A sermon based upon Acts 15: 6-12
Preached
by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin,
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
1st
Sunday of Advent, Nov 26th, 2017,
(Series: THE MISSIONARY CHURCH)
The
Docu-Movie, “Facing Darkness,” tells how the story of how Samaritan’s Purse
confronted the Ebola virus head-on, when two of its own staff, Dr. Kent
Brantley and Nurse Nancy Writebol, contracted the disease. Thanks to the concerted efforts of prayer,
governments, and many health experts, they were saved and the Ebola virus was
finally contained in Liberia. What I
remember most about the documentary, was one single statement, Dr. Kent
Brantley made, after his recovery:
“Faith in God does not make you safe, but it may also put you in
danger!”
Today, we want to speak again about God’s call to become a
missionary church. When the rightly understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
saving message of God is not only for ourselves, our family, or our own
country, but the Good News of Jesus Christ is a message for the whole world. “For God so loved the world,
that he gave his only Son…” the gospel says. “Go and make disciples of all nations…” the Great Commission also says. This gospel is not
a message for only a few, but it is a message for all. So, until a church
is also a church concerned for the whole world, it can’t be a true church
anywhere in the world. Isn't this why we teach our children to sing: “He’s got the whole
world, in his hands!” It’s not
about us being safe, it’s about all being saved.
GOD MADE A CHOICE… (v.7)
To
help us understand how God calls us to be ‘world Christians’, I want to point
to one of the most important moments in the early church. Acts 15 tells us of a meeting of the ‘apostles and elders’ in Jerusalem,
concerning ‘the conversion of the
Gentiles’ (15:3). It was a meeting called
because some were opposed to their conversion, ‘unless’ those Gentiles were ‘circumcised’
as Moses had commanded. As the apostles
were going forward into the world with the gospel, following what Jesus had
commanded, some wanted to stay with only what Moses had commanded.
It
was in the midst of this ‘debate’ that Peter spoke up, saying, that “God made a choice …, that I should be the
one whom the Gentiles would hear the message….” (v. 7). Peter spoke about what God was doing now, not
from only what God had done in the past.
Peter’s new experience of God’s love for the whole world was rooted and
guided by Scripture, but God’s love was not bound or restrained by
Scripture. There is a difference; a
very big difference.
Everything
that God does in the world can be and should be rooted and guided by Scripture,
but God is also a living God who is free, active, and responsive to human
need. The true God always has more than a
word from the past. Since God is the
truth himself, He can’t be restricted nor restrained, even by his own word in
the past. When Peter says “God made a choice,” he means that God
can do anything God wants. God can even
do a ‘new’ thing that has never been revealed or done before, either in
Scripture or anywhere. God can do this,
because God is God. While God doesn’t
go against His Word, which is the ‘eternal’ truth found in Scripture, since God
himself is the eternal truth, God can bring us new ways with new understandings
that bring us new truth beyond the ‘ancient’ truths, so we can still find God’s
love revealed to us today.
Before
we can become ‘world’ Christians, that is, before we develop a concern for the
whole world, we must trust in a God who still makes choices and who is bigger, greater
and more than we now think or know. As
one popular writer has put it, before we can serve God, we must be ‘gripped by the greatness of God’. If God
can be contained within your own thoughts, hopes, wishes, understandings, or opinions,
then God ceases to be God and he also ceases to be true God who can save you. Only
the God who is bigger and greater than the world, can save the world. So, if you want to be a world Christian, you
must first have vision of God who more than you now know.
It’s
is God’s choice to ‘do’ and ‘be’
more, Peter means. In Acts 10, we read
how God came to Peter in a dream, revealing something never revealed
before. God told Peter, who had been
commanded by Moses to only eat ‘kosher’ foods, that God now calls ‘all foods
clean’. If Peter had only stuck with
Moses, Peter could not have followed the true God, who is on the move. In a powerful, revealing, and redeeming
moment, ‘God made a choice’, a free
choice, to go beyond what had been ‘before’.
Now, God was revealing himself, not just in new foods, but also in new
people; people whom Peter had never known until he trusted the God was big still
big enough to be the God who does something new.
HE TESTIFIED TO THEM… (v. 8)
But
of course, the problem most people have with ‘new’ understandings of God is how
to know whether or not this ‘new’ vision is true. Peter said ‘God made a choice’ by choosing him to be a witness to what God is
doing, but how does Peter know? How did
Peter know that the voice speaking to him in the middle of the night was really
God’s voice, and not mere indigestion?
For
those who believe that God created this world, it may not be a great stretch to
understand how God might also ‘love the whole
world’, but it can be much harder to put this ‘truth’ of love into practice,
especially when we have lived in only one country among only one kind of people. When I
was living in Europe, I used to listen to Armed
Forces Radio so that I could get American news. On one program, I can’t recall exactly what
the caller to the news program was talking about, but I do recall what he
said. He stated proudly that there was
no greater country in the world than America.
He also said that no country has ever done what America had done. He also said, in his own words, that America
is the only perfect example of what the rest of the world should be, because
nobody can do what America does. As I
heard him speaking, while I could appreciate his love and patriotism for his country,
I couldn’t agree wholeheartedly. America
is indeed, a good and great country, but America is not perfect and shouldn’t
be idolized. We should be humbled by
America’s goodness or greatness, but not falsely prideful. While Germany, nor Europe, were perfect
either, after living in Europe for over 6 years, I could see many ‘good’ things
America was indeed missing. A more
sober assessment would have been something like I once heard: “America is
great, because America is good; but when America ceases to be good, it will
cease to be great.”
I
tell this story not to belittle the ‘greatness’ of America, but to remind us
that a country, a people, and a religion too, can only be consider ‘great’ as
long we measure ourselves by higher standards than ourselves. Peter tells us that the criterion knowing God’s
truth is God’s living presence made known through the Holy Spirit at work in
people: “God….testified
to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us (8).
I
find it quite revealing that the most important message of the book of Acts was
not about God, nor about Jesus, but the message of Acts is mostly about the
coming of the Holy Spirit into the world.
More than a book about the ‘Acts
of the Apostles’, this is a story about the ‘Acts’ of the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself pointed to the coming of Spirit (John 16:13), telling
his disciples to ‘wait’ on the Holy
Spirit (Acts 1:4) who would enable the church to go, not just to Jerusalem and
Judea, but into the whole world with the good news (Acts 2: 4ff).
There,
are of course, many angles on what Peter was saying about God ‘giving the Holy Spirit’, but perhaps
the most important is that the Spirit is how God continues to work through all
kinds of people. When Jesus said that the
Spirit ‘declares things to come’
(Jn. 16:13), this was more about ‘who’ God will continue through, as much as ‘how’.
God works through all kinds of people to accomplish his saving purpose in the
world.
The
common denominator is not, ‘who’, but ‘how’.
The Spirit is God works through
people who live, act, and love like Jesus.
This God who came to give his
Spirit to us, also came to give His Spirit
to ‘them’. Until we can also see God at
work in them, we will never know the fullness of God’s in us. There is no ‘singular’ truth of God, because God
is at work in us all, when we live and love like Jesus.
HE MADE NO DISTINCTION (v. 9)
Is
your God big enough to love the whole
world? Is your God the God who can reveal himself to anyone through the
Holy Spirit? This is the kind of God
that Peter is reporting to be at work in the world---a God who moves beyond
Jews, beyond Jerusalem, beyond laws, and is a God already at work in the world
beyond us all, keep revealing to all, how the Spirit of Jesus can still save
the world.
Peter
is especially reporting to those ‘stuck’ in their own religious politics, to
inform them, and us, that God moves on to others, whether we want to recognize
it or not. God does not stay in one
place, because love does not hold anything back. Truth will not be squelched, but will be
revealed. And the greatest truth God
has ever revealed is this: ‘by faith
[God} has made no distinction between them and us’ (v9).
We
probably already know the song: ‘Red,
yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight; Jesus loves the people
of the world?’ But do we really know
why we sing, teach, and need to continue to understand this? It is not just so that we can teach our
children that God loves everybody. No,
if we forgot how much God loves them, we will also forget how much God loves
us. For the God who is truly God, and is
only God, is the God who ‘so loved the
world’ just as much as he loved Israel, just as much as he loved his Son
Jesus, as much as he loved the disciples, loved the Church or loves Christians. ‘Red,
yellow, black or white’, means God loves us all, but if we cease to
understand that God ‘makes no
distinction’ and we dividing the world into ‘us’ against ‘them’ or ‘them’
against ‘us’, then we cease to know the true God. When we cease to know this God, it’s not long
until we cease to know God’s love of us too.
Peter
has learned more about God’s great love in Jesus by seeing God’s love at work
in others beyond himself. He has
learned more than how God does not play favorites, or that God doesn’t prefer
one person or people over another. What
Peter is seeing, is how God is already working in the hearts of other people who
are not exactly like him. Peter sees
this, not by looking at human nature, not by looking at race, color, or by looking
into a specific culture or creed, but only by looking at the ‘cleansing of their hearts by faith,’ which
sees by their faith in Jesus, proven by the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, does
people learn, not just how God loves the world, but he also learns ‘who’ God
loves, which is far greater.
This
love of God for the whole world has no condition; none whatsoever. It has no condition because God loves
sinners, just as much as God loves us, or anyone else. When Peter says that God ‘cleansed’ or ‘purified’ their ‘hearts by faith’ (15:9) he is not
making a specific condition for God’s salvation, but he is referring to the
‘condition’ of salvation itself. It is only
through ‘faith’ that God’s salvation
could ever come to a dying, struggling, sinful or selfish human beings. Faith is necessary for salvation, because
faith is only way our ‘cleansing of...hearts‘can come. Our hearts are cleansed by faith because of
what God’s love has made possible, through Jesus Christ.
THROUGH…GRACE…WE ARE SAVED (v. 11)
This
is where Peter comes to his final point: ‘We
believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they
will” (11). Did you catch that
Peter does not say we ‘are already
saved’ but that ‘we will be saved’
through ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus’,
just like they will? Peter is not trying to limit God’s salvation,
but he is trying to broaden our understanding.
We need to be humbled, not proud about what God is doing, not just what
God has done. We need to be forward
thinking, not backward thinking. We
need to look to what God will do in the world, not just what God has done in
the world. By expressing salvation with
a ‘future tense,’ Peter is reminding us,
that God’s ‘salvation’ is not something already fully consummated. Our salvation is never something we possess
only for ourselves or by ourselves, but God’s salvation is something God is
still doing through all who believe in the ‘grace of the Lord Jesus.’ If
we ever limit God’s salvation only ourselves--only to this church, our
denomination, our country, our culture, or even this world, we will also find
ourselves limiting what wants to do with us, in us, and in our world
We
should never limit God’s salvation, because God’s salvation is freely given to everyone who believes in ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus.’ Did you
catch this? God’s doesn’t just save us
by grace, but God saves everyone who ‘believes
in the grace of our Lord Jesus.’ Now, of course, we might possibly think of
some ways God would limit his salvation; like saying that salvation only comes to
those who believe in Jesus. This kind
of statement is certainly in the Bible, because there is no greater love, just
like there is no other name, that has been revealed to us than this: “…God so loved, that he gave his only Son.’ Yes, as a Christian, I may still need to
clarify that Jesus is the one who is ‘faithful
and true’ in revealing God’s love, but I still don’t have to put down other
people or other faiths, especially if they are loving like Jesus loved. Didn’t Jesus himself say to his disciples: ‘Leave them alone, because those who are
not against me are with me.’ Even when
I need to say why I trust in Jesus and why other do too, I can still love those whom God loves, like
Jesus would do.
But
there is finally, something else here too.
When I start to focus on God’s love, on Jesus who died, on what faith means,
or when I focus on who God gives His grace too, my whole focus changes, just
like it did for Peter. With Peter, I stop trying to ‘play God’ by
deciding who is ‘in’ or who is ‘out’ and I start trying to love like God loves
and to care like God cares. This is the direction
the Holy Spirit is going, as He reveals the Father’s love through Jesus Christ.
This
is also the direction we must go, if we want to become world Christians. When we realize that God makes ‘no distinction’ in loving people, we
too will become more and more amazed at how much bigger God is, than we ever
imagined. We will also see that God’s
love becomes ever clearer, because we have come to understand how God loves
them, just as much as God loves us.
Only this God, who has enough love to go around to everyone, is big
enough to be the true God of anyone. That
is why Peter, me, and you too, should be ‘world’ Christians. Amen.
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