Talking It Through

SERMON: 2012-06-24--ac1294--talking-it-through SOURCE DURATION: 00:42:52.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates provided are lyrics from hymns ('My God is mighty to save,' etc.), which constitute music/hymn material and are not part of the sermon itself. The transition from the main sermon content (which occurred before candidate 0) into this musical material happens immediately before candidate 0. Since no preceding sermon segment is available in the provided list, I select the final candidate index but classify it as non-sermon material. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:38:15.060-00:41:05.520, 00:41:08.280-00:42:50.580 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Now, you would think, would you not, that when the Church in Jerusalem heard the news about Cornelius' conversion and that of his whole household, that they would be beside themselves for joy, and it's well possible that perhaps some of them were. But that is not recorded for us in the text that we have read together. Instead, in the text we read that as soon as Peter got back to Jerusalem, he ran into a buzz saw of criticism. Listen again to the verses two and three. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, "You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them." Now the circumcised believers, you will recall from two weeks ago, were a strong faction in the early Church that consisted mostly of Jewish believers who had come to faith in Christ, but who couldn't quite get their heads around to the fact that the ceremonial law of Moses had been fulfilled in Christ. Instead, they believed it was good to believe in Christ, but you had to continue practicing the Old Testament law. And so when they found out that Peter had gone to Cornelius' house, they weren't excited about Cornelius' conversion as much as they were offended by his breaking the law. It would be equivalent of you or me having gone, let's say, to a strip club or to a brothel for whatever purposes. Never mind if they get all converted, what are you doing in a place like that? They criticized Peter for having gone to Cornelius' house. So what does Peter do? Well, he does what all good leaders do. He talks them through the situation as it had transpired. We read in verse four, "Peter began and explained everything to them precisely as it had happened." And so if you read on in that particular passage, he begins by relating his vision at the house of Simon the Tanner, how he had seen three times the net come down with clean and unclean animals and how the Lord Jesus had said to him repeatedly, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat." And how as he was pondering that vision and its meaning, the three representatives, the delegation from Cornelius' house suddenly appeared at his door asking for him. And how the Holy Spirit had then said to him, "Peter, I have sent them. It is okay. You go with them." And how he had traveled with them to Cornelius' house, and that again is where we pick up the narrative in verse 15, "As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Spirit.'" And then verse 17 is the clincher. I love this one. So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? Who was I to think that I could oppose God? As I mentioned two weeks ago, I love that verse because it's not my fault. I didn't make this happen. It was God's doing. You want to pick a fight, you pick it with God. Who was I that I could oppose God? Now to their credit, his critics accepted his explanation, and the passage ends then with these words, "When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, 'So then God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.'" See these circumcised believers were not just ordinary, difficult people, no, they were products of their background, they were products of their experience, they were limited in their knowledge, and they simply needed to understand that God was changing things so that the rest of the Gentiles could also be reached with the gospel. And as I said a number of weeks ago, otherwise the church would have remained a small cult in a backwater Middle East country instead of the global enterprise that it is today. That's why we're spending time on these chapters because it is a huge transition in biblical thinking for the Jewish folks to get their heads around this transition, that even bad people by their estimation could become part of the family of God. So in the time that remains, what are some of the lessons that we learn from this whole episode with Cornelius' conversion? Well, I think there are three lessons that I can think of that would be beneficial for us to reflect on. And the first is this, God's ways are not always our ways. Ever since I can remember, two verses in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 55, have always stood out to me. The verses eight and nine, you will know them. My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways. My ways, declares the Lord, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. And I found it very interesting this past week as I looked more closely at those verses that they actually occur in the context of God's desire to save sinners. Listen again to the verses that immediately preceded Isaiah 55, six and seven, "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord and he will have mercy on him and to our God, for he will freely," or as another translation has it, "abundantly pardon." Our God is a God who has compassion on the lost and he will do whatever he needs to do in order to bring them to himself and to saving faith. One of the liabilities, I think, sometimes of having been a Christian for many years or especially if you have been raised in a Christian home or have gone to church all your life, is that we tend to box God in. That is to say, we think we have him sort of figured out. We know what he is like and what he's going to do and nowhere is that closer to the truth than in who should be eligible for the blessings of God. And try as we might. It is very difficult not to slide back into a notion of law. That is to say, God's blessing should be reserved for the good, hardworking people and certainly not for those who haven't deserved it or who have wasted their lives. If you don't believe that, think back for a moment to the parable of the prodigal son. And if you know the story, you know there are three main characters there. There is the prodigal son, there is the father, and there is the elder brother. And over the years, I have polled many of God's people about what person in that story they most identify with. And in moments of honesty, there are many people who have told me it isn't so much the prodigal, it isn't even so much the father, it's the elder brother. Why? Because he's the good dude. He's the one that has worked hard. He's the one that's been faithful to the father, just like many of us have worked hard, have tried hard, and therefore we think God ought to cut us a little bit extra slack. Is that not true? And then when sometimes we feel that he's ignoring us, and our life is hard, and then we see people that have wasted it and who are prodigals by any definition, because that's what the word "prodigal" means, "prodigal" means wasted, when we see people on the wrong side of the tracks receiving blessings that are far greater than what we have experienced in our own lives, you tell me that there are moments when you feel like the elder brother. Isn't that true? We have our own idea of how God should work, and when God moves out of the box, it's pretty easy to be offended, because God has this nasty ability to want to seek and to save the lost, he doesn't care for the outward performance, relationship with him is not based on what we have done, it's based on understanding our need for grace, and sometimes the broken and the lost and the least are more aware of that than sometimes the rest of us who think that we've been pretty good. One of the books that I've just been reading, and I just finished it I think this past week, is Brian Dirksen's book, Make Love, Make War, Now is the Time to Worship. Brian Dirksen is of course probably one of the preeminent Canadian song writers, and a lot of his songs have received wide acclaim. We sing a lot of them here, Refiner's Fire, Today, Hallelujah, Your Love is Amazing, It's Time for the Reign of God, all of these kind of songs. The book consists of the songs that he has written, and then the history behind each of those songs, and I find that remarkable because once you understand the history behind a given song, the song often takes on a whole new meaning. But he tells the story of how in the early 1980s, a revival of sorts came to the town of Abbotsford where he was living, and he had been raised in a good Mennonite home, which by the way is partly what inspires his title, Make Love, Make War, it's a play on Make Love, Not War, you will recall that slogan from the 60s or the 70s. As a Mennonite, he was originally committed to pacifism, and one of the transformations that the Lord had to produce in his life was to recognize that in Christ there is such a thing as warfare, and that we have to learn to stand up for what is right even when the price is high and the cost is great. But to get back to the story, as the Holy Spirit swept through that community, he touched his life, and that was a significant milestone in his own experience. But at the same time, the Holy Spirit came upon a friend of his whose name is Jeff, and Jeff was strung out on drugs, far away from God, and yet in his broken drug-induced craziness, God met him, changed him, and the two of them became the best of friends and ministry associates for about six years or so, until Jeff met an untimely death in a hiking accident. Jesus said, "I've not come to seek and to save the righteous, but rather to call sinners to repentance." So be careful about putting God in a box, and be careful about thinking that you've got him all figured out, because just when you think you've got him all figured out, he's going to move outside the box, and Jesus said to John the Baptist, "Blessed are those who are not offended at me." God's ways are higher than our ways, and they certainly are not always consistent with what we would do. Second lesson that I think we learn is that God's actions are always consistent with his character and his purpose. His ways are always consistent with both his character and his purpose. Go back with me for just a moment to the story of Peter and that vision that he received. Why did he resist the invitation from the Lord to rise up, kill, and eat the animals that were unclaimed? Well, of course, because that had been his religious tradition. He had been raised in the Old Testament ceremonial law, makes no bones about the fact that if you're going to honor God, you must not eat any unclean animal. It was God's way of teaching them, you will recall, the separation between holy and unholy. And these circumcised believers who were so bent out of shape when they heard the news that he had gone to the home of the Gentiles, why were they so upset? Because they knew from the Old Testament that you had to be separate from Gentiles. And the Old Testament law, as they understood it, forbade them having this kind of relationship. So they were driven by what they perceived God to be telling them in the Old Testament. And when something new came along that seemed at odds with all of that, they stood their ground and they said, "This doesn't fit with what we know of God." And that was a huge problem for them. What they didn't understand, of course, is that the Old Testament ceremonial law had been fulfilled in the person of Jesus. And that Jesus, by his death and resurrection, had broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, and that from the very beginning God's intention had not been just to save Israel at the expense of the Gentiles, but that rather he had saved Israel as a testimony to himself so that in them and through them, God would in turn reach the Gentile nations. And so the whole idea of those Old Testament laws was fulfilled in Christ, and God wasn't doing something inconsistent with how he had revealed himself in the past. No, the law was a custodian. It was a teacher to lead them to Christ. And now that Christ had come, those ceremonial laws were no longer significant because the reality had been fulfilled in the person of Jesus. Amen. But all through the course of history, God's intention had been to seek and to save the whole world. And so you can go back to Abraham and the covenant that God made with Abraham. What was the promise? Well, the promise was, "Through you I will not only bless you, but I will do what? I will bless the nations of the world." And Isaiah, who of all the Old Testament prophets perhaps most clearly saw the coming of God's kingdom, he put it this way in Isaiah 49 verse 6, a verse that occurs in the context of the suffering servant that we know as the Lord Jesus. God says this, "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth." And so here's a practical test. When God moves outside of the box that you've put him in, when you're wondering is this phenomenon or is this movement or is this action truly of God, then always ask yourself the question, is it consistent with his character? Is it consistent with his purpose? And his character and his purpose is for the salvation of the lost. He doesn't wish that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. And while that may not always be immediately clear, you can always put it on the shelf and say, "Okay, Lord, I don't understand this, but show me where you're going and show me what the fruit of this is." Many years ago in the middle of the 1700s, John Wesley, who as you know is the founder of Methodism, after his heart got strangely warmed at Aldersgate and he moved from simply an intellectual knowledge of God to a hard knowledge of God and he began to preach the gospel. It wasn't very long before he ran into trouble with the powers that be. They forbade him from preaching in the cathedrals of the Anglican church and because his heart was driven with the preaching of the gospel, he took to preaching in the great outdoors just like George Whitefield had. And if you know anything about that history, tens of thousands of people would gather and they would hear the gospel because their hearts were hungry. It's often been said that England was spared the disaster of the French Revolution primarily through the preaching of the Methodists who called sinners back to repentance. But John Wesley had been so steeped in high church tradition that he is quoted as saying this, "I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church." But he was so driven by God's Holy Spirit that he recognized the move of God. And if you know again the history of Methodism, it wasn't very long that the power of God began to fall in these crowds and a lot of people would come under very heavy conviction. In fact, he would tell his people in these field preaching meetings, "Don't climb in trees because if the power of God falls on you, you'll fall out of the tree and you could break your neck." But what I always appreciated about Wesley is that he recognized a spiritual phenomenon come in all kinds of shapes and colors. And his approach was this, "Let's wait and see what happens." And if people got up and their lives were changed and they were more passionately in love with Jesus and they were more passionately committed to the purposes of God, he said it might not fit your Anglican box of how God ought to be working, but let's praise him because he is at work to save sinners. Do you understand this wording? How passionately God's heart is moved for people who don't know him. His heart is stirred. And you and I, we can look at ourselves and we say, "A little bit like the elder brother, what about me then?" Do we not matter? Of course we matter. But remember what the father did with the elder brother. He went to find him, he invited him to the party, he said, "Everything that I have is yours," but the elder brother didn't want it because he felt that he had been bypassed in the process. If we truly love God, then we will be happy with whatever God does in anybody's life for the glory of God, isn't that true? God loves sinners and he sent his son so that sinners could come to salvation. And sometimes we just have to get our heads around the fact that under the most unusual of situations and circumstances, God can touch lives in ways that don't necessarily have our approval. Another book that I have finished reading a little while ago is a book called Untamed by Alan and Deborah Hirsch, their husband and wife team, reactivating a missional form of discipleship. They're from Australia, they are on the forefront today of a discipleship movement whereby they're trying to call the church back to serious discipleship. But they tell the story of their own conversion. They were both druggies in Australia in the '60s or the '70s. And in the middle of drug-induced hallucinations, God showed up, brought them to faith, and changed their lives. And when I look at a story like that and I say, "God's not fair." I mean, here the rest of us, we're sitting around wondering for you to show up. They haven't even remotely deserved it. But there you are and you bless them. But that's the character and the heart of God. And as Peter said, "Who was I that I should oppose God?" So God loves to seek and to save. God's ways are not always our ways. His actions are consistent with his character and his purpose. And then there's a third thing we learn in this particular passage. And that is that the conversion of Cornelius and his household then and their acceptance by the church in Jerusalem sets the stage for the next wave of gospel advancement. Listen to how the passage goes on. It's 19, 20, and 21, now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. Just very quickly, three things in that passage that I want us to take note of. The first is how God used persecution to advance or to spread the gospel. Listen again to verse 19, "Those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews." Now think back with me for a moment to that persecution in Jerusalem of which that passage speaks. That is the persecution that broke out before Saul's conversion when he was the leader of the pack. And you may remember that earlier on in the book of Acts we're told that at one point the whole church was scattered and that only the apostles remained in Jerusalem. Now that church is estimated to have been up to 35,000 people in size scattered all across the country. And I'm pretty sure that if you or I had been part of that church community, we would have stood aghast and wondered, "How in the world, Lord, can you let this happen?" I mean, think of the lost lives, think of the economic chaos, think of the torn fabric of society. It was by any description a disaster. But God, whose ways are not our ways and whose ways are higher than our ways, sometimes uses the bad to accomplish good. Because now we're told in this particular passage the result of that was that the believers were scattered all over the Roman Empire, and guess what happened? They just wouldn't shut up. They didn't just lament their condition, they didn't just complain about all the things they had lost. No, they used the opportunity to bear witness to Jesus and they traveled far and wide. Look at the map and you'll get an idea of how far, actually, here's Jerusalem. So the church in Jerusalem got scattered all the way to Phoenicia, that's part of Lebanon now, it's along the coast here, all the way up to Antioch, up here, and then here is Cyrene and here is Cyprus. So the believers got scattered all over the place and they began preaching the gospel originally to Jews only. As Joseph said to his brothers many years earlier, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." Second thing to notice in that passage then is that they start preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. Verse 20, "Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus." Now there is no way of telling if this is linked to the story of Cornelius, at least the text doesn't tell us, but the fact that the stories occur one after the other would certainly be an indication, who didn't know it, that the permission that has been gained by Peter, the barriers that Peter has broken through, now have become a gateway so that these other believers are no longer just preaching the gospel to the Jews, but they are now feeling free to preach the gospel also to Gentiles. If it's okay with Peter, if it's okay with the Jerusalem church, and if it's okay with God especially, then I guess it's all right for us to be telling our neighbors and our friends about who Jesus is. And there's a principle here that is profoundly important that we understand. Every major cultural or societal change is almost without exception the product of one individual or a small group of individuals who press through the limits and the barriers and who establish a new reality that other people can follow into. Let me say it again, virtually every cultural change is the product of some brave soul like Peter in obedience to God, steps out through a barrier, creates a new reality, opens the gate so that others can follow, and this now becomes a new reality. And this happens for good, it also happens for ill. Don't know how many of you remember the name, Semmel Weiss, Dr. Ignaz Semmel Weiss, we've talked about him before. He was an Hungarian physician in the 1800s, and he was struck by the fact that the mortality rate of mothers after childbirth was way too high. In some places, 10 to 15% of mothers who gave birth to children died from what was known as childbed fever. He also noticed that some women were so loathed to come to the clinic because of the high percentage of people that were dying, they would prefer to give birth on the streets. And he discovered that the women who gave birth on the streets died far less frequently than people who had come to the hospitals. And so he said, "There is something wrong here." And he discovered that if, as a physician, he washed his hands with antiseptic, the fatality rate of mothers given birth to children dropped by 90%, 90%. And he had all kinds of statistics that could prove that. And you would think that he would be lauded by the medical profession as having discovered a wonderful way to save mothers' lives. I mean, thousands of mothers died unnecessarily because of these infections. What happened? He was hounded literally to death by the medical establishment. They said, "You have no medical proof. You have no scientific explanation for the results that you claim to obtain." Furthermore, some of them were so proud that they didn't want to humble themselves by washing their hands. Some of these physicians would work with cadavers and autopsies, and then they would go and deliver children, and then they couldn't figure out how come all these women were dying. And so eventually Semmelweis was driven virtually to insanity. He was locked up in an asylum with the permission of his wife because he was truly getting a little weird by this time. And ironically, there he died of an infection sustained after a severe beating at the hands of guards. And it wasn't until many, many decades later. First, Louis Pasteur came along and discovered germs. Up until then, they didn't know the germs existed because nobody could see them. In fact, Semmelweis thought the women were dying because there were cadaver particles that were being transferred and somehow this was causing the women to die. It wasn't until about a hundred years later that his antiseptic treatment became mainstream in medicine and ultimately ended up saving thousands and thousands of lives. Today there's a university that's named after him, and there's an expression called Semmelweis Reflex that has come into the English language to illustrate the intuitive resistance that most of us have to something that is new because we cannot fit it into the old paradigm. The medical field was changed because he paid for it with his life. Now those changes not only happen, as I mentioned, in good ways, they also happen in ways that many of us would think are not so good. You'll remember this man, Dr. Henry Morgenthaler, himself the survivor of the Nazi death camps. And you will recall perhaps how in 1967 he appeared before a government commission to argue for safe abortions. After that, women started coming to him asking him to do that. He was afraid to because he knew he would lose his license and he would be violating the law. But eventually he gave into that pressure and started opening his abortion clinics. There's 21 of them now in Canada. Most recently he's been traveling to the Arctic to establish two up there. He spent a considerable period of time in jail. But eventually public opinion has turned and today, of course, he is honored. Back in 2008 he was honored with the Order of Canada Medal for his work. There is no law in Canada at this point forbidding abortions at any age just for the record. The credit for good or for ill goes back to one man who had the courage to fight the system and pay the price. And that's how society changes because somebody keeps on pushing the limit. One more example just very quickly you'll recognize this person perhaps because she's been in the news just recently, Gloria Taylor. Gloria Taylor is the Lou Gehrig's patient in British Columbia who has been challenging the legislation in this country against physician assisted suicide. And if you've been following the news then you will know that on June 15th past, Judge Lynn Smith said that the laws banning doctor assisted suicide were discriminatory, disproportionate, and over broad. And that now is going back to the legislative houses of the country to see how and if the law should be changed or whether this will be appealed. And my point is this, the changes in society happen for good or for ill because somebody has a vision. Somebody pursues that vision. For that they're criticized, they're sometimes imprisoned, they're often killed, but eventually society catches up and you live in a transformed world for better or for worse. I've often said you're one step ahead of the crowd, you're a leader, two steps ahead you're a pioneer, and you know how it ends, three steps ahead you're a dead duck. And so here's the question in terms of your own life. Are there places where God is calling you forth where on his behalf you're called to step into a situation and pray and work towards the transformation of our society and our culture for the glory of God. Peter received severe criticism for obeying the Holy Spirit, but it opened the door. As I've said before, you and I would not be here today if Peter had not heard that call, had not responded to it, or had not been obedient to God. And I can't speak into your life to know what your call is. I know what my call is. I know the price that I pay for my call. Is there something that God is calling you to step into to be a man or woman of God where you say I'm going to be faithful come hell or high water because this is God's calling on my life. One final lesson and then we'll quit, and that is the fact that God confirms his word. Verse 21, the Lord's hand was with them and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. Now the Lord's hand is a biblical phrase that you will often see in scripture and it refers to the power of God to accomplish his purposes. It's different from the Lord's face. When the Lord turns his face towards you, he has relationship with you. And that's very important. But in addition to having a relationship with us, he also makes his power available. And so in this story, as these believers are now preaching the gospel to Gentiles, the Lord's hand is with them and many people come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. And the point is this, at the end of the day, people's lives are not simply changed by our brilliant gospel presentation, by our cleverness, by our pleasant personalities, or even by our wonderful lives. All of those are important, but at the end of the day, people's lives are changed because they encounter the power of God. And when people experience the power of God, lives change because all of a sudden, spiritual reality becomes real. And that's where we leave the story this morning. Perhaps if the Lord wills next week, we'll come back to this story. Because as the story progresses, now what happens is that the church in Jerusalem hears about all the things that are happening up in Antioch, and they send Barnabas up there to minister. And here's the question that I want you to ponder in the course of this week. Look at the text and see if you can answer for yourself the question, "Why Barnabas? Why not somebody else?" And yes, he was a good man, he was full of faith, and the Lord was with him. But see if you can find something in the text that zeros Ian on why Barnabas went up to Antioch and what the implications of that might be. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:38:15.060; remove through 00:42:52.000] Everyone needs compassion, a love that's never failing, let mercy follow me. Everyone needs forgiveness, the kindness of a Savior, the hope of nations. The Savior, He can move the mountains. My God is mighty to save, He is mighty to save. Forever, author of salvation, He rose and conquered the grave. Jesus conquered the grave. So take me as you find me, all my fears and failures. Fill my life again, give my life to follow, everything I believe in. Now I surrender, I surrender. The Savior, He can move the mountains. My God is mighty to save, He is mighty to save. Forever, author of salvation, He rose and conquered the grave. Jesus conquered the grave. Try to light it, let the whole world see, we're singing for the glory of the risen King. Jesus, try to light it, let the whole world see, we're singing for the glory of the risen King. The Savior, He can move the mountains. My God is mighty to save, He is mighty to save. Forever, author of salvation, He rose and conquered the grave. Jesus conquered the grave. The Savior, He can move the mountains. My God is mighty to save, He is mighty to save. Forever, author of salvation, He rose and conquered the grave. Jesus conquered the grave. Try to light it, let the whole world see, we're singing for the glory of the risen King. Jesus, try to light it, let the whole world see, we're singing for the glory of the risen King. Try to light it, let the whole world see, we're singing for the glory of the risen King. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:42:52.000; resume after this marked segment]