What's in a Name?

SERMON: 2013-03-03--ac1396--what-s-in-a-name-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:44:50.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with the main theological exposition and concludes with a structured prayer/benediction, which are integral parts of the sermon's content. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:41:17.220-00:44:44.860 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 --- So, to appreciate this morning the significance that it is here in Antioch that believers are first called Christians, we have to remember that up until now the believing community has not had a single identifier that set them apart from other people. In fact, they were called many different names by many different people. To the believers themselves, the most popular term was the name "disciple". That occurs 31 times in the book of Acts and is fitting in terms of their Hebrew tradition of being a learner with a rabbi. Jesus was a rabbi, the disciples were his learners, and that's how the early Christian church viewed themselves. They also called themselves followers of the way, they called themselves saints, and they called themselves believers, all terms that identified them as God's covenant people. Their opponents had a lot of other names for them as you can imagine. They were called a Jewish sect, they were called heretics, they were called Galileans, and they were called Nazarenes, all terms used by the early pagan and Jewish communities as derogatory terms to write off this new-fangled group of believers. It's a little bit like in more recent history the Quakers were called Quakers because they quaked, and the Baptists were called Baptists because they dunked, and the Methodists were called Methodists because they were methodical in their discipleship. See, whenever we don't understand something, or whenever we don't like something, or whenever we're afraid of something, then we got to attach a label to it, and if we can make that label derogatory, then we can feel good about ourselves because we have demonized the opponents. And so it's very interesting that it is here in Antioch that for the first time the Christians or the believers are called Christians. We don't fully know historically who came up with the name. There are some conflicting evidences historically. There are some who say it was the pagans who pinned this label on them, again, in a derogatory fashion, and there is some historical evidence for that. There's another school of thought that says that it's the Christians themselves who gravitated towards that name, and again, there is some historical evidence for that. But regardless of who came up with the idea of calling the believers Christians, the fact is the name stuck, because here we are almost 2,000 years later, and what do we call believers in Jesus Christ but Christians. Interestingly enough, the term Christian only occurs two other times in all of the New Testament. The first other reference is in Acts chapter 26 verse 28, when Paul is on trial before Agrippa, and Agrippa says to Paul, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?" I believe the old hymn almost persuaded comes from that encounter between Paul and Agrippa. The only other place where the term occurs is in 1 Peter 4 verse 16, where Peter says, "If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name." So here's the question that Shakespeare said so many years ago, what's in a name? I've always loved that Juliet's soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet, where she's pining away for her lover, and is so troubled by the fact that he's part of a family that is at odds with her family, and you may recall the words, she goes, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. O Romeo, doff thy name, and for thy name which is no part of thee, take all myself." Not touching. Just for the record, that's the only thing I remember from my high school play of Romeo and Juliet, but I remember it well. So what's in a name? What's in the name Christian? Why were they called Christian, and why did they own it when they refused to own most of the names that they had been called? Well, as I hope to show you in the time that we have left this morning, there's actually a lot to the name Christian. Actually it's a derivative of the name of Christ. The name Christ in Greek is Christos, the name Christian is Christianos, the difference between the two terms are three little letters, I, A, N, and those letters are actually taken from Latin and added to the name of Christ and then transliterated in Greek. But those three little letters are significant because they make, the meaning is that they are a follower or a slave of Christ. And so the early church saw themselves as being owned by Christ, and they saw themselves as being his followers, and you say, well, that's simple enough, that's not a lot different from being called disciples, and that's true, but there's a lot more to the story than that. Because remember now, what happened in Antioch that was so earthshaking? Well, it's the first time the floodgates are opened to Gentile believers. Up until then, with the exception of Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, the early church was made up exclusively of Jews and Jewish proselytes. Jewish proselytes were a Gentile people who had become Jewish, and they had gathered together with Jewish believers from all over the Roman Empire on the day of Pentecost for the outpouring of God's Holy Spirit. But the church was essentially Jewish because even those Gentiles were considered Jewish. It's not until Cornelius' conversion that we have God opening the door to the Gentile community, and as we saw last week, once that door was opened, both God and people were ready for a flood, and we read in Acts chapter 11 verse 21, "A great number of people believed and turned to the Lord." The Gentiles, whatever was going on in Antioch, the Gentiles were ready to flood into the Kingdom of God, so much so that Barnabas could not handle it alone as we've seen together, and he goes to Tarsus and he begins to look for Saul. Now the Greek word indicates that that was a bit of a job. It wasn't like everybody knew where Saul was, he was laboring there undoubtedly in obscurity. He finds Saul and he brings him back, and so the two of them met with the church and taught great numbers of people. And then it goes on to tell us the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. It's 12 years now after Saul's conversion, and the key to understanding the significance of the name of Christ and the name Christian lies, I believe, in Paul's unique gifting and his unique calling. Two of us here can remember what was this special revelation that the Apostle Paul received from the Lord that prepared him for his ministry to the Gentiles. The what? Preaching, yes, but preaching what particular message was entrusted to the Apostle Paul. Paul had special insight into what he calls the mystery of Christ. Remember that phrase? He uses it with a measure of regularity, as we'll see in a moment, in his writings. Now when we think of the word mystery, we think of a hidden thing that still has to be solved. We talk about dinner theater mysteries, we read murder mysteries, and part of the excitement is to uncover what has been hidden. That is not the way Paul uses the word mystery. He uses the word mystery in a very technical way, and he uses it to describe something that was previously hidden, but now has already been revealed to God's people. And who can tell me this morning what was previously hidden, but now has been revealed to God's people? Here's a good test for you. The mystery is this, that the Gentiles in Christ are fellow heirs of God and of the blessings of God. Listen carefully to these verses from Ephesians chapter 3. We're going to read from verse 2 to verse 6. Notice how many times the word mystery occurs here. "Surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you." In other words, God has given me a gift so that I can give it to you. That is the mystery made known to be by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. As I keep saying in this series of messages, we cannot overestimate the mind-bending revelation that had to come to the early church to begin to believe that dirty, filthy Gentiles who were far removed from God and far removed from God's covenant could come into the church on equal footing with the Jewish believers. So it took that vision of Peter in Acts chapter 10 to begin to show them that God was giving the Holy Spirit even to Gentiles, but now it took special revelation given especially to the apostle Paul that Gentiles were on an equal footing with Jewish believers in this new community of faith. This blew everybody out of the water. And I've read commentary that said that one of the reasons this could happen in Antioch and not in Jerusalem is that the Jewish believers in Jerusalem wouldn't ever possibly have gotten their heads around the reality of the full implications of this. So here's Paul. He's got this special insight from God how God now intends to take the gospel beyond the Jewish community into all the pagan nations of the world and God is going to make them all one. So what do you suppose might well have been his message for that year when he and Barnabas were preaching in Antioch? Well he would have been talking about the mystery of Christ. He would have been talking about the fact that in Christ, Jew and Gentile together are now the new people of God. They're no longer Jews on the one hand and Greeks on the other hand. They're no longer just people from Galilee or from Nazareth which is what they had been accused of being. No, the gospel now was truly universal in its experience and Jew and Gentile together were a new people founded on the person of Jesus Christ. Gentiles co-heirs with the Jews about all the promises of God. Listen again to how Paul puts it this time in Ephesians chapter 2. He says to the Ephesian Christians you are no longer foreigners and aliens. Remember that's what they were. They were outside of the covenant. They had to become Jewish in order to become part of the covenant community. You are no longer foreigners and aliens but you are fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, that is in Christ, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord and in him you too, that is you Gentiles, are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. And the picture here is that of a temple being built out of stones, rough stones, not nice equal bricks. People from different walks of life, people from a different cultural background, people with different temperaments, people with different values and different outlooks on life because you couldn't get a broader spectrum than a religious Jew and a pagan Gentile in those days and Paul says in Christ, God has brought you all near and he's chipping away at you and he is working at you and he is building you together into a place where God can live by his spirit. Isn't that an amazing picture? A mind blowing revelation and so is it any wonder then that as they seek to establish this new identity, where Jew and Gentile live together, work together, worship together, where good people and bad people are all thrown together into one mix, is it any wonder that when they are casting about a new name, the name that sticks is the name Christian, followers of the Christ because the only way these dividing walls could possibly come down between Jew and Gentile would be by the power of Christ through whom everybody has died to their old world and everybody is being raised up into a new world and into a new people. Paul, writing to the Galatians, puts it this way, he says, "All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." And that folks, if you get it, has tremendous implications for how we do life. And the time that remains, let me try to spell that out for you a little bit. It means first of all, if this morning you are in Christ, you belong in the church on the same footing as everybody else. Listen now to the two verses that introduce the passage that I just read from Ephesians chapter 2. We read 19 to 22, but those words are introduced by the verses 17 and 18. And Paul says concerning Jesus, "He came and he preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." Who were the people who were far away? The Gentiles. Who were the people who were near? The Jewish people, because the Jewish people had covenant. The Jewish people had the law. The Jewish people had God's revelation. They, for all their faults, at least were trying to live up to the standards that God had set before him. They were good people. They were, in our language today, church people. They at least knew the difference between right and wrong, even if they couldn't always practice it. Who were the people that were far away? The Gentiles. Why were they far away? Because they were without God and without hope in the world, and they lived in a state of moral and religious confusion. How does God bring them together? The good people and the bad people all have to come to Jesus. And when you come to Jesus, he brings you nigh to God and he makes you part of one body. Why do I make a point of that? Because try as we might in Christian community, the danger is always that we revert back to social and class distinctions. Depending on the dominant culture of a given group, it's very easy to say, "I don't belong. I'm not educated. I'm poor. I wear the wrong clothing. I have a different ethnic background. I don't know my Bible well enough. I haven't got my life together enough. I can't cross every T dot, every I, therefore I don't belong." Isn't that true? All of us fall into that at one point or another. The reality is that even if all of those distinctions are true, that doesn't determine whether we have a place in the body of Christ, yes or no. Our place in the body of Christ is determined by our relationship with Jesus. Have we repented of our sins? Have we come to faith in him? Are we God's children? Does God recognize who we are? If God is for me, who can be against me? I belong because God says I belong through faith in Jesus. I love the way the Bible puts it in Romans 15 verse 7, "Welcome or accept one another therefore as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God." Let me say it again. If this morning you are in Christ, you belong in the community of believers regardless of how different you may be in background, in culture, or language. The genius of the church is that God takes people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, and he unites them in Christ with a love that can only come from God. Now clearly, the Lord has to do a little bit of work in all of us to get rid of those rough edges, those places of pride, those places of arrogance, those places where we think we know it all, or those places where we think we're better than everybody else so that God can shape us into that kind of people. That's the first implication. Second implication, just for the record, is that God has a job for you to do. The name Christian, as I said a few moments ago, comes from the name Christ, who remembers the meaning of the word Christ. It's not his last name, as a lot of people think today. No, it's his title, and it means the anointed one. It's the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah. And for Jesus to be the Christ means that he was anointed by God's Holy Spirit to solve all the ills that have happened to humanity. And in the Old Testament, there were three leadership positions that God gave to the church, to his people, in order to help them move forward into the purposes of God. Who remembers what they are? Prophet, priest, and king. What was the job of a prophet? To speak the word of God to his people. If they got off base, lest set the Lord. If they needed to be redirected, they needed to know what God wanted of them, the prophet spoke on God's behalf. The priest, he had a ministry of intercession, he made it possible for a sinful people and a holy God to live together, not only, but he also made it possible for the believing community to bring sacrifices to God that were acceptable to God so they could serve God and honor him truly. Jesus as a high priest ever lives to make intercession for us at the right hand of God. As a king, what was the job of a king? It was to rule God's people, it was to make sure that justice and righteousness was observed, and that God's will would be honored among his people. That three-fold anointing fell on Jesus, who is our prophet, and our priest, and our king. Now, guess what? What did we say we're called? Christians. What do you suppose that means? It means we share in the anointing of Jesus. That's what the day of Pentecost was all about. The same spirit that came on Jesus to enable him to be prophet, priest, and king now has fallen on the church. And if you are in Christ, then you share his anointing. And you are a prophet, and you are a priest, and you are a king. I love the way the Heidelberg catechism puts it in Lord's Day 12, question and answer 32. The question is, why are you called a Christian? Notice the answer. Because by faith, I am a member of Christ, and so share in his anointing. I am anointed to confess his name, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, to strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for eternity. Let me take a moment and just pull apart each of those terms. First of all, we are anointed to confess his name. Now what that means is that if you're in Christ and the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you have within you the ability to speak the name of Jesus. That not only means that when your friends challenge your lifestyle or your way of life, you can proudly say, "I belong to Christ, I am not ashamed to belong to him." But it also means that when you're in conversation with family, friends, and neighbors, and somebody comes to you with a problem or somebody comes to you with a challenge, there will be those times that anointing of God's Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will have words to speak that can speak truth into that person's life and by God's mercy and grace, change him from the inside out. That is not just the special gift given to the occasional individual or preacher. We all have been anointed to share and to confess his name. The trick is to both recognize the stirrings of the Holy Spirit in us and then have the courage and the guts to step out into it and do what needs to be done. And I suspect that's where most of us talk ourselves out of obedience to Jesus. Is that not true? And I'm not suggesting we go around waving swords and making nothing but trouble and sticking our feet in our mouths. But you know, in a world where the world has no hesitation in speeding out their values and their priorities, Christians are increasingly timid and afraid to speak the name of Jesus. Isn't that true? I'm reminded of a story I read a long, long time ago. Guy was sitting on a plane, really felt the urge to read his Bible, but he didn't want to look like one of those people, right? And so he was rationalizing that he just, you know, how that all goes. Then he looked across the aisle and he saw a guy reading Playboy and he said to himself, if that guy can sit there and publicly read Playboy, then I can certainly sit here and publicly read my Bible, isn't that true? We need a holy boldness in these days of darkness. We're anointed to confess his name not only, but we're also anointed to present ourselves to him as a living sacrifice of thanks. We're not only prophets, we're also priests. That not only means that we're called to a ministry of intercession, but it also means that we are to present our bodies to him as a living sacrifice. Because of the death and the resurrection of Jesus and because we are a new creation, there is a new life inside us that wants to move us away from our selfishness and from all the kingdom building that we try to do on our own, and it moves us into a life where we want to serve God and worship God and obey God and honor God. So there will be the stirring of the Holy Spirit inside you and me to say no to sin and to say yes to righteousness, to lift songs of praise to God sometimes when even we don't feel like it, simply because he is worthy to be worshiped. To roll out of bed on a Sunday morning when I would just as soon hide away under the covers and make my way to the gathering of the community of faith for no other reason than I want to let the world know, and I want to let my fellow believers know that I'm one of God's people and I have sacrifices I can bring to him. Let me ask you, what has God given you by ways of gifting, time, talent, or treasure that you can put on the altar and that can arise before God as incense before his throne, just so that he can be pleased because he knows the work of Jesus has not been in vain. We're anointed to be prophets, we're anointed to be priests, but we're also anointed to be kings, to strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil in this life. I said before, in Christ we're a new creation. Adam and Eve were created to have dominion over the work of God's hands. The tragedy of the fall is they lose the position of headship and they become slaves to the very forces of nature that they were supposed to control. But in Christ, God begins to reverse that process and he gives us authority over our own lives, the lives of our families, our businesses, our relationships, our places of work. Is it often a struggle? Of course it is because we struggle against sin and we struggle against the devil. But we're not left alone. Jesus said, "I am with you always even to the end of the age." We are anointed with his anointing so that we can try to be faithful to God even in the midst of incredibly difficult and painful situations. And what's the purpose of it all? Just so that one day, afterward, we can reign with Christ over all creation for eternity. Ever wonder, why does God expend so much energy both revealing himself to his people, showing them his blessings, and then challenging and disciplining and training us? I mean, don't you feel sometimes like the psalmist who says, "Lord, just leave me alone for a while. Life's a lot easier before you came along and you try to squeeze me and you try to shape me and all the other kind of things. Let me just live my life." Do you ever feel that way? Maybe I'm the only one that ever feels that way, but why the energy? Why doesn't he let out? Because he has a purpose in mind, doesn't he? What's the purpose? We're going to sit with Christ on thrones and run his new creation. I don't know what that looks like. The Bible says, "Paul got caught up into heaven and what he saw up there was so spectacular that he wasn't allowed to share it, let alone find words to put it into words. But whatever God has for us is more than eye has ever seen, ear has ever heard, or the heart of man has ever imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. We only get occasionally the foretaste by the Holy Spirit of what is to come for God's people." So, Adam and Eve blew that. They get suckered in by the serpent, and we all live with the consequences of that. God's not going to make that mistake the second time. It wasn't God's mistake. I better get my theology straight here before you write me off as a heretic. God is not going to let it happen, so he raises up Jesus who is faithful even unto death. Understand that Jesus, by his faithfulness unto death, demonstrated that he would never sell out God. He would always put God first. He would humble himself no matter what it took, and for that reason, God highly exalted him and placed him on a throne and gave him the name that is above every name. And to share in his anointing is to take up our cross and follow him. It is to learn to die to self so that we might live to him, so that by the time eternity rolls around and the curtain falls on history, God will have matured us in Christ so that for all eternity he can give us the values of his everlasting kingdom. And he will never ever have to worry that sin or selfishness will creep into his new creation. We will all, in Christ, love and serve him and do his will and share the benefits of his glory forever and ever and ever and then a little bit longer, whatever that looks like. Why does God put us through what he puts us through? Because we're crown princes and crown princesses who are being cultivated and groomed to be heirs with Christ. We're going to sit on thrones with him. We're going to manage the new creation for God. Do we know what that looks like? Absolutely not. We only get glimmers of it here and there. But we get enough of a glimmer that we know that going through what we go through is more than worth it because the reward will be out of this world forever and ever and ever. See God as a place for you. You may not like the place that he's got. You may look at other people and you say, "Well, they get more glory than I do." Or you can look at other people and you say, "Well, they have a lot more gifting than I have. Poor little old me. I'm a nothing and a nobody." Doesn't matter whether you're a five-talented, a two-talented, or a one-talented Christian. You need to bloom where you're planted because in that gifting that God has given you and the cultivation of that gift, God is raising you up so that he can give you eternal riches and eternal glory. I believe that biblically, how much will be entrusted to us is in direct proportion to our faithfulness in the here and now. Listen to this verse from Luke chapter 16 and then we'll wind it up this morning, "Whoever can be trusted with very little could also be trusted with much. And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?" In other words, what he is saying is, "How you steward your time, talent, and treasure [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:41:17.220; remove through 00:44:50.000] today on behalf of God will determine in the age to come how much true authority and responsibility [CUT] God can trust you with forever and ever and ever." a day. Jesus, who prayed that your church would be one, that you and the Father are one. Lord, let us see how true unity in you is. One God, one faith, one God and Father God, one truth, we proclaim, one church, respond to the call. Lord, we commit in the power of your name to stand as one for the crowd. One God, one faith, one God and Father God, one truth, we proclaim, one church, respond to the call. Lord, we commit in the power of your name to stand as one for the crowd. One God, one faith, one God and Father God, one truth, we proclaim, one church, respond to the call. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:44:50.000; resume after this marked segment]