Lord caused our iniquity to fall on Him. He was cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of Isaiah’s people. He rendered Himself as a guilt offering, justifying the many by bearing their iniquities. But His resurrection is implied at the end of that great chapter, where God says, “Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors” (53:12).
Paul probably also took them (as he did in his sermon in Acts 13:35) to Psalm 16:10, where Messiah says, “You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.” He probably explained how the sacrificial system pictured Messiah’s death. He may have taken them to Abraham’s receiving Isaac back from the brink of death as an illustration of Messiah’s being raised up after He became the sacrificial lamb. So he argued forcefully from Scripture that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Savior, who had to suffer for our sins and rise from the dead.
Why does the gospel upset people so much? When it is proclaimed rightly, it confronts people with their sin and it calls them to surrender their lives fully to Jesus as Lord. Unless God softens a sinner’s heart, he doesn’t like to be confronted by his sin or the thought of surrendering to Jesus as Lord.
The Jews thought that Messiah would be a conquering King who would deliver them from Rome and other enemies, but they didn’t like the notion of Him suffering and dying for sinners. That implied that they were sinners, but they viewed the Gentiles as the sinners! They liked the idea of a King who would make life comfortable for them, but they didn’t like the notion of a King who would confront their sin! But the gospel proclaims Jesus as both the Savior of sinners and the Lord of all of our lives. We have not faithfully proclaimed the gospel if we give out an easy message that dodges sin and lets the sinner continue as his own lord, “using” Jesus to make life more comfortable.
We see the proper response to the gospel by those that believed both in Thessalonica and especially at Berea.
The Bereans “were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so” (17:11). They did not examine it as proud skeptics, trying to find reasons not to believe. They came at it with an open attitude, seeking after the truth.
Faith in Jesus Christ is not a matter of closing your eyes and leaping into the dark. Rather, it is based on the revelation that God has given concerning His Son. Neither is faith in Christ an emotional decision based on good feelings after a concert or an evangelistic sermon. If your faith is based on good feelings, it will not stand up under trials. Faith should rest on the revelation of the Bible regarding the person of Jesus Christ.
We must recognize what the Bible declares, that we have sinned and stand guilty before the Holy God. But in His great mercy, He sent Jesus to justify all that would believe in Him by bearing the penalty that they deserved (see Isa. 53:4-12; Rom. 3:23-26). Thus the Bible commands us to believe in the Lord Jesus, promising that we will be saved (Acts 16:31).
Jesus is the rightful King, even over Caesar! We must obey Him with every area of our lives, beginning on the thought level. Jason and the new believers in Thessalonica faced immediate persecution for their faith. But Paul had taught them before he was forced to leave town that as believers, we are destined for affliction (1 Thess. 3:3-4). We err if we lead people to think that receiving Jesus as Savior will give them a life of comfort and ease. It will give them much joy and peace, but only in the context of much tribulation (1 Thess. 1:6). This is why we must be convinced of the truth about Jesus before we put our trust in Him. A flimsy, emotional decision won’t stand up if persecution hits.
In 1961, 25 students drew up a Christian manifesto for world evangelism. In part they wrote:
Literal adherence to the principles laid down by Jesus Christ would, without a doubt, result in worldwide revolution—a revolution motivated by love, a revolution executed by love, and a revolution culminating in love!
And we are revolutionaries! We are only a small group of Christian young people…, yet we have determined by God’s grace to live our lives according to the revolutionary teachings of our Master. Within the sphere of absolute, literal obedience to his commands lies the power that will evangelize the world. Outside this sphere is the nauseating, insipid Christianity of our day.
We have committed ourselves in reckless abandonment to the claims of Christ on our blood-bought lives. We have no rights! Every petty, personal desire must be subordinated to the supreme task of reaching the world for Christ. We are debtors. We must not allow ourselves to be swept into the soul-binding curse of modern-day materialistic thinking and living. Christians have been “willing” long enough to forsake all—the time has come (and is passing) when we must forsake all! Christ must have absolute control of our time and money. We must yield possessions, comforts, food and sleep; we must live on the barest essentials, that his cause might be furthered. The propagation of the faith we hold supreme! Christ is worthy of our all! We must be ready to suffer for him and count it joy, to die for him and count it gain. In the light of the present spiritual warfare, anything less than absolute dedication must be considered insubordination to our Master and mockery of his cause!
This is our commitment, and we will press forward until every person has heard the gospel. We will soon be in many different countries, engaged in combat with all the forces of darkness. We look beyond the thousands to the millions; beyond the cities to the countries. The world is our goal! And our primary targets are the seemingly impenetrable areas of the Communist and Moslem countries which can only receive freedom as they have opportunity to receive the Truth. These countries will be reached for Christ no matter what the cost. The ultimate victory is ours! (George Verwer, Come! Live! Die! [Tyndale House], pp. 14-16.)
This was the beginning of Operation Mobilization, which now has missionaries all over the world, often in the most difficult places to reach for Christ. Even if the Lord does not call us to go to other countries, He does call us all to the same revolutionary commitment to Christ and the gospel. He wants us to upset our world for Jesus Christ.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
In 1941, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was invited to preach at Oxford University to a mostly student congregation. After the message, there was a question and answer time. Dr. Lloyd-Jones later learned that the first student to venture a question was studying law and was one of the leaders of the Oxford debating society. He got up and with all the polish of a debater, said that he had much enjoyed the sermon, but that it left one great difficulty or perplexity in his mind. He really could not see how the sermon, which he admitted was well constructed and well presented, might not equally well have been delivered to a congregation of farm laborers or anyone else. Then he sat down, as the crowd roared with laughter.
Dr. Lloyd-Jones responded that he really could not see the questioner’s difficulty. He admitted that he had regarded undergraduates and indeed graduates of Oxford University as being just ordinary common human clay and miserable sinners like everybody else, with precisely the same needs as farm laborers. And so, he said, he had preached as he had done quite deliberately. The students both laughed and cheered, and from then on, Dr. Lloyd-Jones had an attentive hearing (Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers [Zondervan], pp. 129-130).
Dr. Lloyd-Jones (p. 128) quotes Martin Luther, who said, “When I preach I regard neither doctors nor magistrates, of whom I have above forty in the congregation. I have all eyes on the servant maids and the children. And if the learned men are not well pleased with what they hear, well, the door is open.” Lloyd-Jones comments that if the learned man is not able to benefit from a message aimed at the servant girls, he is condemning himself as not being able to receive spiritual truth.
If the thought of sharing the gospel with intellectuals intimidates you, then Paul’s sermon to the philosophers of Athens should both encourage and instruct you. He was at Athens, not by his plans, but because he had to flee persecution in Berea. He was waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him. As he strolled around the city, his spirit was provoked by the abundance of idols that he saw. One early observer said that you were more likely to meet a god in Athens than a man, and it was statistically true. It is estimated that there were about 30,000 idols in the city, but only 10,000 people when Paul visited there. The glory days of Athens had been four centuries earlier. But it was still an intellectual and cultural center, with two predominant rival schools of philosophy, the Epicureans and the Stoics.
Epicurus (342-270 B.C.) taught that pleasure is the chief goal in life, especially the intellectual serenity that is achieved by overcoming disturbing passions and superstitious fears, especially the fear of death. He was a materialist, believing that at death the person ceases to be, and thus there is no afterlife. He believed in the gods, but taught that they did not get involved in human affairs.
The Stoics followed the teachings of Zeno (332-260 B.C.), who thought that the good lies in the soul itself, which through wisdom and restraint delivers a person from the passions and desires that perturb ordinary life. The Stoics tried to live in harmony with nature and put great emphasis on man’s rational ability, his self-sufficiency, and his obedience to duty. This emphasis on their own ability also filled them with pride. They were pantheistic, regarding God as the World-soul.
These two schools of philosophy were Paul’s main audience for his sermon at Athens. Since they did not know about the Bible, Paul did not quote Scripture. But, as F. F. Bruce observes (The Book of Acts [Eerdmans], p. 355), “Like the Biblical revelation itself, his argument begins with God the Creator of all and ends with God the Judge of all.” He hits on sin, righteousness, and judgment, the three areas where Jesus said the Holy Spirit would convict people.
After a brief introduction where he establishes some common ground, Paul points them to the supremacy of God as the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth. He shows God’s sovereignty over men and nations, and man’s utter dependence on God for life, breath, and all things. He shows how foolish idolatry is: God made us; we cannot make God! He concludes by calling them to repentance before God judges the world through a Man whom He raised from the dead.
At the mention of the resurrection, many in Paul’s audience began to sneer. Others said that they would hear more later. A few, including a leading man and woman, joined Paul and believed. Because of the scant response, some have said that Paul failed in his approach. But I believe God gave us this synopsis of Paul’s sermon as a model for how to reach intellectuals for Christ. To sum up:
To reach intellectuals for Christ, we must begin on common ground, show them God’s supremacy and their own sin, and call them to repentance and faith in the risen Lord Jesus.
Paul’s spirit was provoked by all of the idols that he saw in the city (17:16). This led him to reason in the synagogue as well as in the marketplace, where the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers heard him. They brought him to the Areopagus, a body of administrators that exercised jurisdiction over religious and educational matters. There is debate over whether or not this was some sort of trial to determine if Paul could promote his ideas in the city. It seems not to be a formal trial, but rather a preliminary hearing of his views.
Paul began by stating his observation that they were very religious in all respects. He was restraining his indignation over all the idols that he saw, and picking up on the fact that at least they were interested in spiritual things. One way to begin a conversation about the Lord is to ask a person, “Do you have any spiritual beliefs?” Or, if a person is spouting off intellectual ideas about God, you can say, “I see that you’ve done some thinking about spiritual issues. Have you given any thought to who Jesus is?”
Next, Paul mentions that he found an altar in town with the inscription, “To an unknown God.” We cannot be certain of how such an altar (or altars) came to be, but it was probably out of a fear of offending some god that they did not know about. They wanted to cover all their bases! (See Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts [Regal Books], pp. 9-18, for a speculative historic drama of how these altars came about.) But Paul picks up on this well-known fact in their culture and turns it to his advantage. In effect, he says, “You admit that you do not know this God. Let me tell you about Him.” So he establishes a common point and then proceeds to tell them the truth about God.
Don’t feel intimidated to talk to an intellectual about Jesus Christ, because you know something he does not. You know God and he is ignorant of God. The word “agnostic” means that he does not know if there is a God. Tell him what you know!
I grew up in a Christian home. When I was in college, I sensed God calling me toward the ministry, but I felt a bit sheltered. So I decided to major in philosophy to expose myself to the world’s thinking about God and the other important issues of life. I discovered that philosophers have a lot of questions, but they don’t have any good answers! My professors would speculate about their speculations, which were the same speculations that philosophers had been speculating about for centuries, but nobody could arrive at any helpful answers. They are like the men Paul warned Timothy about, who are “always learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). If you know God through Jesus Christ, you have something that the philosophers lack. Begin on some common ground and tell them what you know.
Paul exalts God and humbles proud man. He begins at the beginning: “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things” (17:24-25). Intellectuals need to learn a basic fact: God is God and they are not God! Invariably, intellectuals sit in judgment on God, as if He were an idea that they are free to bat around and leave on the table when they’re done. But Paul begins, as the Bible does, by declaring, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” He is the inescapable fact! Since He created the universe, He is Lord of it. To think that you can make a temple to contain God or that He needs anything from you is to make a huge blunder!
Where does your life come from? It comes from God! He has every one of your days numbered, and when the number is up, He will take your life and you will stand accountable before Him. He gives you breath. In the past minute, you drew about 18 breaths of air. In the past hour, you breathed 1,080 times, which adds up to more than 25,000 times in the past 24 hours. If you are 40 years old, you have gulped in more than 365 million breaths of air. Each one was a gift from God. Have you thanked Him for the air He gives you to breathe?
But God not only gives you life and breath; He gives you all things! Do you have a roof over your head? God gave it to you. Do you have a family or friends who care about you? God gave those people to you. Do you have money to buy clothing and food and other things? It came from God. Do you have the ability to enjoy the taste of food, the aroma of a rose, the touch of a baby’s skin, the sound of music, or the beauty of a snow-covered mountain? All these gifts come to us from God. An intellectual needs to know that the fact that he has taken all of these gifts for granted all of his life, and what is worse, that he has had the audacity to challenge the existence of the Creator, only reveal his incredible arrogance. If the Sovereign of the universe so willed, the proud intellectual would choke on his next bite of food and die!
Furthermore, intellectuals need to be humbled by realizing that they have nothing to offer God. He is not served by human hands, as though He needed anything. He has gotten along just fine all of these centuries without their astute intellect, and He will do just fine in the centuries to come whether they offer Him their services or not! While He graciously gives His redeemed children the privilege of serving Him, He does not need any one of us to accomplish His purpose. The minute I start thinking that I am indispensable to God, I am in big trouble! God is able to raise up children for Himself from the very stones, if He wills (Luke 3:8).
Intellectuals also need to realize that God is sovereignly active in determining the rise and fall of individuals and of nations (17:26). Paul is here confronting the deism of the Epicureans, the view that God is not actively involved with His creation. He is also confronting the racism of the Greeks, who called everyone who could not speak Greek “barbarians.” No nation or race is superior, because God made us all from one common ancestor. Any form of racism stems from sinful pride. God in His sovereign wisdom determined the appointed times and boundaries of every nation’s habitation. He raises up world powers and He takes them down again, according to His purpose. No nation or ruler can boast that we are what we are because of our own intelligence or power. We are what we are only by the grace of God. If He plunges our nation into abject poverty and weakness, He has every right to do it.
Paul is arguing here much as he does in Romans 1, where he shows that that which is known about God is evident to all people. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). Men do not know God because they have suppressed the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18). “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1:21-22), and plunged into idolatry.
Thus Paul’s meaning in Acts 17:27-28 is not that fallen men of their own natural ability and free will can seek after and find God. He clearly refutes that idea in Romans 3. Rather, he is showing that even though men are in fact dependent on God for everything, and even though God has graciously given men life and breath and all things, men have ignored God and gone their own way. They should have sought God and groped in the dark for Him, and if they had, God would have graciously let them find Him. Even though God is high and lifted up, He is also near to all who call upon Him.
In verse 28, Paul cites the Cretan poet Epimenides, “in Him we live and move and exist.” Then he cites a Cilician poet, Aratus, “we also are His children.” Both of those lines were written in the context of Greek polytheism, which Paul was not in any way endorsing. Rather, he is taking a strand of thought from these pagan poets and showing how these thoughts lined up with the revelation of the one true God. The first quote supports what Paul has just said about all of us owing our very life and breath to God. The second quote supports Paul’s contention that God made all people and nations from one man, so that we all are His children by creation. So Paul is using the debating tactic of quoting your opponents’ own writers in support of your point.
Then he applies it in verse 29: Since we are the children of God in the sense that He made us all and we owe our very existence to Him, idolatry is ludicrous. To think that we can make God by creating a statue of gold or silver or stone is absurd. So Paul, in this capital of idolatry, shows the absurdity of idolatry! It would be like going to the casinos of Las Vegas and crying out against the absurdity and wickedness of gambling!
But don’t miss the point: Intellectuals are all idolaters at heart. In our day, they may or may not have little statues that they bow down to. Surprisingly, many who pride themselves on their intellect are pure idolaters. Did you know that we have an entire store in this university town devoted to selling idols? I would never have thought that there would be enough of a market to support such a store, but there must be! They have Hindu idols, idols of Buddha, and idols of Mary and Jesus. I have also noticed an increase of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags around lately, usually flown by those who worship the earth and advocate animal rights above human rights. They are idolaters, worshiping the creature rather than the Creator!
Those who promote atheistic humanism are also idolaters, worshiping man and his intellect. Ironically, at the same time they worship man, they say that he evolved by sheer chance from pond slime, and most recently from apes! And so they “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures” (Rom. 1:23). As Paul puts it (1 Cor. 1:21), “in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God.” Reason alone is not sufficient to bring men to salvation and the knowledge of God. We cannot reason an intellectual into the kingdom, because the heart of his problem is sin, not just wrong thinking.
The root sin of intellectuals is pride, which clearly shows itself here. Even before they heard Paul’s defense of the gospel, they sneered at him and called him an idle babbler (17:18). The Greek word is a “seed-picker.” It referred to birds that would flit around pecking at a seed here and a seed there. So it came to be used in mockery of a man who picked up a stray idea from one place, and another idea from another place, and went around promoting them as his own wisdom. But Luke, in a parenthetical comment (17:21), shows that the Athenians were the real babblers. They liked to pass their time with mind games and endless banter, attempting to prove the superiority of their intellects. John Calvin calls them “drunk with their own pride” (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts, 2:146).
Thus to reach intellectuals, begin on common ground and then show them God’s supremacy and their own sin of pride.
Paul’s forceful conclusion (17:30-31) is, “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring (or, commanding) to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”
Some say that Paul blew it here because he skips over the death of Christ and jumps to the resurrection. I think that there are two possibilities. Luke is obviously giving us a summary version of Paul’s sermon, and so he could have spoken about Christ’s death, but Luke did not record it for us. He does say that earlier Paul was preaching Jesus and the resurrection (17:18), which is obviously a summary. To proclaim that Jesus is risen implies that He died, and it is not difficult to assume that Paul explained that Christ died as the substitute for sinners.
Or, Paul may have been intending to explain Jesus’ death, but he got interrupted and never got the chance. I think this is more likely, because he never mentions the name of Jesus or the offer of God’s forgiveness through faith in Him. Spurgeon mentions that the apostles often plowed the ground with the doctrine of God’s judgment before they came in with the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ (“Jesus the Judge,” on Acts 10:42, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Ages Software]). Here, Paul got through the repentance part, but before he could mention faith in Christ, he got cut off by the jeering of some in the crowd.
The only way an intellectual can be saved is the only way anyone can be saved, by repenting of his pride and other sins, and by trusting in Jesus Christ as the one who bore his penalty on the cross. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:18, “For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Plato told a story about the Greek philosopher Thales, who lived about a century and a half before him. The philosopher was walking along a road with his head thrown back, studying the stars, when he stumbled into a well. Hearing his cries for help, a servant girl pulled him out, but not without making the observation that while he was eager to know about things in the sky, he failed to see what lay at his own feet (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. by Clifton Fadiman [Little, Brown], pp. 539-540).
Many intellectuals are like that. They concern themselves with lofty questions, but they never face their own sin and need for a Savior before they die. If we follow Paul’s example of establishing a common ground, showing them the supremacy of God and their own sinfulness, and calling them to repentance and faith in the risen Lord Jesus, some will sneer and some will put us off till later. But some will believe and be saved.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Faithfulness is a rare commodity. All of us have had the experience of trusting in someone who has let us down, and we got hurt. Because of that, one of the most encouraging promises in the Bible is, “God is faithful” (1 Cor. 10:13). People may let you down, but God is always faithful. Of course, there are times when it seems as if even God has let us down. We all need to learn to deal with those times of disappointment with God. The problem is always on our end, never on His end! But that is the subject of another message.
Today I want to focus on our Lord’s faithfulness to us, especially in times of difficulty. This is the 75th anniversary of the founding of this church, and certainly God has been faithful to this body down through those years. So I want us to see that …
Because God is faithful to us, especially in times of difficulty, we should respond with faithful service to Him.
God’s faithfulness does not mean that He exempts us from trials, but rather that He sustains us through them.
Sometimes we put some of the heroes in the Bible on too high a pedestal. We wrongly imagine that they must not have struggled with the things we struggle with. If I had to pick words to describe the apostle Paul, I would say, “bold,” “fearless,” “courageous,” and “determined.” I would not think of words like “fearful,” “discouraged,” “distressed,” or “weak.” And yet when Paul describes how he felt during his early days in Corinth, he uses “distress” (1 Thess. 3:7), “weakness,” “fear,” and “much trembling” (1 Cor. 2:3). Even though he was a giant in the faith, Paul struggled with the same emotions that we all struggle with.
Why was Paul feeling weak and fearful when he was in Corinth? Let’s trace some of the events leading up to his visit there. You will recall that when he was in Asia Minor, he wanted to go into the province of Asia, but the Holy Spirit forbad him. Then he sought to go into Bithynia, but again, “the Spirit of Jesus did not permit him” (16:6, 7). Then, in the midst of these puzzling hindrances, he got the vision of the Macedonian man, and so they concluded that the Lord was calling them to go there.
But things had not gone smoothly. In Philippi Paul and Silas were falsely accused, unjustly beaten, and thrown into the stocks in jail. From there they went to Thessalonica, but after a short time there, the Jews raised an uproar and they had to flee to Berea. The same thing happened there and Paul had to flee to Athens. In Athens, Paul met with ridicule and scant response, which may have been more difficult than open opposition. And so he left there and traveled alone the fifty miles to Corinth.
Corinth was situated on an isthmus in southern Greece that made it a prosperous commercial crossroads. In Paul’s day, there were about 200,000 residents from all over the Roman Empire. It housed the Temple of Aphrodite, goddess of love, which had 1,000 prostitutes that plied their trade under the banner of “religion.” There were also male prostitutes and other pagan shrines. The city was so notorious for its immorality, that in the fifth century B.C., the Greeks coined a verb, “to Corinthianize,” that meant to commit sexual immorality.
Meanwhile, Paul had run out of money and so he had to find work. Being trained as a tentmaker, he found a Jewish tentmaker named Aquila and his wife, Priscilla, and stayed with them and began to work. This was the first time in his missionary journeys that he had to work at his trade to support himself. We don’t know whether Aquila and Priscilla had become Christians during their stay in Rome or whether Paul led them to Christ.
Every Sabbath Paul went to the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews and God-fearing Greeks, trying to persuade them that Jesus is the Christ, but it was clear that opposition was building (18:4). Meanwhile, he was anxious about the well-being of the new believers in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 3:1-8). Physically, Paul may not have fully recovered from the beating that he had received in Philippi. So the spiritual concerns and discouragement about his ministry, the constant opposition, loneliness, physical pain and weariness, and the lack of funds, were weighing on Paul.
A ray of light broke in when Silas and Timothy arrived. They brought good news about the strength of the churches in Macedonia. They also brought a generous gift from the church in Philippi (Phil. 4:10-14; 2 Cor. 11:9) that enabled Paul once again to devote himself completely to the ministry of the Word (Acts 18:5). But, no sooner had he begun to do so than the Jews fiercely opposed him. Paul took the dramatic action of shaking out his coat against them and pronouncing, “Your blood be upon your own heads! I am clean. From now on I shall go to the Gentiles” (18:6).
The Lord opened an opportunity for Paul to continue ministering next door to the synagogue in the home of Titius Justus, a new Gentile believer. Paul was no doubt encouraged by the conversion of Crispus, the leader of the synagogue. And, many of the Corinthians also were believing and being baptized (18:7-8). But there was also a nagging fear that made Paul’s insides churn. He could clearly see the pattern: He preached to the Jews and saw some initial response. The Jews who didn’t respond grew jealous and stirred up opposition. Then Paul had to flee for his life.
So now, as he saw some initial response from the synagogue leader and from others in town, Paul may have been on the verge of leaving Corinth before he got forced out. He was afraid and discouraged. And if none other than the apostle Paul felt that way, then you can be assured that all of God’s servants go through similar times of difficulty!
There are at least five ways that God showed His faithfulness to Paul at this time, and that He is faithful towards us:
We don’t know how Paul met Aquila and Priscilla. Maybe he was answering a help wanted ad! But God used the anti-Semitic edict of the Roman emperor to force this couple to move to Corinth. Paul’s lack of funds put him in the job market. And so God providentially brought these three together. They later went with Paul to Ephesus, where they hosted a church in their home (1 Cor. 16:19). Eventually they returned to Rome, where they also hosted a church. Paul says that they risked their lives for his sake, and that they were appreciated by all of the Gentile churches (Rom. 16:3-5). In one of the last verses that Paul wrote before he was executed, he sent greetings to this couple, who had become his lifelong friends (2 Tim. 4:19).
Paul also was encouraged when Silas and Timothy rejoined him in Corinth (Acts 18:5). They brought an encouraging word about Paul’s new Christian friends in Thessalonica and Philippi. All of these dear saints were co-workers with Paul in the cause of Christ (Phil. 1:5, 7, 27; 4:3; 1 Thess. 1:8).
When we are saved, the Holy Spirit baptizes us into the body of Christ. We become members of one another, under Jesus Christ our living Head. God did not design us to go it alone. We desperately need each other, even though sometimes we needle each other! All ministry should be team ministry, where we complement one another, pray for one another, and bear one another’s burdens. It is a great encouragement to the pastoral staff here when we see the Lord’s people laboring together with us for His cause!
Paul did not advertise his needs for personal support. He would make known others’ needs (2 Cor. 8 & 9). But when he ran out of personal funds, he would just start making tents until the Lord provided support (I wrote my Master’s thesis on this topic).
While I do not think that it is wrong for Christian workers to make their needs known, all of us must live by faith in the area of finances. I do not just mean “all of us who are in full time ministry,” but, “all of us”! I believe that every Christian should be giving enough to the Lord’s work that you are forced to trust God to provide some things that otherwise you could probably just go out and buy. It is a great joy when you live that way and when God provides what you’ve been praying for!
I debated as to whether I should let you all know that I have been praying for $1 million for the work here at FCF. We immediately need about $90,000 to purchase the lot between our parking lot and the Lighthouse, or it will probably get sold to a business developer. We need $200,000 to finish phase three of our remodeling project. We need a substantial amount to upgrade our nursery. And we need additional properties for more parking and facilities. The two houses just south of the church are being offered right now for $156,000 and $159,000. In the past couple of years, a couple of other nearby properties have been for sale, but we could not act because we did not have the funds.
As I said, I debated whether to share these needs, but then I realized that if I’m the only one praying, I will be the only one blessed when God provides. Since I want you to get blessed, I want you all to bring these needs to the Lord in prayer. He doesn’t always answer in the way that we conceive. He may provide in some other ways. But I don’t want to get to heaven and hear the Lord say, “Why didn’t you ask Me? I would have provided if you had only asked!” Let’s all ask!
Even though Paul faced strong opposition, God graciously brought several to salvation, including the man living next door to the synagogue and the synagogue leader and his family. Many Gentiles from corrupt backgrounds also got saved (18:7-8). Paul lists former fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminates, homosexuals, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, and swindlers as making up the church in Corinth (1 Cor. 6:9-11). Where sin abounded, God’s grace super-abounded (Rom. 5:20)!
I hope that you pray often for God to use this church and to use you to lead people to saving faith in Jesus Christ. If we are not reaching out to the lost, we have forgotten our mission. If, like Paul at this time in his life, you’re struggling with discouragement, nothing will encourage you more than to see someone you witness to get saved. If God was mighty to save the corrupt Corinthians, He can save anyone in Flagstaff!
Just when Paul needed it, the Lord appeared to him in a vision and encouraged him: “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city” (18:9-10). This is one of six visions that Paul received in Acts (9:12; 16:9-10; 22:17-21; 23:11; 27:23-24), all at critical moments in his ministry. This was not just a strong impression, but rather, Paul actually saw Jesus Christ and heard Him speak audibly. Does God still do that today? I won’t say that He never does, but I would say that it is probably much more infrequent than some of our charismatic brethren think. God’s more usual means is to use His Word and His Spirit to give us the confirmation that we need. He confirmed three things for Paul:
“I am with you.” When He gave the Great Commission, Jesus promised, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). The Lord’s promise to Israel applies to all who are called by His name: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior (Isa. 43:1-3). Knowing that the Lord God is with you in whatever you are going through is an unspeakable comfort!
“No man will attack you in order to harm you.” This was not a general promise that applied to every situation, but only to the time in Corinth. At other times, Paul did suffer physical attacks. But for now, God promised His protection. The application for us is not that God’s servants are guaranteed physical safety. Many of His servants are killed because of their witness. But we can know that no one can touch us unless it is the Father’s purpose, and that as long as He has a mission for us to accomplish, He will keep His protective hand upon us.
“For I have many people in this city.” God is referring to His elect, chosen before the foundation of the world in Christ Jesus. God knew each one by name, but Paul didn’t know who they were until they put their trust in Christ. He had to preach the gospel to them so that they could believe.
Some argue that the doctrine of election discourages evangelism, because if God chose them, then it’s a done deal, so we don’t have to do anything. But, God ordained not only their salvation, but also the means of their salvation, the preaching of the gospel. The doctrine of election ought to motivate us to evangelism. If salvation is up to man’s so-called “free will,” no one will ever be saved when you witness to them, because no man can understand the gospel in his fallen condition apart from God’s sovereign grace (Rom. 3:10-13; 1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:4). Given a free choice, every fallen sinner will choose sin. But if God purposed to save a sinner, and Jesus shed His blood to redeem him, and the Holy Spirit imparts eternal life and saving faith to him when he hears the gospel, then there is hope when we share the gospel! That’s why Paul later wrote, “For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
Thus God is faithful to raise up godly co-workers, to provide funds, to bring converts, even in the face of opposition, and to confirm His presence, His protection, and His purpose.
God did not promise Paul protection from opposition, but only from physical harm. When the new governor, Gallio, took office, the Jews sought to get rid of Paul by accusing him of teaching people to violate the law. They probably meant the Roman law, but Gallio saw it as an internal religious squabble and refused to hear the case. What happened next is unclear. Some say that the Greeks in the crowd used the occasion to unleash their anti-Semitism by attacking Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue. Others say that the Jews angrily attacked their own leader for botching their case against Paul. A third possibility is that this Sosthenes is the same man mentioned in 1 Corinthians 1:1, and that he had already believed in Christ, following in the steps of his predecessor, Crispus (Acts 18:8). In this case, the Jews angrily grabbed him and beat him up. We cannot decide for sure what happened.
Luke relates the story to show that this important Roman official refused to rule against Christianity. Gallio was the brother of the philosopher, Seneca, who tutored Nero. Nero eventually turned against both men and against Christianity, but for about ten years, Gallio’s ruling provided a measure of legal protection for the church. And so God’s faithful providence overruled the apathy of this proconsul and the aggression of the Jews. The bottom line of God’s faithfulness for us is:
“Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent” (18:9). So, “he settled there a year and a half, teaching the word of God among them” (18:11). God would not have told Paul not to be afraid unless Paul was afraid. If the bold apostle who could preach to hostile audiences and rebuke even Peter for his hypocrisy could be afraid, then any of us can be afraid. But as John Calvin points out, a lack of fear is the chief quality needed by a preacher of the gospel (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts, 2:187). One of the biggest temptations preachers face is to become people-pleasers rather than God-pleasers. While we should be kind and never needlessly stir up controversy, let’s face it: there are some difficult truths in God’s Word. If we waffle on them, we are not being faithful to the Lord.
The gospel is not, “God loves you and wants you to have a happy life.” The gospel is that you are a lost sinner, alienated from a holy God. The only remedy for your sin is the shed blood of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. You must repent of your sin and trust in Christ in order to be saved from God’s judgment. If we do not confront sinners with their sin, we are not preaching the gospel.
Next February, by God’s grace and faithfulness, I will have been a pastor for 25 years. When I began, I told the Lord that I would try it for three years and see how it was going. I was not sure that I could do it. Here I am, still inadequate, but praising God for His faithfulness.
About 14 years into my ministry, the Lord confronted me with my error of endorsing “Christian” psychology. He showed me that it is just worldly wisdom that has flooded into the church. I had an associate who wanted our church to begin 12 Step groups, and at first, I was favorable. But after many hours of study on the subject, the Lord drew the line in the sand. He opened my eyes to see the many errors of this false teaching.
About then, I came to a text in my preaching where I knew that if I didn’t say something, I would be unfaithful to the Lord. I tried to be gentle and to let people know that I was in process, and that they needed to work through it for themselves. But I also made it clear that I could no longer endorse psychology or 12 Step groups.
It was like throwing a match on a powder keg! Many angry people wrote letters to the elder board demanding my resignation. One former elder and his wife came to see me and told me that I should get out of the pastorate. They said that I was too much like the apostle Paul and not loving, like Jesus! Another woman told me that I might be addicted to my rigid religious dogma. Another woman told me that I was the worst pastor that she had ever had. All of these people were veteran staff members with an evangelical ministry. We had worked together for many years.
One night in the midst of this, I was about to get into bed and I was feeling discouraged. Suddenly the reference, Acts 18:9-10, popped into my mind. I had not been reading in Acts or thinking about it recently. It just came from the Lord. I grabbed my Bible off the nightstand and read, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.” I was flooded with joy and with the presence of the Lord. He is faithful, especially in times of difficulty. We should respond by faithful service to Him, holding firmly to the truth of His Word, even when we’re under attack. I believe that He has many people in this city. Let’s be faithful in proclaiming the gospel of His grace!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Years ago there was a button that read, PBPWMGINFWMY. These jumbled letters stood for, “Please be patient with me; God is not finished with me yet.” If we all could keep that in mind, we would be more kind, patient, and forgiving toward one another. We are all people in process. We come from a variety of backgrounds. We each have different spiritual gifts and different experiences with the Lord. And we’re all at different places in our walk with the Lord.
There may be some who attend here regularly, but who have not yet put their trust in Christ as Savior. They’re learning about who Jesus is and what He did in dying on the cross. They’re reading the Bible and assimilating the teaching that is there. But they have not yet taken that crucial step of trusting in Christ as Savior and Lord. We who have trusted in Christ need to remember that we once were where they are at, and we need to treat them with patience and grace, giving instruction when there is opportunity.
There are others here who are babes in Christ. It’s a brand new life for them to follow the Lord Jesus. There is much that they do not yet know, much less practice. But they’re in process, and those of us who are further down the road need to treat them with the same tolerance that we show to our children when they are young. We shouldn’t expect a one-year-old to act like a ten-year-old, or a ten-year-old to act like an 18-year-old. Rather, we should model mature behavior to them, and gently when we’re able, help them understand how to live in a more mature manner. But none of us has arrived at total sanctification. We’re all in process.
Our text shows us God’s work and God’s workers in process. It’s a passage of Scripture where I wish that the Lord had seen fit to give us more details than He did. Luke raises a lot of questions that he doesn’t seem to answer. What was Paul’s vow? Why did he take it? Was he right or wrong to take a vow? Should Christians today take vows? Why didn’t Paul stay on at Ephesus when the Jews there were uncharacteristically open to his message? Why was his visit to Jerusalem so short? What happened there? Was Apollos a believer before Priscilla and Aquila explained things to him? If so, what did he lack? Why does Luke skim over some fairly important details in Paul’s ministry here, such as the conclusion of his second missionary journey and the start of his third journey? What happened to Timothy and Silas?
A common thread with this section and with the paragraph we will study next week is that we see people in process, and God using these people to accomplish His work of spreading the gospel and building His church. The lesson is,
To accomplish His work of proclaiming the gospel and strengthening the church, God uses workers who are all in process.
First, let’s focus on God’s work. Two strands of that work are evident in our text:
Everywhere he went, even when he was in transition, Paul took advantage of opportunities to preach the gospel, especially to the Jews. So when he was just passing through Ephesus, he went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews (18:19). In Romans 9:3, Paul goes so far as to say that he could wish that he himself was accursed and cut off from Christ, if it would mean the salvation of the Jews! What an incredible statement! I have to admit, I wouldn’t want to give up my salvation for anyone! But Paul was burdened with the condition of lost people. We hear a lot today about people with compulsive behavior. Paul admitted his compulsion: “For I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). It dominated his entire life, so that he could say, “I do all things for the sake of the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:23).
We see the same focus in Apollos, even before he gained clarity in the message from Priscilla and Aquila (18:25-26). After they helped him, he went over to Corinth and gave powerful witness to the Jews there, “demonstrating by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ” (18:28). Note the word “for” that begins verse 28. When connected with verse 27, it shows that Apollos’ preaching of the gospel strengthened those who already had believed the gospel. I can testify that my own faith has been greatly strengthened by reading many of the gospel sermons of Charles Spurgeon, who was probably the greatest gospel preacher of the 19th century. When it is done rightly, preaching the gospel not only brings the lost to salvation, but also builds believers in their faith. But the point here is that a major part of God’s work involves preaching the gospel to the lost. If we forget that, we are out of focus.
Paul began his third journey by revisiting the Galatian and Phrygian regions, “strengthening all the disciples” (18:23). Apollos, as we have just seen, not only preached the gospel to the lost, but also “helped greatly those who had believed through grace.” Priscilla and Aquila had helped Apollos come to a deeper understanding of the things of God. He in turn helped others. That should be the pattern for all believers. In areas where we have received help, we should offer help to others.
Babies are cute, but they need to grow up. They do that gradually, as we feed them, protect them, care for them, and teach them. Eventually they become mature enough (hopefully!) to get married and have babies of their own, who in turn need help to grow to maturity.
In the same way, God’s spiritual children need help to grow up. This is a major task of those with the gift of pastor-teacher, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, so that they will attain to “the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-13). But all members, not just pastor-teachers, have a role to play in this process. The whole body grows as each individual part works properly, according to its function (Eph. 4:16).
If God has helped you work through a problem, He can use you to help someone else struggling with the same problem. If He has helped you to overcome temptation and walk in holiness, He wants to use you to help other believers learn the same thing. If He has helped you get through a difficult trial by leaning on Him as your strength and comfort, He wants to use you to help others learn to trust Him in similar trials.
You may be thinking, “Yes, but I don’t have it all together yet. Someday maybe I’ll be together enough to help others, but I’m not even close yet.” But notice,
Even 25 years after becoming a believer, Paul wrote, “Not that I have already obtained it or have become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:12). He was still in process! Note first,
Luke here momentarily, and seemingly on purpose, skims over some fairly major events in Paul’s ministry and instead focuses more detail on Priscilla, Aquila, and Apollos. He will go back to Paul in detail in chapter 19, but the focus briefly shifts as if to remind us that Paul was not the only one doing the Lord’s work. This godly couple Priscilla and Aquila, whom Paul may have led to Christ, leave Corinth with Paul and then stay in Ephesus as he moves on to Jerusalem and Antioch. God used them to raise up a small group of believers there, even before Paul got back into town about a year later. We know this because when Apollos wanted to go over to Corinth, we read that “the brethren encouraged him” (18:27). Where did these brethren come from? Some probably came from Apollos’ preaching there, but some came from the witness of Priscilla and Aquila.
We are not told where Timothy and Silas went, whether they stayed in Corinth or went back to Thessalonica or to other cities. But they were also at work. God’s work is always teamwork, not a one-man-superstar show.
As you may know, after Apollos went to Corinth, a faction there named themselves after him: “We are of Apollos” (1 Cor. 1:12). Others claimed to be of Paul, others of Peter, and still others, trumping them all, loftily declared, “We are of Christ.” While Paul strongly confronted their party spirit, he did not run down Apollos, but rather, affirmed his ministry. He said, Apollos and I are both just “servants through whom you believed, as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth” (1 Cor. 3:5-6). Paul recognized and affirmed that he was just one servant of many, and that while we all have different roles and responsibilities, it is God who is at work through His church as each member serves Him.
I began to serve as a pastor six weeks before my 30th birthday. I sometimes look back to those years and wonder how God ever could have used me then. In fact, hardly a week goes by now, almost 25 years later, that I don’t feel keenly my inadequacy for the responsibilities that I now have. I have to keep reminding myself of Paul’s rhetorical question, “And who is adequate for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:16), and his encouraging confession, “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God” (2 Cor. 3:5). The point is, if you wait around to start serving the Lord until you get it all together, you’ll be so old that you will forget where you put it! Look at the characters in our text:
We’ve already seen his later confession, that he had not attained yet to where he should be, but he pressed on to know Christ more fully (Phil. 3:12-16). Here, we see Paul keeping a vow and then passing up an open door that he seldom saw because of some unstated need to get to Jerusalem and Antioch. And yet in all of this, he was seeking to be submissive to God’s will (18:20).
Bible scholars run the gamut on the question of whether Paul was right or wrong to make a vow. Most say that Paul was free in Christ to make or not to make a vow, even though they admit that it was a carryover from Judaism. Some explain it as Paul’s strategy of being all things to all men (1 Cor. 9:19-23). But Donald Grey Barnhouse states dogmatically, “Here, Paul was definitely out of the will of the Lord. He had no right to take this vow…. This was deliberate sin on his part” (Acts [Zondervan], pp. 168-169).
Since the text gives no hint that Paul was wrong, I’m not comfortable with Barnhouse’s strong denunciation. But at the same time, I don’t think that Paul should have taken a vow in order to relate to the Jews. If he took a vow, I believe that it reflects the fact that he was strongly steeped in the Old Testament as a Jew, and that even though he was God’s apostle to the Gentiles, he still had not totally shed his Jewish roots. This could have been a vow to express Paul’s thankfulness to God for keeping him from bodily harm during his stay in Corinth. Most commentators think that it was a Nazirite vow (Num. 6:1-8), which separated a person unto God for some special purpose or task. If it was a Nazirite vow, then Paul could not have taken communion for the period of the vow, since it forbade drinking wine or grape juice. The bottom line is, nobody knows for sure what kind of vow it was or exactly why Paul took it, since the text does not say. I view it as an incident that shows that Paul was in process from the Jewish way of thinking into the completely different New Covenant way of thinking.
This raises the question, “Should Christians today make vows before God?” Bill Gothard’s popular seminar has promoted the idea of making a vow to spend five minutes every day reading the Bible and praying. In my humble opinion (feel free to disagree with me, since I, too, am in process!), this is not a healthy way to encourage Bible reading and prayer. We should read the Bible and pray every day, but we are in a loving relationship with God, not in a performance relationship where we check off each day that we have done our duty. If you’re not reading your Bible and praying often, I’ll shoot straight: You need to repent and get back to your first love for the Lord (Rev. 2:4-5). But if your normal pattern is to seek the Lord through His Word and prayer, but you happen to miss a day, I don’t think you need to kick yourself because you have broken a vow before God. The point is, spend time with the Lord often because He loves you and you love Him.
They, too, were growing in their understanding of the things of God. When Paul first met them, they may not have yet been saved. As they worked together in their trade of making tents, Paul talked to them about Jesus Christ, His death on the cross as the substitute for sinners, and His resurrection from the dead. He quoted Scripture after Scripture that proved that Jesus was the promised Messiah. And they came to faith in Christ and grew in faith and knowledge.
Now they were at a point where even though Paul was not there, they had the maturity and knowledge to help this gifted young preacher get the message straight. Even though he was mighty in the Scriptures (18:24), they knew some important truths that he did not yet know. They heard him speak in the synagogue and they whispered to one another, “That young man is right as far as he goes, but he seems not to understand that the One of whom John the Baptist spoke actually has come. Let’s have him over to dinner and ask the Lord to give us an opportunity to talk to him.”
Priscilla is mentioned before her husband, which is unusual in that culture. It may indicate that she was the more knowledgeable or articulate of the two. Maybe she had been a believer longer than her husband had. They were both in process. But this godly couple used great tact and wisdom in not confronting Apollos publicly, but talking with him privately. While Scripture plainly limits the public teaching of men to men (1 Tim. 2:11-15), there is nothing wrong with a godly woman privately helping a young man understand the things of God more clearly. I’m sure that after this, Apollos would have viewed Priscilla as a mother in the faith, and have thanked God for her willingness to help him understand the way of God more accurately.
Apollos was a Jew from Alexandria, which was a famous center of learning. Luke calls him “an eloquent man” (18:24), which refers either to his speaking ability or to his learning. He was probably trained in rhetoric, and able to communicate in a manner that held people’s attention. As we’ve seen, Luke describes him as being “mighty in the Scriptures,” which implies not only raw knowledge, but also the ability to understand and fit together the major themes of Scripture. He was fervent in spirit, showing his zeal for God.
And yet, Apollos didn’t have it all together. He was in process. It is not clear what Luke means when he says that he was “teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus,” but then adds, “being acquainted only with the baptism of John” (18:25). Some say that he knew all about the ministry of Jesus, including His death, resurrection, and ascension, but was lacking the experience of Pentecost, the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I think this goes too far.
Rather, it seems to me that Apollos knew the Old Testament prophecies concerning Messiah, and he had heard of John’s ministry and knew that the Messiah was coming shortly, but he had not heard that these things had been fulfilled in Jesus. Perhaps Apollos had even heard rumors about Jesus being the Messiah, but it had never been clearly explained to him until Priscilla and Aquila did it.
Put yourself in Apollos’ sandals. You’ve been trained in the prestigious city of Alexandria. You are eloquent and learned far beyond the common person. People are always telling you how much they appreciate your sermons. And along come this tentmaker and his wife (and she is the main one doing the talking) and they tactfully let you know that you don’t know what they know. It would have been easy for Apollos to reject their help. The fact that he received it shows that he was teachable and humble.
When Apollos arrived in Corinth, we read that “he helped greatly those who had believed through grace” (18:27). The Greek grammar here is ambiguous, so that it could also mean, “he helped greatly through grace those who had believed” (Calvin prefers this meaning). But both are true, aren’t they? No one believes apart from God’s grace, and no one serves effectively apart from God’s grace. God doesn’t save us because of anything in us. And He doesn’t use us because we have it all together and we’re totally qualified. He uses us in spite of our shortcomings. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. 4:7).
Here are three questions to help you put this message into shoe leather:
You’re thinking, “No, I’m not gifted in evangelism.” Neither am I. But we’re all called to help fulfill the Great Commission. What I’m talking about here is a matter of deliberate focus. Are you burdened about the condition of lost people? If not, put that on your prayer list: “God, give me a burden for the lost, both here and abroad.” Maybe you don’t even want the opportunity to talk to someone about Christ, because you’d be at a loss to know what to say! Get some training (like Evangelism Explosion). Read some books on the subject. When the opportunities come up, do as Apollos did: focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ (18:28).
You’re thinking, “No, I’m not gifted as a pastor.” That’s beside the point. If God has helped you to grow, He expects you to help others to grow. You may not be a Paul or Apollos, but you may be a Priscilla or Aquila. They were vital in God’s work. What if they had thought, “We aren’t in the same league with this young man; someone else will have to talk with him”? The danger is for the one-talent person to bury it, not for the two or five talent person to bury his. God puts every believer on His team, and He doesn’t have any benchwarmers. So get into the game!
I’m not asking, “Do you still have a ways to go before you’re perfect?” We all do. I’m asking, “Are you deliberately doing things to help you to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” Do you go often to God’s Word, seeking to know Him better and to understand the things of God more accurately? Do you study and meditate on the Word, trying to get a better grasp of God and His revealed truth? Do you read solid Christian books that challenge your thinking and help you to walk in greater holiness? You won’t grow as a Christian by accident. You have to make it your focus.
So please be patient with me and I’ll try to be patient with you, since God isn’t finished with any of us yet! But let’s also be deliberately focused on making the gospel known, on building up one another, and in growing personally in the things of God!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
This week I received one of the most incredible emails that I have ever received. It was from Michael Abel, who is with Gospel Recordings in Pakistan. I first met him when he visited our church a couple of years ago. In this email, he was passing on to us information that he has received to the effect that about 300 million lower caste people in India, called the Dalits, are on the verge of rejecting Hinduism and embracing the Christian faith!
The Dalit leaders have been meeting with leaders from the All India Christian Council, the largest evangelical network in India. The Council leaders have helped the Dalit leaders to realize that the ultimate freedom they were searching for could only be attained if their people know Jesus Christ. These Dalit leaders then opened their hearts to call their people to become Christians. This call will go out nationally to the 300 million Dalits next Sunday, November 4th, asking them to embrace the Christian faith. In fact, this mass exodus from Hinduism has already begun, with thousands here and there being reported as coming to Christ. The Dalit leaders’ request is, “The only way for our people to find freedom from 3,000 years of slavery is to quit Hinduism … and embrace another faith. Christianity offers hope for us. We would be happy if our people would know Christ and become Christians … can you help us?”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if God so moved in America that almost one-third of our population got converted within a short period of time? And yet, it would be an overwhelming task to handle that many seekers and new believers!
Our text records the establishing of the church in Ephesus. In Paul’s day, it was a city of about 200,000, noted as a center for magic arts and especially for its Temple of Artemis, a multi-breasted goddess. This temple was the largest building in the world at that time, as long as a football field, known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens. God opened the door for Paul into this stronghold of Satan, so that the church was established and “the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing” (19:20). In fact, “all who lived in Asia [western Turkey] heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (19:10). It was probably during this period that the seven churches of Revelation 2 & 3 were established.
Every Christian longs for God’s church to be established and extended as His word spreads mightily and prevails. Our text shows that for that to happen, there must be evangelizing, empowering, and equipping. The church must be preaching the gospel, it must be empowered through God’s Spirit, and pastor-teachers must be equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. All three were happening in Ephesus.
To establish and extend the church, there must be evangelizing, empowering, and equipping.
Fulfilling his earlier promise to return to Ephesus if God willed (18:21), Paul returned about a year later, after Apollos had left for Corinth. He found about 12 men whom Luke describes as “disciples” (19:1), who had “believed” (19:2). But as Paul talked with them, he discerned that something was not quite right. Finally (we are given only a brief summary) Paul asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” The men replied that they had not even heard that there was a Holy Spirit. But since they were disciples of John the Baptist, and since John clearly taught that the Messiah would baptize His followers with the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16), probably they meant that they had not heard that the Holy Spirit had been given in the sense that John had predicted.
So Paul explained to them that the one of whom John prophesied had come, namely, Jesus. No doubt he told them of His death on the cross as the substitute for sinners, of His resurrection from the dead, and of His ascension into heaven. When they heard the gospel, they believed in Christ and were baptized as a confession of their faith. Then Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying (19:6). Then Paul went into the synagogue and spoke out boldly for three months, until an opposition group forced him to take the disciples and meet in the school of Tyrannus, where he taught them extensively, resulting in the further spreading of the gospel (19:8-10).
First I want to focus on three lessons that our text teaches us about evangelism.
You’re saying, “What? If they already believe and are in the church, aren’t they saved?” Not necessarily! The question is, What do they believe? These men believed in the message of John the Baptist, but they had not heard how Jesus had fulfilled John’s preaching. Even though Luke calls them “disciples” (19:1), it is clear that they were not disciples of Jesus. In a similar way, there are many in evangelical churches today who believe in God, and perhaps even believe in Jesus in some general sort of way, but who are not truly saved. If you asked them, “Are you a Christian?” they would answer, “Of course I am! I’m not a Hindu or an atheist!” But in spite of their answer, they are not truly saved.
How can you tell? One way is to look for signs of spiritual life. We are not told why Paul asked them whether they received the Holy Spirit when they believed, but probably he sensed that something didn’t quite seem right. Maybe they didn’t understand spiritual truth as he talked about it (1 Cor. 2:14). Maybe the fruit of the Spirit was not evident in their attitudes and behavior (Gal. 5:22-23). But Paul sensed something that led him to ask a diagnostic question to determine where these men were really at spiritually: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (The KJV translation, “since you believed,” is in error.)
Sometimes you will be talking with someone who claims to believe in Christ and who has been in the church for years, but you sense that something isn’t right. The two diagnostic questions that Evangelism Explosion uses are excellent tools to determine where the person is at spiritually: “Do you know for sure that when you die you will be with God in heaven?” And, “If God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into My heaven?’ what would you say?” Their answers will reveal what they are trusting in for eternal life. A person must believe that Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man, paid the penalty for sin that we deserve when He died on the cross. And that person must personally receive God’s gift of eternal life by trusting in what Christ did for him on the cross. Any trust in human goodness, even if coupled with faith in Christ, reveals that the person does not understand the gospel and has not trusted in Christ alone for salvation.
Paul set something of a personal record here, in that he lasted for three months in the synagogue before opposition forced him out! He was “reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God” (19:8). Paul not only lectured, but also responded to their questions and challenges. He took them to the Scriptures to show that Jesus Christ is the promised Savior and King. “The kingdom of God” refers to more than the future millennial reign of Christ. It refers to the realm where Jesus is King or Lord. It encompasses all that is entailed in a life of “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17).
Whenever you make it clear that human goodness and works have no merit toward salvation, and that Jesus Christ is the rightful King and Lord of all, some will respond in faith, but others will become hardened and disobedient, and speak evil of God’s way of salvation (19:9). Often those who oppose the most are those who are most religious. They take pride in their religion! How dare you suggest that they are sinners! How can you possibly say that they are not good enough to get into heaven? Every religion, except biblical Christianity, appeals to man’s pride by promoting a salvation through human goodness. But the gospel, rightly proclaimed, says that there are none good enough for heaven. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The only way that sinners can be justified is “as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-24). That message divides people!
John the Baptist had baptized these men when they repented for the forgiveness of their sins (Luke 3:3). But there is salvation in no one other than the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12). Old Covenant saints were saved by believing in the Messiah to come. After Jesus came, it is necessary to believe in Him specifically. This was the transitional time between the Old Covenant era and the New. The fact that Paul has them baptized in the name of Jesus seems to indicate that they just now got saved. The name of Jesus does not mean that the baptismal “formula” must be Jesus only. Jesus taught plainly to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). Luke is here focusing on the fact that their faith is now in the person of Jesus Christ, not just in a hope of Messiah in general.
Although those who advocate infant baptism would disagree with me, I believe that those who were baptized as infants, but who later come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, should be re-baptized as a confession of personal faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. Infants cannot believe in Jesus and should not be baptized. There is no New Testament example or command to baptize infants. The whole argument is built on linking baptism with circumcision as the sign of the New Covenant, and on identifying the church as the new Israel. But baptism is always linked with saving faith in Jesus Christ (even in Col. 2:11-12, which links circumcision and baptism). It is an outward picture of the inward cleansing and new life that God imparts to the person who trusts in Christ. If you have believed in Christ but have not been baptized, I urge you to talk with one of the pastors and be baptized on December 2nd.
Thus to establish and extend the church, we must be evangelizing by proclaiming the gospel of faith alone in Christ alone.
After these men believed and were baptized, Paul laid hands on them and the Holy Spirit came upon them, causing them to speak in tongues and prophesy. This text has led to much confusion in modern Christian circles, primarily because interpreters do not keep in mind the transitional nature of Acts. Because of the unfortunate King James translation (“since you believed”), many in the Pentecostal movement have argued that not all believers receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. They say that we should seek a “second work of grace” where we are baptized by the Spirit and speak in tongues. They make speaking in tongues the mark of whether or not a person has received the Spirit. I must be brief, but let me make three statements about the Holy Spirit:
In Romans 8:9, Paul asserts, “But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” The Spirit of Christ refers to the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent. Even the carnal Corinthians had God’s Spirit dwelling in them (1 Cor. 6:19). Paul told them that the Spirit had baptized them all into Christ’s body, and that they all were made to drink of the one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). Paul later wrote to the Ephesians, telling them that when they believed, they had been sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance (Eph. 1:13-14). If a person does not have the Spirit indwelling him, he is not saved.
As a transitional book, Acts describes the outpouring or baptism of the Spirit as promised by Jesus just prior to His ascension (Acts 1:5). The initial reception of the Spirit happens with four groups in Acts. First, the Jews who believed in Christ received the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost (2:1-4, 33). Then, in Acts 8, the Samaritans believed the gospel, but they did not receive the Spirit until Peter and John came and prayed for them and laid hands on them (8:14-17). The reason for the delay was so that the early church did not divide into Jewish and Samaritan factions. The apostles saw that the Samaritans received the same Holy Spirit by faith that the Jews had received, and the Samaritans saw that they had to submit to the Jewish apostles. In Acts 10, Peter preached the gospel to the Gentiles, who received the Spirit at the moment of saving faith, much to Peter’s surprise. Here, these Old Testament believers living in Ephesus (which may represent “the remotest part of the earth,” Acts 1:8) are the last group to be gathered in.
In each case, an apostle was present to impart the Spirit to this new group. In Acts, receiving the Spirit and speaking in tongues were always group experiences, directly related to salvation. With each group (tongues is implied in Acts 8), the miraculous sign of tongues demonstrated that God was giving that group the gift of the Spirit. But it was a transitional sign, not normative for all times. In 1 Corinthians 12:30, Paul asks rhetorically, “All do not speak with tongues, do they?” If speaking in tongues had been a normative sign of receiving the Holy Spirit, he would not have said that. Even in other conversions in Acts, such as that of the Philippian jailer and his family, there is no record of such manifestations.
I believe that both in Acts and in First Corinthians, the gift of tongues was the miraculous ability to speak in a language that the speaker had not previously learned. It was not ecstatic utterances. In Acts 2, it clearly was languages, since the foreign speakers present heard the believers speaking in their native languages. The same Greek word is used everywhere for tongues. The fact that tongues require interpretation shows that they were not ecstatic utterances, since such noises cannot be objectively interpreted. Prophesying here seems to refer to spontaneous, Spirit-inspired praises to God, not to foretelling the future. My point is that tongues and prophecy were not the normative sign of conversion and receiving the Holy Spirit, whether in Acts or in the rest of Scripture. To make them such for our day is to misinterpret this transitional text.
While every genuine believer in Christ receives the indwelling Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion, walking in the Spirit’s power is not an automatic process. If it were, Paul would not have commanded us to walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16) and be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). Sadly, there are many who profess to know Christ, but their daily lives are more characterized by the deeds of the flesh than by the fruit of the Spirit. We could well ask them Paul’s question here, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” If you did, why aren’t you walking in the power of the Spirit, so that He transforms your character and behavior to conform to Jesus Christ? Especially our families, but also those who know us, should be able to see evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. If they cannot, we need to make sure that we have trusted in Christ by faith, and we need to make it our priority to walk daily in the Spirit’s power.
When Paul finally ran into stiff opposition in the synagogue, he withdrew with the disciples and reasoned daily in the school of Tyrannus. An early manuscript (probably not original) says that it was from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, when the city would have been taking a midday siesta. The name Tyrannus means “tyrant,” and one commentator notes that since it is difficult (except in certain bleak moments of parenthood) to think of any parent naming his or her child “Tyrant,” this must have been a nickname given by the man’s students (Richard Longenecker, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 9:495). Paul would have worked at his trade in the morning hours (Acts 20:35) and then taught his students in this school building during the middle of the day. If he did teach for five hours every day for two years, it adds up to 1,500-1,800 hours of teaching, a substantial amount! The men who received the teaching went into the outlying areas and established churches, such as Epaphras did in Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis (Col. 1:7; 4:12-13). The result was that “all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord” (Acts 19:10).
You can have evangelism and even empowering by God’s Spirit, but if there is no solid teaching, revival will go astray. Sound doctrine is the essential foundation for establishing solid churches. Paul later even warns these men, to whom he had declared the whole purpose of God, to be on guard against men from their own ranks who would speak perverse things, drawing away the disciples after them (20:27-30). In Paul’s final letters to the pastors, Timothy and Titus, he repeatedly emphasizes the need for sound doctrine (1 Tim. 1:3; 4:1, 6, 11, 13, 16; 5:17; 6:3, 20; 2 Tim. 1:13; 2:2, 14-16, 23-26; 3:10, 14-17; 4:1-5, 15; Titus 1:9, 13-14; 2:1, 7-8, 15; 3:9).
In our day, doctrine is being set aside, and experience and emotions are exalted. But if experience and emotions are not rooted in sound doctrine, they will not be biblical and will not sustain us or keep us from serious error. To establish and extend the church so that it is a vital force in future generations, we must devote ourselves to the teaching of God’s Word.
Wouldn’t it be exciting if we could substitute “Northern Arizona” for the word “Asia” in verse 10: “All who lived in Northern Arizona heard the word of the Lord, whether religious people or pagans”! For that to happen, we must commit ourselves to evangelizing the lost, we must daily rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, and we must equip the saints for the work of the ministry.
With reference to the situation I mentioned at the beginning of this message, Indian church leaders are asking churches around the world to mobilize for prayer for the potential opportunity of 300 million Dalits being open to the gospel. The forces of darkness will not be idle if 300 million people suddenly want to hear about Jesus Christ!
Next Saturday, a number of Christian leaders in the U.S. are calling for a special day of fasting and prayer for our nation in light of the current war against terrorism. Since Sunday in India begins while it is still Saturday here, I would ask you to pray not only for our nation, but also for this amazing potential movement of God’s Spirit in India. If 300 million lower caste people convert to Christianity en masse, it will shake the entire Indian social system to the very core, and probably spark a wave of persecution! It will flood the churches there with overwhelming needs. They are estimating the need for at least 10,000 more missionaries in the next few months so that they can adequately handle the masses of Dalits coming to Christ. What a problem!
Let’s close with a time of prayer for the church worldwide, but especially in America and in India, to be evangelizing, to be empowered by God’s Spirit, and to be equipping believers through the teaching of God’s Word.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
As you are no doubt aware, many evangelicals claim that we should often be experiencing the kinds of signs and wonders that we read about in our text. Since the early 20th century, the Pentecostals made such claims, but not many took them seriously. But in the late 1970’s, John Wimber and the Vineyard churches that he spawned began claiming that miracles should be the ordinary experience of the church. Jesus said that His followers would do greater works than He Himself did (John 14:12). Wimber asserted that the main reason that we do not see such works of power is our skeptical Western mindset.
Along with Peter Wagner and Charles Kraft, in 1982 Wimber began teaching a course at Fuller Seminary, MC510, popularly called, “Signs and Wonders.” Hundreds of students took the course, which ran until 1986, when the seminary halted the class and appointed a task force to evaluate the material from biblical, theological, scientific, and pastoral perspectives (published as Ministry and the Miraculous, ed. by Lewis Smedes [Fuller Seminary], 1987). Wimber did not believe that miracles will take place every time we pray, but he did teach that they are the necessary manifestation of the kingdom’s presence and advance. If we are not doing miracles along with our preaching, we are not preaching the gospel as we should, according to Wimber.
The hope of miraculous healing attracts many people to churches that claim to see such miracles happening, because there are many who are afflicted with serious, incurable illnesses. We have many in our church suffering from such diseases. I often pray for them, and I would rejoice if God miraculously healed them. Sometimes God does heal miraculously, and we should pray for it, if it is His will. If I thought that anyone in town, or even in the United States, had the God-given gift of healing, I would either try to bring him here or urge those who are sick to go wherever he was, so that they might be healed. But I question both the Vineyard’s theology and its claims of success in healing large numbers of those who are seriously sick. As the Fuller Seminary evaluation noted, not even the apostles did miracles on a par with those of Jesus. And “by any ordinary standard of equivalence, the healings reported by contemporary healing ministries hardly qualify as ‘greater works’ than Jesus did” (p. 31).
Luke notes that these miracles in Ephesus were extraordinary, even for the apostle Paul (19:11). They seem to parallel the extraordinary miracles that Peter performed for a brief period in his ministry (5:15-16). It is significant that apart from Stephen and Philip, who worked closely under the apostles, there are no miracles recorded as performed by anyone other than the apostles. And, it seems that all who were brought to them were healed (5:16). The purpose of these apostolic miracles (according to Heb. 2:3-4), was to confirm the message of salvation that Jesus and the apostles proclaimed. In fact, throughout the entire Bible, miracles are not uniformly sprinkled as everyday occurrences. Rather, they are clustered at key moments, such as the exodus, where God was working on behalf of His people. Those who lived after are often reminded of these former miracles to call them back to God.
In our text, Paul’s extraordinary miracles in Ephesus are contrasted with the attempts of some inept Jewish exorcists to duplicate the miracles. No doubt the early church often chuckled as it retold the story of these seven men running wounded and naked from the house after the demonic man overpowered them. By drawing this contrast, I think that Luke wants us all to learn a vital lesson that many “faith healers” and their followers need to learn:
We should allow God to use us according to His will for His glory, but we should not try to use Him for our own purposes.
That summarizes the main difference between Paul and these Jewish exorcists. Paul was allowing God to use him according to God’s will and for God’s glory. But these spiritual charlatans were trying to use God for their own financial profit, and those who hired the exorcists were trying to use God’s power for their own purposes. They had no intention to repent of their sins and submit their lives to God’s purpose. Rather, they wanted to use God as an Aladdin’s Genie, and then put Him back on the shelf until they needed His services again.
Even so, many—even many in the evangelical church—attempt to use God for health or wealth or whatever other favors they desire. When He doesn’t perform according to their expectations, they quickly look elsewhere for answers. But in their search for answers to their problems, Jesus Christ is not their Lord. They are their own lords, as seen by their quickly turning to the world when Jesus doesn’t seem to work as they had hoped.
The issue here is not whether or not God will bless those who come to Him in faith for salvation. The Bible shows that God delights to pour out His blessings on His people. As Paul exults, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). When we come to Christ, He grants us “everything pertaining to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3). Clearly, we receive all the riches of Christ when we come to Him for salvation. I’m not denying that.
Rather, I’m focusing on the issue of “Who is Lord?” and on the issue of repentance from our sins. If we come to God to use Him to see if He works, then we are still the lords of our lives, and we have not turned from our many sins. If God works, then we’ll use Him whenever we need Him, but we determine when and where that will be. Do we need a new job or a raise in our current job? Name it and claim it by faith, and it’s yours! Do you need healing from a disease? Command God and He must obey your word of faith! This is what many in the Word of Faith movement are teaching! For example, a prominent Word-Faith teacher has blatantly said,
Now this is a real shocker, but God has to be given permission to work in this earth realm on behalf of man. Yes, you are in control! So if man has control, who no longer has it? God. When God gave Adam dominion, that meant God no longer had dominion, so God cannot do anything in this earth unless we let Him. And the way we let Him or give Him permission is through prayer. (Fred Price, quoted by Christianity in Crisis Study Guide, p. 40; in The Signs and Wonders Movement—Exposed [Day One Publications], ed. by Peter Glover, p. 34).
That kind of heresy makes man the lord and God man’s servant. But the God of the Bible is the Sovereign Lord, who “does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” (Dan. 4:35). These Jewish exorcists reveal three wrong ways that we all are prone to use God for our own purposes:
These false prophets went around from town to town making a living by supposedly casting demons out of those who were afflicted. Luke calls their father, Sceva, a Jewish chief priest (19:14). But since there is no record of any Jewish chief priest by that name, either he was a member of a high priestly family, or, more likely, he took the title for himself to impress his clientele. These men had a bag full of magic spells, rituals, incantations, oaths, and the like. They would try to gain power over the evil spirits by invoking the name of a more powerful spirit being. So when they heard about Paul’s success using the name of Jesus, they added it to their repertoire. But they found out that it was kind of like using a hand grenade without knowing how it works. It went off in their faces and they were glad to get away with their lives!
But the point is, for them spiritual power was usually an easy way to make a nice living. God had not called or sent them to do what they were doing. They weren’t doing it out of loving concern for hurting people. They were doing it for financial gain.
The Bible says that elders who rule well should be paid for their labors, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching (1 Tim. 5:17-18). Those who go out as evangelists or missionaries have a right to be supported in their labors (1 Cor. 9:3-18; 3 John 7-8). But that is far different from those, like the prominent TV “evangelists” and “faith healers” of our day, who make a fortune peddling their spiritual wares on unsuspecting people. I have read that some of them send their appeals for funds to arrive at the same time that elderly people’s Social Security checks arrive! They often travel first class, insist on staying in five-star hotels, and demand large sums of money to come for their crusades (Signs and Wonders Movement—Exposed, p. 22). They live in personal luxury and promise their poor audiences that they, too, can live in luxury if they will just have the faith and, of course, give generously to their ministries! They are feeding themselves at the expense of the flock (Ezek. 34:2). They are serving mammon, not God!
These exorcists were not submitting their lives to God’s Word. In fact, they were in direct disobedience to the Word, which condemned false prophets who purported to speak in God’s name when He had not sent them (Ezek. 13:6). But clearly, they were in the business of using whatever worked. If one spell or incantation didn’t work, they would try another one. If Paul was having success using this name of Jesus, they would try it out. And, although the attempt to use the name of Jesus didn’t seem to work for them this time, they must have been having some other successes, or they couldn’t have stayed in business. Either through satanic power or the power of suggestion or hypnosis, they saw enough results to stay in business. But they didn’t live in submission to God’s Word.
But whenever we use what works without regard for the truth of Scripture, we’ve fallen into pragmatism. As John MacArthur (Ashamed of the Gospel [Crossway Books]) and others have so capably shown, pragmatism has flooded into the American evangelical church. We use marketing techniques to draw the crowds to our churches. We tone down the difficult parts of the gospel and emphasize the feel-good parts so that we don’t scare off potential converts. We avoid difficult doctrines and give shorter messages that focus on how people can succeed in life, because that’s what people want to hear. We use psychological counseling and 12 Step Groups instead of submission to the lordship of Christ to help people cope with life’s problems, because these techniques seem to work. Pastors flock to conferences that share the latest methods that are proven to build your church. These Jewish exorcists probably could have landed a job on the staff of many thriving evangelical churches in our day!
These exorcists were directly involved in the occult. They were trying to manipulate demons by demonic power for their own or others’ advantage. But they ended up getting hurt (literally), because they were playing with powers greater than they realized.
Many Christians and even some Christian leaders today dabble in the occult, sometimes without realizing what they are doing. Techniques of using visualization as a means of healing or financial success are an occult practice (Dave Hunt & T. A. McMahon, The Seduction of Christianity [Harvest House], pp. 123-169). Many of the “Word-Faith” teachers are really promoting the occult when they tell you to visualize and speak into existence whatever you want, assuring you that God will do what you speak in faith. Astrology, fortune telling, Ouija boards, and tarot cards are directly demonic, and yet many Christians think of them as innocent games.
Rather than attempting to use God for our own purposes, as these Jewish exorcists did, we should follow the example of Paul:
Paul was not building a following for Paul; he was pointing people to Jesus Christ. We read that “the name of the Lord Jesus [not Paul] was being magnified” (19:17). “The word of the Lord [not Paul’s techniques for healing] was growing mightily and prevailing” (19:20). Paul was willing to live or die, as long as now, as always, Christ would be exalted in his body (Phil. 1:21). In Paul’s experience in Ephesus and in the lives of those who responded to the gospel there we see four aspects of those whom God uses for His glory:
In contrast to the Jewish exorcists, who were using spiritual power for financial gain, Paul labored at his trade, making tents (20:34). Although Paul had a legitimate right to be supported by his labors in the gospel, he refused to use that right so that he would cause no hindrance to the gospel (1 Cor. 9:3-18, esp. v. 12).
These “handkerchiefs” that people carried from Paul to the sick were actually sweat-cloths that he tied around his head to keep the sweat from dripping into his eyes as he worked. The aprons were his work aprons. Can’t you see Paul coming into his shop and saying, “Now where did I put that apron last night when I took it off?” Modern TV “healers” send out little squares of cloth that they have “anointed.” They ask their audiences to touch them as a point-of-contact and, of course, to send in their donation.
I have one such letter in my files. The “healer” instructs me to hold the cloth reverently and listen as God tells me how He will grant me the healing or financial miracle that I need. Then I’m supposed to put this cloth inside the envelope, along with my generous gift, to prove in a tangible way that I believe God’s Word. He explains that the money is not to buy a miracle, but to express my thanks to God for His free gifts. He also adds (this was in the early 1980’s) that inflation has skyrocketed the costs of soul-winning abroad! He assures me that when he receives my prayer cloth along with my generous gift, he and his wife will lay my request and cloth before God in fasting prayer in their private prayer closet. He assures me that the Lord will grant my miracle.
How different was Paul’s ministry! These smelly rags were reminders of the toil that Paul was going through to make the gospel available in Ephesus. In comparing these cloths to Moses’ rod, Ray Stedman says,
There was nothing magic about the rod itself; it was the symbol of something about Moses which God honored. So these sweatbands and trade aprons were symbols of the honest, dignified labor of the apostle, his labor of love and humility of heart, his servant-character which manifested and released the power of God. God means to teach by this that it is through a man whose heart is so utterly committed that he is ready to invest hard, diligent labor in making the gospel available, willing to stoop to a lowly trade, that the power of God is released (Acts 13-20, Growth of the Body [Vision House], p. 163).
Even the demon recognized Paul’s integrity. He told the exorcists that he recognized Jesus and knew Paul, but he didn’t know them! Demons have no power over a man of integrity who is subject to God, as Paul was.
Here I’m focusing on the Ephesian people who had professed faith in Christ, but they had not genuinely repented until they heard about this incident (19:18-19). They were secretly holding on to their old occult practices, just in case Jesus “didn’t work” for them! But now they went public, confessing and disclosing their sinful practices. As a proof of their confession, they brought their magic books and made a huge public bonfire. The combined price of these books was huge. If the pieces of silver were drachmas (one drachma was a working man’s daily wage), at today’s wages it would have amounted to about $5 million! They could have sold them and financed the new sanctuary in Ephesus! But they didn’t want anyone else contaminated by this spiritual deception, so they rightly burned them.
Have you done that? Maybe it’s not books on sorcery and magic, but it could be filthy videos that are not edifying for you and that would keep others from God if you sold them. Maybe it means throwing out magazines with lustful pictures. Whatever it is, true repentance requires turning from our sin and taking the necessary steps so that we don’t go back to it again. We will stay as far away from the old sources of temptation as we can. If we claim to be believers, but hold onto our old sinful practices, God’s power will be hindered in our lives.
Paul didn’t name his ministry after himself or put his name on the marquee in Ephesus to advertise his nightly healing services. With John the Baptist, Paul lived by the principle, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Seeing God do these sorts of miracles through you (or through your sweatbands), could have been pretty heady stuff! But Paul never let it go to his head. His aim was always to exalt Jesus Christ. If God heals you or uses you to heal someone else, give God the glory!
Again, Paul could have decided that doing miracles drew bigger crowds than preaching the gospel and teaching God’s Word. But he did not. Rather, “the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing” (19:20). Miracles do not always or even usually result in conversions (John 11; Acts 4:16-17). The idol-making silversmiths in Ephesus surely heard about these impressive miracles. But rather than getting saved, they got worried that Paul’s preaching was cutting into their profits, so they started a riot. Their greed was their god, and they didn’t want to give it up.
While sometimes God uses miracles to bring unbelievers to faith (Acts 13:6-12), that is not the general rule. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe (Rom. 1:16). God uses the foolishness of the preaching of the cross to save souls (1 Cor. 1:18). We should stay focused on God’s Word and the gospel, rather than get distracted by signs and wonders.
Can God heal miraculously today? Of course! Does He heal miraculously today? Sometimes, but not nearly as often as those in the Signs and Wonders movement claim. In my experience, miraculous healings and deliverances from demons are very rare. While God does at times heal supernaturally today, I believe that the gift of healing that we see here in Paul was limited to the apostles and their close associates. None of the so-called faith healers see anywhere near the kinds of results that the apostles saw. They all seem to get sick and die, some of them at relatively young ages!
If God chooses in His will to use us to heal someone through our prayers or to deliver someone from demonic power, we should be available for Him to do it. But to try to use such powers for our own purposes is to be lord of our lives. We must be people of integrity, who live in daily repentance and humility, who seek to magnify the name of Jesus, the Word of God, and the gospel. We must be subject to God’s will, which often includes suffering. Rather than trying to use God, we should let God use us!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
I have never been caught in the midst of a riot, much less been the target of one. But I have read of Hudson and Maria Taylor’s harrowing experience in Yangchow, China, when an angry, drunk mob attacked their house and tried to set fire to it, and it doesn’t sound enjoyable (see Roger Steer, J. Hudson Taylor [OMF], pp. 217-224)! Somehow God miraculously spared them and their children from permanent injury and death, although Maria, who was six months pregnant, had to jump out of a second story window to escape. If you’ve never read the story of Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission, you are lacking a profound spiritual experience!
Our text reports the story of a riot in Ephesus instigated against Paul and the infant church there. Although Paul was not at the center of the action, it must have been an unforgettably frightening ordeal. He may have been referring to it when he told the Corinthians how he had fought with wild beasts at Ephesus (1 Cor. 15:32). He probably was referring to it when he also told them, “For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope” (2 Cor. 1:8-10).
Most of us have never had to face that kind of severe opposition because of our faith. Hopefully, we never will, but we should not be taken by surprise if it does come. Sometimes I think that the doctrine of the pretribulation rapture has made American Christians naively assume that they will be spared from any serious persecution in the end times. But whether the pretrib rapture is true or not, we have no guarantee of protection from persecution. Christians in other countries have suffered terribly for their faith, and America is not exempt. We need to be ready in case it comes.
Luke’s purpose for including this incident seems to be twofold (I’m following Richard Longenecker, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 9:502): First, he was trying to present an apologetic that the Christian faith was a legitimate religion, not at odds with Roman law or government. Therefore any who persecuted the Christian Church were in violation of Roman law. He shows this by telling of the friendliness of Asiarchs toward Paul (19:31). These men were from the noblest and wealthiest families in the province of Asia, and were a quasi-religious association that sought to secure loyalty to Roman rule (ibid., pp. 503-504). The fact that they were friendly toward Paul shows that he could not have been a threat to the state. Also, the city clerk’s intervention to quell the riot (19:35-41) shows that he did not regard the Christians as a threat to the city or its citizens.
Luke’s second purpose for including this incident was to show that spiritually, the only thing that heathenism can do against Paul and the Christian faith “is to shout itself hoarse” (Ernst Haenchen, cited by Longenecker, p. 502). Unbelievers oppose the gospel because Satan has blinded their minds and the gospel confronts their sin. Satan’s fury against the church is great, but pagan religions are impotent and empty in the long run. God’s sovereign providence protects His church, even in the face of fierce opposition. So our text is showing us that …
People oppose the gospel because Satan has blinded them and the gospel confronts their sin; but God rules over all.
This disturbance was not just against Paul personally, but against “the Way” (19:23). The Way was an early designation for the church (now it is the name of a false cult!). It points to Christianity as a way of life, and to the fact that Jesus is the only way to God (John 14:6). The first lesson to note is:
You may wonder, “Why would people oppose Christians? Christians care about and help their neighbors. They are good workers on the job. They are good citizens. Why is there such intense opposition toward Christianity and Christians?”
The answer is that there is an evil spiritual being, the devil, who is at work in the world to oppose God and His Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul later explained to this Ephesian Church, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places”(Eph. 6:12).
It is no coincidence that this riot took place after the professing believers confessed their secret sins and openly demonstrated their repentance by burning their sorcery books (19:18-19). As a result of that cleansing, “the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing” (19:20). Whenever the church repents of her sins and the word of the Lord grows mightily and prevails, Satan will not sit around passively wringing his hands. He will launch an attack. If we do not sense any opposition from the enemy, we should examine ourselves to determine whether or not we are doing anything significant enough to oppose.
The power of the Ephesian Church was not primarily political, but spiritual. They hadn’t picketed the temple of Artemis to try to get it shut down. They hadn’t organized rallies or tried to get legislation passed to stop the corrupt practices that went on there. If they had, the city clerk would not have spoken so favorably about Gaius and Aristarchus (19:37). Rather, they had proclaimed the gospel in Ephesus and the outlying area, and they had demonstrated the power of the gospel through their repentance. It was so many people coming under that transforming power of the gospel that now was threatening the business of these idol-makers.
There is a proper place for the church to use political means to accomplish spiritual goals. At times Paul used his Roman citizenship to secure protection for the church and for himself (16:35-40; 25:11). Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all used political power as a part of their overall strategy to establish the Reformation. But our main focus should be to demonstrate by our godly lives the truth of the gospel, and to proclaim that gospel verbally. As people get saved, the culture will be changed. And Satan will not allow that to happen without stirring up opposition. But why do people oppose the gospel?
“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:3-4). Paul also refers to how Christ delivers us from “the domain of darkness” (Col. 1:13). Those who do not know Christ do not have the capacity to accept or understand the things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually appraised (1 Cor. 2:14).
Why else would people worship a grotesque statue of a multi-breasted woman? The legend was that Artemis fell down from Zeus (or, Jupiter; 19:35). Probably, a meteorite fell to the earth that looked something like a multi-breasted woman. The superstitious people thought that she must be a symbol of fertility, and so women would invoke her help in childbirth. The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and people would flock from all over the Roman Empire to see it. The girls who served the temple dressed in short skirts with one breast bare (E. M. Blaiklock, Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible [Zondervan], 1:341). The annual festival in honor of Artemis, which was kind of like the Mardi Gras, drew a great deal of business to the area, including buyers of these small statues.
These silversmiths had heard of and probably seen evidence of the many miracles that God had been doing through Paul in Ephesus (19:11). You would think that they would stop and ask whether Paul’s message might be from God. But sin and Satan blind people so that they can’t see how irrational they are. Demetrius and the silversmiths knew that Paul was saying that “gods made with hands are no gods at all” (19:26). That seems to me to be a fairly self-evident truth, that if someone made it, it isn’t God. But Satan had blinded their minds.
When we talk to people about Christ, we should try to be as clear as we can be. We should be logical and persuasive. But the bottom line is, if God does not shine into the person’s heart with the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 4:6), he or she is not going to respond favorably. You may as well try to get a blind man to appreciate the fine points of a beautiful picture as to try to get an unbeliever to understand the gospel! And so as you share the gospel, pray that God would grant sight to blind eyes.
Both the message of the gospel and the lives of those who have believed the gospel confront sinners with their sin. The message necessarily confronts people with their sin, because if people are not sinners, they have no need for a Savior. A “gospel” that presents Jesus as the way to a happier life, but dodges the sin issue, is no gospel at all. The Bible plainly indicts us all: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). While some of us are better than others (when we compare ourselves with ourselves), none of us has perfectly obeyed God’s holy standards. By our thoughts, words, and deeds, we have repeatedly rebelled against Him as our rightful Lord. We have failed to love Him with our total being, as He rightly deserves. Before people can appreciate and respond to the good news, that Christ died for sinners and that He offers forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift, they must hear the bad news about their sin.
But not only the message of the gospel confronts sinners. Also the lives of those who have believed the gospel confront sinners. If everyone is in the dark, doing things that they know they shouldn’t be doing, and some guy walks in with a bright light, it exposes their evil deeds. If people who used to get drunk and sleep with the temple prostitutes suddenly stop doing that because they have trusted in Christ and repented of their sins, it threatens those who still do those things. They can no longer compare themselves with these people, because they make them look bad. So either they need to accuse them of hypocrisy or spread false rumors to discredit their behavior. Perhaps you’ve experienced this on the job. Because you don’t lie or cheat and because you work hard, you make the other employees look bad, and so they attack you.
Demetrius and his fellow-workers should have asked, “Is the message that Paul and others are proclaiming true? If it is true, we’re in big trouble before the Creator of the universe, because we’ve not only worshiped this stupid idol; we’ve helped thousands of others to do the same! If Paul’s message is true, we need to find another line of work!”
But as Paul argues in Romans 1:18-23, men suppress the truth in unrighteousness and end up in idolatry, worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. Idolatry in the broadest sense is devotion to anything other than the living and true God. It often involves using statues or images, which the second commandment forbids (Exod. 20:4). Even to claim that you’re just using such physical objects as “helps” to worship God (as Roman Catholics and the Orthodox do) is to engage in idolatry. Israel would have claimed that the golden calf was just an object to help them worship the god that brought them out of Egypt (Exod. 32:4), but they were clearly engaging in idolatry. To pray to statues or pictures of Jesus or Mary or the saints, or to set them up in your home or yard in the hopes that they will protect you from harm, is to engage in idolatry.
But you can engage in idolatry without statues. It is idolatry to be more devoted to your job and financial success than you are to God and His kingdom. Devotion to sensual pleasure through pornography or immorality is a form of idolatry. A pursuit that may be legitimate in balance, such as a hobby or a sport, can become an idol when a person devotes an inordinate amount of time and money to it. Sitting in front of a TV set for two hours or more every day, or playing computer games for hours, but not having time to spend with the living God and to serve Him, is idolatry.
At first Demetrius plainly states that his concern is that Paul’s message was cutting into their profit margin (19:25). That was the bottom line! But then (19:27) he makes it sound a bit less self-serving by stating that their entire way of life, built around the famous Temple of Artemis, was in jeopardy. If people stopped flocking to the temple, it would disrupt their whole society. The entire economy would be affected. Inns and restaurants would lose business. Merchants who sold goods to the tourists would be hurting. And, the familiar customs and festivals associated with the worship of Artemis would come to an end. Perhaps even the great goddess, whom the whole world worshiped, would be dethroned from her magnificence!
This whipped the craftsmen into an irrational rage. On their way to the theater (which is still standing, and seated about 24,000), they somehow grabbed Gaius and Aristarchus, whom they recognized as being associated with Paul. Only by God’s gracious providence were they spared from being killed. Paul surely would have been killed if he had ventured into the arena as he wanted to do. But in this case, God protected His people, and no one got hurt.
Even in situations where missionaries have gotten killed, we know that God sovereignly protects His church. Satan is on a leash, and can only go as far as God lets him. As you know, on earlier occasions, Paul was stoned and beaten. Here, he was spared. But whatever happens, we can always know that God is never asleep when it comes to watching over His servants. His providential care and direction are ours, even when the enemy ferociously attacks us.
We see God’s sovereign providence in verse 21, where Paul lays out his plans for future ministry. It is ambiguous whether “in the spirit” means in his human spirit, or in the Holy Spirit, but I lean toward the Holy Spirit. When Paul says, “I must see Rome,” the word “must” is consistently used as a word of divine necessity. God was impelling Paul to new regions. In Romans 15:22-29, which he wrote shortly after this, he tells the Romans that after he visits Jerusalem, he hopes to see them and from there to keep heading west toward Spain. God was leading Paul by putting these desires in his heart
If you know the rest of the story, you know that Paul eventually did get to Rome, but not quite as he had envisioned! He got arrested in Jerusalem, detained in Caesarea for two years, and eventually, by way of shipwreck on Malta, got to Rome as a prisoner. We don’t know whether he ever did get to Spain. But Paul’s plans, made in dependence on the Spirit, show us that we should seek the Lord for how He wants to use us in His purpose. But the outworking of those plans is subject to His sovereign control.
In the riot in Ephesus, we see God’s providential protection of Paul and the other believers. If it had been up to Paul, he would have ventured into the arena and tried to address the unruly mob. He saw it as a choice opportunity to preach to thousands all at once! But surely he would have been viewed as the ringleader and the mob would have killed him. Later (21:11-14), Paul gets warned that he will be imprisoned if he goes to Jerusalem, and his friends plead with him not to go, but he goes anyway. But here he heeds their warning. Why did he listen here, but not there? I think the difference was the providential warning of his Asiarch friends. It is significant that Paul had a good relationship with these influential men, even though they were not yet believers. Out of respect for them and their position of influence, Paul held back from going into the theater to try to preach in this volatile situation.
Luke includes a somewhat obscure detail about a man named Alexander to show that Paul would not have gained a hearing anyway. Probably Alexander was put forward by the Jews to try to disassociate the Jews from the Christians. The Jews in Ephesus were against idolatry, of course, and they feared that the frenzied mob might launch a pogrom against the Jews as well as the Christians in this situation. So they wanted Alexander to show the mob that the Jews were not the cause of their loss of business. But he never got the chance. When they recognized him as a Jew, they started chanting for two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” We don’t know if this is the same Alexander mentioned in two other places in Paul’s letters (1 Tim. 1:20; 2 Tim. 4:14).
God finally protected Paul and the Ephesian Church through the wise words of the town clerk, who is comparable to the mayor. He was the one who would have to answer to Rome for this riot. He assured the crowd that the greatness of Artemis was not in danger, and that the two men they had apprehended were not guilty of robbing the temple or blaspheming their goddess. He reminded them of the proper judicial channels if they had a grievance. And he warned them of the consequences if Rome accused them of an unlawful assembly. Then he dismissed the crowd.
I could not find the exact quote, but T. W. Manson once said something like, “These early disciples were completely fearless, outrageously happy, and constantly in trouble.” This story makes me ask, “Am I doing anything significant enough on behalf of God’s kingdom to stir up the enemy’s opposition?” I realize that God sometimes grants the church times of peace (9:31). I also realize that the freedom of religion in our country assures us a certain amount of protection from persecution. But I also think that we should ponder G. Campbell Morgan’s words: “The Church persecuted has always been the Church pure, and therefore the Church powerful. The Church patronized has always been the Church in peril, and very often the Church paralyzed” (The Acts of the Apostles [Revell], p. 465). Are we making a powerful impact on our culture?
Have we burned our idols and cut off our ties with our old life of sin? Surveys show that those who profess to be evangelical Christians watch the same amount of TV and the same TV shows as the population at large. What if all who profess to know Christ stopped watching the filthy TV shows and spent the time studying their Bibles? What if Christians refused to go to or rent questionable movies or videos? Would Hollywood feel the loss of business? What if Christian young people kept themselves morally pure until marriage? What if Christians who were married kept their marriage vows and worked through their problems rather than get divorced? (There is currently no difference in divorce statistics between Christians and the general public.) What if Christians stopped squandering their wealth on frivolous toys and luxurious living and started living and giving sacrificially toward world missions?
Would these things impact our culture? Would unbelievers begin to see the effects of the gospel in our lives and be convicted of their sins? Would the Way of Jesus Christ begin to cause no small disturbance in the United States? Let’s begin in Flagstaff and find out!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
If you know Christ as Savior and Lord, you desire to have God use you to make a difference for Him in the world. Last week I reread part of the story of Hudson Taylor, the pioneer missionary to China, and I thought, “The huge country of China is different today, 100 years later, because of Hudson Taylor’s vision and commitment to take the gospel to that land.” Then the convicting question hit me, “Will Flagstaff be any different because I have lived and labored for Christ here?” To be honest, I’m not sure that I have a satisfying answer to that question yet! But my heartfelt prayer is that God would so use me that this part of the world would be changed for His glory because I lived here.
The apostle Paul changed the world as few other men have ever done. He lived in a day before jet airplanes or cars and paved highways. He had to go everywhere by foot, on donkeys, or by sailing vessel, none of which were very speedy. He did not have a telephone to call and talk with the leaders of churches that he had founded around the Roman Empire. He couldn’t even call someone across town. If he wanted to see the person, he had to walk across town and hope to find him at home. He didn’t have computers, email, copy machines, or other modern tools that make communication easier. He spent many years of his ministry in prison, unable to move about freely. He contended with fierce opposition both from outside and inside the church. And yet, after 25-30 years of ministry, he left a lasting impact on the world, not only in his time, but also for all times.
How did he do it? Much of it must be explained as God’s sovereign working through this man. As Paul taught, God has allotted to each of us various gifts and measures of faith (Rom. 12:3-8; 1 Cor. 12). Thus even if we’re all faithful to the Lord, we will experience differing results in our ministries. It would be wrong to condemn ourselves because we don’t see the same results that Paul or Hudson Taylor saw. But we can learn from the apostle the biblical principles that governed his ministry and seek to apply them to our own lives, whatever gifts and calling God may have given us.
I am convinced that at the heart of Paul’s strategy was his unswerving commitment to establish and strengthen local churches.
Paul changed the world through his commitment to establish and strengthen local churches.
Jesus promised to build His church on Peter’s confession of Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that the gates of Hades would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:16-18). Paul traveled about preaching the gospel and helping the new converts begin to meet as local churches. Those churches in turn could evangelize their own areas, as well as train and send out new missionaries to evangelize and plant new churches in other areas, so that the process is multiplied many times over. He did this in Ephesus, so that after two years, all of Asia (western Turkey) heard the word of the Lord (19:10).
Paul was unrelenting in his commitment to the church. He was willing to pour out his life to see healthy churches established. He called the Philippian church his joy and his crown (Phil. 4:1). He told the Colossians of his great struggle on their behalf and for those in Laodicea, that they would be knit together in love and attain to all that wealth that comes from a full knowledge of Jesus Christ (Col. 2:1-2). He also told the Thessalonians that they were his joy and crown, and that he really lived if only they stood firm in the Lord (1 Thess. 2:19; 3:8). In 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, he goes through a long list of all of the labors and trials that he had gone through on behalf of Christ. The last thing he mentions is, “Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.”
At first glance, our text shows us a slice of Paul’s life describing his travels. Some things are skimmed over, and we can fill in many details from 1 & 2 Corinthians and Romans, which he wrote during this time period. Other things, such as his meeting with the church in Troas, are described in more detail. We might at first read these verses and think, “That’s interesting, but it doesn’t relate to my life.” But I think that just below the surface of Luke’s description of Paul’s travels lies Paul’s unswerving commitment to Christ’s church. It was that commitment that was at the heart of how God used Paul to change the world for Jesus Christ. No matter what our individual gifts or calling, we need to be committed to the church of Jesus Christ if we want to see God use us to change our world for Him. Our text reveals four aspects of Paul’s commitment to the church:
Luke again silently joins the narrative when Paul passes through Philippi (20:5). The “we” sections of Acts ended about six years before, when Paul was previously in Philippi (16:16). We can conclude that Luke had been left there to pastor that new church. Now he again gives us eyewitness testimony as he travels with Paul to Troas and beyond to Jerusalem. Verses 7-12 give us an interesting description of Paul’s meeting with the church in Troas. Note three features of this church meeting:
*The church met on Sunday. This is the earliest clear reference to the custom of the church to gather on the first day of the week, rather than on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday). Some scholars say that the meeting took place on what we would call Saturday night, since the Jews reckoned time from sundown to sundown. But others argue that Luke was using the Roman method, which started the day at midnight, as we do, in which case this church meeting took place on our Sunday night. This is supported by the fact that the text says that Paul intended to leave “the next day” (20:7), which is identified as “daybreak” (20:12). Under the Jewish reckoning, daybreak would be the same day as the previous night. Also, the chronology here requires that Paul left Troas on a Monday morning, not Sunday (William Ramsay, St. Paul, the Traveller and the Roman Citizen [Baker], pp. 289-290). Thus this all-night church meeting took place on Sunday night.
You ask, “What difference does it make what day of the week the church meets on?” It makes a difference because the switch from Saturday to Sunday worship must have taken place because of the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb on Sunday morning. Why else would Jews, who largely made up the early Christian congregations and who had a God-given command and a centuries-long tradition of seventh-day worship, change to worshiping on the first day of the week? The only reasonable explanation is that the Lord Jesus, whom they worshiped, arose from the dead on that day. Thus the Sunday worship of the church is an evidence of and a testimony to the resurrection of Jesus.
Does this mean that Sunday is now the Christian Sabbath, and that Christians must follow the Jewish law regarding Sabbath observance? While there are differing views on this question (I disagree with some of my heroes, such as Charles Spurgeon, Hudson Taylor, and J. C. Ryle), I think that the Sabbath was the shadow that has now been fulfilled in Christ, the substance (Col. 2:16-17). He Himself is our “Sabbath rest” (Hebrews 4). The Sabbath command is the only one of the Ten Commandments not specifically repeated in the New Testament. Although Paul warned the Gentile churches about many things, he never mentioned breaking the Sabbath. Neither did the Jerusalem Council impose Sabbath-keeping on the Gentile believers (Acts 15). (John MacArthur, Jr., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Acts 13-28 [Moody Press], pp. 202-203, lists ten reasons why Christians are not required to observe the Sabbath, some of which I have used here.)
Although we are not under the Old Testament law regarding the Sabbath, I do believe that we should set aside the first day of every week (“the Lord’s Day,” Rev. 1:10; see also 1 Cor. 16:1) to gather with God’s people for worship and instruction. Since Sunday was not a day off in the Roman Empire, and the slaves and others would have had to work, the church met on Sunday evening. We need to make it a priority to set apart time for gathering with the church on Sunday, and by doing so, we bear witness to the fact that our Savior is risen from the dead.
*The church met to worship the crucified and risen Lord. Luke sums up their worship by stating that they gathered “to break bread,” a reference to the Lord’s Supper. Weekly observance is not commanded, but it did seem to be the custom of the early church. If we could throw away our clocks and not have to be concerned about getting one service over so that the next service can get started on time, I would like to have communion every Sunday. Communion points us to our Savior’s supreme sacrifice for our sins on the cross. It makes us examine ourselves to make sure that we have confessed all of our sins against the Lord and against one another. It reminds us of the need to feed spiritually on Christ and to rely on His grace. It should cause our hearts to be drawn to Him in love and adoration.
*The church met to be instructed from God’s Word. Paul apparently preached in Troas for at least four hours, if not longer (until midnight)! Then, after the incident with Eutychus, he went back upstairs and talked with them (a different Greek word is used here, which indicates conversation) about the things of God until daybreak. Also, before Paul left Ephesus after the riot, he first exhorted the believers (20:1). Luke summarizes Paul’s lengthy ministry in the districts around Macedonia by saying, “he had given them much exhortation” (20:2). As we saw in Acts 2:42, the early church devoted itself to the apostles’ teaching.
Our text does not require that every sermon be four hours long (“Whew!”). Someone has said that if you’re going to preach for that long, you also have to be able to raise the dead, as Paul did! This was obviously a special occasion, the only time that this church could hear the apostle Paul; but they were willing to stay up all night to do it! It illustrates what Paul later strongly commanded Timothy, to preach the Word (2 Tim. 4:1-5).
Paul’s sermon got interrupted when this young man, Eutychus, fell asleep and fell out of the third story window to his death. The Greek word for “boy” (20:12) was often used of a young man between 7 and 14 years of age (New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. by Colin Brown [Zondervan], 1:283), although it was not always used that precisely in the New Testament (Matt. 2:16). If used in a social sense, it referred to a slave or servant. So Eutychus, whose name means “Fortunate” (or, “Lucky”), was probably a youth, perhaps a slave who had worked all day, and now was sitting on the window ledge, trying to fight off his drowsiness as he listened to Paul. Luke mentions the many lamps in the room perhaps to let us know that it was stuffy, since the lamps would have burned up some oxygen. But the boy fell asleep, fell out of the window, and was picked up dead (20:9).
Paul went down and fell upon him, embracing him much as the prophets Elijah and Elisha had done when raising dead young men to life (1 Kings 17:21; 2 Kings 4:34-35). Then he announced, “Don’t be troubled, for his life is in him” (20:10). The almost casual way that Luke describes such a stupendous miracle makes some wonder if the boy had actually died, or whether Paul just resuscitated him. I think that we should take Dr. Luke’s medical description, that he was dead. But in the context, Luke de-emphasizes the miracle by sandwiching it between Paul’s sermon and his talking with the church on through the night afterwards. He seems to be making the point that it is the teaching of God’s Word, not amazing miracles, that will sustain and strengthen the church.
The main task of a shepherd is to feed the flock (Ezek. 34:2). The trend in our day of “user-friendly” churches is to shorten the sermon into 15-minute sound bytes, since the younger generation has been reared on TV and can’t handle a longer discourse. But as J. Vernon McGee used to say, “Sermonettes produce Christianettes.” The church needs solid food from the Word to be healthy.
Paul had first planned to travel by ship from Greece to Israel, but he somehow learned of a plot by the Jews to kill him. It would have been easy for them to hit him over the head and throw him overboard en route. So he thwarted their plot by traveling north by land to Macedonia, where he then took a ship that put in at various ports along the coast of Asia.
Luke lists the names of the men who traveled with Paul (20:4). They were representatives of the various churches, entrusted with carrying their collection (which Paul had raised) to Jerusalem to help the poor believers there. We encounter some of these men in other Scriptures. Paul refers to Tychicus, for example, as “the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord” (Eph. 6:21; Col. 4:7). Many of these men were Gentiles whom Paul had seen come to Christ through his preaching. He spent time with them, teaching them and grounding them in the Scriptures. His strategy, as he explains to Timothy, was to entrust the things of God to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Tim. 2:2).
If you have known the Lord for any length of time, you should be asking God to bring into your life some men (or, women to women) who are younger in the Lord, to whom you can entrust the things God has taught you. Look for “FAT” men: Faithful, Available, and Teachable. If they are lacking any one of those qualities, you’ll be wasting your time. They must be faithful in their walk with God. They must have the time to get together. They must have teachable hearts. If you are younger in the Lord, pray that God would link you with an older brother who could do with you as Paul did with these men, to equip you for service.
For this point, I am relying on the entire context of the Book of Acts and Paul’s epistles. We learn, for example, from Romans 15:19, that Paul had preached the gospel as far as Illyricum (modern Albania and Yugoslavia). He probably did that during his stay in Macedonia (20:2). I have often wished that Luke had given us more detail of the “much exhortation” that Paul gave to the churches of Macedonia and Greece during his many months there. But we probably have that exhortation distilled in the letters that Paul wrote to these churches. It was during his three months in Corinth (20:3) that he wrote his greatest theological treatise, the epistle to the Romans.
In all of his letters, it is clear that Paul was not strengthening the church so that it could be warm and cozy in its holy huddle, isolated from the lost world. He was strengthening the churches so that they could fulfill their mission of preaching the gospel to their own regions, and sending out workers to take the gospel where Christ had not yet been preached (Rom. 15:20). Paul’s own goal was to visit Rome and then continue on to Spain (Rom. 15:24, 28). The church that turns in on itself and loses its outward focus on mission is a dying church.
Thus Paul changed the world through his commitment to establish and strengthen local churches that met on Sunday for worship and instruction. He was committed to train godly leaders for those churches who could, in turn, train others also. He was committed to strengthen these churches for mission.
From Paul’s epistles (1 Cor. 16:1-4; 2 Cor. 8 & 9; Rom. 15:25-28) it is obvious that the driving force behind his trip to Jerusalem at this time was to deliver the collection that he had raised from the Gentile churches for the poor saints in Jerusalem. And the driving force behind his urging the Gentile churches to take up this collection was his desire to see the natural wall of separation between the Jews and the Gentiles broken down in the church (Eph. 2:13-22). Beyond that, Paul was burdened for his fellow-Jews who did not yet know Christ, so much so that he said that he would be willing to be cut off from Christ if it meant their salvation (Rom. 9:1-3). He saw this practical demonstration of Christian love as a means of unifying the Jewish and Gentile believers, and as a witness to Israel of the power of the gospel to transform the Gentiles.
One of Paul’s recurring themes is the unity of the body of Christ, made up of members with diverse backgrounds, nationalities, and spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 12; Gal. 3:28; Eph. 2:13-22; 4:1-16; Col. 3:11). As you know, Jesus prayed that His followers, including those who would believe through the witness of the apostles, would be one, “so that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:20-21).
It is essential that we affirm our fellow believers in Christ, whether they belong to our denomination or not. If they truly know Christ as Savior and Lord, we are one, and we must demonstrate our unity by our love. We sin if we wrongly divide from fellow Christians over minor doctrinal issues or personal preferences.
At the same time, we would sin to affirm our “unity” with those who name Christ as Savior, but who deny doctrines that are essential to the gospel. Our unity is based on the truth (John 17:17). This is why I refuse to participate in the upcoming “unity” service in Flagstaff, since it includes churches that teach that salvation requires our works added to faith in what Christ did for us on the cross. That is another gospel, which is not a gospel at all, and on such false teachers, Paul pronounces anathema, not love (Gal. 1:6-9). So we must be discerning, being careful to maintain unity with those who hold to the essentials, but separating ourselves from those who deny the gospel of God’s grace.
I would like to ask each of you to ask yourself and to pray about the question, “How does God want to use me to impact my world for Jesus Christ?” The answer will differ with each of us, depending on our unique spiritual gifts and circumstances. But God won’t use you to change the world by accident. You’ve got to focus daily on seeking first His kingdom and righteousness.
However God may use you to change the world for Christ, He will not do it apart from your commitment to the local church. The local church is God’s appointed means for fulfilling the Great Commission. You must commit yourself to a local body of Christ where you can grow in Him and use your gifts to serve Him.
You may be thinking, “I tried that and got burned!” I understand. Paul often got burned by those whom he had led to Christ (read 2 Corinthians!). Every local church is made up of only one kind of people—sinners! You will get hurt if you commit yourself to work closely with sinners, even with redeemed sinners. But the church is God’s ordained means of teaching us how to love one another. Let’s face it, you don’t need humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance (Eph. 4:2) if you’re a hermit! You need those qualities when you’re a sinner redeemed by God’s grace, committed to work with other redeemed sinners in the great cause of glorifying the name of Jesus Christ among the nations. How does God want to use you to change the world? Commit yourself to His church and get on with it!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
When Satan wants to attack the church, he usually goes after the leadership. If he can bring down a prominent leader, or at least get people to slander him, he can discredit the entire gospel. Imagine the criticisms that could be brought against the apostle Paul if he were a modern missionary candidate! Here is how the mission board might respond to his application (I have modified this from several sources):
Dear Dr. Paul,
We have received your application to serve with our mission. Unfortunately, the board was unanimous in deciding not to accept you as a candidate with our mission. We want to be as honest as possible, so that you can address what we see as some serious deficiencies in your character and past service.
First, we understand that you have never had sufficient financial support in your missionary labors. Working on the side to support yourself is unacceptable to this board. If a man does not have the faith to trust God for full support, we think that he is not qualified to serve on the mission field.
Second, we have heard that you have been brash and outspoken about your own views. Specifically, we heard that you publicly criticized Dr. Simon Peter and that you contended so strongly with some of our ministers that a special council had to be convened at Jerusalem to prevent a church split. We cannot condone such radicalism. We are enclosing a copy of Darius Carnegie’s book, “How to Win Jews and Influence Greeks.” We encourage you to read it.
Also, we understand that you have not graduated from an accredited seminary. We are glad that you learned a lot during your three years in Arabia, but that does not count. Also, in our background check, we discovered that you used to be a violent man to the point of persecuting the church. Even since your conversion, you have been in jail on more than one occasion. You caused so much trouble for the businessmen of Ephesus that it led to a riot. If it were an isolated incident, that might be one thing. But a pattern of causing enough trouble to lead to your being beaten on several occasions and even being stoned once shows an underlying problem on your part. We would advise a counseling program where you could learn some basic relational skills.
Our background check further revealed that you have numerous critics and enemies, even in some of the churches that you supposedly founded. Some of those critics in Corinth challenge whether it was you or Apollos who had the most influence there. We also learned the details about your falling out with the fine young minister, John Mark, and your refusal to cooperate with Barnabas. We have talked with Hymenaeus and Alexander, who said that you delivered them over to Satan! We believe that such extreme measures are uncalled for! A more tolerant and less judgmental approach would be more in the spirit of our gentle Savior.
Apart from these serious flaws, we have heard that you are prone to preach too long, not being sensitive to your audience. We heard that one young man actually fell to his death while you droned on and on! You need to get in tune with the younger generation that has been raised on TV. Fifteen-minute sermons are the maximum that they can endure. We advise you to use more stories and less doctrine in your messages. Have you considered using a drama team instead of a sermon once in a while?
You admit on your application that you cannot remember those whom you have baptized. A good record-keeping system would help you to be more organized. Also, your resume shows that you have never ministered in one place longer than three years. This pattern of moving on to new works shows that you lack perseverance. Our staff psychologist also suggests that it may reflect a pattern of running from your problems rather than a commitment to work through them.
We share all of these things out of love and concern for you. We want you to succeed in whatever the Lord has for you. But we strongly believe that you would do best in something other than missions. The stresses of the mission field could lead to a complete nervous breakdown. Perhaps a good Christian counselor could help you begin to work through some of these problems. We wish you God’s best.
Sincerely, The Antioch Mission Board
Our text records Paul’s last encounter with the Ephesian elders. He wanted to get to Jerusalem by the Day of Pentecost, so he did not stop in Ephesus, which would have delayed him too long. So he sent and had the Ephesian elders come to him while his ship was in port at Miletus, about 30 miles south as the crow flies, but longer on the road. The elders were probably the pastors of the numerous house churches that met all over Ephesus. Probably many of them were the original twelve men that he met with in the school of Tyrannus (19:1-10) The title “elder” describes the maturity required for the office. In 20:28, Paul calls these same men “overseers” (bishops), which focuses on their main task, to superintend matters in the church.
This is our only example in Acts of a sermon addressed to Christians, or more specifically, to church leaders. Apparently, some of Paul’s critics had been at work in Ephesus, trying to undermine him as a man of God and leader. This comes through in his repeatedly saying, “you yourselves know” (20:18, 34), and his reminding them of his character and way of life when he had been with them. He is clearly defending himself and at the same time showing us some qualities of godly church leadership. In a day when many church leaders have fallen into serious sin, the vitality of the church depends on our recovering these godly leadership qualities. Even if you are not a church leader, every fruitful Christian should be growing in these four qualities seen in our text:
A godly leader is marked by a servant attitude, transparent integrity, godly character, and faithful biblical teaching.
Paul’s servant attitude flavors this entire message, but he mentions specifically that he was “serving the Lord” (20:19). The word “serving” is the verb related to the noun “bond-servant” or slave. Paul often referred to himself as a bond-servant of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:1; Gal. 1:10; Col. 1:7; 4:7; Titus 1:1). It was the way he viewed himself, and the way that every Christian should view himself. We do not belong to ourselves; we are slaves of Jesus Christ. We should do all that we do to please Him. If we have a sphere of service, we received it from Him (Acts 20:24).
This means that a leader primarily serves the Lord, and only secondarily serves the church. He will answer to God someday for how he fulfilled the stewardship entrusted to Him. I realize that sometimes a self-willed man will use that as an excuse for being unaccountable to anyone. If his board questions his behavior, he piously answers, “I don’t need to answer to you; I answer to God!” That is a cop out. Everyone needs to be accountable.
But there is a legitimate sense in which a godly leader realizes that he will answer to God, and it keeps him from becoming a man-pleaser. As Paul said (Gal. 1:10), “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ” (see also, 1 Thess. 2:4). This sense of pleasing God rather than men allows a godly leader to confront sin when necessary, and to preach difficult truth when necessary (more on this in a moment).
When a man truly sees himself as a servant of Jesus Christ, he will take up the towel and basin as Jesus did (John 13:1-17), and serve others out of love. Lording it over others is the world’s way. Christ’s way is that the greatest among us should be the servant of all (Mark 10:42-45).
Paul said, “You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time” (20:18). He later mentions that he was with them “night and day for a period of three years” (20:31). He was referring to spending a lot of time with these men, but I think that he was also referring to living his life openly before them. They had seen how he lived. He didn’t put on a front when he was with them, but then live differently when he was away from them. He had nothing to hide.
Integrity means that what you are in private or at home is the same as what you are in public. Your life is a single fabric. This stems from the first quality, that you are aware that you are serving the Lord, who knows every thought and motive of the heart.
In the 1940’s, a preacher named Will Houghton served as the President of Moody Bible Institute. An agnostic man, who was contemplating suicide, decided that if he could find a minister who lived his faith, he would listen to him. So he hired a private detective to watch Houghton. When the investigator’s report came back, it revealed that this preacher’s life was above reproach. He was for real. The agnostic went to Houghton’s church, trusted in Christ, and later sent his daughter to Moody Bible Institute (“Our Daily Bread,” 11/83). Leaders must be men of godly integrity.
Many godly character qualities could be listed, such as the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). But three qualities stand out here:
You have probably heard it said that as soon as you think that you’ve attained humility, you’ve lost it. But that’s not true. Paul here mentions his own humility. Jesus described Himself as gentle and humble in heart (Matt. 11:29). Moses described himself as the most humble man on the face of the earth (Num. 12:3)! So apparently, you can know when you are humble without being proud of it. What does it mean to be humble?
In a nutshell, biblical humility is a conscious awareness of your utter dependence on Jesus Christ. We see it in Paul when he explains, “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God” (2 Cor. 3:5). We see it when he says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. 4:4). He confronts the pride of the Corinthians when he asks, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7). A humble person is continually aware that all that he is stems from God’s grace. His confidence is not in himself, but in the Lord, so that he is quick to give the glory to God in every situation.
I recently received a promotional letter from some folks in the church growth movement that reported a study that reveals “that although successful leaders have many strengths and various factors in common, there is only one factor that all successful leaders have in common—self-confidence” (emphasis in original). Having concluded that self-confidence is an essential quality for successful leaders, they proceeded to develop a tool that would help pastors develop confidence in themselves (I’m not making this up!).
But in the context of warning us about the deceitfulness of the heart, the Bible strongly warns against self-confidence (Jer. 17:5-9). True, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Phil. 4:13). But there is a huge difference between confidence in Christ in us and confidence in ourselves. A godly leader depends on Christ and is quick to share his own weaknesses (2 Chron. 20:12; 2 Cor. 12:5-10). That is the essence of biblical humility.
These qualities are behind the word “tears” (20:19). He again mentions his tears in 20:31, in the context of admonishing these elders, especially with regard to false teaching. There are more tears, both on Paul’s and the elders’ part, when they accompany Paul to the ship for their final goodbye (20:37). Paul’s tears showed how much he cared about these men, and the feelings were mutual. As the old saying goes, “People don’t care how much you know unless they know how much you care.”
Paul was moved to tears when he heard of Christians who were not walking obediently to Christ. He wrote to the Corinthians, “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears; not so that you would be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which I have especially for you” (2 Cor. 2:4). If you need to correct someone who has fallen into sin or serious error, make sure that the person senses your genuine love and concern.
The Ephesian elders had seen Paul go through the trials that came upon him through the plots of the Jews (20:19). The Book of Acts does not record any such plots in Ephesus, although it does report several other such plots of the Jews in other cities (9:23; 20:3; 23:12), and so it is not difficult to assume that the same thing had happened in Ephesus. The Ephesian elders had also seen Paul’s behavior when the Gentiles rioted against him. In all of these situations, they saw Paul, even though he despaired of life itself, trust all the more in God (2 Cor. 1:8-10). He didn’t grow bitter and rage against God that He wasn’t being fair. He didn’t lash out at the Jews in vengeance. He submitted to God’s mighty hand and cast his cares upon Him (1 Pet. 5:6-7).
Thus a godly leader is marked by a servant attitude, by transparent integrity, and by godly character that includes humility, love, and steadfastness in trials. Finally,
Verses 20 & 21 reveal five aspects of faithful teaching:
“I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable.” This implies that some things that are profitable are difficult to receive, and thus difficult to teach. If Paul had been seeking to please men, he would have dodged these truths. If he had wanted to be a popular speaker, he would have chosen other subjects. But because he sought to please God, and because he knew that these truths were profitable for spiritual growth and health, he plainly taught what God wanted him to teach.
What were some of these truths? I think that we can surmise a few of them by reading Ephesians, which he later wrote to this church. He begins by talking about the doctrines of God’s sovereign election and predestination (1:4-5). He goes on to talk about human depravity, that we were all dead in our trespasses and sins (2:1). Because of this, salvation is totally from God’s grace, not from our merit or works (2:5-9). He shows how the wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles is broken down in Christ (2:11-22). All of these doctrines level human pride and exalt the cross of Jesus Christ. Because they rob man of any basis for pride, people stumble over these truths. But like health food, they are profitable for spiritual health, and so Paul taught them, and so should we.
Paul taught what was profitable or helpful for spiritual growth and health. He warns Timothy about those who teach things that lead to mere speculation and fruitless discussion, rather than furthering God’s provision which is by faith (1 Tim. 1:4-7). As he studies the Bible, a faithful Bible teacher always asks, “So what? What difference should this Scripture make in my life (first), and in the lives of those whom I teach?” Sound application always comes out of sound interpretation of a biblical text in its context. You should be able to look at your Bible and say, “Yes, I see that this is what God wants me to do.”
Paul taught these men publicly and from house to house. Paul taught these men in the school of Tyrannus, in the house church meetings, when they heard him preach in the Jewish synagogues, and in their various homes as they shared meals or got together socially. Sometimes it was the entire group at once. At other times, he met individually with one man to help him understand some doctrine or work through a personal problem biblically. The informal times reveal that Paul always loved to talk about the things of God with these men. He was constantly interacting with them about Scripture because it was central in his life.
Paul “solemnly testified” both to Jews and Greeks about repentance and faith. The word pictures a person under oath in a courtroom, solemnly swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Paul realized that the eternal destiny of souls was at stake, and he didn’t take his preaching assignment lightly.
There is a place for some humor in the pulpit, but it is easy to abuse humor so as to convey that we are not in dead earnest about eternal issues. I recently heard a sermon on a cassette, and I came away thinking that the preacher came across like a stand up comedian. His content would have been fine if he had conveyed it in earnest, but his repeated humor made it seem like a light-hearted, don’t take it too seriously, kind of message. A faithful biblical teacher should convey the seriousness of the gospel.
Some say that repentance toward God applies to the Gentiles, and faith in our Lord Jesus to the Jews. But there is no grammatical reason to take it that way, and the fact is, both groups need both qualities. Repentance and faith are the flip sides of the same coin. They are different ways of looking at the requirement for salvation, but you can’t separate them from one another. Repentance means turning from our sin toward God. It is impossible to turn toward the holy God and at the same time consciously holding on to your sin. Repentance is the heart-felt cry, “O God, I have sinned against You, but I don’t want to live that way any longer. Have mercy on me, the sinner!”
Faith is the hand that lays hold of God’s provision in Christ. Faith looks to Christ as the righteousness that I need to stand before a holy God. Faith looks to Christ as the pardon for all my sins through His shed blood. Faith in the Lord Jesus means that I am not trusting in my own righteousness in any way, but only in Jesus as my mediator and advocate. Both faith and repentance are God’s gifts, not a matter of human merit (Acts 11:18; Eph. 2:8-9).
And just as we begin the Christian life through repentance and faith, so we should go on living daily by repentance and faith (Col. 2:6). As God’s Word shines into the dark areas of our lives, we turn from our sins and we trust in all that Christ is for us and in us. That is the Christian walk, repenting and believing, repenting and believing. Christ Himself is the object and sum of our faith.
Whether you are in an official leadership position or not, you should be growing in these four areas. Are you just living for yourself, or are you developing a servant’s attitude? Are you living a double life, or are you growing in godly integrity? What about your character? Are you growing in humility, in love and concern for others, and in steadfastness in trials? And, while you may not have the gift of teaching, you should be growing in understanding and applying all of God’s Word to all of your life and then sharing what you are learning with others. Congressman J. C. Watts said, “To say America can have strong leadership without strong character is to say we can get water without the wet” (Reader’s Digest [12/98], p. 39). The same is true for the church!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
It’s easy to begin something new. Maybe it’s a new diet or exercise program, a new job, or a new relationship with someone special. There is always a sense of excitement about a new beginning. But life isn’t a 50-yard dash; it’s a marathon. The trick is not just to begin well, but to finish well. I have known many who have gotten excited about serving the Lord in some way. They started with gusto. But then they got hit with criticism. They found that people didn’t respond to their ministry as positively as they had hoped. They got into conflicts with their fellow workers. Perhaps the stress spilled over into their marriages. So after a few years, they left the ministry with a lot of bitterness and cynicism.
None of us want that to happen to us. Paul did not want that to happen to the elders in Ephesus. He wanted them, just as we want for ourselves, to sprint across the finish line, not to drop out of the race. He is sharing from his own life the secrets of a ministry that runs strong until the end of life. In his final letter to Timothy, he declared, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7).
The secret to Paul’s strong finish is summed up in verse 24. I have a difficult task today: I want to convince you that verse 24 not only applied to the apostle Paul, but that it applies to each of you that knows Christ as Savior and Lord. Paul did not consider his own life of any account as dear to himself, in order that he might finish his course, the ministry that he received from the Lord Jesus. Paul is saying that to finish the race, he put his ministry above even life itself. In the same way,
To finish the course, you must put the ministry that you received from the Lord above even life itself.
You may be thinking, “That’s fine for the apostle Paul or for those who have been called to the ministry or mission field. But, hey, I’m just a layman.” Let’s begin with a basic biblical truth:
There is no such thing in the Bible as a Christian without a ministry! We have fallen into a wrong way of thinking, where some who are super-committed go into “the ministry,” but everyone else just putters around at serving the Lord in their spare time as volunteers. It is significant that every time in Scripture that the subject of spiritual gifts is mentioned, it uses the word “each” or “every” (Rom. 12:3; 1 Cor. 12:7; Eph. 4:7, 16; 1 Pet. 4:10). As Peter puts it, “As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” Every Christian has received a gift from God. Every Christian will give an account to God of his stewardship in using that gift for God’s purposes, as Jesus taught in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30).
Thus whether you’re a waiter, an accountant, a carpenter, or a housewife, if you’re a Christian you must see yourself as being in the ministry, just as I’m in the ministry. I happen to get supported by my ministry and you may not. In that matter, you are more like the apostle Paul than I am! He chose to work in a “secular” job to pay his bills. Ministry is not just a task or sphere of service; it is a mentality or way of thinking that permeates all of life. Seeing yourself in the ministry means that you are available to God 24-7, to use you to help others draw near to God. It may mean serving someone in a practical way by meeting a need. It may mean sharing the gospel with an unbeliever or encouraging a believer by listening to his problems or by sharing relevant Scriptures. You can minister through giving or through prayer.
But whatever form it takes, ministry means not focusing on yourself, but on others by being available to God to work through your life. You won’t fulfill the ministry that God has given you if you aren’t even aware that you are in the ministry! But, you are! Maybe you’re thinking, “I’d like to do that some day, but right now I’m just too busy to serve God.” Consider this second point:
Paul tells them that he is “bound in spirit,” on his way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to him there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testified to him in every city that bonds and afflictions awaited him (20:22-23). But this did not deter Paul or make him decide that it was time to move to that nice retirement community on the Aegean Sea, where he could play golf every day.
Why not? Why didn’t Paul think, “Bonds and afflictions don’t sound like a happy future. I think I’ll opt for an easier course.” Because Paul didn’t see himself as a volunteer for Jesus. He saw himself as a conscript under orders from his commander.
It’s difficult to determine whether the phrase “bound in spirit” should be spirit with a small “s” or with a capital “S.” Some translations take it one way, and some the other. Some take it that Paul had an inner compulsion to go to Jerusalem, but it was not from the Holy Spirit. It was Paul’s own idea. Donald Grey Barnhouse goes so far as to say that Paul was sinning by going there (Acts: An Expositional Commentary [Zondervan], pp. 185-187)!
But since Luke does not give us any hint that Paul was sinning or making a serious blunder here (or in 19:21), and since Paul was a man who walked in close fellowship with Christ, I conclude that it was the Holy Spirit impelling Paul to go to Jerusalem, while at the same time warning him of the hardships that he would encounter there. In other words, Paul saw himself as a conscript who had been drafted into the Lord’s army. He was under orders. So he sought to obey what he believed the Holy Spirit was commanding him to do.
All too often, the church conveys the wrong message, that we are looking for volunteers to serve Jesus. The problem with that view is, if you can choose to serve, then you can also choose not to serve or to quit serving if the service isn’t to your liking. But conscripts don’t have a choice. If you get drafted, you serve in the army because you were chosen to serve. You may not like the food, you may not like your living quarters, and you may not like where the army assigns you to go. But you serve anyway because you are under orders.
That’s how Christians ought to see themselves. If Christ bought you with His blood, you belong to Him as His slave. Slaves don’t choose to serve. They’re under orders. If the service isn’t pleasant or fun, they’re not free to quit. To finish the course, we need to see ourselves as conscripts, not volunteers.
Paul did not consider his own life of any account as dear to himself. If following Christ meant hardship, slander, imprisonment, or death, he had settled the issue long ago. He was willing to die for the Savior who had died for him. When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the captain of the ship sought to turn him back. “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages,” he cried. Calvert replied, “We died before we came here.” Those faithful missionaries had signed over their lives to Jesus.
Again, there is the mistaken idea in evangelical circles that there are two options for the Christian life. The most popular option is to sign up to go to church when it’s convenient, drop a few bucks in the offering plate now and then, and live for the American dream of accumulating enough money and stuff to live a comfortable life. If you have time, you may decide to volunteer at church, but only if it’s convenient. Your priority in life, under this option, is to enjoy yourself, live a good life, and someday to retire and spend the last 15 years of your life driving around America in your motor home, or playing golf in sunny Arizona.
The second option is not so popular. It’s only for gung-ho types, who probably signed up for the Green Berets during Vietnam. In this option, you’re admittedly something of a fanatic. You give up the American dream and any right to your own will in order to serve Jesus. You live a pared-down lifestyle and give away lots of money to the Lord’s work. Or, you may even give up the comforts of America and go live in difficult conditions to reach people for Jesus. As a missionary, nobody expects you to live at the same comfort level as the folks back home do. If you did, your commitment to the cause would be suspect! But the folks back home aren’t called to the same level of commitment as you are! You’re called to deny yourself because you’re on the missionary track of commitment. They have not been called to that.
But look at Mark 8:34-35. Jesus was speaking not only to His disciples, but also to the crowd: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.” In the context, Jesus wasn’t calling people to some super-committed discipleship track. When He called people to radical self-denial, to the point of death (as “taking up your cross” implies), He was calling them to salvation! Every follower of Jesus, not just a few super-committed, is called to this total, all-out, lay-down-your-life kind of commitment! Jesus is pretty graphic about what He will do with those who profess to know Him, but are lukewarm in their commitment: He will vomit them out of His mouth (Rev. 3:16). So if on a scale of 1-10 you’d rate your commitment to Jesus as 5 or 6, you’d better turn up the heat! You need to be totally surrendered to Jesus and His will, even if it means hardship to the point of martyrdom.
The Bible makes it clear that following Jesus will mean hardship at some level. Not everyone will be tortured or martyred, but Paul plainly states, “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). As he encouraged the new believers in Galatia, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). He urged the Thessalonians not to be disturbed by their afflictions, because “we have been destined for this. For indeed when we were with you, we kept telling you in advance that we were going to suffer affliction; and so it came to pass, as you know” (1 Thess. 3:3-4).
You may be thinking, “Why would I want to sign over my life to Jesus if it means that I can expect hardship and affliction?” The answer is, because the only other option is to live for yourself and worldly pleasure here and now, and face God’s judgment and wrath in hell for eternity! Remember, if you try to save your life by living for yourself, you’ll lose it. But if you sign your life over to Jesus and the gospel, you’ll save it. Those are the words of Jesus Christ, not of Steve Cole!
Once you entrust your life totally to Christ, you don’t need to live in fear of the future, because your future is in His hands. Thankfully, God doesn’t let us know the details about what will happen to us in the future. I’ve often thought that I wouldn’t want to know what King Hezekiah knew, that he had 15 more years to live. Think of the anxiety as you faced the final countdown! The Holy Spirit told Paul that bonds and afflictions awaited him, but nothing more. We should live each day all-out for the Lord, knowing that if He brings trials into our lives, He will also give us the grace to endure them. But we must live in light of eternity, not for the fleeting pleasures of this life only. The only way to live in light of eternity is to be totally abandoned to Jesus Christ here and now, trusting in Him in every trial.
Thus, to finish the course, you must recognize that God has entrusted a ministry to you and that you are a conscript, not a volunteer. You must sign over your life to Jesus Christ, expecting hardship as you follow Him.
To finish the course, Paul said that he needed “to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God” (20:24). Not everyone is called to be a preacher or missionary, as Paul was. But with whatever gifts God has entrusted to us, the bottom line is the same: we must be faithful by our lives and words to the gospel of the grace of God. If our lives and words betray the gospel of God’s grace, we are in some sense guilty of the blood of those who were tainted by our failure (20:26). If our lives and our words bear witness to the gospel of God’s grace, we are innocent of the blood of those who came in contact with our witness.
Paul here is referring to God’s words to Ezekiel, that He had appointed him as a watchman over Israel. If the watchman sees the enemy coming and doesn’t sound the warning, he is liable for the city’s destruction. But if he sounds the warning and the people ignore him, he has delivered himself; their blood is on their own heads (Ezek. 3:17-21; 33:1-9).
I confess that I do not totally understand what the Lord means when he tells Ezekiel that He will require the blood of wicked men from Ezekiel’s hand if he doesn’t warn them of impending judgment. It must mean a loss of rewards in heaven, because Ezekiel was clearly a saved man who could not be eternally condemned. But whatever it means, it’s a scary warning! More than once God has used that warning to give me the courage to confront someone who was in sin. I feel a need to deliver myself before God, whether the person I confront likes me or not.
If you want to be innocent of the blood of all men, keep your eye on the finish line. There you are, standing before the Judge of the whole earth. To hear “well done,” your life and, as God gives opportunity, your words, must bear witness to the gospel of God’s grace. His gospel of grace is the good news that He will pardon guilty sinners who trust in Christ. But it also includes the bad news that He will eternally damn all who trust in themselves or their own good works, thereby spurning what Christ did on the cross. If people are not convicted about their sin before a holy God, they will not flee to Christ for refuge from God’s wrath.
Paul uses the phrase “preaching the kingdom” (20:25) as parallel with “the gospel of the grace of God” (20:24). The kingdom is the realm where Jesus is Lord and King. Our lives and words must bear witness to the lordship of Jesus if we want to hear “well done” when we cross the finish line. So keep your eye on that goal, to bear witness of the gospel of God’s grace and of the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Paul told these men, “For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God” (20:27). That phrase implies that Paul was balanced in teaching the full breadth of God’s Word. Heresy is often truth out of balance. Paul didn’t ride theological hobbyhorses. He refers to God’s purpose in Ephesians 1:11, where he says that we have been “predestined according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will.” We do not proclaim the whole counsel of God if we tiptoe around the doctrine of God’s sovereign predestination (see also, Acts 2:23; 4:28; 2 Tim. 1:9). On the other hand, we do not proclaim the whole purpose of God if we fail to teach what Scripture so plainly teaches, that every person is responsible for his sins and that everyone is commanded to repent and to trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord (Acts 16:31; 17:30). Both doctrines are true.
As Paul explains in Ephesians 3:1-12, the purpose of God includes the mystery, that the Gentiles are now fellow members of the body of Christ through the gospel. That was a hard teaching for the Jews to swallow, but Paul taught it. Teaching the whole purpose of God means that we don’t dodge the hard truths of God’s Word. If His Word reproves sin, we reprove sin. If it corrects wrong thinking, we correct wrong thinking.
You may not be gifted to preach and teach God’s Word, but you are responsible to grow to understand the whole purpose of God and through whatever gifts He has given you, to impart your understanding to others.
John G. Paton was born in Scotland in 1824. He was reared in a godly home and came to personal faith in Christ. As a young man, he worked in an inner city mission in Scotland. But the Lord put it upon his heart to go as a missionary to the fierce cannibals of the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific. In 1839, the first missionaries to these islands had been clubbed to death, cooked, and eaten within a few minutes of landing. About ten years later, some other missionaries had landed on another of the islands where the natives showed an interest in their teachings, and the Lord gave them about 3,500 converts in a short period of time. They needed help in the work.
So in 1857, just 18 years after the first martyrs had shed their blood on the beach of the New Hebrides, Paton strongly sensed God’s call on his life to offer himself for missionary service there. He immediately met with strong opposition from many that knew him. They argued that he was leaving a certain ministry that God had obviously blessed for an uncertain future where he might throw his life away among the cannibals. His converts needed him and besides, there were plenty of heathen at home to reach. Why go half way around the world to reach these savages? He was even offered a free house and was told to name his salary, on condition that he would stay at home! But these temptations only served to confirm his calling to go to the South Seas.
Among the many who sought to deter him was one old Christian gentleman, whose crowning argument was always, “The Cannibals! You will be eaten by Cannibals!” Finally, Paton replied, “Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer” (John G. Paton Autobiography [Banner of Truth], p. 56).
Paton lost his wife and infant son within a few months of their arrival. He lived in almost daily danger of his life. But God spared him and he lived to age 83, spending his final years traveling around the world publicizing and raising support for the mission. Late in life he said, “Oh that I had my life to begin again! I would consecrate it anew to Jesus in seeking the conversion of the remaining Cannibals on the New Hebrides” (p. 496).
John Paton finished his course because he put the ministry that he received from the Lord Jesus above even life itself. I hope that I have convinced you that you need to do the same thing.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
“All right, let’s come to order. We’ve got a lot of business to take care of tonight. First on our agenda is what color to paint the social hall. There will be a work day at the church in two weeks, and we need to decide. It’s been green for as long as I remember, but I think we need a change. Let’s paint it off-white. Yes, Bob?”
“If you paint it off-white, you’re going to have a rebellion on your hands! Some of our members have been used to a green social hall for 40 years. They might withhold their giving if you change the color!”
“Okay, let’s take a vote. All in favor of off-white? Two. All in favor of green? Five. It stays green. Ernie, will you buy the paint?”
“Our second agenda item concerns the offerings. They’ve been down lately. We need to figure out some ways to get them back up to par. Any ideas?”
That sort of church leadership meeting probably sounds familiar if you’ve been involved with very many churches. In many churches, the leadership board functions pretty much like the board of any organization, following Robert’s Rules of Order, taking care of business decisions, and voting on matters in democratic fashion. It is often assumed that the pastor takes care of the spiritual needs of the church, while the board, elected by the congregation, takes care of the business of the church.
Thankfully, that is not the way our elder board functions, because I believe that the common way described above is not in line with Scripture. It is important for all of us to understand biblically what church leaders should do. Our text, which is at the heart of Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian elders, gives us a biblical job description for church leaders. It shows us that …
The main job of church leaders is to shepherd God’s flock.
Before we look at how Paul tells the church leaders to do that task, let’s clarify some terms and concepts that may not be clear because of cultural ways of viewing church government. First, the leadership in a local church is always plural, not singular. Paul “called to him the elders of the church” (20:17). Every time in the Bible the term elder is used with reference to a local church, it is in the plural (Acts 11:30; 14:23; 15:2; Titus 1:5). The only time that the New Testament refers to a single man who seemed to be running a local church, it is not positive (Diotrephes, who loved to be first among them, 3 John 9-10). The Lord knows the propensity of the fallen human heart to abuse power, and so He designed leadership in the local church to be multiple, not singular, to check that tendency and to provide the wisdom of several over one.
Second, the leaders in the local church are referred to by various terms. “Elder” comes mainly from the Jewish synagogue, whereas “overseer” comes from the Greek culture (F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts [Eerdmans, p. 416, note 56), but they are used in the New Testament to refer to the same men (Acts 20:17, 28; 1 Tim. 3:1; 5:17; Titus 1:5, 7). The term “elder” focuses on the necessary maturity of the man, whereas “overseer” focuses on the main responsibility, to superintend or manage the local church. The term “pastor” looks at the leader from the metaphor of a shepherd (Acts 20:28; Eph. 4:11; 1 Pet. 5:1-4). Sometimes the term “leaders” is used (Heb. 13:7, 17, 24, from one Greek verb; Rom. 12:8; 1 Thess. 5:12, from another Greek verb).
In 1 Timothy 5:17-18, Paul distinguishes between elders who rule well and work hard at preaching and teaching, who are worthy of financial support; and, the other elders, who presumably did not receive such support. In modern terms, the pastoral staff is generally made up of the teaching elders who are supported. The other elders support themselves by an outside job and thus cannot devote as much time to the church. But this should not imply a distinction between so-called “clergy” and “laity,” because every Christian is in the ministry, as we saw last week.
Hebrews 13:17 commands church members to obey their leaders and submit to them (a radical concept in our day!), because “they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account” (a scary thought for church leaders!). This implies that the local church is not to be governed as a pure democracy, where the congregation has ultimate authority. That authority and responsibility for the spiritual condition of the church before God lies with the leaders. Of course the leaders must be accountable to the Lord, to one another, and to the congregation (1 Tim. 5:19-20). Wise leaders should involve the congregation in major decisions (Acts 6:2-3).
The main idea of New Testament church government is that the risen Lord Jesus Christ is the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4; Heb. 13:20) or head (Eph. 5:23) of His church. The church, through the leadership of the elders, is corporately to seek the mind of the Lord for His church. This requires that every member, but especially the leaders, walk closely in dependence upon the Lord, in knowledge of and obedience to His Word. This is far different than a democracy where everyone “votes his mind” and the majority vote wins.
With that as background, let’s examine how Paul says that church leaders should shepherd God’s flock. They must be on guard for themselves first, and then for all the flock.
The verb translated “be on guard” has the nuance of turning one’s mind to, or attending to. The opposite would be to neglect or be oblivious to something. Before a man can shepherd God’s flock, he must shepherd his own soul. Before he gives oversight to a body of people, he must give oversight to his own walk with God. Church leaders must practice what they preach by applying God’s Word to themselves first. Elders are to be examples to the flock (1 Pet. 5:3), which requires paying attention to themselves. Our spiritual lives do not run on auto-pilot. We must constantly pay attention or we will get off course. We can break this down into three broad areas:
Proverbs 4:23 states, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” God does not look on the outward person, but at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7; 2 Chron. 16:9). His penetrating Word judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb. 4:12). Thus a primary requirement for every church leader is often to examine his heart in the light of Scripture, confessing and repenting of all sin so that he grows in true godliness.
This is where every leader must be brutally honest with himself before God. If we play games here, we become like the Pharisees, whom Jesus condemned as hypocrites. They were like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness on the inside (Matt. 23:27). It’s easy to look good on the outside before the church, especially if you’re involved in preaching and teaching. Everyone thinks, “What a godly man!” But all the while, if you’re not walking honestly before God in your heart, you can be secretly engaging in lust, pride, greed, and all manner of evil. When I teach on an area where I struggle, I try to be honest about that fact with those I am teaching, so that I don’t fall into hypocrisy.
So we have to do business with God, beginning on the thought level. Am I taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-5)? Am I judging wrong attitudes toward God and others? Am I submitting in my heart to God’s dealings with me? Am I developing the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) and the qualities required of elders (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9)? Is my love for God growing or declining? Being on guard for myself means paying attention to my heart before God.
Paul goes on to warn the elders of the dangers of falling into false doctrine (20:20). Elders must be able to teach (1 Tim. 3:2). They must hold fast the faithful word so that they “will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:9). This does not mean that every elder will have the gift of teaching publicly, but every elder should be knowledgeable enough about biblical truth to be able to spot false teaching and to set forth what Scripture teaches. Part of being able to teach is to be teachable and growing in your grasp of biblical and systematic theology. Not every elder will have the opportunity to study theology in a seminary, but every elder should be reading and growing in his overall grasp of biblical truth.
I have seen pastors who can preach well and they know the Bible and theology, but they are abrasive or insensitive to others. Sometimes they are nice to church members, but they verbally abuse their wives and children. But a primary qualification for an elder is that he manage his own household well (1 Tim. 3:4). That certainly includes maintaining biblically loving relationships with his family. If we lose our temper and yell at our mates or children, we should be quick to confess it to the Lord and to seek the forgiveness of the ones we sinned against. And we need to take the necessary steps to gain control over anger. “The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). A quick-tempered man is not qualified to be an elder (Titus 1:7).
Also, it is crucial for every elder to guard his relationships with the opposite sex. When a church leader falls into sexual sin, the name of Christ is dishonored and many in the church and outside of it are hurt. If an elder is distant from his wife and is growing close or is attracted to another woman, he is in serious danger and needs to seek help immediately. Every elder must avoid situations where he could be tempted. He should not flirt or do anything that opens the door for unfaithfulness.
So the first requirement for shepherding God’s flock is to shepherd yourself by paying close attention to your heart before God, to your doctrine, and to your relationships. We cannot minister to others if our own lives are not exemplary.
A shepherd who does not pay attention to the flock is a negligent shepherd. In Ezekiel 34, God condemns the shepherds of Israel who fed themselves but did not feed the flock. Rather, they used the flock for their own purposes and did not care when the flock was scattered and prey for wolves. Paul here gives the mandate, the model, and the motivation for paying close attention to God’s flock.
Elders (or overseers) are to desire the office (1 Tim. 3:1), but they do not “run for office” in political fashion. Graduating from an accredited seminary is not by itself a sufficient reason to put a man into the office of pastor-teacher. The church should never put a man into the office of elder because he contributes a lot of money to the church or because he is a leader in the business world or because everyone likes him. Especially the church should never put a man into office in an attempt to get him involved!
Paul reminds these Ephesian elders that the Holy Spirit appointed [lit. Greek] them as elders. What did he mean? In Acts 14:23, we see Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey appointing elders in the various churches after a time of prayer and fasting. In Titus 1:5, Paul tells Titus that he is to appoint elders as Paul directed, and then Paul lists the necessary qualifications. F. F. Bruce is thus correct when he states (ibid.), “Probably the reference to the Holy Spirit here does not mean that their appointment to this sacred ministry had been commanded by prophetic utterance in the church, but rather that they were so appointed and recognized because they were manifestly men on whom the Holy Spirit had bestowed the requisite qualifications for the work.”
This is why I dislike saying that we are going to vote for new elders. It is better to say that we are going to recognize new elders. In other words, by the consensus of the body, we acknowledge that a man approximates (no one fulfills them perfectly) the qualifications listed in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. This is why we do not take last minute nominations for elder from the floor at our annual meeting. Every candidate for elder must first fill out an extensive questionnaire and answer some very personal questions. The elders go over this with him, clarifying any areas where there may be questions. If during the screening process, anyone in the body knows a reason why this man should not be an elder, they need to bring it to the attention of the elders. Our aim is to recognize men as elders on whom the Holy Spirit has already bestowed the requisite qualifications for the work.
Paul refers to the church as a flock and tells the leaders that their job is to shepherd this flock. The metaphor was much more familiar in biblical times than in our culture, where many of us have never observed a flock of sheep for any longer than it takes to drive by on the road and say, “Look, a flock of sheep!” While books are written on it, I must limit myself to three aspects of what it means to shepherd God’s flock:
The good shepherd cares for every aspect of his flock’s well being. Paul mentions all the flock; no one should be overlooked or ignored. A shepherd will genuinely care about every person in the church, desiring that each one grow in Christ. Paul told the Thessalonians, “But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.” He goes on to remind them of how he had exhorted, encouraged, and implored each one as a father would his own children (1 Thess. 2:7-8, 11).
Caring about people involves effort. If that were not so, Paul would not have had to command these elders to pay close attention to all the flock. It’s always easier just to talk to the people you know at church, rather than to meet new people. It takes effort (a great deal of effort for some of us!) to try to remember names. I try to write down the names of new people I meet soon after talking with them. I go over the list of visitors who fill out the welcome slip. While some are more naturally gifted at remembering names, all of us need to work at it.
Beyond the effort to remember names, it takes effort and time to get together with people and get to know them. As an elder spends time with people, he needs to be observant regarding where the person is at with the Lord. An overseer needs to see (the word comes from a word meaning “watchman”)! Does this person know Christ as Savior and Lord? Is there evidence that he is walking with the Lord? Did that sarcastic remark toward his wife reflect a need in his marriage? Did the way he snapped at his kids reveal a problem with anger? You can’t care for people spiritually and help them to grow in Christ if you don’t make the effort to observe them and know where they’re at. Caring relationships are the basis for influencing people for Christ.
Again, not every elder is devoted to preaching and teaching (1 Tim. 5:17), but every elder must be able to teach so that he can help people deal with their problems and grow in their faith. God’s flock today is scattering into worldly areas such as psychology for answers to life’s problems because the shepherds have not shown them the sufficiency of Scripture for all of life and godliness. A question that I have repeatedly asked my Christian psychologist friends is, “Can you name a single emotional, relational, or spiritual problem where the Bible lacks an answer that psychology provides?” I have yet to get a substantial answer to that question!
I will cover this more next week (20:29-31), and so I only mention it in passing. Shepherds need the biblical discernment to spot wolves and the courage to ward them away from the flock.
Thus the mandate for paying close attention to the flock is the fact that the Holy Spirit appointed a man as elder. The model for paying close attention to the flock is that of shepherd.
He purchased it with “His own blood” (NASB). The phrase is theologically difficult (how can God, who is spirit, have blood?), which has led to variant readings. The Greek phrase can be translated, “with the blood of His own,” which is a term of endearment to near relations (Bruce, ibid.). Notice that all three members of the Trinity are mentioned in this verse: The Father, who purchased the flock; the Son, who shed His blood to pay for their sins; and, the Holy Spirit, who appointed elders over the flock.
The main point is clear: Since God paid so great a price for the church, namely, the blood of His own Son, elders should value the church and give themselves to build it up and protect it. Since Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her, elders should also love the church and give themselves in service for her.
Paul is here handing the torch to these Ephesian elders. They were responsible to shepherd this flock of God. That is the main job description for church leaders. Churches are strong or weak, depending on the godliness of their leaders and the leaders’ diligence to pay close attention to themselves and to all the flock. It is both an awesome privilege and a weighty responsibility to shepherd the church that God purchased with the blood of His own Son!
I hope that this message doesn’t cause any of our leaders to resign and run for cover! With Paul, we all can exclaim, “Who is adequate for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:16). But Paul’s charge should challenge us to be even more diligent and conscientious about the task entrusted to us, to shepherd God’s flock. And, I hope that some men who are not yet elders will be challenged to aspire to the office of overseer, because, as Paul says, “it is a fine work he desires to do” (1 Tim. 3:1).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
We live in a day of tolerance where, even in the church, good feelings take priority over sound doctrine. If you dare to question whether someone’s teaching is biblically orthodox, you will be labeled a “heresy hunter” or, even worse, a “fundamentalist,” in the same league with the Ayatollah or the Taliban!
A few years ago, Christianity Today (5/16/94, pp. 38-40) ran a news article titled, “Hunting for Heresy.” It told of how prominent evangelical authors, Karen Burton Mains and Tony Campolo, had separately come under fire because of some of their books. Even giving her a lot of grace, Mains was into some weird Jungian psychology and introspective nonsense that had nothing to do with biblical Christianity. Campolo caught flak because of urging the church to overcome its “homophobia” and to “work to stop discrimination that denies homosexuals their civil rights.” He also said that many Christian homosexuals had been born with that orientation. And critics found problems with his views “on the environment and the sacredness of animals.”
In spite of the fact that both Mains’ and Campolo’s writings, at the very least, called for biblical critique, the flavor of the news article was that those criticizing them were a handful of self-appointed judges, carrying on a witch-hunt. The implication was that we are not acting with the love of Christ if we call into question teaching from a professing evangelical that may be false.
But on the contrary, as Charles Simeon said, “To warn men of their danger is the kindest office of love” (Expository Outlines of the Whole Bible [Zondervan], 14:520). If false teachers are like savage wolves that do not spare the flock (20:29), then we certainly are not loving God’s people if we fail to warn them about specific false teachers or teaching that may destroy their souls. Just as our President has called our nation to be on a high state of alert against terrorist attacks during this holiday season, so Paul calls these Ephesian elders to be on the alert against the dangers of false teachers. And, he gives the antidote to false teaching, namely, to stay centered on God and the word of His grace. Thus a major responsibility of elders is to guard the flock of God in these two ways:
Elders must guard the flock by tenderly warning against false teachers, and by staying centered on God and the word of His grace.
To do this task well requires at least four things of elders:
To spot a false teacher, an elder must know what constitutes sound doctrine and what goes outside permissible limits. He must know which truths are essential to the Christian faith, and which issues allow room for disagreement among true believers. To do this, an elder needs to have some knowledge of the great doctrinal controversies that have been debated and resolved through church councils down through the centuries.
There are some core doctrines, where there can be no room for tolerance. These include the inspiration and authority of the Bible; the Triune nature of God; the person and work of Christ, including His absolute deity, His sinless humanity, His substitutionary death on the cross, His bodily resurrection, ascension, and second coming; and, the gospel, that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. We cannot give an inch on these truths, or we compromise the Christian faith.
Other areas of doctrine are important, in that they affect the spiritual health of believers, but not essential for salvation. These would include a person’s view of God’s sovereign grace in salvation; baptism; Bible prophecy; and, the charismatic gifts of the Spirit. These doctrines are worth debating, but we should not label those who disagree with us as heretics or false teachers, unless they insist on dangerously unbiblical views in these areas.
For example, to hold to infant baptism is not heresy (although I disagree with that view). But if a person teaches that baptism is necessary for salvation, he has crossed into the realm of heresy. A person can be premillennial, post-millennial, or amillennial without being heretical. But I know a man who teaches that Jesus has already returned (in A.D. 70), and thus there is no future return of Christ. As I understand it, he is promoting heresy. Some of the “word-faith” teachers, who teach that God must obey our commands, are clearly heretical. But the point is, elders must have a handle on biblical and theological issues so that they can spot such false teachers and warn the flock of the dangers.
Paul alludes to the sinfulness of the heretics by calling them “savage wolves” that will not spare the flock. They will speak perverse things, twisting verses out of context or taking something that is true and stretching it to an unbiblical extreme. Behind their false teaching is a selfish motive, to draw away the disciples after them. They want to gain a following for themselves, not for Christ. Thus pride is at the root of almost all heresy. The false teacher has not humbled his heart before the majesty of God.
John Calvin points this out in his comments on verse 30 (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts, 2:258-259). He says that almost all corruptions of doctrine flow from pride and selfish ambition. The pure and sincere handling of Scripture leads to Jesus Christ alone having the preeminence. But false teachers are invariably “addicted to themselves,” and thus study to advance their own glory, thereby robbing Christ of His rightful glory. In 1 Timothy 1:19, Paul refers to two heretics in Ephesus, Hymenaeus and Alexander, who had rejected faith and a good conscience and thus had suffered shipwreck in regard to the faith. In his commentary on this text (p. 46), Calvin observes, “All the errors that have existed in the Christian Church from the beginning, proceeded from this source, that in some persons, ambition, and in others, covetousness, extinguished the true fear of God. A bad conscience is, therefore, the mother of all heresies …”
We do not know whether or not Hymenaeus and Alexander were amongst the elders that Paul is addressing in our text. But he warns these elders that the danger of heresy does not just come from outside the church. Even from among themselves, men would arise, speaking perverse things, and drawing away the disciples after them. Paul is not just warning the ignorant or untaught. He is warning men that he has personally admonished and taught for three years. This means that if we think that we are not vulnerable to the danger of false teaching, we are most vulnerable, because we do not understand the perversity of our own hearts!
Being a wolf is a matter of the heart, not of outward appearance. That’s why Jesus warned about wolves that come in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15). It takes a fair amount of discernment for a sheep to recognize that this isn’t another sheep; it’s a wolf! Paul calls them “angels of light,” disguised as “servants of righteousness.” But then he adds, “whose end will be according to their deeds” (2 Cor. 11:14-15). Their evil deeds expose them for what they really are, false teachers, wolves in sheep’s clothing, who are out for personal glory and gain, not for the glory of Christ.
In his book, The Cruelty of Heresy ([Morehouse Publishing, 1994], p. 17, italics his), C. FitsSimons Allison writes, “We are susceptible to heretical teachings because, in one form or another, they nurture and reflect the way we would have it be rather than the way God has provided, which is infinitely better for us.” For false teachers, the motive may be to gain a following in order to further their own love of self. But for those that follow them, the motive may be that they do not like what the Bible teaches about God or about sin. Perhaps they want an excuse to indulge in their favorite sin. So they reject sound doctrine and embrace teaching that allows them to continue in their sin. For example, to justify immorality, a person must reject the notion of a holy God who will judge all sin. So he invents a “God of love,” who would not judge anyone. But he does so to his own ultimate destruction (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
Thus elders must first of all be on guard for themselves (20:28), that their hearts are not in rebellion against God, that they are not being seduced by pride or self-love to seek a following. And then they must be on guard for the flock. False teachers and those that follow them invariably are people who have not judged their own pride, greed, ambition, or lust.
False teachers do not spare the flock. What people believe has consequences. The picture is that of a wounded, devastated flock, with many of the sheep killed, as the wolves rapaciously feed on them. Usually, wolves go after the lambs or the already wounded, especially those that may be straying from the flock. Perhaps a person makes a profession of faith and begins to come to the church. But then someone wrongs him or he goes through a difficult trial, and he does not understand how to submit to God’s purpose in the trial. He begins to distance himself from the fellowship, nursing his bitterness toward God and toward the church. He is a target for savage wolves! It is in the context of enduring trials that Peter warns that Satan is like a lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Pet. 5:8-9).
In his book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 ([Zondervan, 1970], p. 37), Phillip Keller says that he has heard of two dogs that killed 292 sheep in a single night of unbridled slaughter. One morning at dawn, he found nine of his choicest ewes, all soon to lamb, lying dead after a cougar had attacked the flock in the night. From then on, he slept with a loaded rifle and flashlight near his bed. At the least sound, he would leap from bed and dash out into the night to protect his sheep. That is a picture of the job of godly elders. Because the flock is precious to God, since He purchased it with the blood of His own Son (20:28), elders must guard it from spiritual wolves that would destroy and wound the flock, especially the lambs. Allison’s title is true: Heresy is cruel!
Paul points these elders to his own example of faithfully admonishing them with tears during the time he was with them. “Admonish” is a word that points to correction. Paul had the courage to point out to these men where they were wrong, and to point them toward a more thorough submission to Jesus Christ. But he admonished them with tears, showing his compassion and concern for these men. Paul does not mean that he was always literally weeping, “but that his whole ministry was something more than a cold and heartless exhibition of the truth, being warmed and animated by the tenderest affection towards them, and a heartfelt desire for their salvation” (J. A. Alexander, Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles [Klock & Klock], p. 715).
I read about a church that had dismissed the pastor and gotten a new one. Someone asked a member why they had gotten rid of the old one. “Because he kept telling the people that they were going to hell.” The questioner asked, “What does the new pastor say?” “Oh, he keeps telling them that they’re going to hell, too.” “Well, what’s the difference?” “The difference is that when the first one said it, he sounded as if he was glad about it. But when the second one says it, you know that it is breaking his heart.”
I think that that may have been the problem in the Christianity Today article that I mentioned earlier, although the author never stated it. The critics were probably right in what they were criticizing, but wrong in the spirit of how they did it. In fact, in a subsequent issue, Karen Mains has a letter to the editor in which she commends the Christlike grace that Dr. Joe Stowell of Moody Bible Institute had extended to her during her season of criticism (7/18/94, p. 10). I hope that Dr. Stowell did not gloss over the errors that Mains was promoting, but that he offered his correction with grace and compassion, recognizing that he, too, is a fellow sinner who may at some time need correction.
Thus a major task of elders is to guard the flock by tenderly warning against false teachers and their teaching. But if all they do is warn against false teaching, they will be out of balance. They also need the positive focus of God and His grace:
In taking leave of these men, Paul commends them to God and the word of His grace, which is able to build them up and to give them the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. God and His word of grace will keep the elders from falling into false teaching. By implication, as they keep the flock focused on God and His word of grace, the flock will be kept sound in the faith.
As Allison states, “Faithfulness to correct doctrine and loyalty to the creeds is not the same thing as trust in the God whom the creeds describe” (ibid., p. 65). We learn that about 30 years later, the church at Ephesus actually fell into the trap of dead orthodoxy. In Revelation 2:2-4, the Lord Jesus indicts the church:
“I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”
It is possible to be theologically correct and to be diligent to reprove false teachers and to guard the flock from error, but at the same time to lose our first, heartfelt love for the Lord Jesus! The point of studying theology is not to be able to set everyone straight with correct doctrine. The point is to encounter the living God who has revealed Himself in His Word, and to have our hearts properly humbled before His majesty.
In his introduction to Calvin’s Institutes ([Westminster Press], p. lii) editor John McNeill cites A. Mitchell Hunter (The Teaching of John Calvin), who says of Calvin, “Piety was the keynote of his character. He was a God-possessed soul. Theology was no concern to him as a study in itself; he devoted himself to it as a framework for the support of all that religion meant to him.” McNeill goes on to say that “in Calvin’s pages we are everywhere confronting God” (ibid.). He cites Calvin’s commentary on John, where he writes, “The Scriptures are to be read with the purpose of finding Christ there” (p. lvi).
Thus every elder should study theology so that he can know God in a deeper way. We must read and study all of God’s Word so that we do not get a humanly warped view of God. If we only camp on our favorite passages, we can get out of balance. God is loving, but He is also fearfully holy and just. He is absolutely sovereign, and yet He holds us accountable for our choices. He can use evil to accomplish His sovereign will, and yet He Himself is separate from all evil. He dwells in unapproachable light, and yet He invites us to draw near to His throne through the blood of Christ to receive grace for our needs. Stay centered on God Himself as revealed in His Word and you will not fall into false doctrine.
By “the word of His grace,” Paul is referring first to the gospel, but then beyond to the whole of the written Word of God. That Word is a word of grace to every sinner. It begins with the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, and how they sinned and plunged the entire human race into sin, under God’s righteous judgment. But even in that story, there is the word of grace, that from the woman’s seed, one would come who would bruise the serpent’s head. The narrative goes on to tell of God’s gracious promise to Abraham, that from his seed, one would come who would bless all the nations of the earth. As the New Testament makes clear, Jesus Christ is that seed of Abraham. God sent His own Son to bear the just penalty that we all deserved for our sin. His sacrificial death is freely applied to every sinner who trusts in Him, apart from any merit or works. Thus the main message of the Bible is a word of God’s grace.
Most doctrinal errors stem from a misunderstanding or a deliberate perversion of God’s free grace. The Roman Catholic Church denies God’s grace by mingling it with human works as necessary for justification. Legalism, the attempt either to justify or to sanctify oneself by works, is a perpetual error that seeps into the church (Galatians and Romans were written to confront this). Any system of righteousness through human effort or works glorifies man and feeds human pride. Thus Satan is always injecting such false teaching into the church.
But the doctrine of God’s free grace glorifies Him alone and robs us of any ground for boasting (1 Cor. 1:26-31). Thus elders must understand, personally live by, and constantly teach God’s word of grace.
That word is able to build up the saints (20:32), to strengthen them spiritually so that they can resist the schemes of the devil. It also can give them the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. The inheritance refers to the future fulfillment of all of God’s promises of salvation to those that believe in Christ. It is only those who are sanctified, or holy, both in their standing before God (Gal. 3:18) and in their daily walk (Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5), who have an inheritance in God’s kingdom. Thus elders must guard themselves first, to make sure that they are living daily by God’s sanctifying grace. And, then they must guard the flock by leading all that profess to know Christ into a daily walk where they experience His sanctifying grace.
Many in our day say that doctrine is not important or, even worse, that it is harmful. Experience is what we seek. But experience that is not based on sound doctrine is not godly experience.
Years ago, a seminary professor told his class at the beginning of the semester that they would work together on one major project during that semester. They would move systematically through the New Testament to categorize every area of truth and determine how many times each area is addressed. Their goal was to find what one thing is emphasized more than any other in the New Testament. When they completed the project, they were amazed to see that warning against false doctrine is emphasized more than any other thing, even more than love, unity, and experience (Renald Showers, in “Israel My Glory,” [April/May, 1995], pp. 24-25). Apparently God thinks that it matters greatly what you believe!
Charles Spurgeon, in the heat of the “Down-grade” controversy, when liberal theology was being tolerated by the Baptist Union, wrote, “Those who do away with Christian doctrine are, whether they are aware of it or not, the worst enemies of Christian living. The godliness of Puritanism will not long survive the sound doctrine of Puritanism. The coals of orthodoxy are necessary to the fire of piety” (cited by David Kingdon, in A Marvelous Ministry [Soli Deo Gloria], p. 128). The author who cites him goes on to point out how Spurgeon realized that a decline in vital godliness would result from a departure from the doctrines of the depravity of the sinner, the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the absolute necessity of regeneration and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
So elders (I’m preaching to myself here), guard yourself first, and then guard the flock by tenderly warning against false teachers and by staying centered on God and the word of His grace!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Early one morning years ago an American serviceman was making his way back to the barracks in London. He saw a little boy with his nose pressed to the window of a bakery, staring in silence. The serviceman’s heart went out to the little boy, probably an orphan. “Son, would you like some of those?”
“Oh, yeah, I would!”
The serviceman stepped inside and bought a dozen. He took the bag outside to the boy and said, “Here you are.”
As he turned to walk away, he felt a tug on his coat. He heard the child ask quietly, “Mister, are you God?”
When we give, we act as God does. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son …” (John 3:16). As God’s people, we should be givers, not only at the Christmas season, but as a way of life.
In his final address to the Ephesian elders, Paul reminds them one more time of his own example when he had been with them. His example of being free from greed and of working to provide for his own needs and even for the needs of his co-workers, demonstrated before them how they, too, should shepherd God’s flock. More than his own example, though, Paul told them to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Then Luke records the emotional farewell between Paul and these men who thought that they would never see his face again.
Jesus’ words here are not contained anywhere else in Scripture. Apparently they were part of the oral tradition handed down from those who had been with Jesus during His earthly ministry. As John (21:25) mentions, if everything that Jesus did was written down in detail, even the whole world couldn’t contain the books. We may wish sometimes that we had more of Jesus’ sayings, but what we are given are probably convicting enough for us to work on for a lifetime! That is certainly true of His words here. By our fallen nature, we all are takers, not givers. But by God’s sanctifying grace, He wants us all to grow to be givers. As we do, not only will others be blessed, but so will we!
But, why are givers more blessed than those who receive? I remember as a boy when my mother would quote this verse to me at Christmas time, thinking, “Well, then I’ll let someone else get blessed by giving to me!” I wanted to be on the receiving end! Our text explicitly reveals three reasons that givers are more blessed; a fourth reason is implicit in Jesus’ statement and taught explicitly in other Scriptures:
Givers are blessed because they are freed from greed, they are being conformed to Jesus, they have enduring relationships with others, and they will reap eternal rewards.
Perhaps Paul is contrasting himself with the false teachers that he has just warned them about, wolves who come in to feed on the flock, rather than to feed the flock. Throughout the Bible, false teachers are denounced for being greedy and covetous (Isa. 56:11; Jer. 6:13; 8:10; Luke 16:14; 1 Tim. 6:5; Titus 1:11; 2 Pet. 2:3, 14, 15; Jude 16). But Paul’s example shows us that …
As Paul himself argued (1 Cor. 9:1-18; 1 Tim. 5:17-18), those who labor in the gospel are worthy of being supported by the gospel. But there is a huge difference between a man being supported by the gospel and a man who is in the ministry to get rich by taking advantage of others. One requirement for elders is that they be “free from the love of money” (1 Tim. 3:3). Both elders and deacons must not be “fond of sordid gain” (Titus 1:7; 1 Pet. 5:2; 1 Tim. 3:8). If a man is trying to fleece the flock, it erodes trust and undercuts the basis for any lasting spiritual ministry.
The prophet Micah (3:11) denounced Jerusalem’s leaders that pronounced judgment for a bribe, her priests that instructed for a price, and her prophets that divined for money. In the world, giving counsel for a hefty fee is standard practice. Unfortunately, the Christian world has imitated the secular world in this. But the Lord’s servants should offer counsel or other ministry freely, trusting God that if people are ministered unto, they will reciprocate by helping to meet the needs of the one who has ministered to them. There is nothing wrong with charging for a product, such as a book or CD, where there are obvious costs in production and marketing. But even there, the focus of many Christians seems to be on making huge profits, not on ministry to the Lord’s people.
Many years ago, I was shocked when I tried to line up a speaker for a men’s retreat at our church in California. I tried a nearby seminary and the secretary told me up front, “Dr. So-and-So’s fee is so much for a weekend retreat.” I could not find even one speaker who would come without agreeing on a fee, and most of them were high amounts! I finally settled on one of the cheaper speakers, but I was grieved by the monetary focus. Why not come and minister and trust God to provide? The biblical principle is that we should offer ministry freely, and those who are ministered to should meet the needs of the one who is ministering (Gal. 6:6). Elders must set the example by being free from greed.
The Bible ranks greed or covetousness alongside immorality and idolatry, warning that “because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:5-6; Col. 3:5-6; see also Mark 7:21-23; 1 Cor. 5:10). Paul said that those who desire to get rich get snared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction (1 Tim. 6:9).
A Nigerian folk tale illustrates the destructive nature of greed. Three friends were on a journey when they found a bag full of money. They were very happy with their good fortune. They were hungry, so they sent the youngest man into a nearby town to buy food. After he left, one of the men persuaded the other that they should kill the younger man when he returned so that they would only have to divide the treasure two ways.
Meanwhile, the youngest man had bought the food and started back when he got the idea, “If I could kill these two men, the money would all be mine.” So he returned to town, bought some poison, and put it in the food. “I will tell them that I have already eaten and am not hungry now. They will eat and die, and the money will all be mine,” he schemed.
He no sooner arrived back with the other men than they beat him to death. Then they sat down to eat their lunch, but before they could finish, they became ill and died from the poison. And so because of greed, all three men died without enjoying any of their newfound treasure.
Greed is always easy to recognize in others: They won’t share what they have with me! But it’s not so easy to spot it in ourselves. Charles Simeon, in a sermon on Luke 12:15 (Expository Outlines on the Whole Bible [Zondervan], 12:468-471), developed three criteria to judge whether we are under the influence of greed. He said that we should examine the manner in which we seek material things; the degree to which we enjoy them; and, the manner in which we mourn or are anxious when we lose them. Givers are blessed because they are freed from this sin that brings both temporal and eternal destruction.
In Ephesians 4:28, Paul wrote, “He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with the one who has need.” When he was in Ephesus, Paul had been an example both of hard work and generosity. He had made tents to meet his own needs, and from any surplus, he had helped support the men who worked with him in the gospel. Apparently he also had enough funds to help some in the church who were needy (20:35a).
Paul’s example affirms the dignity of work, including physical labor. Some are like Maynard G. Krebs in the old Dobie Gillis TV show. Every time the word “work” was spoken, Maynard would jump backwards and shriek as if he had been contaminated by the plague, “Work!” Some think that work is a part of the curse. But Adam had work to do before the curse, and we will have work to do throughout eternity. The curse is the thorns and thistles that interfere with productive labor, not the labor itself.
All Christian men, except those who are physically or mentally incapable, are responsible to work in order to provide for their families’ and their own needs. Women are primarily to be workers at home (Titus 2:5). Not to provide for one’s family is to deny the faith and be worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:8, a fairly strong warning!). Paul says that if a man will not work, the church should not feed him (2 Thess. 3:10). There is no mandate to meet the needs of moochers or of irresponsible people who squander their money and don’t have anything left to pay their basic bills. But we are to help those who are weak, that is, who are unable to work because of legitimate health needs or who need help because of unusual trials.
Giving to those in need is the drain plug for greed. If you think that greed is getting a foothold in your life, sit down and figure out what frivolous spending you can eliminate and give it to the Lord’s work. Think about what material possessions are clogging your spiritual arteries, and give them to our church missions yard sale. Giving is more a matter of mindset than of amount. Paul was never wealthy, but he demonstrated a lifestyle of giving. It’s a matter of disciplining yourself to resist impulse spending and to give off the top because it is your priority. Givers are blessed because they are freed from the destructive sin of greed.
As I said, we have no record of Jesus saying these exact words, although there is no reason to doubt that He did so. But we do have record to show that these words are in complete harmony both with His teaching and His example.
For example, Jesus warned, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). The context for that comment was that a young man in the crowd called out, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me” (Luke 12:13). I would have thought that Jesus would have condemned this young man’s greedy brother. But rather, He confronts the greed of the complainer and goes on to tell the parable of the rich man who decided to build bigger barns to hold all of his wealth. But God said, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?” (12:20).
Jesus also said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19-21). You store up treasures in heaven by investing in God’s kingdom here below.
Jesus Himself is the embodiment of giving, in that He left the splendor and glory of heaven to come to this earth, not as a mighty king, but as the lowly baby of the stable in Bethlehem. He came to give Himself as the sacrifice for our sins. Thus Paul could write, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).
I want to make it clear that no amount of giving or self-sacrifice will get you into heaven. Before you can give anything that pleases God, you must first receive God’s free gift of eternal life. You must come to God as a poor sinner, unable to pay the debt that you owe, and receive the forgiveness that He has provided freely for you, but at great cost to Himself. Jesus’ death is the only satisfaction for our sins before the holy God. He offers this unspeakable gift to everyone who will receive it. Receiving God’s salvation in Christ is the starting point for becoming a giver, because it is the starting point of being conformed in your character to the Lord Jesus. Thus if we are becoming givers, although we can never match what Jesus did or even think of paying Him back, we are being more conformed to His image, and we will be blessed.
Paul had given himself and his material goods to see these men come to Christ and be built up in Christ. They knew that he loved them like no one else had ever loved them. And so when it came time for Paul to depart from them for what they thought would be the last time, they broke out in loud, uncontrollable sobs. They fell on his neck and repeatedly kissed him, as Middle Eastern men do to this day when greeting one another. The scene that Luke portrays here shows the deep mutual love between Paul and these men. If Paul had been stingy or greedy or had tried to rip them off, this scene would never have taken place.
Ask any person on his deathbed what means the most to him and he will not say, “All of the things that I have accumulated for myself! And my huge bank accounts really mean everything!” Invariably, he will say, “My family and friends that love me mean more than anything else to me right now.” And Christians will say, “My hope in the Lord Jesus and His promise of eternal life means everything.”
I once read that the late billionaire J. Paul Getty had pay phones installed in his mansion for his house guests to use, because he didn’t want to pay for their long distance calls! Needless to say, those guests were not there because of the warm feelings that they had for J. Paul Getty! Stingy, greedy people cut themselves off from close relationships with others. Think of how greed has often divided family members from one another because they think that they are not getting their fair share of the inheritance of a departed “loved one,” who was not very loved! Greed destroys close relationships, but givers know the joy of deep and enduring relationships with others.
Givers are invariably people of faith, because you have to trust in God to give away money that you easily could spend on yourself. People of faith are people of prayer, because it is through prayer that we receive from God’s bountiful supply. So it was fitting that Paul knelt down with these men and prayed with them before he got on board the ship. He probably prayed that God would keep them from false teachers, that each man would be a godly example to the flock, and that through them the church would be built up and expand all over Asia. And he probably prayed that God would meet their needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19). These men grieved at the thought of never seeing Paul again, because they knew that this generous man loved them, and they loved him.
So givers are blessed because they are freed from the destructive sin of greed; they are being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ; and, they have deep and enduring relationships with others. But there is a fourth reason that givers are blessed. It is not explicit in our text, although it is implicit here and explicit elsewhere:
As I said, heaven is not the reward for being a giver. Heaven is God’s free gift, based on Christ’s giving Himself on the cross. But those who have received God’s gift of eternal life will reap rewards in heaven in proportion to their stewardship of money in this life. Unlike our investments in this uncertain world, that can be lost in a market crash, our investments in heaven are secure from every source of loss. That’s why Paul told Timothy:
Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed (1 Tim. 6:17-19).
How can you put a price on an investment that yields eternal dividends? If you give to further the Lord’s work, you will someday be welcomed into eternal dwellings by many friends who are there because you gave (Luke 16:1-9).
Years ago, a lady was filling a box for missionaries in India. A child came to her door to give her a penny, all that the child had, to be used for the Lord. With this coin, the missionary bought a tract and put it into the box. Eventually, this gospel leaflet came into the hands of a Burmese chief, and God used it to bring him to salvation. The chief told the story of his conversion to his friends, and many of them believed in Christ and threw away their idols. They built a church there, sent out a missionary, and at least 1,500 natives were converted. All this, and probably more, resulted from a little girl’s gift of one penny for Jesus (“Our Daily Bread,” 12/70).
Almost everyone has heard of and loves O. Henry’s short story, “The Gift of the Magi.” He tells of a young couple who are very much in love, but very poor. One Christmas Eve, Della wanted to buy a present for her husband, Jim, but she did not have enough money. She wanted to buy him a platinum fob chain for his precious family heirloom pocket watch, the proudest possession he owned. In desperation, she decided to sell her own most proud possession, her long and beautiful hair. It brought in just enough, and she bought the watch fob. When she got home and looked in the mirror, she was shocked at her appearance. But she thought that it was worth it to get Jim this special present.
When Jim came home, he looked at Della and there was deep, silent shock in his eyes. “Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without buying you a present.” Then Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket. He handed it to Della to unwrap. Now it was her turn to be in shock, because inside she found a set of combs for her beautiful hair that she had long admired in a Broadway window. To buy them, Jim had sold his precious watch. Both of them had sacrificed the most precious possession out of love for the other.
Were they foolish? O. Henry concludes, “No, of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. They are the Magi.”
His story illustrates the joy and blessing of giving. God has given His own Son so that you might be saved from His judgment. If you have received His gift, He will bless you even more as you become a giver out of love for Jesus.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
All Christians want to know God’s will for their lives. We want to know His will concerning major decisions, such as the career that we should pursue, the person that we should marry, and the place where we should live. We need His guidance on dozens of other daily decisions affecting our money, our time, and our relationships. If you know Christ as Savior and Lord, you want to please Him in every aspect of life by making wise decisions in line with His will.
Much of God’s will is revealed in the commands and principles of His Word. You don’t need to pray for guidance in these areas. In fact, you are sinning if you pray about whether you should marry a nice non-Christian (they’re always nice!)! God has already revealed His will on the matter, that you not be unequally yoked. You don’t need to pray about whether to pursue a career as a drug dealer or thief. You don’t need to pray about whether or not the person to whom you are already married is God’s choice for your life partner. All of these and many other decisions are clearly spelled out in God’s Word. We simply need to understand and obey the commands and principles that are revealed in His Word.
But what about the decision to marry girl A or girl B, when both girls love the Lord and they both would say yes to your proposal? (I never had that problem!) What about deciding your major in college? What about the decision to take job A in one city, or job B in another location? There are many such decisions where we need to know how to discern God’s specific will.
Some depend heavily on subjective feelings or signs, to the point of falling into the ways of pagan divination (see Bruce Waltke, Finding the Will of God [Vision House]). For example, a girl was praying about where to go to college, when she came upon the Lord’s words to Jacob, “Arise, go to Bethel.” Since her denomination had a college of that name, she decided that God was telling her to go to Bethel College. I hope that once she got there she did not read Amos 4:4 which says, “Go to Bethel and sin”!
On the other side of the spectrum, and more seriously, Garry Friesen wrote Decision Making and the Will of God [Multnomah Press, 1980], in which he argues that God does not have a specific will for the details of each person’s life. Rather, as long as a believer acts within the moral will of God and follows the principles of biblical wisdom, he is free to decide whatever he wants. Thus, if Sally and Jane are both dedicated single Christian women, Bob is free to marry whichever one he chooses, assuming that his pick goes along with the plan. Bob would be wasting his time to ask God to reveal His will, especially through some sign or inner impression. In effect, God would be in heaven shrugging His shoulders, saying, “They’re both fine girls. Get wise counsel and do as you please.”
Although Friesen levels some valid criticisms against what he calls the traditional view of finding God’s will, I do not agree with his primary thesis. My main gripe is that if we don’t need to seek God’s guidance for our major (and some minor) decisions, then we really don’t need to trust God in a practical, daily manner.
But, then, how do we discern God’s will? The bad news (or good news, depending on how you look at it) is that there is no simple, mechanical formula in Scripture for discerning God’s will in specific situations. If there were, we would probably just apply the formula without seeking God Himself. So the good news side of it is that God primarily guides us through our relationship with Him, as we grow to understand His Word and learn to walk daily by His Holy Spirit. But since even the best of us (including Paul) are fallen sinners, it is an imperfect and somewhat uncertain process at best. But even when we miss God’s will due to our dim sight or sin, He is sovereign and gracious to overcome our mistakes.
The uncertainty of this process is revealed in the difference of opinion between godly scholars over whether Paul was right or wrong to go to Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit had repeatedly revealed to Paul that he would encounter “bonds and afflictions” if he went there (20:23). Some commentators, such as Donald Barnhouse, Ray Stedman, and James Boice, argue (in light of 21:4) that Paul was either deliberately sinning or making a foolish mistake to continue his journey in light of these warnings. Others (the majority of those that I read) argue that Paul was right and that those who pled with him not to go were wrong. But our text and the history of Paul in Acts reveal some principles on how to discern God’s will:
We should walk so closely with God that we discern His guidance as we live in obedience to His Word, in dependence on His Holy Spirit.
With that as a brief summary, I want to work through seven principles for discerning God’s will, some of which are in our text, and others which come from Paul’s walk with God.
It is futile to speculate about God’s will for your life unless you are 100 percent committed to obeying it. God isn’t a travel agent who arranges your itinerary and then asks, “What do you think?” You say, “I like the week in Hawaii, but I’d prefer not to go to that Muslim country as a missionary. Could you change that to a few years in Tahiti, please?” He is the Lord, and it is true that He loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life! But you must yield your entire life to Him, trusting that His will for you is good, acceptable, and perfect (Rom. 12:1-2).
Paul had long since done that, so that he could now say, “I am ready not only to be bound, but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13). He did not consider his own life of any account as dear to himself, in order that he might finish his course, and the ministry which he had received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God (20:24).
Signing your life over to God may strike you as a bit scary. What if do it and He tells me to go to some jungle as a missionary, when I don’t even enjoy camping out? What if you don’t like the cold, and He sends you to the Eskimos? But, remember, He is your loving Father and He is all-knowing and all-wise. His purpose is to be glorified through you by blessing your life. So you’ve got to begin by trusting Him.
Granted, His path for you may include some severe and difficult trials. But you can trust that even in these, He will bless you in ways that you cannot imagine if you will trust Him and submit to Him. His Word promises, “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Ps. 84:11b). No one, including those who have gone through severe trials or persecution, ever wrote God a blank check with his life and later regretted it. You must begin there if you want to discern His will.
Paul had known the Lord and walked closely with Him for years at this point. This fact, along with the fact that there is no hint in the text that Paul was being disobedient, leads me to disagree with those who say that Paul was sinning here. He may not have been wise (more on this in a moment). He may have been blinded to something that is obvious to us from our vantagepoint. (It’s always easier to know God’s will after the fact!) But Paul’s aim for many years now had been to know Christ (Phil. 3:9-10). He knew God’s Word well, and he walked by the Spirit, not by the flesh (Gal. 5:16). I think that as best as he knew how, Paul was seeking to obey the Lord by going to Jerusalem.
I have been married to Marla for almost 28 years now. On many matters I could tell you what she would want without asking her opinion. I know her will because I know her. In the same way, knowing God’s will in a specific situation is very much bound up with knowing God Himself.
There are no shortcuts or easy formulas to knowing the Lord. It’s a process that requires diligently seeking Him in His Word and in prayer over time. For some reason, God has designed life so that you have to make some of the biggest decisions (career, marriage partner) when you lack the maturity that you will gain later in life! That’s one reason that you should seek the wise counsel of those who have followed the Lord for many years, perhaps including your parents! In the biblical culture, these decisions were pretty much made for you. If your father was a farmer, you became a farmer. Career choice wasn’t much of an option. Your parents had a major role in choosing your marriage partner. It is only in recent times that young people have had pretty much free reign on these major life decisions! Wise and godly young people will seek wise and godly counsel.
If you are a relatively new believer, you should probably postpone a major life decision, such as marriage, until you get a basic grounding in God’s Word. You need to know the godly character qualities to look for in a mate. And, you need to be the kind of person that the kind of person you want to marry would want to marry. In other words, you won’t win the heart of a godly young woman unless you are a godly young man.
I’m expanding here on the previous point in order to say that at times, God’s wisdom and His ways are opposed to man’s wisdom and ways (Isa. 55:8-9). Not usually, but occasionally, God wants us to do something that defies human logic. For example, using our text, human wisdom and logic would say that we should avoid a course of action that will lead us into obvious trials. But sometimes God’s will is to be glorified through His servants as they endure various trials, or even through their martyrdom.
The biblical principle that was governing Paul’s trip to Jerusalem was his strong conviction that in the church there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, but we are all one in Christ (Gal. 3:28). He was taking the collection that he had raised from the Gentile churches to the Jewish church as a demonstration of love and unity. Luke hardly mentions this collection (24:17), but from Paul’s epistles we know that it was a big deal to him (Rom. 15:25-32; 2 Cor. 8 & 9). James Boice speculates that Luke’s silence about it may reflect that he did not think that it was a very good idea (Acts [Zondervan], p. 358). But the principle behind it, the unity of the church, is an important biblical doctrine (John 17). Paul was willing to march into the face of danger on the basis of his commitment to this truth.
Also driving Paul was his heart’s desire for the salvation of the Jews. This was such a compelling force that Paul says that he would be willing to be cut off from Christ for eternity if it meant the salvation of the Jews (Rom. 9:3)! Because of this compelling desire to see the Jews saved, Paul was willing to sacrifice his life, if need be.
We need to live on the basis of biblical principles, not human wisdom. We’ve had several similar situations here as a church. A man got so upset because we sent out some college mission teams to dangerous parts of the world, that he and his family left the church. We listened to his counsel and we even adopted some of his advised safety precautions. But as we sought to determine God’s will, we felt that the Great Commission overrode his concerns. We sent the teams, recognizing the potential danger.
It is possible to be committed to doing the Lord’s will, but to be in the wrong place or position. For example, perhaps Paul could have sent some delegates with the collection, but stayed away himself, and still have accomplished his desire of unifying the church. A key question, which is not always easy to answer, is, “Where can I be the most effective in furthering God’s kingdom in light of my gifts?” For example, I have a heart for missions, but I know that I am not an evangelist. I have asked myself, “Am I more effective to stay in America and instill in God’s people a heart for missions or to go myself?” That is one reason I am near a university campus, because I want to see God raise up workers for the harvest in missions. If I ever feel that I can be more effective by going myself, I’m out of here!
Paul was admirable in his commitment to be willing to suffer and die for the name of Christ. But I can’t help asking, should someone have asked him whether he would be more effective in prison or dead, or free to continue ministering as he was? It is not always God’s will for us to be so committed that we ignore our own safety. On one occasion, David asked the Lord if the men from the town of Keilah would turn him over to King Saul, who sought his life (1 Samuel 23). When God said, “Yes, they will turn you over,” David took off, and rightly so. It’s a tough question to ask up front, because sometimes God can use us more while we are in prison or through martyrdom than if we spared our lives.
In addition to our gifts and how we can best be used, we need to examine our motives and desires. Am I truly seeking God’s glory and not my own? Is my heart open before Him, with no secret sins? If I can honestly answer yes, then I should ask, “What are my desires? What do I enjoy doing?” If I am delighting in the Lord, then I can trust Him to give me the desires of my heart, either by fulfilling my current desires, or by changing those desires to be in line with His purpose (Ps. 37:4). He is a loving Father who delights in blessing His children by granting their holy desires. So if I am delighting in God, it is legitimate in seeking His will to ask, “What do I enjoy doing?” That may be where I should serve Him.
Our text says that “through the Spirit” these believers told Paul not to set foot in Jerusalem (21:4). Those who think that Paul made a mistake or sinned argue that he disobeyed the directly commanded will of God. But most commentators say that “through the Spirit” means “that the Spirit’s message was the occasion for the believers’ concern rather than that their trying to dissuade Paul was directly inspired by the Spirit.” So they see it not as Paul’s rejecting God’s command, but rather as God’s revealing what would happen, with Paul’s friends’ natural desire to dissuade him (Richard Longenecker, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan] 9:516).
After Agabus’ prophecy, even Luke and Paul’s other traveling companions (“we,” 21:12) joined in with the locals in trying to persuade Paul not to go to Jerusalem, and Paul’s response shows that they were getting to him. But he was so strongly persuaded that God wanted him to go to Jerusalem that he resisted their appeals.
Which side was right? Frankly, it’s difficult to say. Paul may have been a bit strong-headed in not listening to their counsel. He didn’t need to go to Jerusalem to prove that he was willing to suffer and die for the Lord. If he had not gone, perhaps God would have used him even more powerfully than He did. On the other hand, Paul’s resolve to stand alone, even against a group of godly men who were unified in pleading with him not to go, may show how firmly he believed that he was in the will of God. Several commentators point out numerous parallels between Jesus’ firm resolve to go up to Jerusalem to the cross and Paul’s resolve here. So it is difficult to decide which side was right. But the point is, we must evaluate the counsel that we receive, even if it comes from a unified group of godly friends.
Thus to discern God’s will, you must write God a blank check with your life; you must know Him intimately through His Word and His Spirit; you must act on biblical principles, not human wisdom; you must analyze your gifts, motives, and desires in light of God’s purpose for His glory; and, you must listen to and evaluate godly counsel.
Again, this is not an easy thing to do! For example, God had now brought into Paul’s life repeated warnings against going to Jerusalem from many different sources. Should he have taken these warnings as God saying, “Don’t go?” Or, could they be to test his obedience to what he knew to be God’s will? Perhaps the warnings were for the purpose of helping both the saints and Paul to stand firm after he was imprisoned, knowing it to be God’s will in advance. Perhaps Paul’s other circumstances, such as being able to get on ships that got him to Jerusalem in time for Pentecost, showed God’s approval on his going there.
As you can see, the same set of circumstances can be interpreted in a number of ways, and so we need to be careful in how we evaluate them. It is generally not wise to “put out fleeces” to try to determine God’s will. Sometimes closed doors do not mean “no,” and sometimes open doors do not mean “yes.” Finally,
Ultimately, each person must determine God’s will for himself or herself. You can’t blame others for the decisions that you make. In a marriage, the husband is accountable to God for family decisions, but any wise husband will only go against a godly wife’s counsel after much deliberation and prayer. If Paul was right here, and his friends were wrong, it illustrates the point that sometimes bad counsel stems from loving motives. It was because these people loved Paul that they pled with him not to go, but he had to go against the wishes of his friends to do what he thought God wanted him to do.
Sometimes your parents may counsel you not to go to the mission field because they are genuinely concerned for your safety. That counsel could be from the Lord, but it might not be from the Lord. The will of God is not necessarily the most trouble-free route. You must work through the process in dependence on the Lord and then lovingly tell family and friends, “I’m doing what I believe God wants me to do. Please pray for me” (Rom. 15:30-31).
What if you make a mistake in discerning the will of God? If you come to realize that your mistake was due to stubbornness, self-will, or pride, confess it and ask God to overrule your mistake. I do not think that Paul sinned by going to Jerusalem, but I’m not sure whether or not he made the wisest decision. But God used Paul’s prison years for His glory, and He can use our mistakes and even our rebellion if we submit to Him and seek to please Him.
Remember, the process begins when you trust Christ as Savior and when you write Him that blank check with your life, being willing to do whatever He calls you to do. If you’ve never repented of your sins and trusted in Christ, you are clearly out of the will of God, because He is not willing that any should perish, but desires for all to come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Most of us are familiar with the term “armchair quarterback.” An armchair quarterback sits in his comfortable chair, favorite beverage in hand, munching potato chips and watching the quarterback on TV as a herd of 300-pound giants rushes furiously towards him. The quarterback desperately throws the ball down field, but instead of connecting with his receiver, it gets intercepted. The armchair quarterback shakes his head and laments, “He never should have thrown that pass. His other receiver was wide open. He should have thrown to him.”
It’s easy to sit in your comfortable chair and give advice to the guy who is down on the field facing 300-pound gorillas. But it’s an altogether different matter to be the guy down on the field, making split-second decisions under incredible pressure. It’s easy in that situation to make mistakes. So we need to be careful about judging someone who made a mistake in the midst of such pressure.
I don’t want to play armchair quarterback on the apostle Paul here today. It’s easy to second-guess what he did. And yet I believe that he made a serious mistake in the story before us. Luke recorded it for our instruction and encouragement. We can all be instructed if we learn how prone we all are to make mistakes when we’re under pressure, and thus to be on guard. We can be encouraged because if even the most godly of men, such as Paul, make mistakes, and yet God uses them mightily, perhaps there is hope for us all! God is not thwarted by our mistakes. Rather,
When a godly man errs, God will work it together for good according to His loving purpose.
We all err in our personal lives. Sometimes we err in discerning the will of God because, as we saw in our last study, it is at best an imperfect and tentative process. We err in our ministries, sometimes misjudging people or situations. We err in our marriages. All of us who are married can look back and think, “I wish that I had said this or done that in my marriage years ago. If I had, I wouldn’t be having my current problems.” We err in rearing our children. We have to raise them at a time when we have no experience raising children. By the time we have the experience, they’re out of the nest! Every parent can look back and lament, “If only I had done some things differently!” We’ve all made financial errors that we wish we could undo. We’ve made major decisions that turned out to be major mistakes. Our text offers three lessons for us who are seeking to follow the Lord, when we err:
Paul and his delegation from the Gentile churches arrived at Jerusalem, bearing the gift for the poor that had been collected from the Gentile churches. The next day, they met with James and the elders from the Jerusalem church. This James was the Lord’s half-brother, author of the Epistle of James, who was obviously the main leader of the church. The apostles must have all been out on various missionary enterprises by this time. Luke himself was present at this meeting, and he mentions the warm welcome (21:17-18).
It is odd that Luke does not mention the presentation of the gift or the response of the Jerusalem leaders to the gift. Different theories have been proposed for why Luke omits what to Paul was so important. F. F. Bruce suggests that the Jews may have viewed Paul’s gift as undermining or competing with the temple tax. Thus Luke did not report it so that it would not be used against Paul when his case was referred to the emperor (Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free [Eerdmans], pp. 296-297). I’m inclined to agree with James Boice, that Luke may not have shared Paul’s enthusiasm toward this scheme (Acts [Zondervan], p. 358).
Paul proceeded to share with the Jerusalem church leaders what God had accomplished through his ministry among the Gentiles. Their response has always struck me as a bit odd. First, they glorify God; but in the next breath they tell Paul about the thousands of Jews who have believed and are zealots for the Law. These people have been told that Paul was teaching the Jews who lived among the Gentiles to forsake Moses and not to walk according to the Jewish customs. Then they propose their scheme, which obviously they had concocted beforehand. In my opinion, it is political posturing at best. To avoid a backlash from the Jewish faction of the church on account of the leaders’ welcoming Paul and his Gentile converts and accepting their gift, they propose that Paul join these four men in their Jewish vow and sacrifice. Then it will look to everyone as if Paul himself keeps the Law.
It seems obvious that James and the elders were not concerned over the fact that these believing Jews were still zealous for the Law of Moses. Not only that, but the leaders themselves probably would have been uncomfortable with Paul’s view that Jewish Christians are free from the ceremonial aspects of the Law (Bruce, Paul, p. 347). Their citation of the Jerusalem decrees (21:25) shows that they were still, after all of these years, hung up over the details of what believing Gentiles should and should not do on these matters. Their focus should have been on Christ as “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4). But rather than seeing Paul’s visit as an opportunity to teach the believing Jews these great truths and to clarify any misconceptions that they have about Paul’s teaching, they are nervous about what they might think. So they propose this political scheme that will “spin” Paul in a different light. And, Paul submits to it!
I find it surprising that many commentators defend Paul’s actions here. Maybe his aura is just too great to dare to suggest that he blew it. And, as I said, it is easy to play armchair quarterback by taking potshots at a man who was under a lot of pressure. We don’t want to do that. But even so, I believe that Paul made a major mistake here. But before I tell you why, let me, in all fairness, state the arguments of those who think that he was right. (I’m combining here the arguments of Stanley Toussaint in The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books], p. 416; and, John MacArthur, Jr., Acts 13-28 [Moody Press], p. 254).
First, Paul himself had taken a Nazirite vow (Acts 18:18). Thus why is it wrong for him to participate in this ceremony? Second, Paul’s participation did not compromise any biblical truth, but was a matter of Christian liberty. It fit in with his policy of becoming a Jew to the Jews, in order to win the Jews (1 Cor. 9:20). His offering animal sacrifices here did not deny the finished work of Christ, but were only memorials. Third, if Paul had made such a serious error, would not the Holy Spirit have made this clear in the text? Besides, Paul later states that he had not violated his own conscience (23:1; 24:16-18). Fourth, Paul’s motives were pure. He was trying to unify the Jewish and Gentile Christians and be a witness to the unbelieving Jews. Fifth, the negative results of his actions do not prove that he made a mistake. Such a pragmatic approach denies that Paul’s arrest had been prophesied before his arrival in Jerusalem (20:22-23; 21:4, 11).
In response, first, the text never hints at whether Paul had been right or wrong to take a Nazirite vow. It is, at the very least, a debatable matter that he was right to do so. Second, it is arguable that Paul’s actions compromised or, at the very least, clouded some crucial biblical truths. Why should believers in Jesus Christ, whose blood cleanses us from all sin, go through a ritual of purification involving animal sacrifice under the priestly system that put the Savior to death? As the author of Hebrews argues, Christ is the sum of everything that the Jewish sacrificial system pointed forward to. Why go back to the old system when the veil in this very temple had been torn? It is one thing for Paul to set aside his freedom in Christ and to adopt some neutral Jewish customs that might be a hindrance to the gospel. But to participate in a Jewish sacrifice for purification at the temple was at the least to cause confusion on what Paul elsewhere plainly taught, that the decrees of the Law were removed by being nailed to the cross (Col. 2:11-14).
The third argument was that there is no indication in the text that Paul erred or sinned, and that he later states that he had always maintained a clear conscience. But in light of Paul’s epistles, verse 20 should jar any sensitive reader of Scripture. Paul taught that the law is our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. Thus the purpose of the tutor is done away with (Gal. 3:24-26). He taught that Christ is the end or fulfillment of the Law for righteousness to all who believe (Rom. 10:4). He exhorts the Galatians, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” He goes on to tell them that “in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:1, 6). How the sum of Paul’s teaching about not being under the Law can be harmonized with a favorable view of being zealous for the ceremonial Law, is beyond me!
Regarding Paul’s clear conscience, he does not mean that he had never sinned or made a mistake. Rather, he is defending his integrity, first before the Jewish Sanhedrin (Acts 23:1), and then before the Roman governor Felix (24:16). I would not agree with Donald Grey Barnhouse (Acts) that Paul deliberately sinned by going to Jerusalem and cooperating with this scheme. But I do contend that he made a major mistake, in spite of his sincere motives. To live with a clear conscience means that we confess our sins and acknowledge our mistakes, not that we live perfectly.
The fourth argument is that Paul’s motives were pure. Granted, but sincerity and pure motives do not protect us from making major mistakes. Regarding the final argument, that the negative results are no basis for determining right or wrong, I agree. Sometimes we act in obedience and suffer terribly. Sometimes we disobey God and life seems to go well for a while. But the prophecies about Paul’s imprisonment say nothing about whether the actions that led to that imprisonment were right or wrong. As James Boice argues (p. 364), the greatest proof that Paul was wrong was that God, who is sovereign over the details of our lives, intervened before Paul was able to offer the sacrifice in the temple and prevented him from doing it.
I see a parallel in the life of David, who was also a godly man who erred. On one occasion, after years of being hounded by Saul, David said, “I will perish one day by the hand of Saul” (1 Sam. 27:1). As a result of this thinking, which the text does not condemn, but which was clearly sinful unbelief in God’s promise to David to sit on the throne, David went over to the Philistines. This wrongful alliance involved him in deception and murder. It culminated in his going into battle with the Philistines against the army of God under Saul and David’s beloved friend, Jonathan! In His grace, God intervened and spared David from this terrible result. But clearly, David’s wrong thinking and subsequent wrong behavior had led him to the brink of what would have been a disastrous compromise, even though the text of Scripture never says that he had done wrongly. I think that while Paul was not sinning here, but rather making a serious mistake, if God had let him go through with offering the sacrifice, it would have compromised the gospel.
How should Paul have responded to this scheme? He should have said to James and the elders, “Brothers, we need to have a long discussion.” He should have found out exactly what they meant by their statement about being zealous for the Law. He should have used this as an opportunity to educate the Jerusalem leaders that in Christ we are not under the Law, but under grace. And, he should have warned them of the danger that they were in of falling into the racist views of the unbelieving Jews against the Gentiles. In their effort not to offend these Jews so as to reach them with the gospel, the leaders had allowed them to come into the church and yet hang onto their Jewish ceremonies and customs without showing them that Christ was the fulfillment of these things. They should have been in the process of educating these Jewish believers that in Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile (Gal. 3:28). They should have been pointing them toward taking the gospel to every tongue and tribe and nation, and that God is no respecter of a man’s race (Acts 10:34-35).
Why didn’t Paul confront these church leaders? Why did he quietly go along with their scheme? There were two primary reasons, and both of them are good motives. First, Paul ardently desired for there to be unity between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. He taught in Ephesians 2:14 that the dividing wall between them had been broken down in Christ. He was referring to a short wall in the temple that kept Gentiles out of the sacred place upon threat of death. Ironically, Paul was falsely accused of bringing a Gentile inside this wall, leading to the riot and his arrest (Acts 21:28). But Paul’s strong desire for unity in the church pushed him over the line in accepting this compromising scheme, rather than confronting the truth issues that were at stake.
The second reason Paul went along with this scheme was his deep burden for the conversion of the Jews (Rom. 9:1-3). But in his effort not to offend the Jews and to become a Jew to reach the Jews, I believe that he created confusion over the main issue of the gospel, namely, the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins.
It is never right to maintain peace and unity at the expense of compromising or confusing major truth. And it is never right to leave out the offensive aspects of the gospel for the sake of winning those who would be offended.
Let me give an example of each error. King Jehoshaphat was a godly leader of Judah who sincerely wanted to bring about an alliance with the separated northern kingdom. But to bring about this noble aim, he allied himself with the wicked northern king, Ahab. He married his son to Ahab and Jezebel’s daughter, Athaliah. She later usurped the throne and almost succeeded in slaughtering the Davidic line of kings. It was an example of unity at the expense of holiness, and it had disastrous consequences.
In our day, we are being urged to set aside our differences and to come together with Roman Catholics on the matters where we agree, to demonstrate “our unity in Christ.” But to do so will either result in compromising or seriously confusing major truth about the gospel. While unity is important, it must be based on the central truths of the gospel, or it is not true biblical unity.
Regarding the second error, of leaving out or tiptoeing around the offensive elements of the gospel in order to win people, it results in people coming into the church who are not truly saved. I think there are reasons to question whether these Jews who had believed and were zealous for the Law were truly converted. At best, they were very immature believers who desperately needed some straightforward teaching. If they had heard Paul preach as he does in Galatians, it would have separated the genuine believers from the false!
In our day, if in our attempt to reach Muslims, we tell them that we both worship the same God, and we are silent about the deity and lordship of Jesus Christ, we may succeed in getting them to “accept Christ.” But if they can accept Christ and yet hang onto many of their Islamic beliefs, they have not believed the gospel! Or if in witnessing to a Roman Catholic, we do not make plain the difference between works-righteousness and the righteousness that is imputed through faith in Christ alone, we have not presented the gospel clearly. Any decision that comes out of such unclear witness is suspect at best.
So the first and major lesson of our text is that even the most godly of men can err, and so we must be on guard against making serious mistakes, especially when we’re under pressure.
This scheme did not produce the intended results, to say the least! As I already said, we cannot judge any actions by the results, but only by whether or not they line up with God’s revealed truth. But when we do err, even if we do so with sincere and good motives, there will be negative consequences, either immediately or later.
Paul’s error in going along with this scheme resulted in the Jewish leaders and church at large missing a vital lesson about law and grace. They missed a badly needed correction about their view of Gentiles. Rather than clearing up a problem, it only resulted in greater confusion and misunderstanding. Paul himself got beat up and almost killed. He spent almost the rest of his life in confinement because of this mistake. And seeing Paul in the temple going through these Jewish rituals did not soften the hearts of the Jewish unbelievers towards the gospel. So we should never just shrug off mistakes as if they do not matter. They do matter, and inevitably both we and others get hurt by our errors.
Even though Paul erred, God graciously spared his life and gave him the opportunity to preach to the mob that had just attacked him (22:1-21). As a result of his imprisonment, he was able to present the gospel to governors and rulers with whom he otherwise would have had no contact. He eventually got an all-expenses paid trip to Rome and was able to witness to many in Caesar’s household. He had time to write his prison epistles, which are in our New Testament. All of these positive results illustrate the abundant grace of our God, who works all things together for good to those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28).
Everyone makes mistakes. Some examples: In 1899, the director of the U.S. Patent Office stated, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” About the same time, Lord Kelvin, the President of the Royal Society, said, “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” In 1905, President Grover Cleveland said, “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.” In 1921, baseball great Tris Speaker said, “Babe Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching.” In 1923, the Nobel Prize winner in Physics stated, “There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.”
D. L. Moody said, “If you don’t go to work for the Lord because you’re afraid of making mistakes, you will probably make the greatest mistake of your life—that of doing nothing.” He’s right! We should get out of the armchair and into the game!
The point of this message is not to play armchair quarterback on Paul, but to get us all to play armchair quarterback on ourselves! We all should constantly be examining our lives to identify our sins and mistakes, including the mistake of not serving the Lord. When the Lord graciously opens our eyes to errors that we have made, we should learn from them and, if possible, try to correct them and ask forgiveness of those whom we have wronged. We should submit humbly to the trials that may be in our lives as a consequence of our mistakes and sins.
But, we should not despair that we have somehow thwarted God’s plan for our lives. Without minimizing or excusing our mistakes, we should realize that in His grace, God works around and through our mistakes for His own glory. We should trust Him, move on in obedience to His will for our lives, and marvel that He can use bumbling sinners such as we are!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Have you ever wished that you had a more dramatic testimony? Perhaps you’ve heard of someone who came to Christ from a life of terrible sin and you’ve thought, “If I just had a testimony like that, I could lead all sorts of people to Christ!” But, like me, you grew up in the church. Your testimony isn’t all that dramatic.
Whenever I’ve heard instruction on how to prepare your personal testimony, it follows a three-point outline: Tell about your life before you came to Christ; how you met Christ; and your life since you met Christ. The problem is, I can’t remember much before I met Christ. I must have been a rebel. Everyone goes through the terrible two’s, and I’m sure that I threw my share of temper tantrums. I must have dirtied a lot of diapers, too. When I was three, I told my Mom one morning that I wanted to accept Jesus. We woke up my Dad, knelt beside their bed, and I prayed to receive Jesus Christ. Since that time, I grew up in the church. In elementary school, I renewed my commitment to Christ, “just to make sure.” I was baptized at age 12. In spite of this good upbringing, I’ve had my share of sins, of course. Finally, in college I realized that it had to be my faith, not that of my parents. So I yielded myself to Christ as Lord and began to grow in my faith.
When did I get saved? I honestly don’t know. Was it at three? In grade school? In college? Only the Lord knows! All I know is, it’s not a very dramatic story. But the Lord has shown me over the years that my heart is just as corrupt as the hearts of the most wicked people on earth. I’ve also learned that it takes the same mighty power of God to save an outwardly good person as it does to save an outwardly evil person. And, that outwardly good person needs salvation every bit as much as the notorious sinner does.
Our text relates Paul’s testimony to the angry mob of Jews in Jerusalem who were in the process of beating him to death, until he was rescued by the Roman soldiers. It is the second of three times that the story of Paul’s conversion is told in Acts. Perhaps second only to the resurrection of Jesus, Paul’s conversion stands as an impressive testimony to the truth of the gospel. How else can you explain the sudden turnaround of this man who vehemently persecuted the church into the apostle who relentlessly preached what he had once despised, except for his meeting the risen Savior? The Spirit of God saw fit to include this testimony three times in Acts so that we could learn from it. Here,
Paul’s testimony teaches us how God works mightily to save sinners.
If I had just gotten beaten up by an angry mob that was trying to kill me, but I got rescued, I don’t think that the first thought on my mind would be to preach the gospel to them! I would have been thinking, “I’m safe! Get me out of here so I can recover from this traumatic experience!” But Paul had the presence of mind to ask permission from the Roman commander to address the mob that had just attacked him. Granted that permission, he addressed the crowd in their native Aramaic and identified himself with them as a Jew. His address falls into three parts: His life before his conversion (22:1-5); the experience of his conversion (22:6-14); and, his commission to preach the gospel to all men, including the Gentiles (22:15-21). But when he uttered that despised word, “Gentiles,” the mob that had been listening went ballistic, calling for his death. He was not able to finish his message. Paul’s testimony teaches us five things:
From his youth, Paul had been zealous for God (22:3). He had a Jewish pedigree that few could rival. Although he was born in Tarsus, in southern Asia Minor, he grew up in Jerusalem where he was tutored by the famous and highly respected rabbi, Gamaliel. As a Pharisee, Paul was trained according to the strictest law of the Jewish fathers. His zeal to preserve the ancient traditions led him to persecute to the death this new sect, known as the Way, going so far as to imprison not only men, but also women. He was heartless, even if it meant taking mothers away from their children. He did not restrict his zeal to those in Jerusalem, but was on his way to Damascus to round up the Christians there, when God struck him down with a blinding light from heaven.
Paul attributes the mob’s beating him to their zeal for God (22:3). They thought that they were defending the Jewish temple against defilement from the Gentiles, and defending the Jewish people and their sacred laws from this renegade who taught the Jews to set aside their heritage (21:28). But all of this religious zeal on the part of Paul and his audience had not reconciled either of them to the God of Israel. In fact, it was this very zeal that had led the nation to kill her Messiah! Here, religious zeal was motivating these same Jews to attempt to kill the messenger that Messiah had sent to tell them the way of salvation.
Down through the centuries to the present day, religious zeal is behind much of the violence in the world. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Muslim wars to conquer North Africa and their incursions into Europe, modern Islamic terrorism, and the terrorism in Northern Ireland, all stem from religious zeal. But Paul’s testimony makes it plain that you can be zealous for God and yet be horribly mistaken. You can be zealous for God and actually be fighting against Him! All of the religious zeal in the world will not reconcile a soul to God. Usually, as in the case of Paul and these Jews, our religious zeal is just a cover-up for our pride and prejudice, which are sin. No amount of religious zeal can atone for sin!
Paul was not considering the claims of Christ as he marched toward Damascus that day. He had not been re-reading his Bible in light of the life, death, and claimed resurrection of Jesus, to see if the ancient prophecies pointed to Jesus as Israel’s Messiah. He was not unhappy with his life in Judaism, searching for another way. Rather, he was militantly defending the Jewish faith, seeking to rid it of the blight of these heretics who claimed that Jesus was the Christ. It was as he pursued this course of action with a vengeance that God literally stopped Paul in his tracks. His power knocked Paul to the ground and blinded him. Then God gave very specific orders about what Paul had to do next.
Everything about Paul’s conversion came from God. Nothing about his conversion stemmed from Paul. God didn’t look down and see some merit in Paul that qualified him to come to salvation. Quite to the contrary, he confesses that he was “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent aggressor” (1 Tim. 1:13). Twice Jesus emphasizes that by persecuting the church, Paul was persecuting Jesus Himself (Acts 22:7, 8). For this, he deserved God’s judgment, but he was shown God’s mercy. God didn’t say, “Oh Paul, I’d really like you to be My apostle, but I’m not going to force your will. You have to exercise your free will to choose Me!”
There are many who say that the reason that God chose Paul, or that He chooses anyone, is that He foresees that the person will one day choose to follow Him. But to say this is to base God’s sovereign election on the fallen will of man, ignoring the plain biblical truth that unless God first does a work of grace in our hearts, no one would ever choose Him. No one comes to Jesus unless the Father draws him (John 6:44). No one is able to come to Jesus unless it has been granted him from the Father (John 6:65). No one knows who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him (Luke 10:22).
In several places, Paul attributes the first cause of our salvation to God’s choice of us, not to our choice of Him. In Galatians 1:15, he says that God set him apart from his mother’s womb and called him through His grace. In Ephesians 1:4-6, he says, “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world …. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” In 2 Timothy 1:9, he says that God “has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.” There are many more such verses.
If we deny God’s sovereign election, we rob Him of glory and attribute at least part of the cause of our salvation to something in us. If God’s choice of us depends on what He foresaw that we would do, then we have grounds for boasting, either in our will, in our brilliant minds that caused us to see the truth, or in our faith, which God saw that we would exercise. But if our salvation rests not on our will or our effort, but only on God who shows mercy (Rom. 9:16), then He gets all the praise and glory!
If God’s grace and power are mighty to save a sinner such as Paul, then He is able to save any sinner, and to do it instantly and totally. His light can blind and knock down the most insolent, proud, powerful persecutor of the church. You may have some terrible sins in your past. You may even be militantly opposed to Christianity, convinced by all of your arguments that it is just a myth. But the risen Lord Jesus is mighty to save even you. He can open your eyes to get a glimpse of His glory and grace, and you will never be the same.
Paul’s testimony teaches us that being zealously religious does not reconcile us to God. Rather, salvation is totally by God’s grace and power, not by anything in us.
Moments before this happened, Paul was picturing himself striding confidently into Damascus, his henchmen around him, waving to his admirers, while Christians fled in terror. Instead, he is blindly led into Damascus by the hand, completely submissive to God’s command. As a Pharisee, Paul was proud of his spiritual sight. God had to blind him so that he could begin to see rightly (see John 9:39-41). Before the Damascus Road, Paul would have said, “I see! I know the truth!” But now, blind and led by the hand, he had to admit that what he thought he saw before he no longer saw. And what he had never seen before, the glory of the risen Lord Jesus, now he saw.
God does not always humble us to the degree that He humbled Paul before we are converted. But if at some time we have not been humbled before God’s majesty, it shows that we barely know Him. Of the hundreds of books that I have read besides the Bible, by far the most profound is John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion [Westminster Press]. The reason that that book is so profound is that Calvin exalts God and humbles us all before Him. Consider his words in the second section of the opening chapter:
Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy—this pride is innate in all of us—unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity. Moreover, we are not thus convinced if we look merely to ourselves and not also to the Lord, who is the sole standard by which this judgment must be measured [1.1.2].
He goes on to point out how Scripture often shows men as stricken and overcome when they felt God’s presence. Even though these men were normally stable, let them get just a glimpse of God’s glory and they are laid low and almost annihilated. Then he says, “As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty” [1/1/3].
When much later Calvin develops the doctrine that he is most famous for, predestination, he emphasizes that the ignorance of it detracts from God’s glory and takes away from true humility. Those who oppose the doctrine of election, he says, “tear humility up by the very roots.” He states, “For neither will anything else suffice to make us humble as we ought to be nor shall we otherwise sincerely feel how much we are obliged to God” [3.21.1]. Throughout his treatment of predestination, Calvin keeps coming back to this practical application, “that, humbled and cast down, we may learn to tremble at his judgment and esteem his mercy” [3.23.12].
Such humble submission to God is a mark of true conversion. Paul’s two questions that he asks God here are good ones to ask every time you approach Him through His Word: “Who are You, Lord?” and, “What shall I do, Lord?” To say, as some do, “I believe in Jesus as my Savior, but I haven’t yielded to Him as Lord,” is nonsense! If He gives you even a brief glimpse of His power and glory, you will be laying prostrate with Paul, asking, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”
No sooner did Paul receive his sight through Ananias’ ministry than he exhorted him, “And now why do you delay? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name” (22:16). Some interpret this verse to mean that water baptism washes away our sins. But if it is teaching that, then the dozens of other verses that state that our sins are forgiven by grace through faith in Christ alone must be lacking something essential. In other words, it is far easier and makes more sense to harmonize this verse with the predominant teaching of Scripture, that salvation is through faith in Christ alone, than vice versa.
1 Peter 3:21 states that baptism saves you, but then Peter clarifies what he means: “not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Quite often Scripture does what Peter does there: it closely associates the act of baptism with what that act symbolizes. Baptism in water pictures what God has already done in a person’s heart through faith, that He has washed away our sins. In Acts 22:16, Paul had already called upon the name of the Lord, at which point God washed away his sins. The act of baptism, in obedience to the Lord’s command, would be a graphic picture and source of assurance to Paul of the cleansing that had come to him the moment he trusted in Christ.
But don’t miss the application: if God has cleansed your sins by faith, then why delay confessing that truth by being baptized? The idea of an unbaptized believer would have been foreign to the apostles. It should be foreign to us as well. We will have a baptism on April 28th. Make sure that you’re included if you have never confessed your faith through baptism.
Thus Paul’s testimony teaches us that being zealously religious does not reconcile us to God, but that salvation is by God’s grace and power, not by our merit or will power. It teaches us that God often humbles us before He extends mercy to us. It teaches us that baptism is an important confession of our faith in Christ. Finally,
This lesson is repeated twice so that we won’t miss it. First, the Lord tells Paul that in Damascus he would be told “all that has been appointed for you to do” (22:10). Then, Ananias tells Paul, “The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will, and to see the Righteous One [a Messianic term], and to hear an utterance from His mouth. For you will be a witness for Him to all men of what you have seen and heard” (22:14-15). The first word translated “appointed” is a military word meaning, “to give orders or a command.” The second word that Ananias uses means “to take into one’s hand,” and thus to determine or choose. Neither word leaves a lot of “free will” to Paul concerning his future! God had determined how Paul would serve Him. He had an agenda for Paul, and that agenda did not coincide with what Paul initially wanted to do!
Paul wanted to stay in Jerusalem and be a witness to his fellow Jews. But when he returned to Jerusalem after his three years in Arabia, he was in the temple praying when he saw a vision of Jesus telling him to get out of Jerusalem quickly, because the Jews would not accept his testimony about Christ. Paul protested that his background would make him an excellent witness to the Jews, but the Lord overruled and sent him to the Gentiles. When Paul mentions this, his Jewish audience went into a frenzy.
Note two things: First, Paul’s audience reacted emotionally to his message. They were not thinking rationally at this point. Any time people react emotionally to the gospel, they should calm down and ask themselves why. Paul didn’t get a chance here to get them to do this. But if you’re witnessing to someone who reacts emotionally, don’t get drawn into his response by getting emotional yourself. Rather, try to get him calmed down enough to examine his reaction. In this case, it was pride and prejudice that blinded these people from calmly thinking through what Paul was saying.
Second, God’s will for us does not always coincide with our will for ourselves. He wants the message of His salvation to go to all the nations on earth. While we aren’t all called to be missionaries, as Paul was, neither are we called to live selfishly for ourselves while the nations perish in darkness. If, like the Jews of Paul’s day, we begin to grow comfortable about being God’s chosen people and ignore His purpose of reaching the lost, then we’re missing God’s purpose for our lives. Every Christian should ask himself, “How does God want me to fit into His purpose of being glorified among the nations?”
Some years ago in a church in England, the pastor noticed that a former burglar was kneeling at the communion rail beside a judge of the Supreme Court of England, the very judge who, years before, had sentenced the burglar to seven years in prison. After his release the burglar had been converted to Christ and had become a Christian worker.
After the service, as the judge and the pastor walked home together, the judge asked, “Did you see who was kneeling beside me at the communion rail?” “Yes,” replied the pastor, “but I didn’t know that you noticed.” The two men walked on in silence for a few moments, and then the judge said, “What a miracle of grace!” The pastor nodded in agreement, “Yes, what a marvelous miracle of grace!”
Then the judge said, “But to whom do you refer?” The pastor replied, “Why to the conversion of that convict.” The judge said, “But I was not referring to him. I was thinking of myself.” “What do you mean?” the pastor asked.
The judge replied, “That burglar knew how much he needed Christ to save him from his sins. But look at me. I was taught from childhood to live as a gentleman, to keep my word, to say my prayers, to go to church. I went through Oxford, took my degrees, was called to the bar and eventually became a judge. Pastor, nothing but the grace of God could have caused me to admit that I was a sinner on a level with that burglar. It took much more grace to forgive me for all my pride and self-righteousness, to get me to admit that I was no better in the eyes of God than that convict whom I had sent to prison.”
Do you have a testimony of how God’s mighty power has saved you? Share it!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
If you have been a Christian for very long, you have blown it as a witness. I still remember an incident during my sophomore year of college (a long time ago!). I was taking a group discussion class. Each group was evaluated by our classmates. To get good evaluations, we would choose controversial subjects to arouse interest: sexual issues, drug use, etc. On every issue, I was the conservative member of the group.
There was a guy in our group named Ralph. On every issue, he took the libertarian side of things. He was in favor of free sex, homosexuality, experimenting with drugs, and every other issue that I was opposed to. One day after class, Ralph looked me in the eye and asked, “Hey, man, are you for real, or are you just putting us on in there?” Instantly I knew that this was an opportunity to tell Ralph about Christ, but I was tongue-tied. All I could do was mumble, “Yeah, I’m really that way.” I felt terrible, knowing that I had failed the Lord.
That failure led me first, to pray for Ralph over the years when he has come to mind, that God would save him in spite of my failure. Also, it led me to get some training in how to share my faith. But in spite of all of the training and the books that I’ve read on the subject over the years since then, I still find that witnessing is an up and down sort of thing. Sometimes I do okay, but sometimes I still don’t do so well.
Paul’s story here should encourage every Christian in the ups and downs of witnessing. Even though Paul probably could have handled things better than he did, the Lord graciously appeared to him when he was discouraged and said, “Take courage; for as you have solemnly witnessed to My cause at Jerusalem, so you must witness at Rome also” (23:11). The lesson is,
If we will speak out for Christ, even if we blow it, He will graciously encourage us and give us further opportunities to speak out for Him.
In Acts 22:1-22, Paul had taken the opportunity to preach to the Jewish mob that had tried to kill him. They listened until he told them how the Lord told him to leave Jerusalem, which would not accept his witness, and go to the Gentiles. At the mention of the word “Gentiles,” the crowd went wild, like a pack of wolves trying to get to their prey.
Since Paul had been preaching in Aramaic, which the Roman commander probably did not understand very well, he didn’t know what had set the mob off again, but he was determined to find out. He brought Paul into the barracks and was going to examine him by torture to get it out of him. Scourging was a brutal punishment of beating a man on his bare back with a leather-thonged whip that had pieces of metal or bone attached to it. It would leave a man severely crippled and could result in death. This was the treatment that Pilate inflicted on Jesus just prior to the crucifixion. As the soldiers stretched Paul out to tie him for the beating, he asked the centurion, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned?” (22:25). Paul was exercising his legal right to protect himself from persecution, and there is nothing wrong with doing that.
The centurion quickly informed the commander of the situation. Alarmed, the commander came to Paul and discovered that he was indeed a Roman citizen. In fact, Paul was born a citizen, whereas the commander had obtained his citizenship by paying a large sum of money. Since it could have cost him his position to scourge a Roman citizen without a trial, the commander quickly had Paul untied.
But since he was responsible to maintain peace in Jerusalem, the commander still wanted to find out what was going on between Paul and the Jews. So he called together the Jewish Sanhedrin and brought Paul in before them to get to the bottom of this conflict (so he thought). But it wasn’t long until the Council itself erupted in such an uproar among themselves in response to something that Paul had said, that the commander again had to rescue this troublesome man! This story teaches us three main lessons:
If you have trusted in Christ as Savior, then you are His witness. You may not always be a good witness, but His name is identified with you, so that by your actions, attitudes, and words, you are a witness for Him. As He gives you opportunities, you should bear verbal witness. As 1 Peter 3:15-16 exhorts us, “But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” In 22:1-22, Paul had given his defense (22:1) with a good conscience (23:1).
Paul’s experience teaches us three practical lessons:
Paul had just been mobbed and badly beaten, but when he got rescued, his first thought was to address the crowd and tell them about Jesus. When he stood before the Jewish Council, again he would attempt to tell them about his experience with Christ, although he didn’t get very far. When later he would have audiences with the Roman governors, he would tell them about Christ.
This didn’t just happen by chance, or because Paul was a natural preacher. In 1 Corinthians 9:22-23, he explains, “I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it.” It was a matter of deliberate purpose or aim. If we want to imitate Paul in obedience to our Lord, we need to make it our frequent prayer, “Lord, give me opportunities to speak out for You, and give me the words to say when the opportunities come.”
As we saw last week, Paul basically shared his testimony: his life before conversion; his conversion; and his life afterwards. Even if you don’t have a dramatic story (as I do not), you can tell people what God has done for your soul and what He will do for them. Beyond that, you should be armed with the basic facts of the gospel and the accompanying Scriptures to present it clearly. Learn some simple illustrations that help to clarify. Learn how to respond to the common objections that people raise. Much of our fear of witnessing is that we don’t know what to say. Some basic training can offset that fear.
Paul begins his witness to the Jerusalem Council by saying, “Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day” (23:1). He will later tell Felix, “I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men” (24:16). He told the Corinthians (1 Cor. 4:4), “For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord.”
Some have wondered how Paul could say such things in light of his record of persecuting the church and other sins. But to have a good conscience before God does not mean to have lived perfectly, but to live openly, confessing our sins and turning from them when God convicts us of them. Also, our conscience must be informed by God’s Word or it will be a faulty guide. Paul was acting in good conscience when he persecuted the church (1 Tim. 1:13), but he was terribly wrong because his conscience was informed more by his Jewish culture than by the Scriptures. If a person deliberately violates his conscience repeatedly, it will lead to a seared conscience (1 Tim. 4:2), insensitive to all wrongdoing. It is only the blood of Christ applied to our hearts that gives us a clean conscience (Heb. 10:22; 1 Pet. 3:21).
But the point is, if we speak out for Christ, we should not be aware of any wrong that we have committed, either against God or men, that we have not repented of and made right. Otherwise, our witness will be used against the Lord and the gospel, because unbelievers will shrug us off as hypocrites. If you are not seeking to maintain a clear conscience before God and men, please do not let anyone know that you believe in Jesus! And, you may want to examine yourself to see whether you truly do believe in Him!
If you haven’t blown it witnessing, you must not be witnessing! But you can’t let the fear of saying the wrong thing keep you from saying anything. You learn from your mistakes and you trust God to overrule and use your mistakes for His purpose.
Paul began his witness before the Council by looking intently at them, which probably involved both eye contact and trying to read their faces. Facial expressions and body language can tell you a lot about where people are at. I’ve had people in church sit with their arms folded, glaring at me with a grim expression on their faces. I don’t need a Ph.D. in communication to realize that they are not friendly toward my message! Then Paul made his opening statement about living with a good conscience before God. The Greek verb translated “lived my life” means to live as a citizen. In this context it has reference to Paul’s life as a Jew in the Jewish theocracy. He is denying the charge leveled against him of bringing a Gentile into the exclusively Jewish section of the temple.
We can’t be sure where Paul was heading from there. Perhaps he would have gone on to show them how even though he had been sincere in persecuting the Christians, he had been sincerely wrong. From there he could have appealed to them to acknowledge their errors, however sincerely they had made them. But Paul didn’t get a chance to go further, because Ananias, the high priest, ordered those standing beside Paul to strike him on the mouth.
Remember, Paul had just been badly beaten by the angry mob. His face was probably sore and bruised. The blow must have both shocked Paul and hurt terribly. Also, the high priest’s command was grossly unjust and revealed that he was not interested in justice, but only in getting Paul condemned. Ananias was a notoriously corrupt high priest. According to Josephus, he stole from the common priests and used violence and political power to further his goals. The Jewish nationalists hated him because of his pro-Roman leaning. During the Jewish revolt against Rome, some Jewish loyalists assassinated him.
As soon as he was hit, Paul shot back, “God is going to strike you, you white-washed wall! And do you sit to try me according to the Law, and in violation of the Law order me to be struck?” (23:3). When some bystanders expressed their shock that Paul would thus revile the high priest, Paul replied that he had not been aware that he was the high priest, and admitted his error by citing Exodus 22:28: “You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.” Scripture commands us to respect the office, if not the man.
The puzzling question is, why didn’t Paul know that Ananias was the high priest? Three answers have been proposed, none of which are completely satisfying. Some say that Paul’s eyesight was so bad that he could not see who had given the order for him to be struck. Verse one seems to contradict this, unless you take “looking intently” to mean that he squinted at them without being able to see them clearly. But even if he couldn’t see, wouldn’t Paul have known that the command came from the leader of the Council?
A second view is that Paul was being sarcastic, saying in effect, “He was acting so contrary to the character of a high priest that I didn’t recognize him.” The problem with this view is that his Scripture quotation seems to acknowledge his wrongdoing.
The third view is that Paul had been gone from Jerusalem so long that he didn’t know who the high priest was. But even if he didn’t know Ananias by sight, he should have known that the leader of the Council was the high priest. So we really don’t know why Paul didn’t recognize him, but we have to take his word for it that he did not. The lesson for us to apply is:
If we stonewall it, we’ll only reinforce people’s prejudice that Christians are phonies and hypocrites. If we confess our mistakes, people will get the message, Christians are not perfect, but they are willing to admit their mistakes and make things right. Perhaps they will learn that there is reality in walking with God.
When we lived in California, we had a collie that for some unknown reason went crazy with barking at our neighbor’s truck when he drove by. One morning, the neighbor reached his limit. When Christa, who was about 12, went outside to calm the dog, the neighbor yelled at her, using some foul language. I’d like to think that if he had yelled at me, I would have remained calm. But using foul language on my 12-year-old daughter pushed my “Defend-your-daughter” button, and I got really mad. I went outside and told him to keep his foul mouth shut and we exchanged some angry words.
This happened on a Sunday morning, just before I left for church! As I walked out to go to church, the neighbor and his daughter’s boyfriend, who lived with her there, drove by. They were glaring at me and looking menacing. I held up my hand to stop them. They screeched to a halt and jumped out of the truck with their fists clenched, ready for a fight. Again I held up my hand and said, “I’m sorry that I yelled at you a few minutes ago. I was wrong. Please forgive me.” Instantly, the neighbor melted and offered an apology for his own wrongs. After that, we always waved in a friendly manner to each other.
That neighbor probably knew that I am a pastor. If I had not asked forgiveness for my wrong response, it only would have reinforced his negative bias against Christians. I pray that the Lord used my confession to open the way for the gospel to come through to him through some other means. That’s a second lesson:
After his admission of wrong, Paul took another tack. Perceiving that some of the Council were ardent Pharisees and some were equally ardent Sadducees, Paul cried out, “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead!” (23:6). This led to a free-for-all among the Council. As Luke explains for his non-Jewish readers, the Sadducees deny the resurrection, angels, and spirits, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. So the Pharisees immediately came to Paul’s defense, while the Sadducees attacked them and Paul. The commander, who probably wondered why everyone was in such an uproar, finally had to rescue Paul by force again.
Scholars debate whether Paul was right or wrong to use this tactic to divide the Council and deliver himself. Some accuse him of using deceit (claiming still to be a Pharisee) to save his own neck. If that was Paul’s scheme, then he was wrong. Others say that he knew that he would never get a fair trial before the Sanhedrin, and that they were too hostile to listen to the gospel. Thus he used this ploy to deliver himself from certain condemnation.
But it’s also possible that Paul’s intent was to use his background as a Pharisee to establish a common ground with the Pharisees who were present, and then to try to move from there to bear witness to Jesus’ resurrection and the gospel. If this was his intent, his strategy didn’t work out as he had hoped.
Whatever Paul’s intent, we’ve all had times when we tried a certain approach in witnessing, but it did not go as we had hoped. Perhaps the person reacted in an unexpected way and told us that he never wanted us to talk to him about religion again. At that point, all we can do is trust God to use our feeble attempt, and to remember that God doesn’t need perfect disciples to accomplish His sovereign plan. To say this is not to excuse our weaknesses, but rather to exalt God’s greatness and power.
Thus we all are responsible to speak out for Christ, but sometimes we will blow it or things will not go as we had hoped. Finally,
That night as Paul lay awake in bed, he was discouraged. Things had not gone well in Jerusalem. The church had not received his gift in the spirit that he had hoped. Then they got him involved in the scheme to look like a Law-keeping Jew, which led to his arrest and getting beat up. His witness before the Sanhedrin had not gone well. And the future looked uncertain and bleak. He didn’t know if he ever would get to Rome, as he had hoped.
At that moment, the Lord Himself stood at Paul’s side and said, “Take courage; for as you have solemnly witnessed to My cause at Jerusalem, so you must witness at Rome also.” What words of encouragement and hope! I don’t have time to give adequate attention to these words now, but I want you to see the grace and encouragement that the Lord extends to His servants. This was the fourth time that the Lord had appeared to Paul (9:4-6 & 22:14; 22:17-18; 18:9-10). Just when Paul needed it, the Lord came and spoke these words of encouragement.
If such appearances of Christ were rare for Paul, they are extremely rare (if at all) for the rest of us. I have heard stories of persecuted prisoners who have seen a vision of the Lord, and I do not doubt such experiences. But the normal way the Lord encourages us when we feel that we’ve blown it is by bringing us to an encouraging verse of Scripture, or through an encouraging word or note from someone who may not even know that we needed it at that moment. Our gracious Lord is aware of our discouragement and He wants us to be encouraged by the promise of His presence and the assurance that He will use us again in the future.
Some time ago, I shared with you how I blew an opportunity to witness. It was on Thanksgiving Day, and I had just run in the Turkey Trot race at Buffalo Park. As I was catching my breath, a middle-aged man walked up and without introducing himself said, “When was the last time you had your prostate checked?” He went on to tell me that he was 53 years-old and had terminal cancer that had begun in his prostate. He was going around handing out pamphlets to every man there to get his prostate gland checked regularly. I was so startled by the encounter that I let him walk away to talk to others before I could say anything about the Lord. I stood there feeling that I had failed as a witness. I didn’t even get his name, so all I could do was pray that somehow he would hear the gospel before he died.
After I shared that story in a sermon, a woman in the church told me that she knew this man and that her husband had shared the gospel with him! I was encouraged with the faithfulness of the Lord and reminded of the fact that He will work out His sovereign purpose in spite of my failures and mistakes. I want all of you to be encouraged, even if you’ve blown it as a witness, to get back up to the plate and swing again. Our gracious Lord will use you in spite of your mistakes if you will speak out for Him!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
A retired teacher shared with “Dear Abby” an incident from many years earlier, when she was teaching junior high math. The class had worked hard on a new concept all week and the students were obviously stressed. To take a break, the teacher asked the students to take out a sheet of paper and write down the names of the other students in the class, leaving a space between each name. Then she told them to write down the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates.
She collected the papers and that weekend wrote the name of each student on a separate piece of paper, followed by what the students had said about that person. On Monday, she gave each student his or her list. Before long, everyone was smiling. She overheard one student whisper, “I never knew that meant anything to anyone. I didn’t know anyone liked me that much!”
Years later, the teacher had to attend the funeral of one of those students, a promising young man who had been killed in Vietnam. The church was packed with many of the man’s friends who had been in that junior high math class. Afterwards, at the parents’ home, the parents said to the teacher, “We want to show you something. Our son was carrying this in his wallet when he was killed.” The father pulled out that list of all the good things that the boy’s classmates had said about him. “Thank you so much for doing that,” the mother said. “As you can see, he treasured it.”
A group of the former classmates heard the exchange. One smiled sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. It’s in my top desk drawer at home.” Another said, “I have mine, too. It’s in my diary.” “I put mine in my wedding album,” said a third. “I bet we all saved them,” said a fourth. “I carry mine with me at all times.”
That poignant story illustrates how much we all need encouragement. As George Herbert, an English pastor and poet, said, “Good words are worth much, and cost little.” To give a word of encouragement to someone who is feeling down is to be like our Lord Jesus. In our text, He stands by the side of the apostle Paul in his prison cell and says, “Take courage; for as you have solemnly witnessed to My cause at Jerusalem, so you must witness at Rome also.” He is the Lord who encourages His people. The Lord encouraged Paul in three ways here that we can apply to ourselves:
The Lord encourages His servants with His presence in their difficult circumstances, His praise for their past service, and His promise of their future service.
This was the fourth time (and last, so far as we know) that the Lord appeared personally to Paul. One time after this (27:23) an angel appeared to him. The first appearance of the Lord was Paul’s conversion on the Damascus Road, just before he was struck blind (9:4-6; 22:14). It is possible that during his three years in Arabia the Lord appeared repeatedly to Paul to teach him (implied in Gal. 1:11-17). The second definite time was in the temple in Jerusalem, three years after his conversion, when the Lord told Paul to go to the Gentiles (22:17-18). The third time was when Paul was fearful in Corinth. The Lord appeared to him in a vision at night, telling him to go on speaking, promising His presence and protection, and assuring him that He had many people in that city (18:9-10). And now here, the Lord came and spoke these words of encouragement to Paul in his difficult circumstance. We can learn four lessons about His presence in our difficult times:
The Lord didn’t need to send out a team of angels to find out where Paul was. The prison cell and the guards didn’t hinder the Lord from finding Paul. He knew exactly where His servant was and what he needed at that moment. And even though Paul didn’t yet know it, and the Lord didn’t tell Paul about it in advance, the Lord knew of the plot that the Jews were forming against Paul, not to eat or drink until they had killed him. The Lord knows all of our difficult circumstances, and the enemy can only go as far as the Lord permits, and no farther. As Isaiah 54:17 proclaims, “‘No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their vindication is from Me,’ declares the Lord.”
You may be in a prison of difficult circumstances—a physical illness, a financial crisis, the heartache of a loved one who has no place for God in his life—where you feel that no one knows what you’re going through. Whatever your circumstances, and even if no other human being knows, Jesus knows and He cares for you.
The Lord stood at Paul’s side! Most likely, none of us will ever see a physical manifestation of Jesus until either He comes again or we stand before Him at death. Such visible appearances are extremely rare (1 Pet. 1:8), and we should not count on them.
But the Lord is present with us spiritually, and to say that is not to cop out. After giving the Great Commission, Jesus promised, “And, lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Or, as Hebrews 13:5-6 promises, after exhorting us to have our way of life be free from the love of money, “for He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,’ so that we confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What shall man do to me?’”
When we are in the fiery furnace, the Lord Himself stands with us, if not physically as He did with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego (Dan. 3:19-27), very much spiritually, where you can sense His presence. Sometimes He manifests Himself in a special way through His Word. Sometimes it comes through a word of encouragement from another believer. I have experienced both, and they have been precious times, in spite of the difficulties.
In my message on Acts 18:9-10, I shared with you how in my ministry in California, I was going through the most difficult time of criticism that I had ever experienced. I had changed my view from being in favor of “Christian” psychology to being against it, and that change resulted in a barrage of angry letters attacking me and calling for my resignation.
One night, as I was sitting on the edge of the bed feeling discouraged, the reference “Acts 18:9-10” popped into my mind. I had not been reading in Acts and so I don’t know how that verse came to my mind, except that the Lord put it there. I grabbed the Bible beside my bed, opened to those verses, and read how the Lord appeared to Paul in Corinth. He said, “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.” I was flooded with the sense of the Lord’s presence and His confirmation of the direction of my ministry.
I also began to detect a pattern during that time. It took me a while to notice, but once I began to notice, it was very consistent. Every time that I received a letter attacking me, often in the same day’s mail, or at least within a day or two, I would receive an encouraging letter. It was the Lord saying to me, “Take courage! I am with you. Just keep on being faithful to My Word.”
As many of you know, shortly after I began in the ministry here, a severe controversy developed between four of our former elders and me. It was a very distressing time. I think it’s fair to say that they were trying to force me out of the church. Many of you sent me encouraging notes, expressing your support for my ministry, which meant much to me. But the note that meant the most came from our then 13-year-old daughter, Joy. She wrote,
Mom & Dad, I just want you to know that I really appreciate you even though some other people don’t! Don’t listen to them. They don’t know what they’re talking about! Dad, I’m really glad you only preach the truth and don’t compromise what the Bible says. Your sermons have helped me lots! A lot of other people have said the same.
Just hang in there and both of you keep up the good work! Look up these verses: they’ve been an encouragement to me: Jeremiah 29:11; Romans 8:28. I love you lots! Love always, Joy.
Whatever you’re going through, if you’re a child of God, He is there with you. He will show you His presence through His Word and through the encouraging words of other believers. Lean on His promise never to desert or forsake you! He knows all of our difficult circumstances and He is there with us in them.
The Lord does not waste words. He does not say, “Take courage” unless He knows that His servant is discouraged. Paul was disappointed over the way things had gone in Jerusalem. The church had not really appreciated his ministry there. He had been falsely accused and had been beaten by the mob. Now he was feeling the depression that usually follows physical injury. He was alone in his cell. He was feeling uncertain and fearful about the future. Would he ever get to preach in Rome, as he wanted to do? Perhaps he was even wondering where the Lord was in all of these trials. After all, he was only human.
The Lord did not condemn Paul for feeling discouraged, but neither did He let him stay there. He understands our feelings, because He is fully human. As Hebrews 2:16 states, “For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.” So He fully understands how we feel, but He wants us to learn to deal with our feelings in a godly manner.
You’ve probably heard the expression, “Feelings aren’t right or wrong; feelings just are.” There is both truth and error in that statement. The truth of it is, we shouldn’t deny how we feel in an attempt to look more spiritual. Perhaps I’m feeling angry, but I know that my anger would be sinful, and so I say (with clenched teeth), “I’m not angry!” But it’s obvious to everyone else that I’m steaming mad! We need honestly to own up to how we feel.
But the error in the statement is the implication that feelings are morally neutral, and that we’re not responsible for them and we can’t do anything about them. The Bible is clear that many of our feelings are sinful and need to be confronted and put aside. Anger is usually sinful. Sometimes, depression is sinful, when it stems from self-pity or from not trusting God. Anxiety is sinful, even when we’re in the midst of a storm at sea and are afraid that we’re about to die! Jesus rebuked the disciples in that situation for their lack of faith (Mark 8:35-41)! Bitterness is always sinful, no matter how badly we’ve been hurt. So once we’ve admitted how we feel, we need to process our feelings biblically. That’s the fourth lesson:
“Take courage!” Six out of seven uses of this verb in the New Testament are on the lips of Jesus. To a paralytic, lying on his bed, Jesus said, “Take courage, My son, your sins are forgiven” (Matt. 9:2). To the woman with the hemorrhage who touched the fringe of Jesus’ coat, He said, “Daughter, take courage; your faith has saved you” (Matt. 9:22, lit.). To the disciples, who thought that Jesus walking on the water was a ghost, He said, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid” (Matt. 14:27; parallel, Mark 6:50). To the disciples on the night He was betrayed, Jesus said, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). The only other usage was when the bystanders told blind Bartimaeus, “Take courage, arise! He is calling for you” (Mark 10:49). Truly, Jesus is the Lord who encourages those who are discouraged and without any other hope!
But note that it’s a command. It’s a gentle and gracious command, but it is a command. That implies that we can choose to obey it or disobey it. We disobey it when we stubbornly refuse the help that He sends us through the promises of His Word or through a fellow believer who tries to encourage us. We obey it when we say, “Thank You, Lord, for Your faithful love,” and trust His Word. Thus the main way that the Lord encourages us is with His presence in our difficult circumstances.
The Lord tells Paul that he has solemnly witnessed to His cause in Jerusalem. He was no doubt referring to Paul’s courage when he addressed the mob that had just tried to kill him in the temple precincts. But I think the Lord also was referring to Paul’s testimony before the Sanhedrin, although seemingly it had not gone well. In neither instance is there any record of there being any conversions. But making converts isn’t our job. Our job is to bear witness for the Lord, and to leave the results to Him.
All too often, we judge our service for the Lord by the results that we can measure or see. How many showed up at the meeting? How many made decisions for Christ? How many gave us positive feedback about what we did? If we consistently receive negative feedback or no visible results, we probably should evaluate whether our manner or methods are somehow wrong. But in some cases, such as with Jeremiah, we may faithfully serve the Lord for many years with many negative and few positive responses.
The main criteria for evaluating our work for the Lord are: Was I faithful to God’s Word? And, was I relying on Him and acting in obedience to what I believed He wanted me to do? If you can answer yes, then, even if you catch criticism, you know in your heart that the Lord was pleased with your service. You offer it up to Him, and you will hear from Him, “Well done!”
The Bible has many promises that the Lord commends His faithful servants. Here are two: Hebrews 6:10 says, “For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.” And, 1 Corinthians 15:58, in the context of the resurrection of the body and the Lord’s return, says, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.” Whatever you do to serve Him, He remembers and He will reward you for it. Even if no one else appreciates what you have done, the Lord says, “Thanks for standing for My cause!”
The Lord encourages His servants with His presence in their difficult circumstances and with His praise for their past service.
“So you must witness at Rome also.” The Lord doesn’t bother to tell Paul of the impending plot to kill him or of the two years that he will sit in custody in Caesarea. He doesn’t tell him of the shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea or of the fact that he will go to Rome as a prisoner. But He does tell Paul that he will bear witness at Rome. Even if Paul made a mistake by going to Jerusalem (as some say) or by going along with the scheme of going into the temple to participate in a Jewish ceremony and sacrifice (as I think he did), there is no word of rebuke for that here. Rather, the Lord commends Paul for his past service and promises that He is not through with him yet.
Note the word “must.” The Greek word means, “it is necessary.” Luke uses it about 22 times in Acts. The Lord uses the same word again through the angel who appeared to Paul in the storm just before the shipwreck and said, “Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar” (27:24). When God says, “you must,” you know that it’s a done deal. It’s going to happen. As someone has said, “You are immortal until your work for the Lord is done.”
During that time of intense criticism that I went through in California, one evening when I was feeling down, I went into our bathroom to get ready for bed. Our oldest daughter, Christa, who was about 14, had put a post-it note on our mirror that quoted her favorite verse at that time (Jer. 29:11, NIV): “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” What an encouragement! That was God’s promise through Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon, that after 70 years of captivity, God would visit them and fulfill His word to bring them back to the Promised Land.
But that is also His promise to all of His servants who may feel exiled in some distant Babylon, set aside from His purpose. It is His word to those who feel forsaken in some literal or figurative prison, nursing the bruises that they have received in their service for Him. The Lord says, “I have plans to prosper you, plans to give you hope and a future!” “Take courage, for you must witness at Rome also.” Even though you’re wounded and tired, if you’re still breathing, God isn’t finished with you yet. Take courage!
In a sermon on the Lord’s words, “Take courage” (The Westminster Pulpit [Baker], pp. 18-20), G. Campbell Morgan asks the question, “How are we to obey Him?” How can we take courage when we feel fearful or discouraged? He concludes that the only way is to get a clear vision of the Lord Himself. It is to see Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who endured such hostility of sinners against Himself (Heb. 12:2-3). He observes, “All our fear and all our panic result from a dimmed vision of the Lord, a dimmed consciousness of Christ” (p. 19). A few paragraphs later he states, “There is no refuge for the soul of man other than the Lord Christ” (p. 20).
If you’re discouraged about your present difficult circumstances, or feeling down about past mistakes you have made, or anxious about the future, the Lord wants you to take courage. He is with you in your trials, He commends you for your past service, and He promises to use you again in His service as you continue to walk with Him.
And as the Lord encourages you, seek to be His channel of encouragement to others. Remember George Herbert’s words, “Good words are worth much, and cost little.” If you encourage others, you are acting like the Lord Jesus.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
“What rotten luck I’ve been having lately!” “I’m having a bad day!” “Oh, well, whatever will be will be, and there’s nothing that we can do about it!”
You’ve probably heard people say all of the above. Perhaps you’ve even said or thought something similar yourself at times. But all of those declarations are at odds with biblical truth, because each statement goes against the truth of God’s providence. There is no such thing as luck or pure chance. If we have a bad day, it is because the Lord ordained these circumstances for our benefit. Bad days don’t just happen! “Whatever will be will be” reflects a view of our circumstances as being caused by impersonal fate.
The Bible often teaches and illustrates the doctrine of God’s providence (I will give a definition later), and it should be a source of great comfort and instruction for every believer. It means that God is not distant, passive, or unconcerned with the daily events in our lives. Rather, as our loving and caring Heavenly Father, He actively governs the daily events of our lives, usually behind the scenes, without in any way robbing us of the duty of making responsible choices.
The story before us contains no exposition of biblical doctrine, no exhortations, and no commands. Rather, it illustrates for us the doctrine taught and illustrated elsewhere of God’s providence. The governing verse for this and all of the events before Paul reaches Rome is verse 11, where the Lord promises Paul that he must witness at Rome also. God has declared His sovereign purpose, and we will see it unfold in the chapters ahead. Here, we learn that …
When we face trials and opposition in our service for the Lord, we should trust Him to protect us by His providence and to work out His sovereign plan for our lives.
God declares that Paul will bear witness for Him in Rome. Over 40 Jewish terrorists determine that even if they die in the process, they will not eat or drink until they assassinate Paul. Guess who prevails? It just “so happens” that Paul’s nephew gets wind of the plot and tells Paul, who sends him to the commander, who is willing to listen to the boy’s story and act on it. He calls together 470 armed troops to escort Paul safely to the Roman governor, Felix, at Caesarea. God wins! There are two practical lessons:
Paul was not what you would call an ordinary believer. God has not used any other man in the history of the church as mightily as He used the apostle Paul. That being the case, you would think that God would grant this great man smooth sailing so that he could accomplish as much as possible. But if you have read your New Testament, you know that that is far from the truth. Here is how Paul himself catalogued what he had gone through:
… in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches (2 Cor. 11:23b-28).
If Paul, who was one of God’s choicest servants, went through such trials, then none of us are exempt. And yet often believers are surprised when they encounter trials in the course of their service for the Lord. They think, “If I were living for myself, that would be one thing. I would expect God’s hand of discipline in that case. But here I am trying to serve the Lord, and now this happens! What’s the deal?”
The deal is that God nowhere promises His servants a pass that exempts them from trials and opposition. In fact, His Word often describes the Christian life as warfare, and warfare is hardly a promise of a smooth, easy existence! So whenever you attempt to do anything to serve the Lord, whether it is a behind-the-scenes kind of helping ministry or a visible, up-front ministry, you should expect that the enemy will oppose you and be trying to take you out of service. It just goes with the turf!
Paul’s opposition here came from the Jews, and not just from the average, go-to-synagogue Jews, but from the Jewish leaders. These zealots who intended to kill Paul engaged in a religious activity, fasting, to show their zeal and dedication to God. They no doubt justified their evil aim by arguing that the cause is so important that it doesn’t matter what means are used to achieve it. This renegade Jew who went around the Roman Empire preaching that Gentiles could know God without becoming Jews needed to be silenced. If they couldn’t silence him legally, they would have to kill him. If some of them died at the hands of the Roman guards protecting Paul, so be it. If it required deception to the Roman commander to pull it off, then they would use deception. The necessary end justified the wicked means!
Luke skillfully contrasts the kindness and lawful protection of the Roman commander with the murderous conniving of these religious Jews. This pagan man kindly took Paul’s nephew by the hand, led him aside where they could talk privately, and listened to what he said. He could have scoffed at it as the wild imagination of a young boy, but he didn’t do that.
Rather, he used his authority and the troops at his disposal to protect this Roman citizen so that he would receive a fair trial. And so a pagan Roman soldier shows far more kindness to Paul than his own kinsmen did. It calls to mind the story of Jonah, where the pagan sailors showed Jonah much more kindness than the disobedient prophet was willing to show towards the pagan people of Ninevah.
The Roman commander, in his letter to the governor, bent the truth a bit to make himself look good (23:27). But he also declared Paul innocent of breaking the Roman law (23:29). If Paul’s enemies had a valid case against him, they would not have had to resort to violence. When people attack a man, it is often because they cannot refute his doctrine, and that doctrine convicts them of their sinfulness before God.
The application for us is, don’t be surprised when your strongest critics and opponents of your service for the Lord come from within the church, rather than from outside. There are many in evangelical churches who simply “use” God as a covering for serving their own selfish purposes. They teach the Bible because it makes them feel important and gives them a public platform. They serve in some capacity because they love the recognition and praise that they get from it. They follow Jesus to the extent that He “meets their needs.” But at the heart level, they have never dethroned self and enthroned Jesus as Lord.
The stumbling-block of the cross was at the heart of the Jewish opposition to Paul. If we were not sinners who deserve God’s eternal wrath, then Jesus the Savior did not have to die for our sins. To receive Him as Savior requires that we acknowledge that we are sinners who deserve God’s wrath. And, it is ridiculous to say that we can receive Jesus as Savior, but that submitting to Him as Lord is optional! If He is the eternal God who took on human flesh to die for our sins, then we owe Him everything.
So the first lesson is that we all will face trials and opposition in our service for the Lord.
The Lord had just appeared to Paul and told him that it was necessary (literal Greek for the word “must”) for him to bear witness in Rome. As I mentioned last week, so far as the text reveals, the Lord didn’t say a word to Paul about this impending plot against his life, or about any of the other trials that would be involved in getting him to Rome. He just announces His plan, that Paul would bear witness in Rome, and leaves it for Paul, seemingly by “happenstance,” to discover this plot against his life. Paul’s nephew (this is the only direct reference to any of Paul’s relatives in Scripture) “happens” to be in the right place at the right time to learn about this plot. God uses this to save Paul’s life. There are four lessons here for us to apply:
As the “Four Spiritual Laws” booklet states Law One: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Whether He calls you to be a bricklayer or a businessman, a school teacher or a missionary, a truck driver or a preacher, His plan is that you would live in such a manner that your life brings glory and honor to His name.
As we also saw last week, the Lord promised His exiled people through Jeremiah (29:11), “I know the plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” Or, as the prophet Isaiah (8:10) declares to the nations that threatened Israel, “Devise a plan, but it will be thwarted; state a proposal, but it will not stand, for God is with us.” Wicked men may plan to destroy God’s servants, but unless God permits it as a part of His sovereign plan, they will not succeed. God’s plans overrule the plans of men, no matter how powerful they may think they are. Even of kings, God says, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Prov. 21:1). Proud men may plan out their lives, but “There is no wisdom and no understanding and no counsel against the Lord” (Prov. 21:30). This means,
These more than 40 men who bound themselves under oath to murder Paul were terrorists. The literal Greek of 23:14 is, “We have anathematized ourselves with an anathema to taste nothing until we have killed Paul.” They knew that killing Paul while he was under Roman guard would probably mean that at least some of them would die in the attempt. If the others could be apprehended, they would be tried and executed for attacking Roman soldiers who were occupied in their duty of guarding a Roman citizen. But these men were like modern suicide bombers; they were willing to die for their cause. But as David declares (Psalm 2:1-4):
Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.
Sometimes God’s sovereign plan for us includes martyrdom, as it later did for the apostle Paul, and as it has for hundreds of thousands of saints down through history. But when the wicked succeed in killing God’s servants, it is only because God has a higher plan and because He permits it. As Isaiah 54:17 promises, “No weapon that is formed against you will prosper.” We can take great comfort in the fact that no evil person, government, or force can thwart God’s sovereign plan for our lives.
The word “providence” does not occur in the Bible, but the doctrine is stated and illustrated as a major theme throughout Scripture. As you probably know, it is the theme of the Book of Esther, which never mentions God directly. And yet His providential hand is behind the twists and turns of the story, preserving His chosen people from destruction.
Deists deny God’s providence by asserting that He created the world, but He is no longer actively involved in it. Others say that God is active in the events of the world, but that He is not sovereign over evil. Rather, evil is the result of free will. But the Bible teaches that God is actively controlling or directing even evil events and evil people in such a way as to accomplish His sovereign will, and yet He is not the author of evil and is not responsible for it (as Eph. 1:11 states). But no evil person or act changes or thwarts God’s sovereign will (see the discussion in Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology [Zondervan], p. 322-331).
Here is how theologian Wayne Grudem (ibid., p. 315, italics his) defines God’s providence:
God is continually involved with all created things in such a way that he (1) keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them; (2) cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do; and (3) directs them to fulfill his purposes.
John Calvin puts it (The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. by John McNeill [Westminster Press], 1:16:4), “providence means not that by which God idly observes from heaven what takes place on earth, but that by which, as keeper of the keys, he governs all events.” As Grudem’s definition outlines, there are three aspects of God’s providence in the Bible (I’m following his treatment and quoting him, pp. 315-354, here).
First, God’s providence means preservation, that “God keeps all created things existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them” (p. 316). Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Christ “upholds all things by the word of His power.” The Greek word translated “uphold” means to carry or bear. Grudem says, “It does not mean simply ‘sustain,’ but has the sense of active, purposeful control over the thing being carried from one place to another” (ibid.). Colossians 1:17 also asserts that “all things hold together” in Christ. If Jesus were to “let go,” the entire universe would instantly disintegrate! Thus God did not just design the laws of science and nature and step away from them. Rather, He actively maintains such laws.
Second, God’s providence means concurrence, that “God cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do” (p. 317). This includes God’s causing things to happen that we would think of as merely “natural” occurrences. For example, the Bible says that God causes the rain and snow to fall on earth, along with the wind to blow and the lightning to flash (Job 37:6-13; Ps. 135:7). God also gives food to the wild animals and birds (Ps. 104:27-29; Matt. 6:26).
God governs what we might call random chance events, such as the casting of lots (Prov. 16:33). Also, God causes things to happen where His creatures also play a role. For example, I may water and fertilize my grass or a farmer his crops, but God causes them to grow. I can put water into the freezer, but God makes it freeze (Job 38:27, 29-30).
God also governs human affairs. He determines the time, existence, and boundaries of the nations (Acts 17:26). He sets up rulers and takes them down again (Dan. 4:34-35; Ps. 22:28). He governs every aspect of our lives (Jer. 10:23; Prov. 16:9; 20:24), including the number of days that we will live (Ps. 139:16). He is even sovereign over evil, although He is not tainted in any way by it nor is He responsible for it (Gen. 50:20; Acts 2:23; 4:27-28; 1 John 1:5). But He uses evil men and events to carry out His sovereign plan, even as He is doing in our story with this evil plot to kill Paul.
Third, God’s providence means government, that “God has a purpose in all that he does in the world and he providentially governs or directs all things in order that they accomplish his purposes” (p. 331). “He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” (Dan. 4:35). God “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11).
The doctrine of God’s providence is very practical and comforting on a daily basis. If we live in a world of random chance, it is a most scary place to be! You never know what bad things might happen to you or your loved ones, and so all you can do is hope for “good luck.” Or, if as some Christians believe, God is not sovereign over evil, then when terrorists fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and kill thousands of people, or a crazy gunman kills your loved one, that’s tragic, but there was nothing that God could have done about it, since He gave them “free will.”
But if even that evil event was under God’s providence, then we know that He can work it together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). Those who lost loved ones can know that those wicked men did not in any way thwart God’s sovereign plan. Rather, those evil men were inadvertently carrying out His sovereign plan for history and they will face God’s eternal judgment!
Thus, God has a sovereign plan for each of us. Evil men cannot thwart God’s purpose. God carries out His sovereign plan through His often behind-the-scenes providence. Finally,
God had promised Paul that he would bear witness at Rome, but when his nephew told him about this plot to kill him, he did not say, “Don’t worry! God has promised that I will go to Rome, so we don’t need to do anything about it!” No, Paul sent him to the commander, and then he thankfully used the horses and 470 armed soldiers that the commander provided to get him safely out of Jerusalem to Caesarea.
The Bible teaches that God ordains both the end and the means to the end. Some Christians wrongly conclude, “If God has ordained that a certain number of elect people will be saved, we don’t have to do anything about it, because they will get saved.” The fallacy in that statement is that God ordained that His elect would be saved through the preaching of the gospel to every nation (Matt. 28:19; Rom. 10:14-15). As Paul said, “For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10). Paul had to suffer what he went through in order to preach to God’s elect so that they would get saved. God also ordains that we pray in order to see His kingdom come, even though it will certainly come (Matt. 6:10).
Hopefully no one here has (or ever will have) a band of assassins sworn to kill you! But you may be in difficult circumstances, perhaps even in connection with your service for the Lord. God wants you to see Him in all of your circumstances, orchestrating events to fulfill His plan for your life. As Harry Ironside comments on our text, “God is never closer to his people than when they cannot see his face” (Lectures on the Book of Acts [Loizeaux Brothers], p. 545). So we can submit to Him and His will as He deals with us through our circumstances.
But don’t fall into the error of passively submitting to circumstances as if fate or determinism were true. God expects you to use the means that He has provided as a part of His providential care for you. As you work out your salvation with fear and trembling, you will see that it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Years ago, 20th Century-Fox advertised for a salesman and got this reply from an applicant:
I am at present selling furniture at the address below. You may judge my ability as a salesman if you will stop in to see me at any time, pretending that you are interested in buying furniture. When you come in you can identify me by my red hair. And I will have no way of identifying you. Such salesmanship as I exhibit during your visit, therefore, will be no more than my usual workaday approach, and not a special effort to impress a prospective employer (“Bits & Pieces” [3/85]).
I don’t know if that young man got the job, but he demonstrated a quality that is rare, although it shouldn’t be—integrity. It’s easy to talk about integrity. In a 1980 Sports Illustrated, a well-known athlete said, “Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident and money takes wings. The only thing that endures is character.” That was O. J. Simpson speaking!
But talking about character and living it are two different things. When we find a man whose life radiates integrity, we should pause and learn from him. The apostle Paul was such a man. In his defense before Felix to the charges that the Jewish leaders brought against him, Paul proclaimed his integrity by saying, “I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men” (24:16). But he not only proclaimed his integrity; he lived it. The proof of Paul’s integrity is the great impact he has had on so many down through the centuries.
Luke contrasts Paul’s integrity with the glaring lack of integrity of a certain lawyer, Tertullus, who was willing, for a fee, to take up the Jewish leaders’ slanderous accusations against Paul. And, although Luke does not say anything derogatory against the Roman governor, Felix, it was common knowledge that he was a scoundrel. I will deal more with him next week, but for now I will say that he was a slave who gained his freedom and rose to power through his connections. The historian, Tacitus, described Felix as one who reveled in cruelty and lust, and wielded the power of a king with the mind of a slave. His rule over Palestine was marked by unrest and turmoil. He dealt with insurrection by crucifying hundreds of rebels. If Tertullus could convince Felix that this renegade Paul was a seditious man, it would not bother Felix’s conscience in the least to crucify him or lop off his head.
And so we have here a man of integrity up against a lawyer, a group of Jewish leaders who had tried to assassinate him, and a governor who notoriously lacked integrity. Paul teaches us that …
We can live with integrity by speaking the truth, by living in line with Scripture, and by keeping a blameless conscience before God and men.
Before we look at these factors, we need to take to heart another lesson that is evident from our text:
*A life of integrity does not shield us from being falsely accused.
If this world were made up of basically good people, a man of integrity would be well loved and have no enemies. But since this world is made up of sinners who love darkness rather than light, and since a life of integrity exposes their evil deeds, sinners will often slander the man of integrity. We are naïve if we think that if we live with integrity, we will be protected from false accusations and slanderous attempts to bring us down.
In 24:1-9, Tertullus presents his shaky case against Paul. Nearly half of his speech consists of his obvious flattery toward Felix. It is one thing to be polite towards the one in authority; Paul does that (24:10). But Tertullus’ flattery goes so far beyond credulity that probably Felix himself was thinking, “Come on! We all know that you’re lying. Get on with your case!” Tertullus promises to be brief, as if to say, “This case is a no-brainer! Just grant us what we ask by getting rid of this pesky fellow and we can all get on with more important matters.”
He brings three charges against Paul. Although the Jewish leaders’ main gripe was religious, they knew that religious charges would not get far with the Roman governor. Rome took charges of political unrest seriously, and if Paul were guilty of sedition, he could be executed. So they framed the first two charges in terms of political sedition: (1) Paul was a plague, spreading unrest among the Jews throughout the empire. (2) He was a ringleader of a heretical sect that was not recognized as a legitimate religion by the Roman government. And, (3) since he had tried to desecrate the Jewish temple by taking a Gentile beyond the Court of the Gentiles, Rome should hand him over to the Jews to execute him. Rome had granted the Jews that right, even if the Gentile in question was a Roman citizen (Richard Longenecker, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 9:522).
Tertullus’ strategy was to hope that, based on the Jews’ testimony, Felix would act in his usual insensitive manner and have Paul executed (ibid., p. 540). Tertullus flatly lies when he states that the Jews arrested Paul in the act of trying to desecrate the temple (24:6). The fact was, the Jews mobbed Paul with the intent to kill him, but the Roman commander intervened to save his life. But in spite of such blatant falsehood, all of the Jews joined his attack, asserting that the charges against Paul were true (24:9).
The best manuscripts omit verse 6b through 8a. The addition of these sentences would have Tertullus complain against Lysias’ intervention, and would urge Felix to examine Lysias’ testimony. The exclusion would urge Felix to examine Paul’s testimony. Probably the words in brackets were not original (Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament [United Bible Societies], 2nd ed., p. 434). Thus Tertullus is telling Felix that if he examines Paul, he will find him to be the liar that he really is.
The application is to keep in mind that living with integrity does not shield us from being falsely accused. Read the Psalms to see how often David was slandered. Remember that he is often a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was without sin and yet was constantly slandered. You could probably state it as a rule: the more godly the man, the more he will be slandered!
With that in mind, let’s look at three factors that went into Paul’s integrity:
Paul’s integrity enabled him to give a calm, straightforward reply to the accusations against him. He lived openly before God and men, and thus he didn’t have to weave a tale of half-truths or misleading statements to defend himself. He simply spoke the truth, refuting each of the charges in order.
To the charge of stirring up sedition, Paul pointed to the facts. It had only been 12 days since he went up to Jerusalem to worship. Although it is debated as to when the starting point was of Luke’s “after five days” (24:1), Paul’s irrefutable argument is that he simply had not had time to stir up sedition, as his accusers had charged. Furthermore, his purpose in going to Jerusalem was not to stir up the crowds, but to worship. Thus he had not preached or even carried on a group discussion in the temple, nor in synagogues, nor anywhere in the city (24:12). His accusers could not prove their first charge.
Regarding the second charge, of being the ringleader of a heretical sect, Paul did not deny his commitment to the Christian faith, which he calls “the Way,” but he denies that it is a heretical Jewish sect. He affirms his full belief in everything written in the Law and the Prophets (the entire Old Testament). He also affirms the Jewish hope (denied by the Sadducee wing of his accusers) “that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked” (Dan. 12:2; John 5:28). This is the only time that Paul explicitly states that the wicked will be raised for judgment. Paul is saying that as a Christian, he was acting as a true Jew, in line with the Hebrew Scriptures. Felix would have missed it, but Paul is also taking a swipe at his Sadducee accusers, implying that it was they that were the Jewish heretics. In denying the resurrection, they denied their own Scriptures.
Regarding the third charge, that he had desecrated the temple, Paul pointed out that his reason for coming to Jerusalem was to bring alms to his nation and to present offerings. “Offerings” may be a repetition of “alms,” referring to his gift that he had collected from the Gentiles for the poor Jewish believers. Or, it may refer to the offerings that he was about to offer in connection with the vows of the young men. But his point is that he had come to Jerusalem for noble purposes and had gone through the ritual purification. As he was going about his business, certain Jews from Asia who recognized him stirred up the crowd against him.
By pointing out that his accusers should have been present (24:19), Paul was raising a point of Roman law, which imposed heavy penalties on accusers who abandoned their charges. “The disappearance of accusers often meant the withdrawal of a charge” (Longenecker, p. 541). Paul concludes by pointing out that the only supposed misdeed that any of his accusers had against him was his statement of being on trial before them because of his belief in the resurrection of the dead. So Paul answered his accusers by speaking the truth.
Being a person who consistently speaks the truth is a freeing concept! If you’re in the spin business, of making yourself look better than you really are, then you have to remember what you said to whomever, and hope that those you’re trying to impress don’t start comparing notes. But if your life is a single fabric and you habitually speak the truth, you don’t have to worry about what you said to whomever. You just speak truth to everyone!
Earl Long, a former governor of Louisiana, once said of another politician: “You know how you can tell that fellow is lying? Watch his lips. If they’re moving, he’s lying.” I’m sure that all of you were, as I was, disturbed several years ago when our former President looked straight at the camera and told us with great vehemence that he had not had sex with “that woman.” But what bothered me even more was that when it came out that he had even lied about this under oath, the majority of our political leaders and the majority of Americans polled shrugged it off as if it didn’t really affect his ability to govern our nation!
As Christians, we are commanded to speak the truth (Eph. 4:25). The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44), but God is the God of truth, who cannot lie (Titus 1:1-2). Jesus Christ claimed that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one can come to the Father, except through Him (John 14:6). As His followers, we must become people who speak the truth in every situation.
A small boy was on the witness stand in an important lawsuit. The prosecuting attorney cross-examined him and then delivered what he thought would be a crushing blow to the boy’s testimony. “Your father has been telling you how to testify, hasn’t he?”
“Yes,” the boy quickly replied.
“Now,” said the attorney triumphantly, “just tell us how your father told you to testify.”
“Well,” the boy said modestly, “Father told me the lawyers would try to tangle me in my testimony, but if I would just be careful to tell the truth, I could repeat the same thing every time.” (Author unknown.) Well said!
Paul asserts his obedience to Scripture when he tells Felix that he served “the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the Law, and that is written in the Prophets” (24:14). Becoming a Christian for Paul did not in any way mean jettisoning the Old Testament. When he wrote, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16), Paul was referring mostly to the Old Testament, since the New Testament was not yet widely recognized and accepted as Scripture.
While the Old Testament must be properly interpreted in light of its fulfillment in Jesus Christ and in light of the transition from law to grace, we would greatly err if we set it aside as irrelevant or impractical. While the Jewish ceremonial laws were fulfilled in Christ and are set aside under the New Covenant, God’s moral law stems from His holy character and is always our standard for godly living. Being under grace never means setting aside God’s moral law. We will grow in integrity and godly living only as we grow to know and understand all of God’s Word of truth.
In light of Paul’s hope in God and in light of the certainty of the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked, Paul sought to maintain always a blameless conscience before God and before men. The concept of maintaining a good conscience is an important one in Scripture. Paul later tells Timothy, “But the goal of our instruction [lit., “commandment”] is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5). He tells Timothy to keep faith and a good conscience, warning him that some have rejected these qualities and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith (1 Tim. 1:19). So it is crucial for us to understand what it means to maintain a good conscience and to practice it daily.
I offer this definition of what it means to live with a blameless conscience: In the light of Scripture and the coming judgment, we examine our hearts and are not aware of any sin of thought, word, or deed that we have not confessed and turned from; or of any person that we have wronged and not sought to make it right. Consider these four aspects:
Because of the fall of the human race, the conscience by itself is not a safe guide. Jesus told the disciples that the day would come when those who killed them would think that they were offering a service to God (John 16:2). His words applied to these Jewish leaders who sought to kill Paul. Paul himself had once thought that he was serving God by persecuting Christians. If we compare ourselves with others, rather than with Scripture, we can conclude that we’re doing okay. But God’s Word penetrates like a sword down into our innermost being, judging the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, laying us bare in God’s holy presence (Heb. 4:12-13). So we must grow in our understanding of God’s standards as revealed in His Word.
I had a humorous illustration of this in the church I pastored in California. My associate pastor was standing in line in a convenience store behind a man who had just started attending the church. This new guy, who was not from a Christian background, was buying a six-pack of beer and $5 worth of lottery tickets. The cashier only charged him $1 for the lottery tickets. He pointed out her error and then turned and said to my associate, “After Steve’s sermon, what else could I do? I have to be honest!”
Hopefully after he grew to know God’s Word, he would get convicted about his drinking and gambling, but at least he knew that he needed to be honest!
If we only live outwardly before men, we are hypocrites. It’s very easy to fake it in front of others, but we cannot fake out God, who examines our hearts (1 Thess. 2:4-5). Jesus said that all sin begins in the heart (Mark 7:21-23), and so we need to get in the habit of judging it at that level before it goes any farther. If we do not develop this habit, we are deceiving ourselves if we think that we are walking with God. It is especially important to avoid rationalizing and excusing our sin by blaming others. Having a blameless conscience before God means that I quickly confess and turn away from any sin that His Word or His Spirit convicts me of, no matter what others may have done to me.
There should not be anyone who could say to us, “You sinned against me and have never made it right.” We don’t need to go to another person if our sin against them was only in our mind. We should repent of that sin before God, but if the other person is not aware of it, we don’t need to ask his or her forgiveness. But if we know that we sinned against the person directly or behind his back (through gossip or slander), we need to ask forgiveness and seek to avoid repeating the same sin again.
Bill Gothard has some helpful teaching on this subject. He emphasizes the importance of using correct wording so as to reflect full repentance and sincere humility. It is best to call or to go directly to the person, rather than to write a letter. Do not say, “If I was wrong, please forgive me.” As Bill points out, this is like saying, “If my personality (for which I’m not responsible) has offended you, there must be something wrong with your ability to get along with others. But I’ll be big-hearted about this and assume that maybe it’s my fault (which I’m not fully convinced it is) and ask you to forgive me—if you still think I’m wrong, that is” (“Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts Manual,” Clear Conscience, p. 28).
Rather, you should say, “God has convicted me of how wrong I’ve been in ___ (basic offense). I’ve called to ask, ‘Will you forgive me?’” (ibid., p. 29).
Paul states that his practice of seeking to maintain a blameless conscience before God and men stems from the certainty of the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked (24:15-16). If there is no God, no resurrection, and no future judgment, then you are a fool to live as a Christian. Those aren’t my words; those are Paul’s words (1 Cor. 15:19). If there is no eternity, then live for all the immediate pleasure that you can get, because you will die soon (1 Cor. 15:32). But if God lives and if He is going to raise every person to stand before Him in judgment, then everyone should repent of his sins, trust in Christ as Savior, and live all of life with a blameless conscience before God and before men. If you cannot go from here today with such a clear conscience, your greatest and most urgent need is to get right with God!
As we’ll see next week, Felix was a sad case, and here he waffles. He knows that Paul is innocent and should be released. But he also knows that the Jews won’t be happy if he lets Paul go. He can’t afford any more unrest among his constituents. So he does what many politicians do: He punts! He postpones the case with the excuse that he will decide it after he hears the testimony of Lysias, the commander. This gets the Jews off his back and out of town. He salves his guilty conscience by giving orders that Paul’s custody should be fairly comfortable and free.
This shows us that we have no guarantee that everything will go well with us when we walk uprightly before God. Joseph acted with godly integrity when he resisted the seductive moves of Potiphar’s wife, and it landed him in prison for several years. But the Lord was with him there, and it’s better to have the Lord with you in prison than to have sinful pleasure without the Lord. It’s better to be in custody with a clear conscience, as Paul was, than to have power and money, but be alienated from God, as Felix was.
So devote yourself to living with integrity by speaking the truth in every situation; by living in line with God’s Word; and, by keeping a blameless conscience before God and men. However difficult your circumstances here, you will sleep well, knowing that you will dwell in heaven with God throughout eternity.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
A legend tells of the devil summoning his evil forces to consider how best to keep the world on his side. One demon said, “Send me. I will tell them that there is no God.” Satan replied, “They will never believe you. Most of them know that there is a God.” Another said, “Send me. I’ll tell them that there is no heaven or hell.” Satan shook his head, “That will never do. They know that there is life after death.” Then a third spoke, “Send me. I’ll tell them there is a God, a heaven, and a hell, but there’s no hurry to decide.” “Ah,” said Satan with satisfaction, “that is the best plan!” He was sent out into the world to spread this lie (source unknown).
That demon was surely at work in the case of Felix. Here was a man with the opportunity of a lifetime, to listen to none other than the apostle Paul preach the gospel to him and his wife personally. But Paul’s preaching went to meddling and got a bit too close for comfort. Felix should have responded as the trembling Philippian jailer did, by asking, “What must I do to be saved?” Instead, Felix became frightened and told Paul, “Go away for the present, and when I find time, I will summon you” (24:25). He did summon Paul often after that, but he never trembled again. He missed the opportunity to be saved because of the excuse that he didn’t have time for God.
Each of us needs to ponder Felix’s excuse, “when I find time.” We all live busy lives. Many things crowd into our daily schedules. We all know that we should make time for God, but we’re prone to think, “I’ll do that later, when I find the time. Right now, I’ve got too heavy of a schedule.” “As soon as the semester is over, I’ll find time for God.” “As soon as I get through the current pressured time at work, I’ll make time for God.” “As soon as the kids get into school, I’ll make time for God.” “When I’m older, after I’ve had some fun in life, then I’ll make time for God.” And so life slips by, the things of God fade from view, and we miss our opportunity, just as Felix did.
Felix and his wife Drusilla were colorful characters whose lives sound like a modern TV series. He was a slave in the household of Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia and the mother of the Roman emperor Claudius. Felix and his brother, Pallas, were given their freedom and rose to positions of great influence during Claudius’ reign. Pallas became the chief accountant to the public treasury and amassed enormous wealth. Through his connections in high places, Felix got appointed as governor of Judea, a position that he held probably from A.D. 52-59.
In his personal life, from a worldly point of view, Felix had not done badly for a slave. His first wife was the granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra. Drusilla was his third wife, a famous beauty whom he seduced from her husband, a king in Syria. She was about 18 or 19 when Paul spoke to them here. She was the daughter of Herod Agrippa I, who executed James and planned to do the same to Peter (Acts 12). She was the sister of Agrippa II and Bernice (Acts 25:13 ff.), who were rumored to be living together in incest. Bernice later became the lover of the Roman general Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Drusilla and Felix had a son who was killed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. You can see why I said that their story sounds like a modern soap opera!
This vignette of Paul’s encounter with Felix and Drusilla gives us some principles that will enable us to find time for God:
To find time for God, we must seize present opportunities, deal with known sin, and establish proper priorities.
Each of these principles is illustrated positively in Paul and negatively in Felix and Drusilla.
I once saw a cartoon that showed Martin Luther sitting in front of a TV set with the remote in his hand. He’s thinking, “Should I write those 95 theses? Nah, let’s see what’s on the tube.” The caption said, “What would have happened if Luther had had TV.” All too often, we allow procrastination to rob us of spiritual opportunities, whether for our own growth or for the advance of the gospel. Note the contrast between Paul and Felix.
Here is Paul, a prisoner who is innocent of the false charges against him, coming before the man who had the power to release him or execute him. Paul easily could have been tempted to argue for his release, but to say very little about the Christian faith. But Paul acted according to his stated purpose, of doing all things for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:23). Even in presenting the gospel, he could have been tempted to go very lightly, being sure not to say anything offensive to this powerful man and his wife. Maybe he should present the gospel in a user-friendly fashion, showing them how Jesus could help them have a happier life. He could bring out his best stories to warm their hearts and maybe Felix would even let Paul out of prison.
But Paul didn’t know anything about a user-friendly gospel! He didn’t give Felix and Drusilla an inspiring message that left them feeling good about themselves. He went for the jugular! He spoke about the faith that is in Christ Jesus (24:24, lit.). And he didn’t just say to them, “Don’t worry about your sins. Just believe in Jesus and you’ll have eternal life.” Look at what he spoke about as he explained the Christian faith: “righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come” (24:25). The verb translated “discussing” means “to reason with.” Paul didn’t bypass their minds and go for heartwarming stories. He appealed through their minds to their consciences. The gospel should make people think, convicting their consciences, leading to a rational decision to trust in Christ. An emotional appeal that bypasses the mind may get decisions, but they will be flimsy, at best.
Where did Paul come up with these topics for a message to this unbelieving couple? Did he need some instruction on how to present the gospel more sensitively? No, he was doing what Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do through His followers: He would convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8). Paul couldn’t have aimed this message any more directly at his hearers than he did! They might have expected a safe, interesting, comfortable lecture on the Christian religion. But Paul went for their consciences, bringing the message pointedly to bear on their corrupt, immoral, worldly lifestyles.
When he spoke of righteousness, Paul probably spoke on the perfect righteousness of God and the absolute righteousness that God demands from every person as revealed in His holy law. Everyone has sinned and falls short of God’s perfect standard. Paul’s words on the need for self-control hit this couple with their own sins of lust, adultery, greed, and selfish indulgence. Perhaps he said to them, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present world” (Titus 2:11-12). The judgment to come pointed them to the fact that God “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).
We don’t know how far Paul got, but you can be assured that if he was allowed to keep going, he spoke on the need for faith in Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection provide the payment for the penalty of sins that every sinner needs. Paul saw the opening for the gospel, and he went through it with full force.
But perhaps before Paul was able to point to the Lord Jesus, Felix became visibly frightened over Paul’s message and said, “Go away for the present, and when I find time, I will summon you.” Here we see that …
“When I find time”—what a sad excuse! Here Felix was, talking with none other than the apostle Paul, who could have answered any spiritual question that Felix had asked. His fear would seem to indicate that the Holy Spirit was bringing conviction of sin to his conscience as he felt the force of Paul’s words. Yet he sent Paul away with a lame excuse about finding time later. He often did talk with Paul after this, but he never trembled with fear after this. He missed his opportunity to respond to the gospel.
When your body is in pain, it’s a warning that something is wrong. If you dull the pain with drugs without fixing the root problem, you may be in for more serious trouble later. It’s like the warning lights on the dashboard of your car. When they go off, you need to find out what the problem is and fix it. Continuing to ignore the warnings can destroy your engine.
It is the same way spiritually. God may use His Word, the preaching of the Word, or someone’s godly words or behavior to prick your conscience. You can pay attention to the warnings and take appropriate action, or you can ignore the warnings by making up excuses and pretending that the problems don’t exist. Felix should have allowed his fear to drive him to ask, “What must I do to be saved?” Instead, he blocked out the warning and missed his opportunity for salvation.
Every week, we all face opportunities for spiritual advance. There is the opportunity to set your alarm a few minutes early to get up and spend time with the Lord. Or, you can sack in and miss that opportunity. There is the opportunity to read some spiritually enriching Christian books that will change your life. Or, you can sit mesmerized in front of TV shows that pollute your mind with filthy humor, which the Bible plainly commands us to avoid (Eph. 5:3). There is the opportunity to get your finances in order as a good steward of what the Lord has entrusted to you, and to give generously to His cause. Or, you can squander those resources on American junk. There is the opportunity to meet with other believers to grow in your faith. Or, you can forsake assembling together with the saints. There is the opportunity to talk to a lost person about the Savior. Or, you can busy yourself with less important things. With Paul, will you seize present opportunities for spiritual advance or, with Felix, will you make up excuses and miss those opportunities?
It is often difficult and painful to root sin out of our lives. But if we ignore sin, it doesn’t just quietly go away. It grows like cancer, until it finally destroys us. Note again the contrast between Paul and Felix.
As Paul testified, “I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience before God and before men” (24:16). Part of maintaining a blameless conscience is to confess and turn from our sin as soon as the Holy Spirit convicts us of it.
In the current situation, Paul easily could have rationalized a little bribe to get himself out of prison. Just think of what he could accomplish if he were free! He could preach at Rome and go on to evangelize Spain. All he had to do was to say the word and his friends could be there shortly with a bribe for Felix. Prayer for Paul’s release didn’t seem to be working. Besides, the system worked through bribes. Since it was for the furthering of the gospel, why not go with the flow? But Paul would not use corrupt means, even to achieve a noble cause. He was a man of integrity, who did his best always to maintain a clear conscience.
This point is connected to the first. If you don’t deal with your sin and maintain a clear conscience, you won’t be able to see and seize the spiritual opportunities that God puts in front of you. Your spiritual callousness will dull your conscience or your guilt will hinder you from responding. To find time for God, you must deal with any known sins in your life.
Felix apparently knew a lot about Christianity (24:22), but he liked to keep things in the realm of safe intellectual discussions. Perhaps he called for Paul so that as a governor, he would be more knowledgeable about this rapidly growing new religion. He could impress his colleagues with his understanding.
But when Paul started getting personal, talking about righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment, the discussion suddenly got too close for comfort. For Felix to repent of his sin, he would have had to turn his back on his entire way of life. Felix had been living to accumulate all of the money and possessions that he could get. He was keeping Paul in prison with the hope that Paul’s wealthy friends would come up with a bribe to set him free. But Paul was saying that the Christian faith meant seeking God’s righteousness, not this world’s riches. Felix had been giving in to every sensual whim and pleasure. But Paul was saying that he needed self-control. Felix had been living as if this life were all there is. But Paul was saying that there is a judgment and eternity to come. Felix refused to deal with his sin, and missed the opportunity to receive eternal life.
I know that the thought of dealing with your sin is threatening. But which is more threatening: to deal with your sin now, through repentance and confession, and receive God’s mercy? Or, to have to face your sin at the judgment, and receive eternal punishment? If you bring your sin to the Lord now, in repentance, He is rich in mercy and abounding in love. Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). He promised, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). Come to Jesus in repentance and He will welcome you!
To find time for God, we must seize present opportunities and we must deal with known sin. Finally,
Again, note the contrast between Paul and Felix:
Paul’s priorities shine through here and everywhere else that you see him in action. His life was committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel. Everything that Paul did was with a view to furthering the kingdom and glory of Jesus Christ. As he told the Ephesian elders, “I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, in order that I may finish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God” (20:24). He told the Philippians (1:20-21) that in his imprisonment, his aim was that “Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
As I have already mentioned, it would have been tempting for Paul to set aside the gospel and focus on his release. After all, if he could get out of prison, many more could hear the gospel. Why risk offending this powerful couple with the gospel? Why not at least give them a more pleasant version of things? Why focus on righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come? The answer is, because Paul’s priority was, as ours should be, to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Paul’s straightforward presentation of the gospel and his refusal to bribe Felix resulted in his staying in prison for the next two years. God didn’t reward Paul’s faithfulness with a quick release. But Paul would not compromise his priority of testifying to the gospel of Jesus Christ, both by his words and by his life. He lived in light of the coming judgment, and he trusted that God would deliver him from prison if and when it was God’s will to do so. Otherwise, what were a few years in prison in comparison to eternity with Christ?
Do you live every day in light of standing before the Lord in all His glory and hearing, “Well done, good and faithful slave” (Matt. 25:21)? Your number one ambition should be “to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:9b-10). How awful it would be to hear on that day, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matt. 7:23)!
Felix was a rags to riches, Horatio Alger, all-American success story! He went from slave to governor; from being a piece of property with no rights, to owning much property; from being powerless to powerful. He had friends in the highest places of the Roman Empire. He had a string of beautiful princesses as his wives. Isn’t that what every person should aim for? If you buy into the American dream, yes! But if you live for Jesus Christ, no!
Felix was successful in the world’s eyes, but from God’s perspective, he was a man whose god was self. His only standard was his own advancement and pleasure. If the Jews rebelled, crucify the rebels! If people got in his way up the ladder, push them off! If a married woman looked sexier than his current wife, dump his wife and seduce the other wife from her husband. If a prisoner would give him a bribe, his release could be arranged. Otherwise, let him stay in jail, especially since it pleased the political constituents. After all, one’s political career is more important than a prisoner’s life!
I trust that no one here is as ruthless as Felix was. But I fear that there are many American Christians that have gotten caught up in the pursuit of the American dream. They profess to be Christians, but other than attending church and living a relatively moral life, they’re not much different from the world in their goals. They’re living the good life, accumulating all that they can, and dreaming about the day when they can retire and live totally for themselves! They give no thought to advancing God’s kingdom.
Many American Christians spend their time just as the world spends its time. Polls reveal that American evangelical Christians watch the same amount of TV and the same programs as the population at large! After sleep and work, the thing that Americans do the most is watch TV! If you watch just two hours per day (the national average is much higher), in 70 years you will have spent almost six years, day and night, watching TV! Can you imagine hitting 75, looking back on your life and thinking, “What have I accomplished with my life? I’ve spent six years watching television!”
In one of his plays, Shakespeare describes a dying man calling on God. He makes the narrator say, “I, to comfort him, bid him he should not think of God. I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet” (in Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture [Baker], Acts 13-End, p. 293). That is the way the world thinks: Don’t trouble yourself with God until you’re at death’s door. But God’s way is very different: “Behold, now is ‘the acceptable time,’ behold, now is ‘the day of salvation’” (2 Cor. 6:2).
This very day, God is giving you a great spiritual opportunity through the fact that you’re hearing His Word. It may be to trust in Christ for salvation. It may be to deal with some sin in your life. It may be to get your priorities in line. Don’t be like Felix and miss it! Be like Paul and seize the day for God’s glory!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
A man, toolbox in hand, rang the doorbell. “Good morning, ma’am, I’m the plumber. I’ve come to fix the pipe.”
“But I didn’t call a plumber.”
“You didn’t? Aren’t you Mrs. Foster?”
“No, she moved away a year ago.”
“How do you like that? They call for a plumber, claiming it’s an emergency, and then they move away!”
Sometimes it seems as if God responds to our emergencies like that plumber responded to that call. We’re in a crisis and we cry out, “Help, God!” Silence. “God, I need You right now!” No answer. “God? Are You there?” Nothing.
If you have been a Christian for very long, you have experienced God’s delays. David experienced them. He wrote, “I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched; my eyes fail while I wait for my God” (Ps. 69:3). Again he wrote, “My soul waits in silence for God only; from Him is my salvation” (Ps. 62:1).
Waiting is especially difficult in light of the shortness of life. The older you get, the quicker life seems to fly by. I’ll be 55 in three weeks, and it’s amazing to me to think that all our children are grown now. I wonder how all of those years went by so quickly. Some wag observed that life is like a roll of toilet paper: the closer you get to the end, the quicker it goes!
Because life is so short, it’s difficult when the Lord makes you wait. Paul must have struggled as he remained in custody in Caesarea. The notice we get seems almost like an insignificant passing comment: “But after two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus; and wishing to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul imprisoned.” You can read that comment in a few seconds, but it represents two long years of Paul’s life, and he wasn’t getting any younger. You’ll look in vain for any mention of God in the verse. It sounds so capricious. To gain some political capital, a selfish politician leaves God’s number one apostle to the Gentiles in prison. The preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles will have to wait. As Paul waited and prayed and prayed and waited, he must have wondered, “Why doesn’t God get me out of here?”
There are many lessons that we can learn from our times of waiting for God’s delays, but I would like to focus on two:
God uses His delays to teach us to trust Him more fully and to submit more thoroughly to His lordship over our lives.
Paul was a great man of faith, but no one graduates from the Lord’s school of faith in this lifetime. Paul had post-doctoral degrees, but there were still more courses to take! This course had at least four lessons in faith that God was refining in Paul:
We learn of Paul’s agenda in Romans 15:25-29, which Paul wrote just before he went to Jerusalem. His plan was to deliver the gift that he had collected among the Gentile churches and then to go to Rome for some ministry before he headed west to Spain. This was not a self-centered agenda. After all that he had suffered for the cause of Christ, I couldn’t blame Paul if his plan had been to retire to a nice seaside resort and write his memoirs.
But Paul was seeking to serve the Lord by spreading the gospel where Christ had not yet been named (Rom. 15:20). That was a godly agenda, but it was not God’s agenda, at least not in the way Paul envisioned it. He would eventually get to Rome, but not as quickly as he had hoped. Maybe he went on to Spain; we don’t know for sure. But while Paul sat in prison in Caesarea, he had to submit his agenda to God and trust God to work out His agenda in His time.
There is nothing wrong with godly desires and hopes for the future. We all should dream about what God may do through us in the future. We should plan, as much as we’re able, by setting godly spiritual goals for our lives. But after all the planning and goal-setting are done, we have to bow and say, “Lord, not my will, but Your will be done with my life. I trust in Your agenda for me.”
As I said, there is no mention of God in verse 27. Paul must have wondered, “Where is God in all of this? Why isn’t God answering my prayers?” After all, Paul wasn’t trying to get out of prison so that he could go do his own thing. He wanted to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. But here he sat, confined in jail, day after day, month after month, for over two years. As he sat there, Paul had to deepen his trust in God to accomplish His sovereign will in his life through God’s power.
In Acts 23:11, the Lord had appeared to Paul and told him that as he had witnessed to His cause in Jerusalem, so he would witness at Rome also. But then, as far as the text tells us, the Lord sort of checked out, as far as any visible or audible messages to Paul. He didn’t tell Paul in advance about the plot on his life by more than 40 bloodthirsty Jews. He didn’t tell him about the false accusations that would be brought against Paul in Felix’s courtroom. He didn’t mention that Paul would be incarcerated for two years in Caesarea, and then transported to Rome as a prisoner. He didn’t bother to relate the little detail about being shipwrecked in the Mediterranean Sea and spending a winter on Malta. In all of those trials and delays, Paul had to trust God’s promise to him and wait on Him to work through His power in His time.
Did Felix’s politically motivated injustice of leaving Paul in prison frustrate God’s plans for Paul? Of course not! No self-centered, corrupt politician, no matter how powerful, can even put a bump in the road of God’s sovereign plan for His people. But, God wants us to trust Him when it seems as if some evil person is blocking our ability to move forward with our plans for serving the Lord. We usually don’t understand the reason for God’s delays, but we need to trust that He knows what He is doing, and that He is not frustrated in the least by the whims and foibles of wicked men.
Even though we are seeking to trust in the Lord, it is so easy to put our hope in our circumstances instead of in the Lord Himself. Every time that Felix called for Paul (and it was often, 24:26), Paul’s hopes must have soared. Maybe today Felix would trust in Christ and this whole time of imprisonment would finally make sense! Just think of the influence for Christ that this powerful man would have! Paul easily could have thought, “That must be the reason God has me in prison. Felix is going to become a Christian.” Or, perhaps when Felix called for Paul and they had an enjoyable conversation, Paul went back to his cell and thought, “Maybe now he will release me so that I can get on with my ministry.” But Felix never became a Christian and he did not release Paul.
If we trust in our circumstances, we will have a roller coaster type of Christian experience. When things are looking up, we will be up. When things look down, we will be down. But it was a few years after this that Paul, still a prisoner, wrote that great epistle to the Philippians. The repeated theme of that letter is, “Rejoice in the Lord” (Phil. 3:1; 4:4). In spite of all of his years of trials, Paul was full of joy, not in his circumstances, but in the Lord.
In 1812, Adoniram Judson and his new bride, Nancy, left their familiar and comfortable New England surroundings to take the gospel to far-off Burma. After a difficult four-month voyage, they arrived in India only to hear discouraging reports about Burma and to learn that they could not stay in India. They spent a year moving from India to Mauritius (off the coast of South Africa) and back, to avoid deportation. Finally, against all advice, they managed to get aboard a ship heading for Burma. En route, Nancy gave birth to a stillborn child and almost died herself.
They finally arrived in Rangoon and began the arduous task of learning Burmese. They found the Burmese people to be committed to Buddhism and totally uninterested in and opposed to Christianity. The only other English-speaking couple in Rangoon left, leaving the Judsons alone to struggle with the language and the mission. The birth of a son brightened their lives, but when he was eight-months-old, he became ill. With no medicine or doctors in Rangoon, the baby died. The Judsons buried him in their back yard and plodded on through their tears.
After six years, they finally baptized their first convert. A handful more trickled in over the years, but mostly, they faced fierce opposition from the Buddhist monks and the government. In 1824, the British went to war against Burma, and Judson was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned on false charges as a spy. The conditions and torture in the prison were terrible. As he suffered with fever in that dark prison, Judson’s wife delivered a letter from a friend that asked, “Judson, how’s the outlook?” He replied, “The outlook is as bright as the promises of God.”
Wow! There was a man who had learned to trust in God, not in his circumstances! Judson later was released from prison only to face the deaths of his wife and his two-year-old daughter. He fought intense depression and struggled against numerous setbacks. But he plodded on in faith until he died at age 62. Today, over 600,000 Burmese Christians trace their roots back to Adoniram Judson, a man who hoped in God.
When God delays, we must trust Him by submitting our agendas to Him. We must trust Him to accomplish His will through us by His power. We must trust in God, not in our circumstances. Fourth,
As we saw last week, Paul was a man of integrity who would not use corrupt means, even if they would have accomplished a good end. A bribe would have sprung Paul from prison. It would have freed up this great apostle to get on with his ministry. He had so much to accomplish. Why not just pay off Felix and get on with his great goals?
Why not? Because Paul knew that doing right and not reaching our goals is better than doing wrong in order to reach them. Remember, Paul’s goals were godly. He wanted to preach the gospel in the regions that had never heard of Christ. But he would not compromise his integrity in order to reach a godly goal. He trusted God by doing what he knew to be right, even though it seemed at the time to sacrifice his goals for the gospel.
General Robert E. Lee was once offered $10,000 a year for the use of his name in connection with a state lottery at a time when money was a pressing issue for him. That was a lot of money back then, but Lee’s reply was, “Gentlemen, my name is all I have left, and that is not for sale!”
So the first major lesson in God’s delays is to learn to trust Him more fully.
Yogi Berra used to say about baseball games, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” The same is true of sanctification. It isn’t over until we meet the Lord in heaven or in the air. So even if we’ve yielded our lives totally to Jesus as Lord, there’s always more to yield. God’s delays often expose areas where we need to yield further to Him.
Paul told the Romans that he had for many years a longing to come to visit them (Rom. 15:23). Finally, it looked like he would be able to realize that dream. He would just deliver the gift to the church at Jerusalem, and then he would head for Rome. He wasn’t doing anything in Jerusalem to stir up controversy or risk a riot. He was just quietly going about his business in the temple when some Jews from Asia “happened” to spot him and start the riot that led to his imprisonment. Suddenly Paul’s plans were put on hold for over two years.
We all like to think that we’re in control of our circumstances, but the reality is, we are not in control. God is in control. As I said, we can and should make plans in dependence on Him, but as the psalmist said, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain” (Ps. 127:1). When you make careful plans in dependence on the Lord, and the plans get foiled by what seem like random chance (there is no such thing), you have to bow and say, “Lord, you are God and I am not. I submit to You and will wait for You to accomplish Your plans in this situation.”
It was while Paul’s imprisonment dragged on beyond the two years in Caesarea into his time in Rome that he wrote to the Philippians, “Do all things without grumbling or disputing; that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:14-15). In his current circumstances, Paul easily could have grumbled, “I obeyed God by preaching the gospel to Felix and his wife and by not bribing them, and look where it got me! I’m still in this prison and my prayers have not been answered.” He could have grown bitter and disappointed with God.
But even though Paul’s prayers were not answered as quickly as he wished, he learned to be contented in God’s sovereign plan for his life. He submitted to the lordship of Christ by not grumbling, even though Felix was wronging him by not releasing him.
If you’ve been in the military, you’re familiar with the phrase, “Hurry up and wait.” They get you out of bed at 5 a.m. so that you can stand in formation for 45 minutes to wait for breakfast. Then you march to your class 20 minutes before class starts so that you can stand in line waiting for the other class to be dismissed so that you can go in. Everyone grumbles, “Hurry up and wait!”
Paul says that if we don’t grumble, but rather rejoice in the Lord, our lives will shine as lights in this dark world. The world won’t be able to figure us out! Grumbling is natural for those who don’t know Christ, but it ought to be rare for those who submit to Jesus as Lord. When we grumble, it brings dishonor on the Lord’s name. In effect, we’re saying to the world, “You wouldn’t want to serve my God, because He treats you really poorly!”
God was angry with Israel in the wilderness because of their grumbling. He had dramatically delivered them out of Egypt through the parting of the Red Sea, where He drowned the Egyptian army. He provided His cloud to protect them from the burning sun during the day, and His pillar of fire to keep them warm and to let them see at night. But they grumbled about their conditions and wanted to return to Egypt. Because of their grumbling, the Lord said, “For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they are a people who err in their heart and they do not know My ways. Therefore I swore in My anger, truly, they shall not enter into My rest” (Ps. 95:10-11). If we want God’s rest in our hearts, we must not only submit to Him in times of waiting, but submit joyfully. We must repent of our grumbling.
The well-known New England preacher, Phillips Brooks, was normally a man of poise and calm. But at times he suffered moments of frustration and irritability. One day a friend saw him pacing the floor like a caged lion and asked, “What is the trouble, Dr. Brooks?” “The trouble is,” Brooks replied, “that I’m in a hurry, but God isn’t!”
Paul was probably in his mid-fifties at the time of this imprisonment. Speaking firsthand, when you’re in your mid-fifties, you often think about the fact that you may not have many years left to serve the Lord. I think about the fact that John Calvin died at 54, Martin Luther at 62, Jonathan Edwards at 55, and Charles Spurgeon at 57. Even if the Lord enables me to serve until I’m 75, it isn’t all that far off. So I often ask myself what I need to be doing with the remaining time that the Lord gives me. Spending a number of years in jail isn’t part of my vision for the future!
But Paul no doubt used this time for spiritual advantage. He probably met with many visitors from the churches around Judea and used the meetings to instill his vision for reaching the Gentiles. He had many talks with Felix, although it didn’t yield any results that we know of. He had time for quiet reflection, communion with the Lord, and for further study of God’s Word. I am certain that he studied during this time because during his final imprisonment in Rome, as he awaited execution, he wrote to Timothy, “When you come bring the cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments” (2 Tim. 4:13).
Charles Spurgeon (Spurgeon’s Expository Encyclopedia [Baker], 11:386) comments on that verse:
He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a man to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!
I would only add, “He’s facing imminent execution, and yet he wants books!” Paul used his time in confinement to deepen his knowledge of God through His Word and, perhaps, through other books. We should use times when God makes us wait to deepen our roots with Him.
Luke also probably used this time in Caesarea to research the material that he used in his gospel and the Book of Acts (Luke 1:1-4). Someone has said that the key to patience while you’re waiting at a doctor’s office or wherever is to have something to do while you wait. I agree. I’ve watched people just sit there doing nothing! I always take something with me to read if I expect to wait.
So when God brings delays into our lives, we should learn to trust Him more fully and to submit more thoroughly to His lordship over our lives.
A reporter once asked Mrs. Einstein if she understood the theory of relativity. She replied, “No, but I know Albert and he can be trusted.” As Christians, we may not understand why God makes us wait at times when it seems that we need immediate answers. But we do know the Lord Jesus Christ and He can be trusted.
David wrote, “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord” (Ps. 27:13-14).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Many years ago, the painter John Sargent was in Italy. He learned that his train would be quite late. Others who were waiting for the train paced back and forth at the station, complaining about the heat and the delay, expressing their frustration.
But Sargent sat down, set up his easel, took out his paints, and began to capture a scene of a yoke of oxen on a street nearby. He literally turned the delay and potentially frustrating circumstances into a masterpiece.
As Christians, we will often face circumstances that can either be frustrating or fruitful for the Lord, depending on how we handle it. If we see things only from a human perspective, we’ll grow impatient and frustrated as we think, “What a waste of time!” But if we see God’s sovereign hand orchestrating all of our circumstances according to His plan, then we can rest in Him, knowing that He will work it together for good according to His purpose.
Paul easily could have become frustrated while he waited in prison in Caesarea. Felix knew that Paul was innocent, but he kept him in prison, hoping for a bribe from Paul’s wealthy friends. When that didn’t come, and Felix was recalled to Rome because of the complaints of the Jews, to gain some political capital, he left Paul imprisoned.
Felix’s successor Festus was a more upright ruler than Felix (according to Josephus). He was a man of action. He had barely arrived in the capital of Caesarea before he went up to Jerusalem to familiarize himself with the situation there. Paul’s Jewish opponents there took advantage of the governor’s newness on the job to present their case against Paul and urge that he be brought to Jerusalem for trial. Their real intent was to resurrect their foiled plans from two years before and murder him on the way. But Festus wasn’t going to let the Jews get the upper hand by telling him how to manage his affairs, so he told them that they could come to Caesarea and present their case against Paul.
When Paul found himself standing before the same angry accusers who had tried to get him executed two years earlier, he easily could have become frustrated. It seemed like more of the “same old same old.” These guys just wouldn’t quit! They didn’t have anything new to say. Their charges, which they couldn’t prove, were basically the same as before, that Paul was violating the Jewish law, that he had desecrated the temple, and that he was a threat to the Roman government (25:8; cf. 24:5-6). Paul could have impatiently thought, “When will this ever end, so that I can get on with the more important task of taking the gospel to the Gentiles who have never heard about Christ?”
But Paul didn’t grow frustrated or impatient. Instead, he calmly defended himself before this same angry group of Jews and before the new governor. As the trial progressed, Festus saw a way that he could now gain some political capital with the Jews, and so he reversed his earlier decision and offered to move the trial to Jerusalem. Paul could see that he would not get a fair trial there, if he even got there alive, and so he was forced to appeal his case to Caesar. Through this, God sovereignly was working to get His apostle to Rome.
When Festus granted Paul’s appeal to go to Caesar, he was probably relieved to get this sticky case out of his jurisdiction. But he also created a problem for himself, in that he had to give sufficient rationale to Caesar to trouble him with this case. About that time King Agrippa and his sister (and lover) Bernice, arrived at the capital to pay their respects to Festus. He was still puzzling over what to write to Caesar, and so he ran the case by Agrippa, who wanted to hear Paul. And so God used these potentially frustrating circumstances not only to get Paul to Rome, but also for Paul to bring the gospel before these influential leaders.
To understand the spiritual perspective of these events, you must read the story in the light of two texts. In Acts 9:15, the Lord had predicted of Paul, “He is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel.” Here Paul bears witness before all three groups. And, in Acts 23:11, the Lord had told Paul, “for as you have solemnly witnessed to My cause at Jerusalem, so you must witness at Rome also.” God was at work behind these potentially frustrating circumstances and repeated false charges to fulfill His purpose for His servant, Paul. The lesson for us is that …
God will protect His servants from the forces of evil and use us according to His sovereign purpose.
There are two main lessons:
The enemy of souls is not passive when a faithful servant of the Lord like Paul is seeking to preach the gospel. Here he brings two forces against Paul: the Jews, who are militantly hostile; and Festus, who is seemingly benign, but potentially lethal, if Paul had gone along with his suggestion of moving the trial to Jerusalem. But neither enemy is a problem for God to dispose of when they oppose His purpose for Paul.
The Jews illustrate for us the implacable hardness of the fallen human heart. These men were the religious leaders of Israel, God’s chosen nation. They were the only people on earth who had received God’s covenant promises and who were able to read His revelation in the Scriptures. They knew the history of the nation, how God had called Abraham, how He had preserved Abraham’s descendants through four long centuries in Egypt, and how He had brought them out of Egypt with a mighty deliverance. They knew how God had protected Israel in the wilderness and had displaced the fearsome Canaanites and had given Israel the promised land. They knew the faithfulness of God in restoring them to the land after the punishment of the Babylonian captivity. They had access to God’s presence through worship in the temple. Yet in spite of all of their knowledge and privileges, they had killed the Anointed One whom God had sent to save them from their sins. And now they were intent on murdering God’s servant Paul, one of their own countrymen, who had done them no wrong.
When men stubbornly refuse to submit to God’s truth, they will seek to eliminate it from their lives. The light exposes their evil deeds, which they don’t want to face. Rather than coming to the light in repentance, they try to snuff it out so that they can continue living as they please (John 3:19-21). So we see these men, who were supposed to uphold God’s holy law, trying to set up an ambush to murder God’s servant. If they couldn’t murder him, they would slander him with false accusations and lies.
Paul himself, of course, had formerly been one of them. He was bent on destroying all who followed this new sect called the Way. What had changed Paul from persecutor and murderer to the ardent apostle who now said that he would even be willing to be cut off from Christ, if it meant their salvation (Rom. 9:1-3)? The only thing that can transform hearts so hardened by sin is the power of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. God stopped Paul in his tracks, imparted new life to him, and claimed him as His servant. Even as God temporarily blinded Paul’s eyes physically, He opened them spiritually to see the light of the glory of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead (see 2 Cor. 4:4-6; Gal. 1:13-16). That same power of God can still transform any sinner who comes to the cross for mercy.
Festus was an evil tool of Satan in a different way than the Jews were, in that he was more positive and subtle. He seems to have been a decent ruler. He wasn’t willing to turn Paul over to his enemies without a trial. Perhaps he naively thought that moving the venue to Jerusalem would not compromise justice, although probably he knew the potential danger to Paul’s life. But if Paul had been lulled into compliance with Festus’ suggestion, it would have spelled certain death.
Festus’ weakness was that he was a people-pleaser at the expense of doing what he knew to be right. Probably he had read Lysias’ report to Felix about the plot to kill Paul. Felix had probably briefed him on the pending case. But Paul was only one man, and Festus had to live with these Jewish leaders. If Paul’s life “accidentally” got snuffed out in transit to Jerusalem, that would be a pity. But if it gained some favor with the Jews, then why be unpopular by taking a hard line for truth and justice?
Sadly, I know of many evangelical pastors who compromise the hard truths of Scripture in order to be popular. They know that the Bible thunders against sin, but if you tell people that, some will get offended. So they play it down. They know that the Bible threatens a terrible eternal punishment in hell for those who reject Christ, but that’s not a popular truth for our day. Besides, people like to come to church so that they can be uplifted and feel good, not to be confronted with sin and judgment. So they skirt around the heart of the gospel in order to gain favor with people. Unwittingly, like Festus, they are often the more dangerous enemy of the gospel than those who are militantly opposed to Christ.
The application of all of this is, if you are serving the Lord in some capacity (and every Christian should be serving!), expect that Satan will oppose you, either with open hostility or with subtle compromises that are equally destructive. Don’t be surprised when it hits. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
If we had to face Satan’s frightening forces in our own strength or wisdom, we would despair. But thankfully, the Lord surrounds His servants, protecting them until it is His time to call them home. Our text reveals two ways that God protects us.
We have already seen God’s providential hand at work in protecting Paul from the plot against his life, but here we see it again. Although God is not overtly seen, He is covertly at work, orchestrating circumstances and people to accomplish His sovereign purposes through the gospel. (I am indebted to my friend, Bob Deffinbaugh, “Acts: Christ at Work Through His Church,” www.bible.org, for many of the following insights under this heading.) God has used Paul’s love for his people and his strong desire to unify the Gentile and Jewish wings of the church to bring him to Jerusalem. He used the counsel of the Jerusalem church leaders, misguided though it may have been, to get Paul into the Temple. He brought along the Jews from Asia at just the right moment to spot Paul and stir up the riot against him. He used Lysias, the commander, to rescue Paul from the angry mob.
He used Paul’s nephew overhearing the plot of the Jews, along with Lysias’ protection, to save Paul’s life and get him safely to Caesarea. He used the self-seeking scoundrel Felix to put the Jews at bay for two years, during which time Paul had further influence among the Jewish Christians and Luke had time to research his gospel and the Book of Acts. And now He uses the inexperienced governor’s suggested compromise to set up an appointment for Paul to preach to Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice, as well as to get him an all-expenses paid trip to Rome.
From a human standpoint, all of these events could seem like a comedy of errors for Paul. His gift to the church at Jerusalem had not been well-received, as he had hoped. Their scheme to go into the Temple had backfired, resulting in the riot and Paul’s arrest. His interviews with Felix had not resulted in Felix’s conversion or in Paul’s release. And now, Festus’ misguided suggestion forced Paul to appeal to Caesar, further delaying his release from custody.
But from God’s standpoint (remember, we must read this story against the backdrop of God’s prophetic declarations in 9:15 & 23:11), God was working all things together for good for Paul according to His purpose of being glorified through the gospel, before the Gentiles, kings, and the Jewish people. He was working to bring His apostle to Rome, where many in Caesar’s household, and probably even Caesar himself, would hear the gospel.
The key for applying this to your life is to view your circumstances, however seemingly frustrating and confusing, from God’s sovereign, providential perspective, not from the human perspective. From Paul’s perspective, he was hemmed in and restricted. He had not planned these events in his personal three-year goals, nor was he the prime mover in bringing them to pass. But from God’s perspective, God was setting up for Paul the witnessing opportunities of a lifetime, to preach the gospel to the most influential people in Israel and in Rome.
Often the greatest opportunities for ministry that God gives us come disguised as frustrating or confusing circumstances, where we seem to be restricted from reaching our goals. If we view those circumstances from the human perspective, as just so much “bad luck,” we will grumble in discouragement and miss the opportunity for ministry. But if we submit to God’s mighty hand, He can use us in such a way that He alone gets the glory.
God has ordained human government to protect those who do right and to punish those who do evil (Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:13-17). Even though human governments are run by self-serving men like Felix, Festus, and Nero, God still uses them in His purposes. He commands us to submit ourselves to such governments and their laws, unless the government demands that we do something that violates God’s commandments (Acts 4:19-20; 5:29).
It is not wrong for Christians to serve in government or to use the government and its judicial system to obtain due process and legal protection. Some argue that Christians should have nothing to do with government, because it is worldly or evil at its core. They say that we are citizens of heaven, not of this world. But I believe that the examples of Joseph, Daniel, and Nehemiah argue that some believers can and should serve in government. Paul’s example here shows that it is proper for us to use the government to protect us and to uphold our rights as citizens.
Paul acknowledges that if he has committed the crimes that he was accused of, he was willing to die. This (as well as Romans 13:4, “bear the sword”), argues that the government has the right of capital punishment in certain cases. For the government to take the life of a convicted criminal who has committed serious offenses does not violate the sixth commandment, which is properly, “You shall not murder” (rather than “kill”). Certainly, the judicial process needs to be extremely careful to establish guilt beyond the shadow of doubt through a fair trial. But to abolish capital punishment in cases of first degree murder because “it is barbaric,” actually results in greater barbarism, because it cheapens rather than elevates the value of human life.
Also, Paul’s defense here (25:8) shows that it is not wrong for a Christian leader to defend his innocence against false charges. In my former ministry, I was being falsely accused of some things and I defended my integrity. An elder there, who holds a doctorate in theology, told me that I should not defend myself, but rather be like Jesus who was silent against His accusers. But Paul was not silent, because in addition to several defenses in the Book of Acts, he also wrote Galatians and 2 Corinthians to defend his ministry. Satan tries to discredit the gospel by slandering those who preach the gospel. There is no virtue and much damage to the cause of the gospel if a faithful man allows false charges and slander to stand without defense or explanation.
I conclude by giving four practical lessons from our text:
Paul had maintained a blameless conscience both before God and before men (24:16). He knew that he had not committed any offense against the Law of the Jews or against the temple or against Caesar (25:8). Thus he could calmly state the truth and know that God was his shield and defender. The glory goes to God, not to me, but I know firsthand the peace that comes from a clear conscience when you are under attack. Shortly after I began my ministry here, four of the former elders sought to have me fired because I opposed one of them for being pro-choice on abortion. I told Marla, “Even if I have to get a job flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s, I have peace in my heart that I did the right thing and that God will take care of us.” As Paul puts it (Rom. 8:31-34),
If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
He goes on to show that there is absolutely nothing that can separate us from God’s great love in Christ Jesus our Lord!
The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is not a point for theological debate; it is a precious reality that brings great comfort to the believer. This week Dan Barton and I had lunch with our friend and fellow pastor, Chuck Ballard, who was visiting from Texas. He shared with us that his father, who was an unbeliever, had committed suicide some years ago. Chuck said that the Scripture that sustained him through that difficult time was Romans 9, where Paul shows so clearly that the primary cause of salvation is God’s choice, not man’s choice. It is a most comforting truth that the sovereign God is orchestrating all of the circumstances of our lives, no matter how frustrating or confusing they may seem to us. We can trust Him to work all of the trials together for good for us, because we love Him and are called according to His purpose.
If Paul had been focused on his frustrating circumstances, he would have thought, “Not this again! How long do I have to put up with these same enemies and these same false charges?” And he would have missed the opportunity to bear witness for Christ. If we put our focus on our frustrating circumstances, we will miss the opportunity to tell others of our great Savior and of the mercy that He offers every sinner at the cross.
Paul did not consider his life of any account as dear to himself, in order that he might finish his course and the ministry that he received from the Lord Jesus, to solemnly testify of the gospel of the grace of God (20:24). You may think, “But if I didn’t compromise the truth, it would cost the company a lot of money and my boss would fire me.” Which is more important: a job, or to hear “Well done, good and faithful slave”?
Life presents us with many temptations to compromise our commitment to Jesus Christ. If we will stand for Him, even if it means imprisonment or death, we can know that His protective hand is upon us and that He will use us for His glory according to His sovereign purpose.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
On December 17, 1903, when Orville and Wilbur Wright finally succeeded in keeping their homemade airplane in the air for 59 seconds and 852 feet at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they rushed a telegram to their sister in Dayton, Ohio, telling of this great accomplishment. It read: “First sustained flight today 59 seconds. Hope to be home by Xmas.” The sister was so excited that she rushed to the newspaper office and gave the telegram to the editor. The next morning the headline stated, “Popular local bicycle merchants to be home for the holidays.” The editor botched the scoop of the century because he missed the point.
Sometimes we miss the point because we lack the perspective of history. From our vantage point in history, it seems inconceivable that anybody could overlook the first airplane flight and focus on a trip home for the holidays. The Wright brothers’ flight was one of the most significant events in the history of the world, an event that would change the world. But at the time the editor didn’t realize the significance of that event.
Incredibly, in spite of the vantage point of two thousand years of history, there are many people who view the resurrection of Jesus Christ just like that editor viewed the Wright brothers’ first flight. They don’t give much thought to it. Even though it is the most significant event in the history of the world, they shrug it off as inconsequential and go on about life, focusing instead on trips home for the holidays and other trivia. They just don’t get it.
Our text reveals two views of the resurrection, the world’s view and the Christian view. The apostle Paul was under house arrest in Caesarea, awaiting transfer to Rome. Festus, the governor, had heard Paul’s defense before his accusers, the Jewish leaders from Jerusalem. He had asked whether Paul would be willing to go to Jerusalem to stand trial for these charges. Paul knew that he would either be murdered on the way or given a mock trial and condemned. So he exercised his right as a Roman citizen by appealing to Caesar. But that meant that Festus had to send along the charges that warranted taking this case to Caesar.
As Festus pondered this, his friends, Agrippa and his sister, Bernice, arrived for a visit. Since Agrippa was an expert in Jewish matters, Festus told him about the case to get his opinion. Verses 18 and 19 are Festus’ summary of the case to Agrippa. This is shop talk between two rulers. But it reveals the world’s view of the resurrection. We will also look at the Christian view, as represented by the Apostle Paul. We see that …
While the world views the resurrection as inconsequential, the Christian views it as the most important fact in history.
Catch the flavor of Festus’ words: “And when the accusers stood up, they began bringing charges against him not of such crimes as I was expecting; but they simply had some points of disagreement with him about their own religion and about a certain dead man, Jesus, whom Paul asserted to be alive.” We could paraphrase, “I thought they were going to accuse Paul of something serious, like murder or treason. But instead they just had some silly dispute about their religion. No big deal—just some dead man whom Paul said was alive.”
If a reporter from the Caesarea Daily News had been there, he probably would have reported the “important” news: “Festus and Agrippa Meet. Historic high-level talks between leaders take place in Caesarea.” Somewhere down in the middle of the article it might have mentioned that, among other things, they discussed various judicial cases. But Paul’s assertion of the resurrection of Jesus would have been skipped altogether. It wouldn’t have been considered very important in light of the really “important” news that Festus and Agrippa had met.
Notice four things about the world’s view of the resurrection:
Festus says that the matters the Jews accused Paul of were “not of such crimes as I was expecting” (25:18). He thought it would be something really important, some matter of Roman law. Maybe Paul was a mass murderer or he had plotted to assassinate the emperor. Perhaps he was planning a revolution against Rome and was training his guerilla forces in the desert. But then he found out it wasn’t anything that important. Just a dispute about some dead man whom Paul said was alive. No big deal.
That’s still the world’s view of the resurrection. The pope may make the front page on Easter Sunday with his usual plea for world peace. But it’s just a human interest story, not really as substantial as the important news, such as the latest exchange between the President and some world leader or the score of yesterday’s basketball game. Why get excited about the resurrection of Jesus when there’s so much important news to cover?
Festus says, “they simply had some points of disagreement with him about their own religion and about a certain dead man, Jesus, whom Paul asserted to be alive” (25:19). But Festus was at a loss how to investigate such matters (25:20). In effect he’s saying, “It was the Jews’ opinion against Paul’s opinion, one religion against another. Everyone is free to believe what he wants to about religion. And since there’s no factual way of deciding between one religion and another, what was I to do?”
That’s still the world’s way of viewing Christianity and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “This is a free country. You can believe it if you want to, and I’ll believe what I want to. But don’t force your religious views on me.” After all, religion is a matter of private opinion.
When the outspoken Christian, William Wilberforce, was trying to abolish the slave trade in England late in the 18th century, one of his opponents, Lord Melbourne, angrily commented, “Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade private life.” That’s the world’s view. Other people are free to be religious as long as it doesn’t confront me. They can believe what they want, but don’t let them dare try to apply their beliefs to my life. The world says there’s no way to decide on matters of religion. It’s just one subjective opinion versus the next.
Festus uses a word for religion that can also mean “superstition.” He may not have intended that nuance out of courtesy to Agrippa, who was nominally a Jew. The Greek word comes from two words, meaning “to be afraid of a god or demon.” It implies that religion is not something verifiable. It’s in the realm of fear of the spirit world, not in the realm of reason or fact.
The world’s view of Christianity has not changed much since then. Christianity is seen as one of the religions of the world, no different than any other. All religions are a matter of faith, not of reason or verifiable truth. Evolution—that’s science; creationism—that’s faith. A recent letter to the editor of our local paper accused right-to-life activists and anti-evolution folks as trying to impose a theocracy on our nation. How dare they think that their views are based on facts! Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, eastern mysticism, Christianity—take your pick or mix and match according to what you like. It has nothing to do with facts. That’s the world’s view.
Festus calls Him, “a certain dead man, Jesus” (25:19). To Festus, Jesus was some Jewish religious leader who went too far and got himself killed. Festus knew that Paul thought very highly of Jesus, but that was about as far as it went. Jesus was just “a certain dead man.”
The world still views Jesus that way. Some will concede that He was a great religious leader and a powerful moral teacher. Perhaps they will even call Him a religious genius. But others question whether you can even know the historical Jesus. They contend that it is impossible to separate the real Jesus from the myths that the New Testament writers created. The famous “Jesus Seminar,” for example, meets to vote on which parts of the gospels are authentic and which are fables. To the world, Jesus is not unique. The resurrection is a nice, harmless idea, if you care to hold to it. Easter is a fun spring holiday, when we can feel good about life and full of hope because of the new life in nature. But they view the resurrection as inconsequential.
How do you view the resurrection of Jesus? Perhaps for you, Easter is a nice holiday. The kids and the wife get new clothes and the kids hunt for Easter eggs. You go to church as a family, go out to dinner or get together with extended family, and that’s about it. It’s no big deal. As far as the historical resurrection of Jesus goes, you can believe it if you like. But you? Well, you believe in your own sort of way. Your view is that if you do the best you can, everything will work out okay in the end.
But to view the resurrection in that way is like focusing on the Wright brothers’ trip home for the holidays instead of on their momentous flight. It is to focus on the trivial and miss the most important fact in all of human history.
The world says, “The resurrection is no big deal.” The Christian says,
In 1 Corinthians 15:13-17, Paul argues that the whole Christian faith depends on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ:
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we witnessed against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; your are still in your sins.
In other words, if you want to discredit Christianity once and for all, disprove the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the foundation on which all else rests, the domino that makes all the others fall when it is pushed.
The world would not rank the resurrection among the world’s most important events. I have a book called The Timetables of History (Bernard Grun, Touchstone, 1982). It lists all the great and many not-so-great, but interesting people, facts and events of history in parallel form, so that you can see at a glance what was going on in politics, the arts, religion and philosophy, science, and daily life at any point in history. Interestingly, although it gives an estimated date for the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus, it omits the resurrection. It just ignores the most crucial fact in history by skipping it! But that’s hardly a scientific approach for dealing with what many credible scholars have insisted is historically verifiable!
Paul says that if the resurrection is not historically true, you’re wasting your time to be a Christian. It’s better to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. But if it is true, the resurrection of Jesus is the central fact of human history, not some inconsequential event that can be ignored if you choose. It means that He is the risen Lord, and that He has a claim on your life. And if the living Lord of the universe has a claim on your life, it is a very big deal!
The world says that the resurrection is a matter of private opinion. You can believe it if you want to, but don’t suggest that others must believe it.
When he was preaching in Athens, Paul stated, “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). He didn’t say, “This is my opinion for those who care to accept it.” He said, “God is now declaring that all everywhere should repent,” because one day all people will stand before the risen Lord Jesus Christ for judgment.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “Well, that was Paul’s opinion. But how do I know it’s true for everyone?” First, you need to realize that this isn’t just Paul’s opinion, but also Jesus’ opinion. Jesus said that the Father “has given all judgment to the Son in order that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father” (John 5:22-23, 27). You must either accept the word of Jesus or reject it. There is no middle ground. Either He knew exactly what He was talking about and you must accept it, or He was deluded or trying deliberately to deceive and you must reject it. But as C. S. Lewis pointed out, there is not room for the view that Jesus was just a good, moral teacher. He was a liar or a lunatic or He is Lord of all. It would be a serious mistake to conclude that Jesus was slightly mistaken on a few things, like eternal judgment!
Read the gospel accounts and you will conclude that there is only one option, that Jesus Christ is exactly who He claimed to be. He is obviously not a deluded man nor is He the type of man who would deliberately deceive. He was a man of utmost integrity, who was full of compassion. And yet He spoke words of sober truth concerning the judgment to come. God has furnished proof of Jesus’ appointment as the Judge of all by raising Him from the dead. The resurrection is not a matter of private opinion, which you can believe or reject as you like. Rather, it is a fact of history that confronts each person with the sober reality that one day you will stand before the risen Lord Jesus Christ, either as your Savior or as your Judge. Before you die, you must choose which it will be.
I mentioned that there is proof of the resurrection. The world says that the resurrection is not factual or verifiable. It’s just a subjective religious idea. But the Christian view is:
Festus points to this when he states that Paul “asserted” Jesus to be alive (25:19). Paul didn’t say it might be true or that he hoped it was true or that he believed it was true regardless of the evidence. He asserted it to be true. He wasn’t presenting speculation or subjective religious ideas that warm the souls of all who are simple enough to believe. He was presenting testimony as an eyewitness of the risen Christ.
Paul had met the risen Lord Jesus on the Damascus Road, and his life was turned around. He had been a rising young Jewish leader, bent on persecuting Christians and stamping out this pernicious new teaching. He had a promising future, status in the community, a good living ahead of him. But he gave it all up when the risen Lord Jesus confronted him that day.
“But,” you say, “that could have been a hallucination. Many people have such mystical experiences.” But what about the changed lives of all of the other apostles? They all were depressed, disappointed men who were not expecting a resurrection. They easily could have returned to their former occupations and slipped quietly out of sight. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by their testimonies to the resurrection. Yet they suffered beatings, went to prison and many were killed because of their testimony that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead. They were all men of honest character and integrity, who did not profit financially, but rather gave up everything, in their role as apostles. Why else would not only the twelve, but Paul and thousands of other early Christians live as they lived, unless they knew, based on abundant eyewitness testimony, that Jesus Christ was risen?
If they were all deluded, you still have to explain away the empty tomb. If Jesus’ body had been in that tomb, as soon as the apostles began preaching the resurrection, the Jewish leaders could have produced the body and ended the foolish myth right then. But clearly, there was no body to be found. The tomb was empty.
If Jesus’ enemies had stolen the body, they would have produced it immediately. If the Roman guards had been bribed to hide the body elsewhere, it meant their lives when the Jewish leaders protested to their commander. The Jewish leaders never accused the Roman soldiers of stealing the body or of allowing it to be taken by the disciples. Rather, they accepted the guards’ testimony concerning the resurrection and then bribed them to keep quiet (see Matt. 28:11-15). If the disciples somehow stole the body, then they would have slipped quietly away and forgot about preaching the gospel, especially once persecution began. Why give your life for something you know to be a hoax, especially if it’s not going to make you rich or famous?
There is clear, compelling evidence that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a fact of history. And the Jesus who arose is not just “a certain dead man,” no different than other religious leaders.
The hundreds of Old Testament prophecies, the unique events of His birth, His life, His teaching, the miracles He performed, and His death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven all bear witness to the fact that Jesus is not a mere man, but that He is God in human flesh, the unique, eternal Son of God. When He died in accordance with the Scriptures, His death was unique in that He was the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world (John 1:29). He was the fulfillment of what the sacrifices in the Old Testament typified.
When you stand before God (and we all will!), either you will bear your own sins and face God’s judgment, or your trust will be in Jesus to bear your sins. If your trust is in Jesus’ death for you, God’s holy justice has been satisfied and He will welcome you into heaven. If your trust is in anything else, including your good works, you will face God’s judgment for your sins on that day.
The real issue is right here. Most people do not reject Christ because of a lack of evidence. The Jewish leaders in His day had plenty of evidence. People reject Christ because they don’t want to turn from their sins and selfish ways. They want to cling to their pride that tells them that they are good enough to get into heaven. Their pride convinces them that their good works will merit eternal life. But the Bible declares that none of us by our good works can earn a place in heaven (Titus 3:5).
This morning you are the editor. The story has come across your desk: “Jesus Christ is risen from the dead; children hunt Easter eggs; restaurants crowded on Easter Sunday; retail sales climb ....” You must decide which story is trivial and which is crucial. Will you, like the Ohio editor in the Wright brothers’ day, ignore the crucial and focus on the trivial? Or will you face the most important fact of history, that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and put your trust in Him as your Savior and Lord?
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Years ago, Reader’s Digest [11/82] carried the story of one of the nation’s leading chest surgeons, Dr. Paul Adkins, who looked at his own chest X-ray and realized that he was looking at his own obituary. He was dead four and a half months later, at age 55, from lung cancer, the disease that he had attempted to treat in hundreds of other patients. The sad, ironic fact was that Dr. Adkins himself had smoked up to a pack and a half of cigarettes daily for 40 years. His mother had smoked and lived to an old age, and so Dr. Adkins had foolishly concluded that he could do the same. Even after he realized that he had lung cancer he continued to smoke, against the strong warnings of his colleagues.
If anyone knew the dangers of smoking, Dr. Adkins did, but he did not apply that knowledge to himself. Knowledge is of no use if we do not apply it. The same is true spiritually. We can know the truth, but if we do not apply it personally, it does us no good.
I’m concerned because I read that anywhere between one-third to one-half of Americans claim to be born again Christians, and yet there is no appreciable difference in how they live. There is no difference between professing Christians and the American culture regarding how much or what TV shows we watch; our rate of sexual immorality; or our divorce rate.
The current issue of World (3/30/02) has a cover story on evangelical pastors who become sexually involved with women whom they are counseling. They cite a 1984 survey that one out of five theologically conservative pastors admits to sexual impropriety! I have read other surveys that put the number at one out of eight, which is still shocking! The most disturbing example they report is about a pastor who remains in his pulpit, who is scheduled to speak at a major Campus Crusade conference this summer, but who has never repented of serious sexual sins. Truly there are many who will say to Jesus on judgment day, “Lord, Lord,” only to hear Him reply, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matt. 7:21-23)!
Our text gives us the longest of Paul’s defenses in the Book of Acts. This one is before Festus, Agrippa, and his sister/lover, Bernice, along with many important dignitaries from the Roman capital, Caesarea. It is the third time that Luke repeats Paul’s testimony of his conversion. Paul especially focuses on the commission that the risen Lord Jesus gave to him, to go to the Gentiles so that they might repent and turn to God (26:18, 20). As in all the apostolic witness in Acts, Paul’s testimony rests on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. His message to us is:
Our response to the fact of Jesus’ resurrection should be repentance.
In other words, to say, “I believe in the risen Savior,” but to go on living in the same way as this wicked world lives, does no more good than for a chest surgeon to say, “I believe that smoking causes lung cancer,” but to go on smoking his pack a day. If we truly believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, our lives will show it. Repentance is not optional for the believer. Those who separate God’s grace in salvation from repentance pervert the gospel (John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts, 2:383). Like the false prophets of old, they heal the brokenness of people superficially and give false assurance by saying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace” (Jer. 8:11).
Paul’s defense here makes two main points: (1) The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fact; (2) Repentance is the only rational response to this great fact.
Paul is speaking here before a skeptical audience, and so he presents his case inductively. He does not state up front, “Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.” He would have been hooted out of the room. Even when he finally states this great truth, Festus interrupts to say that he’s out of his mind (26:24). So Paul begins with the possibility of resurrection in general. Then he describes his own encounter with the risen Lord Jesus, and the changes that took place in his life as a result. Then he asserts that his message is completely in line with the Jewish Scriptures, of which Agrippa had some knowledge. Finally he comes to his point, that Jesus died and was raised from the dead. He gives four proofs of the resurrection:
Paul begins by telling of his early life in Judaism and identifying himself with the hope that God had promised the Jews, namely, the coming of Messiah and His kingdom. That promise would have been worthless to the Jews that had died in past generations if there were no resurrection of the dead. Yet it was for this Jewish hope that Paul’s Jewish kinsmen were accusing him. Thus he interjects, “Why is it considered incredible among you people if God does raise the dead?” (26:8).
In other words, if you believe in the God of the Bible, you must necessarily believe that He has the power to raise the dead. And, as Paul will go on to assert, the fact that God raised up Jesus proves that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Paul’s logic here is solid: If you believe in the God who created all things and who spoke life into existence, you must also admit that God has the inherent power to raise the dead.
Paul goes on to recount again his own dramatic encounter with the risen Lord Jesus on the Damascus Road (26:12-15). As I mentioned last week, critics might say that Paul only saw a vision or hallucination, not the actual risen Lord Jesus. If Paul had been the only one to make such a claim, perhaps we would have to concede the point, or at least not build our case on it. But in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8, Paul states that the risen Lord appeared to Peter and the other apostles, as well as to over 500 followers at one time, most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote. Floyd Hamilton states (cited in Teacher’s Manual for the Ten Basic Steps Toward Christian Maturity [Campus Crusade for Christ, 1965], p. 104, italics his),
Now it is perfectly possible for one man to have an hallucination, and two men might have the same hallucination by a singular coincidence, but that eleven men of intelligence, whose characters and writings indicate their sanity in other respects, or that five hundred men in a body should have the same hallucination and at the same time, stretches the law of probability to the breaking point!
Or, as J. N. D. Anderson wrote (“The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Christianity Today [3/29/68], pp. 5, 6),
The most drastic way of dismissing the evidence would be to say that these stories were mere fabrications, that they were pure lies. But, so far as we know, not a single critic today would take such an attitude. In fact, it would really be an impossible position. Think of the number of witnesses, over 500. Think of the character of the witnesses, men and women who gave the world the highest ethical teaching it has ever known, and who even on the testimony of their enemies lived it out in their lives. Think of the psychological absurdity of picturing a little band of defeated cowards cowering in an upper room one day and a few days later transformed into a company that no persecution could silence—and then attempting to attribute this dramatic change to nothing more convincing than a miserable fabrication they were trying to foist upon the world. That simply wouldn’t make sense.
Someone may be thinking, “That’s great for those who saw the risen Christ. But I’ve never seen Him. How do you expect me to believe?”
I expect you to believe because there is reasonable evidence to believe. We all believe in things we cannot see and in people we do not know. You trusted that the people who packaged the cereal you ate for breakfast did not poison it. You trusted that the mechanic who fixed your brakes did a good job. You trust the teller at the bank to deposit your money in your account and not steal it. If you accept the witness of men, the witness of God concerning His Son is greater (1 John 5:9). He will rightly hold us accountable if we reject the eyewitness testimony that He has given us regarding the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Paul had been devoted to destroying Christians. He says that he was “furiously enraged” at them (26:11). And yet here he is, a prisoner for the cause of Christ, having endured numerous hardships because of his faith in Christ, and yet there is not a trace of bitterness or hatred in him toward his enemies. How did this man who had been driven by hate change into a man driven by the love of Christ? The only explanation is that he had seen the risen Savior. The same is true of the transformation in all of the apostles.
Paul affirms that he is saying nothing except that which Moses and the Prophets had said would take place, “that the Christ was to suffer, and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He should be the first to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles” (26:22-23). Probably Paul went into more detail here, quoting from Isaiah 53, Psalm 16, and Psalm 22, all of which predicted Messiah’s death and resurrection centuries before these things took place.
Thus Paul’s point is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a historical event. Such a miracle is possible because God exists. It is proved by eyewitness testimony and by the changed lives of the witnesses. It is supported by the Hebrew Scriptures.
But, so what? What difference should this fact make?
Paul shows this both by his own example and by his direct preaching. When Paul believed in Jesus Christ, he did a 180-degree turnaround. From then on he preached that all men must repent (26:20). Repentance is a turning of the whole person away from sin and toward God. It involves a change of mind, but it is more than merely a change of mind. It involves a change of the mind, the will, and the emotions, resulting in a change of behavior. Repentance is not separate from saving faith, but is rather the flip side of faith. If you truly believe that Jesus Christ is the risen Savior, you cannot remain the same. You will turn from yours sins to God. Note four things about repentance implied in Paul’s words here:
God sent Paul “to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light” (26:18). Apart from Christ, all people, no matter how brilliant their minds, are “darkened in their understanding” (Eph. 4:18). The “god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4). They cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God, which are spiritually appraised (1 Cor. 2:14).
People in this naturally fallen condition cannot grasp the awesome holiness of God. If you had asked Paul before his conversion whether he believed that God is holy, I’m sure that he would have answered, “Of course!” He knew that fact intellectually. But only when the light brighter than the sun shone from heaven did Paul realize that God was far more holy than he had ever imagined. Previously, Paul thought that his own good deeds as a Pharisee would qualify him for dwelling in God’s presence in heaven. But the instant the light of God’s holiness struck him to the ground, Paul, like Isaiah, was undone. He realized that his own holiness was like filthy rags in the sight of God.
At that same instant, Paul saw that he was far more sinful than he had ever imagined. Again, if you had asked Paul before his conversion if he were a sinner, he would have replied, “Of course, all men are sinners.” He probably would have thought, “I’m glad that I’m not like Gentile sinners! I tithe, I pray, I fast” (see Luke 18:10-12). But when the light from heaven blinded him, Paul instantly realized that he could never qualify for heaven by his own good deeds. Further, he realized that he needed atonement for his many sins, and that all of his supposed good deeds could never pay for his many evil deeds.
Years after his conversion, Paul wrote to Timothy, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15). He did not say, I was chief, but I am chief! As C. S. Lewis pointed out, “When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less” (cited by Nathan Hatch, Christianity Today [3/2/79], p. 14). Thus repentance is not just a one-time experience at the moment of conversion. It is the ongoing experience of every believer who walks in God’s holy light.
If sin and Satan blind people so that they cannot see the light of God’s truth regarding His holiness and their own sin, how can they change? The biblical answer is, only God can change them. As Paul said, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). God brings this change through the preaching of the gospel. Thus the risen Lord tells Paul that he will open their eyes (26:18), although obviously, only God’s power through Paul’s preaching of the gospel can do that.
God not only opens the sinner’s eyes to the holiness of God and to the depths of the sinner’s depravity, but also to the abundance of God’s grace in Christ, who bore the penalty that sinners deserve. Thus even Paul, the chief of sinners, found mercy at the cross. That same mercy is available to all who will repent.
Everyone by nature is born into this world as a captive to Satan’s evil domain of darkness (Col. 1:13). As Charles Wesley put it, “Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night” (“Amazing Love”). We all were held captive by Satan to do his will (2 Tim. 2:26). Both Jesus and Paul describe our condition as being slaves of sin (John 8:34-35; Rom. 6:17, 20).
How can anyone break free from so strong a master? Jesus said, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Paul says that God “rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13-14). It is God alone who can free us from slavery to sin and make us slaves of righteousness (Rom. 6:17-23). Or, as Wesley put it, “Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”
This means that if you have not experienced a definite change of masters, from sin and Satan to holiness and God, you had better examine yourself to see whether you have truly repented of your sins. Repentance means turning from Satan’s dominion to God.
Paul continues, “that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me” (26:18). Before repentance, we were under God’s just condemnation because of our sins (John 3:18, 36). But the instant that we repent and believe in Christ, God sets us apart (“sanctified”) and grants us forgiveness of sins and all of the riches that are in Christ. At that moment, we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ (John 17:3). Rather than being afraid of God because of our sins, now we can come boldly into His presence through Christ’s blood to receive grace to help in our time of need (Heb. 4:16; 9:22-28). Thus if you have turned from your sins and trusted in Christ, you now enjoy God’s forgiveness and every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:3-8).
Thus repentance involves a change of understanding, from darkness to light; a change of masters, from Satan to God; a change of relationship, from condemnation to forgiveness and acceptance as heirs. Finally,
In verse 20, Paul tells of his obedience to this heavenly vision. He kept declaring both to Jews and Gentiles, “that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.” Whether you have been a religious person (as Paul and the Jews were) or a raw pagan (as the Gentiles were), the message is the same: Repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.
As G. H. Lang put it, “None more firmly than Paul rejected works, before or after conversion, as a ground of salvation; none more firmly demanded good works as a consequence of salvation” (The Gospel of the Kingdom, cited by F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts [Eerdmans], p. 493). Biblical repentance is not just a change of mind or an intellectual decision. It is a turning of the whole person from sin to God, resulting in a life of obedience to God from the heart (Rom. 6:17).
Paul personally addresses Agrippa (26:27) with the question, “King Agrippa, do you believe the Prophets?” Before Agrippa can respond, Paul answers his own question, “I know that you do.” Yes, Agrippa believed the prophets in an intellectual sort of way, just as many Americans “believe in Jesus.” But it made no difference in the way he lived. But Paul was not just preaching for intellectual assent. He was preaching for repentance.
So am I! Repentance means that you believe in the risen Savior with such conviction that it turns around the way you live. Instead of living in darkness, you now live in the light of God’s holy presence and His Word. Instead of living under Satan’s domain, you now live under the Lordship of Jesus. Instead of living for yourself and sinful pleasure, you now live to please Jesus Christ.
Now Paul had Agrippa in a corner. If he denied his belief in the Prophets, he would lose face with the Jews. If he agreed with Paul, he could see that the next question would be, “Why don’t you believe in Jesus Christ as the risen Savior?” He wasn’t ready to go there! So he skated out of this embarrassing dilemma with a mildly sarcastic humorous dodge, “In a short time you will persuade me to become a Christian” (26:28). The NIV may be correct in making it a question, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?” And so to save face in front of this pompous crowd, Agrippa threw away his opportunity to receive God’s forgiveness and gift of eternal life!
Probably almost everyone here believes that seat belts save lives. But that belief does not do you any good in a crash unless you had actually fastened your seat belt. Those who buckle up are those who truly believe that seat belts save lives. How would you like your obituary to read, “He believed in seat belts, but he was not wearing one at the time of the crash”? Your belief is worthless if you don’t personally apply it.
Do you believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead? Good for you! You do well so to believe, because it is true! But if that belief has not led to a life of repentance from sin, it won’t do you any good on the Day of Judgment. Your response to the fact of Jesus’ resurrection should be repentance.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Newsweek [10/22/90] reported in 1990 that Princess Diana had spent more than $1.9 million for her wardrobe since her engagement to Prince Charles in 1981. That averages out to over $200,000 a year! It included 95 evening gowns, 176 dresses, 178 suits, 54 coats, 141 hats, 71 blouses, 29 skirts, 28 sweaters, 350 pairs of shoes, and 200 purses. She also had spent $22,950 on underwear and $11,475 on stockings. Millions of women worldwide would have swapped places with Princess Diana in an instant! But just a few short years later, it became public knowledge how deeply unhappy she was. Her tragic death should have revealed how vain it is to live for this world’s fame and fortune.
“For what does it profit a man [or woman] to gain the whole world, and forfeit his [or her] soul?” (Mark 8:36) These profound words of Jesus sum up the scene in Acts 26. Luke describes how Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice entered the auditorium amid great pomp, accompanied by the commanders and the prominent men of the city (25:23). If you’ve ever watched the Oscar Awards night on TV, you have some idea of the glitter and glamour of the rich and famous, who are all trying to impress one another and the world. Into this superficial scene the guards bring a little Jewish man in chains, the apostle Paul, to speak about eternal truths.
It was not a trial per se, but more like entertainment. Festus needed to know what charges he could write to the emperor. Agrippa, who was somewhat an expert in Jewish matters, wanted to hear this man who had stirred up such vehement opposition among the Jewish leaders. It would be fun to hear the man’s quaint story and discuss it afterwards over drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
In the middle of the proceedings, after Paul had proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus, Festus reached his limit. He blurted out loudly, “Paul, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you mad.” Paul calmly replied, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth” (26:24-25). Paul proceeded to target King Agrippa, seeking to bring him to personal faith and repentance.
This exchange, which puts Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice on one side, with all of their worldly pomp and show, and Paul the prisoner for Jesus Christ on the other side, makes us ponder the question, “Who’s crazy?” Is Paul crazy to give up all that this world offers to follow Jesus Christ? Or, are those who live for all that this world offers—riches, fame, and pleasure—crazy, who die without repenting of their sins? The biblical answer is,
The crazy person lives for this present world, whereas the sane person obeys Jesus Christ and lives in light of eternity.
Martin Luther said, “I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all. But the things I have placed in God’s hands, I still possess” (cited without reference by Ray Stedman, Expository Studies in 1 John [Word], p. 109). Or, as Jim Eliot, who was martyred at 28, wrote in his journal at age 22, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose” (Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty [Zondervan], p. 15).
Those comments make perfect sense to the believer, and yet each of us would have to admit that this present world holds a strong attraction for most of us. Few of us who know Christ would abandon our faith in favor of the world, but many professing Christians try to live with one foot in each realm, hoping to get the best of both worlds. Even Demas, whom Paul at one point called his fellow worker (Philemon 24), later deserted Paul because he loved this present world (2 Tim. 4:10). Thus we all need to remember Jesus’ words, “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13); and John’s warning, “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
Why would a person live for something as superficial and short-lived as this evil world? A brief glance at the lives of Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice will uncover at least six factors that should serve as a warning to us:
Once when Marla and I lived in Dallas during my seminary years, President Ford came to town and was having lunch at the mansion of a businessman who lived just about a mile from our humble apartment. We rode our bikes over to the entrance. Secret Service agents had cordoned off the sidewalks and were shouting to the crowd as to where they could and could not stand. Soon we heard the roar of motorcycles, and about a dozen police in formation rode in front of the presidential limousine. A dozen more rode behind the vehicle. Secret Service agents stood on the running boards. As they turned into the driveway of the mansion, we got a brief glimpse of President Ford, waving out of the window. He went through the gate to have lunch with a rich, successful businessman. It would be very hard to be either the President or that wealthy businessman and not let it go to your head!
It must have felt great to Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice to be surrounded by armed guards, to step out of the royal chariots in their expensive robes and wave to the common people as they went up the steps into the auditorium. All of the invited guests bowed before them and greeted them respectfully. Servants stood by to wait on their every whim and need. In the eyes of the world, they had it made! Ah, the sweet smell of success!
But those whom the world considers successful are soon dead and forgotten. Festus would be dead within two years. If he, Agrippa, and Bernice had not had their names recorded in the Bible, no one today would know anything about them. Paul, whom most people in Caesarea wouldn’t have walked across the street to see, was the truly successful man in the room that day, because he lived his life in the light of eternity.
Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice were like all the rich and famous, trying to impress others with their own greatness. But their fatal mistake was that they did not give any thought about how to live so as to please God. And, while few of us here would ever be as superficial as these worldly people were, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to impress others and forget that our focus should be on pleasing God, who examines our hearts. We should always keep in mind the Lord’s words (Isa. 66:3, NIV), “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.”
Festus was a rationalist. For him, the notion that Jesus or anyone else could rise from the dead was just plain crazy. He thought that in spite of Paul’s great learning, saying such things proved that the man had lost his mind. He believed in philosophy and logic, not in religious superstition.
Festus’ mistake was that he had not factored in God, who spoke the universe into existence by the word of His power. Reason is fine to a point; God gave us minds capable of thinking, and we should use them. His Word gives us many truths that require careful thinking to grasp. But if we exalt human reason to the point that we exclude God and His power or set aside His revelation in His Word, we fall into error. To leave God out only leaves this present world as all that there is. If this world is all there is, then we should eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow we die.
When Paul backed Agrippa into a corner with his pointed question (26:27), to save face Agrippa made light of it by saying, “In a short time you will persuade me to become a Christian” (26:28). He was embarrassed in front of all of these important people. What would they think if he took seriously what this controversial Jew was saying? So with no regard for what the living God might think, Agrippa joked away his opportunity for eternal life!
Peer pressure has always been a powerful force to draw people away from God and to keep them in this world. You don’t want the other kids at school to think that you’re weird! So don’t take a stand for Christ. Just go to all of the parties and have a few drinks like everyone else. Just laugh along with the dirty jokes. At work just cut corners and fudge the truth like everyone else. Just go with the flow! But the flow is heading straight toward hell!
In their day, Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice had what everyone else wanted. They lived well. They had plenty of money, the finest clothes, the best food, and the most comfortable places to live. Paul owned no property, had no investment portfolio, and probably could pack all of his earthly belongings in one suitcase. But who was truly wealthy? As Jesus taught us, the one who piles up this world’s goods and is not rich toward God is the fool (Luke 12:15-21). While we can legitimately enjoy the material blessings that God has given us, we need to be on “guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions” (1 Tim. 6:17-19; Luke 12:15). We need to remember that we are stewards of what God has entrusted to us. When we stand before Him, we will give an account of how we invested it in light of eternity.
It was rumored that Agrippa and Bernice were living together in incest, which was even scandalous in worldly Rome. Later she married a petty monarch, divorced him and then became the lover of the Roman general Titus. These worldly rulers were living for sensual gratification without regard for God’s moral standards.
You can’t stand in line at the supermarket without being bombarded by magazines with pictures of sensuous men and women and articles promising ten new ways to please your lovers. The power of the flesh, especially when you are in the beauty and strength of youth, is a strong temptation, even for Christians. But if we yield we are crazy, because we gain momentary pleasure, but long term misery and pain. The lives of Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice show us that the crazy person is the one who lives for this superficial, fleeting world.
Contrary to the charge of Festus’ outburst, Paul was the sanest man in that room! He calmly counters Festus’ charge by saying, “I am not out of my mind, most noble Festus, but I utter words of truth and rationality” (26:25, lit.). As we saw last week, Paul’s faith (along with the faith of all of the apostles) rested completely on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was not an irrational leap in the dark, but was based on their eyewitness testimony. It was Paul’s encounter with the risen Savior that converted him and changed him from insanity to sanity Note three things about the sanity of obeying Jesus Christ in light of eternity:
Paul was insanely driven when he persecuted the church, but it was on the Damascus Road that Paul began to live in light of God’s eternal kingdom, which is the only sane way to live.
If Paul had viewed Agrippa through worldly eyes, he would have thought, “The man has everything he needs. He’s wealthy, he’s powerful, he’s successful—what do I have to offer him?” But Paul viewed his audience that day through God’s eyes: They were lost, enslaved to sin, and under God’s condemnation. While Agrippa had a superficial belief in the Old Testament prophets (26:27), he needed to repent of his sins and trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. So Paul sought to bring him to saving faith, which necessarily includes repentance.
Often, there is an intense struggle involved in a person’s coming to saving faith. The Lord describes that process for Paul as “kicking against the goads” (26:14). A goad was a sharp stick, sometimes with a metal tip, which was used for prodding oxen, especially as they were harnessed to a plow. To resist serving its master by kicking against the goads would only hurt the oxen. The only safe and sane path was to submit and obey. Paul apparently went through a time of resisting and kicking against the truth of the gospel, perhaps after he witnessed the death of Stephen.
The point is, to fight God on the matter of conversion is insane. It is only to wound yourself. The path to blessing both now and for eternity is to quit fighting God, to repent of your sins, and to trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.
As I said, repentance is an essential part of conversion. Paul preached that people “should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance” (26:20). Repentance means doing a 180, turning from sin toward God. Before conversion, we all were living for self and for the things of this world. After conversion, we live to please and glorify Jesus Christ and to seek first His kingdom. Paul describes his own repentance in Philippians 3:7-8,
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.
Here Paul describes his life after conversion: “I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision” (26:19). That vision included his commission to preach not only to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles (26:17, 20), which was the reason the Jews hated him. It took radical obedience for a zealous Jew like Paul, who thought that any contact with Gentiles was defiling, to devote his life to reaching Gentiles for Christ and to teach that they had equal standing in the church. But Paul obeyed the Great Commission.
Such radical obedience is not just the calling of the super-committed. Jesus said, “if anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). He told us that, instead of seeking after all of the worldly comforts that worldly people seek, we should seek first His kingdom and righteousness (Matt. 6:31-33). Each of the Gospels and Acts record His Great Commission, that we should go and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all that He commanded us (Matt. 28:19-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-48; John 20:21; Acts 1:8).
I fear that many American Christians have dismissed the Great Commission as pertaining only to those who are called as missionaries to foreign lands. Since they have never sensed that call, they pretty much ignore Christ’s command and get on with their careers, their families, and their private pursuits and interests. Once in a while they drop a few bucks in the offering plate to do their bit for the cause. Church is a nice slice of the good life that they enjoy as Christians. But they don’t live with radical obedience to the Great Commission. It plays little if any part in how they live their lives. In fact, they hardly ever give it much thought at all.
But the Bible clearly teaches that every Christian should put Jesus Christ and His kingdom at the center of their lives. Knowing Him and making Him known, both locally and globally, should be our passion in life. I like the way John Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist, puts it:
We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. One of the Biblical truths that drives us is great news that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
And this vision of reality radically frees us from passing and dying trinkets of the world and compels us (as joy always does) to spread what we love the most through radical acts of love. We long to see those who do not treasure God now, whether in the American urban centers or suburban sprawls or among the unreached peoples of the world, to come to know true and forever Joy -- which is only found in God. (From their web site, http://bbcmpls.org).
You don’t accidentally fall into that kind of radical obedience to the Great Commission. It must be your deliberate focus. You’ve got to keep shrugging off the enticements of this world in order to be obedient to the heavenly vision. One final observation:
As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 15:19, “If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.” The world lives as if this life is all that really matters. The obedient Christian says, “No, if this life is all there is, I am crazy!” We put all of our eggs in the eternity basket. We say, “If Christ is not risen, and if there is no hope beyond the grave, please pity me, because I’m nuts!” Would the way that you obey Jesus as Lord, the way you spend your time, and the way you manage your finances cause a worldly person to say, “You’re a bit off”? If not, perhaps you need to rearrange your priorities in the light of eternity. Because Jesus is risen, it’s the only sane way to live.
Peter Cameron Scott, a gifted young vocalist, was on the steps of an opera house ready to pursue a career as a singer, when God challenged him, “Will you seek a life of self-glory and applause in the entertainment world, or will you dedicate your life to My service?” He obeyed God’s call, received some missionary training, and at age 23 he sailed for Africa. Within a few months, his brother joined him, but the harsh African climate and environment that became known as “the white man’s graveyard” took its toll. His brother died. Peter built a crude coffin, dug the grave himself, and buried his brother. Alone at the grave, he recommitted himself to preach the gospel in Africa.
His own health broke, and he went first to England and then back to the U.S. to recruit others for the cause. In 1895, at age 28, he established the Africa Inland Mission. But just 14 months after he and his party had landed on African soil, Scott fell ill and died.
After Scott’s death, the mission nearly failed as one after another of the workers died. By the summer of 1899, only one missionary remained on the field. But they persisted, and ten years after the mission’s founding, there were 31 missionaries on the field. In the early years, more missionaries died from the harsh conditions than people came to Christ. But still more missionaries came, arriving with their goods packed in coffins. The Africans were amazed at such determination. They said, “Surely only a message of great importance would inspire such actions.” By 1971, there were a million and a half members in the Africa Inland Church. (Story culled from “The Global Prayer Digest” [10/84] and from Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya [Zondervan], pp. 300-304.)
Who are the crazy ones? Those who live for this present world and all it offers. Who are the sane people? Those who obey Jesus Christ and live in light of eternity!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
One of the most unforgettable, worst days of my life took place in November, 1972. The 82-foot Coast Guard Cutter on which I did my reserve duty had to go out in 60-mile-per-hour gale-force winds to rescue a man and his daughter in their sailboat somewhere beyond Catalina Island. Forty-foot waves caused our boat to tilt so far over that I was sure we would capsize. The screws would come out of the water, revving the engines to full throttle. Then the whole boat would shudder and we would start back in the other direction. A desk, chairs, and file cabinets inside the cabin shifted from side to side with each roll. The only thing that kept me from being scared to death was the thought, “You never read about Coast Guard vessels going down in bad storms.”
After nine hours of heaving my insides out, we saved the man and his daughter, who would have died. I use the term “we” loosely, as in the night that Chicago Bulls rookie forward Stacey King scored one point and Michael Jordan scored 69. King said, “I’ll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score 70 points” (Reader’s Digest [10/91], p. 22). I’ll always remember the day that my crew mates and I saved that man and his daughter. They saved him while I made a steady path between my bunk and the toilet!
If you’ve ever been in a terrible storm at sea in a smaller vessel, you can identify with Luke’s description of the shipwreck in Acts 27. He and Aristarchus accompanied Paul (“we” resumes at 27:1, from 21:18) on this difficult journey to Rome. Scholars have wondered why Luke goes to such lengths to describe the details of this event, since at first glance it does not seem to fit into his purpose. Part of Luke’s reason may be that the details reveal just how harrowing this experience was. Against the human helplessness of this frightening adventure stands the sovereign hand of God, who had promised Paul that he would testify in Rome (23:11). Since an angel repeats that promise to Paul here in the midst of the storm (27:24), Luke’s main purpose is to show that God’s purpose cannot be thwarted, even by such powerful forces of nature.
Also, Luke shows Paul’s calm, practical leadership in the midst of this crisis. Even though he was a prisoner, Paul is the dominant figure in the chapter. Because of him, all 276 people on board the ship were saved from death. Paul’s testimony, both by his calm demeanor and by his words, would have had an unforgettable impact on the people on board.
Even if you’ve never been in a storm at sea, you have been and will be in many storms in life. In some of them, you may despair of life itself, even as everyone on board here did (27:20). Paul’s experience teaches us that …
If we will trust in God’s sovereign care for us in life’s storms, He will use us to bear witness to many.
There are three main lessons here:
The biblical doctrine of God’s sovereignty over all things is one of the most practical truths for us to apply in times of trial. There are those who teach that it is not God’s will when some tragedy hits. I have heard a pastor in our town declare at a funeral that the person’s death was not God’s plan! I think that by saying that, he was trying to make God look good and to comfort the grieving family members. But he did neither! If it wasn’t in God’s plan, then God is at the mercy of some greater power that got the upper hand, which is a blasphemous thing to say about God! And, it hardly gives comfort to the grieving to think that somehow God was momentarily overpowered just when our loved one needed protection! It is far more comforting to believe what the Bible teaches, that God is absolutely sovereign over everything that takes place, even over the most tragic events in history (Acts 2:23; 4:27-28). There are three practical truths that stem from this:
This ship was out of control (27:15-20), at the mercy of this fearsome storm. The power of the wind and waves in such a storm is awesome! Even in a modern Coast Guard vessel, you realize very quickly that your control over the situation is minimal. But in Paul’s day, they were completely out of control and helpless. They did everything they could to keep the ship from breaking apart (27:17), but beyond that, there was nothing else to do. Since they had no compass or other instruments, and they couldn’t see the sun or stars, they were lost in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. They were fearful that they might drift 350 miles to the south, where there are dangerous sandy reefs off the coast of Libya (Syrtis, 27:17). They jettisoned a lot of the cargo and even the non-essential ship’s tackle. But after doing all that they could do, they were not in control.
But God was in control! He always is! This storm did not take Him by surprise. He was not in heaven in a panic, summoning His angels to come up with a rescue plan for Paul. God caused the boat to drift 476 miles from the small island of Clauda to Malta, another speck in that vast sea. Although the sailors were not in control, God was!
In the 19th century, an experienced Scottish yachtsman, James Smith, made a careful on-site study of this narrative. He asked experienced Mediterranean navigators what the mean drift of a ship of this kind would be in such a gale. He learned that it would drift about 36 miles in 24 hours. Even today, the soundings mentioned in verse 28 indicate that the ship was passing Koura, a point on the east coast of Malta, on her way into St. Paul’s Bay. Smith calculated that a ship leaving late in the evening from Clauda would, by midnight of the 14th day, be less than three miles from the entrance to St. Paul’s Bay. He also reported that no ship can enter St. Paul’s Bay without passing within a quarter of a mile from the point of Koura, where the sailors would have heard the breakers, thus surmising that they were nearing land, as Luke reports in verse 27 (cited by F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts [Eerdmans], pp. 514-515).
This shows the perfect accuracy of Luke’s narrative and that we can trust in God’s Word. When things in our lives are out of our control, they are never out of God’s control. Trust in the promises of His Word of truth!
Sometimes when we find ourselves in the midst of a sudden storm in life, we wonder if we’re out of God’s will. We may be, especially if we got into the storm because of sin in our lives. But we may be exactly where God wants us to be. The Lord had told Paul that he would testify for Him in Rome (23:11), but He had not bothered to mention the little detail of this storm and shipwreck!
Matthew 14:22 reports that immediately after feeding the 5,000, Jesus “made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He sent the crowds away.” The word “made,” which means “to compel by force or persuasion,” shows that the disciples didn’t have much to say about what they were doing. The following verses show that Jesus was deliberately sending them into a storm at sea! He knew that that storm was coming, but He wanted to teach them His power over storms by walking to them on the water. So even though they were in a fierce storm, they were precisely in the will of God for them at that moment.
Just about every time that I have made a major move, I have experienced unusual trials. When Marla and I went to Dallas so that I could finish seminary, we got caught in a major snowstorm in southern New Mexico on the way. We got to Dallas, finally found an apartment, and three days later got mugged at gunpoint. The gun sight on the robber’s pistol tore my hand open. I wondered if I had somehow missed God’s direction.
When we moved to Flagstaff, we had major problems with our house in California. When it finally sold, we had trouble finding an affordable house here. Just as we moved in, a major controversy erupted between the former elders and me, threatening my continuing in the ministry here. But in each storm, I’m convinced that we were in God’s will for us at that time. The point is, God’s will for His children sometimes includes storms.
Even though the sailors did not know where they were and had no control over the situation, God knew exactly where they were. They never went off of His radar screen. And He cared for all of them, even for those that did not know that He exists, as seen by the fact that He spared all of their lives. Of course He especially cared for His children on board, Paul, Luke, and Aristarchus. If my kids are all on board a ship or a plane, I care about everyone on board, but I especially care about those three children of mine. If you are God’s child through faith in Christ, you can be assured that He cares for you in every storm that He takes you through. Peter combines God’s sovereignty and His care when he tells us to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand, and then adds, “casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:6-7).
So God’s sovereignty over everything that happens is a source of great comfort for the believer in the storms of life. But God’s sovereignty never negates our responsibility. To conclude that since God is sovereign, whatever will be will be, and thus to kick back and do nothing, is not biblical.
Our text reveals four aspects of trusting openly in God’s care:
Paul was a man of great faith, and he specifically testifies that he believes God in this trial (27:25). So we can assume that he was trusting God in verse 10 when he advised the men in charge not to continue with the trip due to the lateness in the year. The “fast” (27:9) refers to the Day of Atonement, which was in early October that year. Any time after September 14th was risky for sailing in the Mediterranean, and no one sailed after November 11th until the end of winter, because of the frequent storms (Bruce, p. 506). So we need not assume that Paul had had a revelation from God warning him about the storm. Rather, he was just using common sense. After all, he had already been in three shipwrecks, including a night and a day spent drifting in the deep (2 Cor. 11:25)!
But the pilot and ship owner did not like the harbor of Fair Haven for the winter, and along with the centurion decided to try to make the 40 miles to Phoenix. The moderate wind that came up fooled them into supposing that they had gained their purpose, and so they launched off into what would shortly become a major disaster. So much for expert opinion! As Spurgeon observed, that was not the only voyage that commenced favorably and ended disastrously (Spurgeon’s Expository Encyclopedia [Baker], 11:436).
But the point is, there was nothing wrong with Paul’s using good judgment and common sense. Sometimes people imply that trusting in the Lord necessarily means casting reason to the wind and doing something absurd. Sometimes the Lord does expect us to do something by faith that those in the world consider foolish because they do not trust in God. But we had better be sure that the Lord is behind such things, or we end up looking awfully stupid in the world’s eyes! Trusting God and using your brain are not necessarily opposed to one another.
Paul stands out above all others in this desperate situation because of his calm faith in God. It seems that for a while, even Paul, Luke, and Aristarchus lost hope and were fearful, because Luke states, “from then on all hope of our being saved was gradually abandoned” (27:20). The angel’s word to Paul, “Do not be afraid” (27:24), implies that he was afraid. After all, he was only human, and when we are overwhelmed by a catastrophe of this magnitude, even the strongest believers can momentarily falter.
But the angel reminded him of God’s earlier promise that he would bear witness in Rome, and he also promised Paul that all on board would be saved. So Paul stood up and reminded them of his earlier warning, not just to say, “I told you so,” but to establish his credibility. Then he gave them all a word of encouragement concerning God’s promise. Later, Paul encouraged them all to eat some food so that they would have the strength to get to shore (27:34). He openly thanked God for the food before he ate, unashamedly showing these rough sailors, soldiers, and fellow prisoners his open trust in God.
If we want to stand out in a time of trial from those who do not know the Lord, we’ve got to have a daily walk of seeking God before the trial hits. In Proverbs 1:24-29, wisdom personified warns us that if we refuse to seek her during normal times, she will laugh at us when our dread comes like a storm and when distress and anguish come upon us. But if we daily seek God and His wisdom during normal times, when a storm hits, we will be different than those in the world, because we know and trust our God.
The angel promised Paul that everyone on board would be saved (27:24). But during the final night, the sailors were trying to escape from the ship in the dinghy, under the pretense of laying out anchors from the bow (27:30). Paul saw what was happening and realized that those on board needed the sailors’ expertise to get to land in the morning. So he said to the centurion, “Unless these men remain in the ship, you yourselves cannot be saved” (27:31). By now the centurion had come to respect Paul’s wisdom, and so he ordered his soldiers to cut the lines to the ship’s boat, so the sailors could not escape by themselves. Also, Paul realized that for everyone to be saved, they needed strength. But no one had eaten anything for two weeks, due to seasickness and perhaps due to the difficulty of preparing food. So he took bread, gave thanks to God, and ate, encouraging all of them to eat also, telling them that the food was for their preservation (27:34-36).
In other words, although God promised that everyone would be preserved alive, Paul did not assume that it would happen apart from the use of proper means. The sailors could not escape, and everyone needed the strength that came from eating. In the same way, God has promised that some from every tribe and tongue and people and nation will be in heaven because Jesus purchased them with His blood (Rev. 5:9). But they won’t be there unless we labor through our prayers, our giving, and our sending some to go and tell them the gospel. God is sovereign to save His elect, but He does it through the means that He has appointed.
When God encouraged Paul through the angel’s promise, Paul didn’t keep it to himself. Neither did he make everyone think that he was just a positive person, and that they all should keep a positive outlook as well. He used the situation to tell them about God, about his trust in God, and to promise that God would spare all of their lives through this ordeal. When he encouraged them all to eat some bread, Paul could have thought, “These are pagan men. Why ask God’s blessing on the food in front of such rough men?” But rather, he openly gave thanks to God in the presence of all (27:35).
In times of trial, people are especially open to spiritual things. When life is out of control, and nothing seems to be working, people are open to hear about a God who is in control. We should not hesitate to be bold to tell them about the true and living God and the eternal life that He offers them through His Son, Jesus Christ.
As long as men can devise human ways of coping with the storm apart from God, they will do so. These sailors had heard Paul’s testimony that God would deliver them all, but they were going to use their own ingenuity to save themselves. But God only has one way of salvation, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. He won’t let people save themselves in their own ways, or add anything to the way that He has provided. Because Paul trusted God and bore witness to God’s promise of deliverance, the other 275 passengers on that ship heard about God. No doubt in the days and winter months to follow on Malta, Paul was able to give them the gospel more fully and clearly than he could do on board during the storm. One man who trusts God in a storm of life can have a major impact on others who see the reality of God in his life.
In late 1735, a ship made it’s way to the New World from England. On board was a young Anglican minister, John Wesley, who had been invited to serve as a pastor to British colonists in Savannah, Georgia. A storm hit and the ship found itself in serious trouble. Wesley, who was chaplain of the vessel, feared for his life.
But he noticed that the group of German Moravians, who were on their way to preach to American Indians, were not afraid at all. In fact, throughout the storm, they sang calmly. When the trip ended, he asked the Moravian leader about his serenity, and the Moravian responded with a question: Did he, Wesley, have faith in Christ? Wesley said he did, but later reflected, “I fear they were vain words.”
Wesley’s experience in Georgia was a failure, both personally and ministry-wise. A bitter Wesley returned to England. After speaking with another Moravian, Peter Boehler, Wesley concluded that he lacked saving faith. On May 24, 1738, he had an experience that changed everything. He described the event in his journal:
In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. (From the web site, http://www.christianitytoday.com/holidays/fourthofjuly /features/wesley.html).
God used those Moravians’ trusting Him during that storm at sea to bring about the conversion of the great evangelist, John Wesley. If you’re going through a storm, He wants you to trust Him. He is sovereign over your storm. If you trust Him openly, He will use you to bear witness to many who need to know the Savior, who alone can deliver us from the storm of God’s wrath that is sure to come on the whole earth.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
A passenger on an ocean liner was enduring a rough Atlantic crossing. As he leaned over the rail, his face a shade of green, a steward came along and tried to encourage him: “Don’t be discouraged, sir! No one’s ever died of seasickness yet!” The nauseous passenger looked up at the steward with horror and said, “Don’t say that! It’s only the hope of dying that’s kept me alive this long!”
That’s probably how Paul’s fellow-passengers felt after two weeks of enduring the storm at sea. Not only were they sick; after not being able to see the sun or stars for many days, they had lost all hope of being saved (27:20). In the same way, when people go through severe storms in life, often they lose all hope.
Into this bleak picture, the encouraging words of the apostle Paul brought a ray of light. In verse 22, he urges everyone to keep up their courage, promising that there would be no loss of life among them. Again in verse 25 he says, “Therefore, keep up your courage, men, for I believe God, that it will turn out exactly as I have been told.” Yet again in verse 33 we read that “Paul was encouraging them to take some food.” The result was (27:36), “all of them were encouraged.”
Someone has said, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Those who do not know Christ need encouragement. Paul describes them as having no hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2:12). They need the hope that only Christ can give. The Lord’s people need encouragement. Discouragement is one of Satan’s greatest tools, causing many in Christian service to give up and drop out of the ministry. Our families need encouragement. As husbands and fathers, we need to set an atmosphere of encouragement in our homes. The apostle Paul’s experience here shows us first, how to receive encouragement from the Lord in the storms of life; and, then, how to pass God’s encouragement on to others who desperately need it.
Those who have received God’s encouragement in life’s storms should encourage others to look to God.
Paul wasn’t just an upbeat, positive person who never felt down. Luke’s words in verse 20 imply that Paul, Aristarchus, and Luke felt the same as everyone else on board, that there was no hope of their being saved. This is reinforced by the angel’s words to Paul (27:24), “Do not be afraid.” If Paul had not been discouraged and afraid, he would not have needed this encouraging word. But once he experienced God’s encouragement, he then passed it on to others. Before we can pass God’s encouragement along to others, we must personally experience it ourselves.
Howard Hendricks often says, “You cannot impart what you do not possess.” So how do we receive God’s encouragement when we’re going through a difficult time? Seven ways:
Paul did not have to face this difficult voyage to Rome alone. He was accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, and Luke, the beloved physician. Sir William Ramsay, in his book St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen ([Baker], p. 316), argued that to get permission to accompany Paul as a prisoner, Aristarchus and Luke would have had to pass themselves off as his slaves. Aristarchus was one of Paul’s traveling companions who had been dragged into the theater during the riot in Ephesus (19:29). He accompanied Paul on his journeys through that region (20:4). Later, writing from Rome, Paul refers to him as a fellow-prisoner (Col. 4:10). This faithful young man was willing to be Paul’s slave and to go to prison with him! No doubt Paul was greatly encouraged by such a loyal friend and fellow-worker (Philemon 24).
As the journey to Rome began, the ship put into port at Sidon, and the centurion allowed Paul to visit his friends and receive care (27:4). We often think of Paul as giving care to others, but he also needed to receive care. He taught that we all are part of the body of Christ, where each member both gives and receives from the other members in order to function properly (1 Cor. 12:12-27).
The current World magazine (4/20/02, p. 14) reports that radio evangelist Harold Camping is telling his listeners that they should drop their church memberships, leave their congregations, and just listen to the radio. And many of his listeners are doing what he says. At a conference of some 100 pastors, each one reported losing members because of Mr. Camping’s teachings. As the article goes on to point out, the idea has a certain appeal. Sleep in on Sunday, no meetings, no obligations, no messy involvement in the lives of other Christians. But, of course, it is in direct disobedience to Scripture, which tells us not to forsake assembling together, but rather to encourage one another (Heb. 10:25). We receive encouragement by being with God’s people.
In this case, it was not the Lord Himself who appeared to Paul (as in 23:11), but His angel (27:23). But it had the same effect, to remind Paul that God was always with him, always aware of the trials that he was going through. When He gave the Great Commission, our Lord promised, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Here Paul again experiences the reality of that promise.
He had experienced it when he was afraid in Corinth. The Lord appeared to him and promised, “for I am with you” (Acts 18:9-10). Paul had also experienced it when he was in custody in Jerusalem, and the Lord stood at his side and said, “Take courage,” and promised that he would bear witness at Rome” (23:11). He would later experience it at his final imprisonment, just before his execution. He told Timothy that no one supported him, but all deserted him. Then he added, “But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me” (2 Tim. 4:17). Each of these experiences of the Lord’s presence came at times of crisis in Paul’s life.
I’ve never seen the Lord or an angel, and I believe that such experiences are quite rare (1 Pet. 1:8). But I have felt His presence with me in times of great need, and it has flooded me with encouragement. Even if we do not have literal visions of Christ or His angels, we have His promise, and it should give us encouragement.
Late in his life, the great pioneer missionary to Africa, David Livingstone, received an honorary doctorate from Glasgow University. As he rose to speak, he was gaunt and haggard as a result of the hardships he had gone through in tropical Africa. He left arm, crushed by a lion, hung helplessly at his side as he announced his resolve to return to Africa without misgiving and with great gladness. He added, “Would you like me to tell you what supported me through all the years of exile among a people whose language I could not understand, and whose attitude toward me was often uncertain and often hostile? It was this: ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.’ On these words I staked everything, and they never failed!” (“Our Daily Bread,” Fall, 1984.)
Paul tells these rough men on board that he belongs to God (27:23). If you have trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, you belong to Him. He purchased you with something far more valuable than silver or gold, namely with His precious blood (1 Pet. 1:18-19). You can be assured that He is going to take care of His expensive purchase.
If you pay a lot of money for something, you don’t carelessly toss it into a drawer and forget about it. You put it in a special place and you check on it often. In some cases, if it is very valuable, you rent a safe deposit box at the bank and put it there. God purchased you with the blood of His Son, and He isn’t about to abandon you. That should give you great encouragement in the storm.
Paul calls God the one “whom I serve” (27:23). The Greek word refers to service to God, sometimes with the nuance of worship. It is used of the Old Testament priests offering their service to God (Heb. 13:10). And so it refers to a life that is lived with a God-ward focus. All that we are and do should be offered to the Lord as a living sacrifice to Him (Rom. 12:1-2).
Every Christian, not just those in so-called “full-time Christian service,” should view himself or herself as the Lord’s servant, always on duty. Every contact is an opportunity to represent our Lord Jesus Christ. Throughout the day we should, “Through Him … continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Heb. 13:15-16).
If we see ourselves that way, as the Lord’s servants, we can be encouraged in the storms of life, because the Lord looks out for His servants. We’re doing His business, and just as a company looks out for its workers, even more so the Lord looks out for His workers. He has the best employee benefit package of all!
Thus we receive God’s encouragement in the storms of life by being with His people; when we remember His continual presence; when we remember that we are His possession; and when we remember that we are His servants.
Paul relates the angel’s words, “you must stand before Caesar.” These words are simply a reminder of what the Lord already had told Paul in Jerusalem (23:11). The word “must” points to divine necessity. When God says, “you must,” you know that it will happen. He is always faithful to His promises.
During Donald Grey Barnhouse’s student days in France, he led a girl to Christ who later married a French pastor. She often came to the Barnhouse home and saw them taking verses from a promise box—a small box that held about 200 promises from the Bible printed on heavy paper curled into cylinders. They would take one out and read it when they needed a word of special comfort. So this French woman made her own promise box, writing these same verses in French.
Years later, during the war, this French family had no food except for the potato peelings from a nearby restaurant. The children were hungry and were almost in rags, and their shoes were worn through. In one of her lowest moments, this woman turned in desperation to the promise box. She prayed, “O Lord, I have such great need. Is there a promise here that is really for me? Show me, O Lord, what promise I can have in this time of famine, nakedness, peril, and sword.”
Her tears blinded her, and in reaching for the box, she knocked it over. The promises showered down around her, on her lap and on the floor. Not one was left in the box. At that moment, the Holy Spirit flooded her with divine light and joy as she realized that all of the promises were indeed for her in that hour of her greatest need (Barnhouse, Let Me Illustrate [Revell], pp. 253-254).
And so it can be for you in whatever storm you are going through. As the Lord promises (Isa. 43:1-3),
But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
The angel told Paul, “Behold, God has granted you all those who are sailing with you” (27:24). The words, “God has granted,” imply that Paul had prayed, not only for himself, but also for all on board, that they all would be saved from death through the shipwreck (John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Acts, 2:401). God could have saved Paul, Luke, and Aristarchus, but let the others perish. But instead, He graciously granted to Paul the lives of all on board. The world never knows the protection that it receives because of the presence and prayers of God’s people! Scripture doesn’t tell us how many of those on board eventually came to saving faith in Christ, but I think that many did.
Whenever you are going through a storm, not only pray that God will deliver you, but also that He will grant you the souls of others with whom you have contact during the storm. He may be taking you through the storm for the very reason that He wants to use you to bring the gospel to others “on board” with you. The fact that He graciously answers prayer for the salvation of others should encourage us in the storm.
Paul tells the others on board to keep up their courage and then adds, “for I believe God, that it will turn out exactly as I have been told” (27:25). God’s promises don’t do us any good unless we believe Him, that He will do just as He has said, in spite of our current overwhelming circumstances. As the encouraging Hebrews 11 reminds us, it was by faith that the men and women of the past saw God do mighty things on their behalf. When the waves of the storm are breaking over us, we can be encouraged by believing the One who merely spoke the word, and the wind and the sea instantly obeyed (Mark 4:39-41).
So the first thing we need is personally to receive God’s encouragement in our storm. Then, having received it, …
When we’re going through a storm, our natural tendency is to focus on ourselves and our problems, and forget about others and their problems. But Paul didn’t do that. He didn’t keep God’s encouragement to himself, or just share it with Luke and Aristarchus. He shared it with everyone on board, and repeatedly encouraged them to take courage on the basis of God’s promise of deliverance.
Some of the men on board may have been condemned prisoners, headed to Rome to die in the arena with the lions (Richard Rackham, The Acts of the Apostles [Baker], p. 480). They desperately needed Christ. As pagans, if they had made it through the storm, they would have praised their good luck or offered sacrifices to their favorite idols. But Paul wanted to make sure that they knew that it was the living God who delivered them (Calvin, p. 400). And so he made it clear where the source of deliverance came from. I can only briefly touch on them, but notice five ways that we can encourage others in the storm:
As I mentioned, Luke and Aristarchus were with Paul, not only here, but also in prison in Rome. And all three men were on board with the others in the storm. Often the Lord puts His people into a storm for the good of others. Although Luke and Aristarchus probably said much to encourage Paul, none of it is recorded. The only thing recorded is their presence, and it was no doubt a source of great encouragement to Paul.
Sometimes we hesitate to visit someone who is going through a difficult trial because we don’t know what to say. Don’t worry about that—just go and be there. Remember, Job’s three friends did just fine for the week that they just sat there silently. It was when they opened their mouths that they got into trouble!
After Paul’s advice not to continue the voyage had been rejected, he easily could have got his feelings hurt and said, “If that’s how they want to be, they deserve to perish!” But he put his feelings aside and prayed that all would be delivered. No doubt these sailors were not nice men with high moral standards. They probably swore a lot, as sailors are notorious for doing. The soldiers guarding Paul and the other prisoners showed their true colors by wanting to kill all the prisoners just prior to the shipwreck. But Paul knew that they all needed the Lord, and so he prayed for them. Even so, we should pray for people in the world who do not deserve God’s grace. None of us do!
As we learned in the “Praying for You” seminar several years ago, most unbelievers will respond favorably if you ask, “May I pray for you?” Everyone has needs, and even the most hardened unbelievers will often say, “Well, it can’t hurt!” Your kindness may open a door for the gospel. And with fellow believers who are going through the storm, it will encourage them to know that you are praying for them.
Paul encouraged these men to eat some food so that they would have the strength to swim to shore (27:34). It was a practical matter, not directly spiritual. But the men were encouraged by it. Often, the most encouraging thing you can do is to take a meal to someone who has been ill, or clean their house or go grocery shopping for them. Don’t say, “If you have any needs, let me know.” They won’t ask. Just put yourself in their place and ask, “What would I want someone to do for me?” Then do it for them.
Paul was literally in the same boat with these pagans! He probably got seasick, just as they did. He had been discouraged and fearful, just as they were. But when he received encouragement from the Lord, he openly shared his experience to encourage the others. He gave thanks to God for the bread in front of everyone and then ate, setting the example. The others were encouraged to follow. Especially in our families, our kids follow our example. If we panic and fall apart in a storm, they learn to be fearful. If we trust in God, they learn to trust Him in their storms.
Paul didn’t just tell them to keep a positive outlook or to have faith in faith. He told them that he believed God and the promise of deliverance that God had given. Many in this world have faith that everything will turn out okay just because they are positive, optimistic people. But the fact is, if they do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, everything will not turn out okay! Those who believe in God’s Son have eternal life, but those who do not believe in Him will perish (John 3:16). So it’s not enough to encourage people in a storm by telling them that everything will turn out okay. We must tell them about God and His power to save them from their sins through the Lord Jesus Christ.
From his cell in Bedford Jail where he was imprisoned for preaching the gospel, John Bunyan wrote, “This prison very sweet to me hath been since I came here; and so would also hanging be, if Thou didst then appear.” Bunyan was saying that if his trial revealed more of Christ to him, it was worth all the pain.
If God used this storm to reveal more of Christ to Paul or to bring any of the men on board to Jesus Christ, the life-threatening ordeal would have been well worth it. If God encourages you in the storm, reveals more of Himself to you, uses you to bring someone to Christ, or to encourage one of His people, it will be worth it all.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Gicomo Puccini was a great composer whose operas number among the world’s favorites. Even after he was stricken with cancer in 1922, he was determined to write a final opera, “Turandot,” which some consider his best. As his illness grew worse, his students implored him to rest and save his strength, but he persisted. At one point he remarked, “If I do not finish my music, my students will finish it.”
In 1924, Puccini went to Brussels to be operated on, where he died two days after his surgery. His students did finish “Turandot,” and in 1926 the premiere was held in Milan under the baton of Puccini’s favorite student, Arturo Toscanini. All went brilliantly until they came to the point in the score where the teacher had been forced to put down his pen. Toscanini, his face wet with tears, stopped the production, put down his baton, turned to the audience and cried out, “Thus far the master wrote, but he died!”
After a few moments, his face now wreathed in smiles, Toscanini picked up his baton and cried out to the audience, “But his disciples finished his work!” They finished the opera.
The Book of Acts is the story of “all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day that He was taken up to heaven” (1:1, 2). The work that He began was to be completed by His disciples, who were to be His “witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (1:8). When we come to the end of Acts, Luke leaves us with the apostle Paul preaching the gospel in the capital of the empire, “with all openness, unhindered.” And so, in one sense, the mission was accomplished, with the gospel going to the remotest part of the earth.
And yet in another sense, Luke leaves the story open and ongoing. Jesus’ followers have been carrying on the mission for almost 2,000 years, but it is not yet thoroughly accomplished. We know that one day in heaven there will be some from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, whom Jesus purchased for God with His blood (Rev. 5:9). There have been encouraging advances in the cause of world missions in recent years. For example, the Jesus Film has been shown to about 5 billion people. A year ago, film project director, Paul Eshelman, estimated that 90 percent of the world, about 5.6 billion, could listen to the film in their native tongue (Mission Frontiers, [3/01], p. 39).
But as yet there are still close to two billion that have not heard of Jesus Christ. We have the privilege of joining the Lord in accomplishing His purpose of being glorified among all the nations! In that sense, the Book of Acts is still being written. Acts 28 shows us how God accomplishes His mission:
God accomplishes His Great Commission by protecting, providing for, and empowering His servants who obediently proclaim the gospel to all people.
Alexander Maclaren put it, these verses show the Christian’s place in the world, as an object of divine care and a medium of divine blessing (Expositions of Holy Scripture [Baker], 12:371).
Paul and his fellow shipmates discovered that they were shipwrecked on Malta, a small island about 18 miles long and 8 miles wide, located about 60 miles south of Sicily. It was cold and rainy, and the men were wet from swimming ashore. The natives showed them extraordinary kindness by kindling a bonfire and eventually helping the men find lodging for the winter. These verses show us God’s protection, provision, and power:
Paul didn’t see himself above helping out in mundane tasks. As he was collecting sticks for the fire, he didn’t notice (perhaps due to his poor eyesight) that among the sticks was a viper, somewhat stiff from the cold. The warmth of the fire caused it to loosen up and it fastened on Paul’s hand. He calmly shook it off into the fire. The natives concluded that Paul must be a murderer, and that even though he escaped from the sea, justice had not allowed him to live. They waited and watched for him to swell up and fall down dead. But when nothing happened, they changed their minds and concluded that he was a god.
Although there are now no poisonous snakes on the island of Malta, that does not mean that there were none in Paul’s day. When I went for a hike in Romania with some of the students that I was speaking to, they warned me that there is a viper there whose bite will kill you within minutes. Clearly, the natives on Malta had witnessed the effects of such poisonous snakes before. Luke tells the story to show how God miraculously protected Paul, because God’s purpose was that Paul would bear witness in Rome (23:11). Nothing, whether shipwreck or poisonous snake, can thwart God’s purpose for His servants until their work is done.
After the winter, the shipwrecked men set sail for Rome on another ship. Here Luke includes another detail that may just be an interesting fact, but it may hint at something more. The ship had for its figurehead the Twin Brothers (28:11), which refers to Castor and Pollux, whom the mythical god Zeus supposedly transformed into gods represented by the constellation Gemini. Sailors considered them a sign of good luck in a storm. Luke may mention this detail to contrast pagan superstitions with the true protection that believers have through God’s providence. The reason for their safe voyage from Malta to Rome was not the mythical Twin Brothers, but rather the protection of the living God.
God provided for His servants through the unusual hospitality of the natives on Malta. Publius, the leading man of the island, entertained all 276 men for three days, and then he apparently found them lodging for the winter. As the men departed, the islanders honored them with many gifts and supplies (28:10).
God also provided for Paul through a week of fellowship with the believers in Puteoli, about 140 miles south of Rome. The centurion was especially kind to allow Paul to visit these saints. God further provided through the Christians who came out as far as the Market of Appius (44 miles from Rome) and Three Taverns (33 miles) to escort Paul into the city. Can you imagine what the rest of the travelers in Paul’s company thought when they saw these people welcoming this prisoner as an important dignitary! Paul thanked God and took courage when he saw these Christians whom he had longed to see for several years (Rom. 15:23). God also provided for Paul by permitting him to stay by himself, with the soldier who was guarding him, in rented quarters. Through the generous gifts of the Philippian church and others, Paul’s financial needs were met (Phil. 4:10-18).
Paul’s case was not unique. If you read missionary biographies, you will find story after story of how God meets the personal and financial needs of His servants who are taking the gospel to the remotest parts of the earth.
Although Luke was the physician, the Lord used Paul to heal miraculously many of the sick people on Malta. The first was the father of Publius, who was sick with fever and dysentery. He may have had Malta fever, which could last from four months to several years. In 1887 it was discovered to be caused by a bacterium in the milk of Maltese goats. After this, many others also came for healing. Probably this gave Paul and his companions many opportunities to tell people about Christ.
While the gift of healing to the extent we see here seems to have been limited to the apostles, I have read many stories of miracles from modern missionaries. God seems to grant miracles to a greater degree on the frontiers of the gospel, where people need powerful authentication of its truthfulness.
One of the most gripping missionary stories I’ve read is Bruchko, by Bruce Olson (Creation House, 1978). He left his Minnesota home at 19 with no support and no contacts to take the gospel to the murderous Motilone tribe in the jungles of South America. They shot him with arrows, but he survived. At another point, he was far into the jungle, suffering badly with hepatitis, when two men in an oil company helicopter, out for a joyride over the dangerous Motilone territory, spotted a blond man in the clearing below. One of the men turned out to be a doctor whom Olson knew from years before. They took him to a hospital, where the doctors said that in six hours he would have been dead. They also told him that he would be in treatment for over six months, and that his liver was so permanently damaged that he could never go back into the jungle.
But Olson knew that God wanted him to reach the Motilones, and so he told the doctors, “You’re wrong, I’m going back!” Three weeks later he was released, and a week after that he walked back into the jungle. On the third day, he began to feel dizzy. The chest pains returned. His urine was dark. As he fell asleep that night, feeling terrible, he prayed, “Father, You brought me here to work with the Motilone Indians. Please, God, heal my body.” The next morning he woke up feeling fine, with no more pain. His urine was clear (pp. 125-127). He made it back to the Motilones, where he has seen God do many more miracles (pp. 155-162). But the greatest miracle he has seen, he says, has been the changed lives of the Motilones through the power of the gospel (p. 161). His story is a modern example of how God accomplishes His Great Commission by protecting, providing for, and empowering His servants.
It seems odd that Luke never reports that Paul preached the gospel on Malta, nor does he report any conversions. Other than the fact that Luke is pressing quickly toward his conclusion in Rome, I do not know why he omits these important details. But I think we can assume that Paul, who never missed an opportunity to tell others about Christ, was not silent for these three months.
When he finally got to Rome, Paul quickly summoned the Jewish leaders to explain why he was a prisoner there. It seems strange that they had not heard anything about Paul, and their knowledge of Christianity, while negative, seems somewhat secondhand and distant (28:22). Perhaps since Claudius had expelled all the Jews from Rome just a few years before, they were being diplomatic and cautious about saying too much. But they were open to hearing Paul’s views, and so a time was set.
Paul spent the entire day testifying about the kingdom of God, which refers not only to Christ’s future reign on earth, but also to the gospel that brings people under His rule. There was probably a lot of interaction both ways, as Paul tried to persuade them concerning Jesus, that He is God’s promised Messiah. Paul’s source of authority was the Law of Moses and the Prophets (= Old Testament). He probably took them to the texts in Moses that describe the Jewish sacrificial system, showing that these sacrifices pointed ahead to Jesus. He would have taken them to Psalm 16, which both Peter and Paul used to show the truth of the resurrection (Acts 2:25-28; 13:34-37). He no doubt took them to Psalm 22, which describes death by crucifixion centuries before this was known as a means of execution. He would have taken them to Isaiah 53, which describes the death of Jesus with amazing detail.
The outcome was, as in many of Paul’s previous experiences, some were being persuaded, but others would not believe, leading to a dispute between the two groups (28:25). Before they left, Paul gave his parting shot, quoting Isaiah 6:9-10. Just after Isaiah’s rare vision of God, exalted on His throne, and Isaiah’s commission to preach, the Lord spoke these words to Isaiah, warning him of the hardness of heart of the people of Israel.
This important text is quoted six times in the New Testament (Matt. 13:14; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:40; Rom. 11:8; & here). Three of those times are in reference to the parable of the sower in the synoptic gospels, where Jesus explained why He spoke in parables, to conceal truth from scoffers, but to reveal truth to seekers. Another time John cited it and then commented, “These things Isaiah said because he saw [Jesus’] glory, and he spoke of Him.” The main idea of these verses is that if people close up their hearts to God’s Word through His messengers, the Lord will confirm their rejection by hardening them even further. Israel had a sad history of rejecting and even killing the prophets that God sent to turn them back to Him. Finally, and most tragically, they killed God’s Son. God’s judgment would shortly fall on Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and the Jews would be scattered for 19 centuries.
Paul uses the quote to support his calling to take the gospel to the Gentiles, adding, “they also will listen” (28:28). God’s purpose is to be glorified through the preaching of the gospel to all peoples. He accomplishes that purpose through His servants’ willing obedience to the Great Commission. Israel should have been a light to the nations, but their idolatry and sin caused them to fail.
Hardness of heart prevents sinners from responding in faith to the gospel, but it never thwarts God’s ultimate purpose. There is a mystery here, in that sinners are always responsible for their stubbornness and unbelief, but if they turn in repentance and faith to the Lord, it is not their doing, but only because He has granted it to them (Acts 11:18). In other words, we are solely responsible for our unbelief, but if we come to faith in Christ, it is solely from God, so that none can boast.
While Israel was cut off because of unbelief and the Gentiles were grafted in, God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew (Rom. 11:2). One day Israel will again be grafted back in, “for God is able to graft them in again” (Rom. 11:23). As Paul explains, “a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.” But after this, “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:25-26). There will be a future time of great blessing for the nation Israel, when God will pour out on them “the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on [Him] whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son” (Zech. 12:10). Israel will turn en masse to their Messiah Jesus Christ.
But, meanwhile, like Paul, we should commit ourselves fully to God’s purpose in the Great Commission. Just as the Lord told Paul that He had many people in the city of Corinth, and thus Paul should go on speaking so that these would come to faith, so we know that He has some from every people group who are His elect (Rev. 5:9). Whatever the hardships, we should commit ourselves to get the gospel to all who have not yet heard.
Though Paul was in chains in Rome, the gospel was not chained. Luke’s final word in the Greek text (as in the NASB) is, “unhindered.” As he later wrote to Timothy, even though he was imprisoned as a criminal, the word of God is not imprisoned. For that reason, Paul endured “all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
Luke never tells us the final outcome of Paul’s trial or anything about his subsequent life. Probably Paul stayed in custody for about two years (until 62), during which time he wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. When his accusers did not show up, he was released on default. Some think that he eventually made his way to Spain, as he hoped (Rom. 15:24, 28). He probably visited again some of the churches, perhaps even seeing the Ephesian elders once more, contrary to his earlier prediction. He sent Timothy there to help correct some problems. He visited Crete and left Titus there to minister. During these free years, he wrote 1 Timothy and Titus. Perhaps he was betrayed by someone such as Alexander the coppersmith and arrested again. He was taken to Rome, where he anticipated that things would not go well. From prison, he wrote 2 Timothy. About 67 or 68, Nero executed the great apostle who had fought the good fight, finished the course, and kept the faith (2 Tim. 4:7). Paul accomplished his mission.
Each of us needs to ask, “What about me? Am I as committed to the Great Commission of my Lord as I ought to be? Since God has protected and provided for me, am I relying on His power to do all that I can to see as many people reached for Christ, both locally and worldwide, as I am able?” I close with seven action points that will help you move in the right direction:
Put it on your prayer list. If we are apathetic about those who are perishing, we are not like Jesus, who had compassion on the lost (Matt. 9:36) and who wept over the unbelieving city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).
We are offering an Evangelism Explosion class this summer and again in the fall. There are many books that teach you how to share your faith. Memorize the verses you need to know to lead another person to faith in Jesus Christ.
Take the Perspectives Course if it is offered again in town. Subscribe to Mission Frontiers (U.S. Center for World Mission, 1605 E. Elizabeth St., Pasadena, CA 91104, 626-398-2249; web: www.missionfrontiers.org). It will teach you about the unreached people groups around the world and what efforts are underway to reach them. Also, Operation World is an excellent informative book to help you learn about and pray for the nations of the world. Global Prayer Digest (available in our narthex or through the U.S. Center for World Mission) is a daily prayer guide for the unreached peoples. Become a “world” Christian (not to be confused with a worldly Christian)!
The thrilling stories of those who have taken the gospel to the remotest parts of the earth will strengthen your faith and will encourage you to get fully behind our missionaries. Read about Jim Elliot and the men who gave their lives taking the gospel to the Auca Indians. Read about John Paton, Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, William Carey, Bruce Olson, and others.
The tools mentioned above will help you be faithful in prayer. Sign up for missionary prayer letters and emails so that you can pray as special needs arise.
We have about 75 young people going out on mission projects that need support. Many of our missionaries are lacking full support. Invest your treasure in missions and your heart will follow your treasure.
You don’t have to be gifted as an evangelist, translator, or teacher to be used in missions. Many missions are desperate for support personnel, as our friend from Wycliffe shared several weeks ago. God can use both young and old in the cause!
A familiar legend tells of a conversation between Jesus and the angel Gabriel after the Lord ascended into heaven. They talked of what had happened down here—of Christ’s birth, His life and ministry, His death, and His resurrection. Then Gabriel asked, “And how will the people of the world hear about all of this?” Jesus replied, “Well, I have a little company of friends there whom I have asked to publish it.” “But what if, for any reason, they let You down and fail to do it?” To which the Lord answered, “I have no other plan.” We’re it! Let’s commit ourselves to accomplish the mission the Lord has entrusted to us!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation