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One of the stranger phenomena in the church over the past few decades is the seeker movement. Whether it is the seeker sensitive style or the even more radical seeker driven movement, the press toward random acts of kindness or neighborhood block parties, Christians, for a season in the United States, used what cultural cachet they had to attempt to win people to Jesus. Often, the methodology included the simple plan to try to be the nicest, most encouraging, least offensive people we could possibly be in order to make people like us, want to be a part of our group, and then to visit our churches. There we believed we could share a gentle, life-affirming, socially helpful message with them that included giving Jesus a try.  

But, a look at the genuine gospel message preached by the apostles in the book of Acts will show us that the disciples were not always the most seeker sensitive lot. Though these men were the men carrying out the original Great Commission, they did not pander to the culture. Neither did they mince words when calling out the sinful attitudes and practices of the lost who were opposing the things of God.

Note these two examples of things that Paul said in Acts 13.

Acts 13:8-10 – 8 But Elymas the magician (for that is the meaning of his name) opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. 9 But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him 10 and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?”

Acts 13:46-47 – 46 And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.”

Twice, in a pair of encounters in this chapter, Paul spoke some fairly hard words to people. Nothing about his words were seeker sensitive, and they certainly were not seeker driven. Nor did Paul, in these encounters, set up a neighborhood celebration or try to convince the community that the Christians were just the nicest folks on the planet. Instead, Paul preached a genuine gospel and spoke with biting honesty about those who opposed it.

Now, please do not get me wrong. I’m not here trying to say that all churches who do neighborhood outreaches are wrong. I’m not against us doing good to people in the name of Jesus. The Savior himself performed merciful miracles in his ministry. So, the point here is not to oppose kindness.

What I am noticing, however, and what I want to point out is that we are not called to be the nicest people on the planet. We are not actually going to win the world with niceness. Jesus made it plain in John 15:18-21 among other places that the world is going to oppose us because of him, and that is not going to be done away with simply because we are good people.

And, we need to grasp that, if we become so committed to being a positive social force in our communities, to being liked by everybody we come across, we will eventually stop being able to speak the hard truths of the gospel. We will, if we are not careful, spend so much energy building relational bridges in our community that we will not dare to walk across those bridges with the gospel lest we destroy the very bridges we have worked so hard to build.

So, friends, yes, do acts of kindness in the name of Jesus. Make genuine friends and share the gospel. But do not think that you are going to draw people to Jesus by your niceness to those who are opposed to God and who reject his salvation. Tell the truth. Do not fear. Know that God will do the work of saving people. Do not be unnecessarily harsh, but also do not hide from the offense of the cross.

Acts 13:48 – And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed

God appoints people to eternal life, and those people will believe. We tell the truth. We leave the results to God. And, as we speak that truth, we must understand that it will not be politically correct. It will not be seen as open-minded, inclusive, or socially acceptable. But we speak the gospel honestly and boldly knowing that, nice or not, the Lord will be glorified in those who believe.

It was the year 44, and the church had grown in and around Jerusalem. Christians faced persecutions, to be sure, but in general, the church was able to grow and to flourish. Reigning over the region of Judea was King Herod Agrippa I, a generally kindly man who had a strong affinity for the Jews. It was Agrippa I who persuaded Caligula not to put his statue in the Jewish temple in 41.

Perhaps to please the Jews, Agrippa I did two things that would have terrified the early church in Jerusalem.

Acts 12:1-4 – 1 About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. 2 He killed James the brother of John with the sword, 3 and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. 4 And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people.

Consider what you would have felt like had you been a Christian in that young church in Jerusalem. Yes, things had looked good for a while. But, now, for whatever reason, the government has really turned against you. James, one of Jesus’ 3 best friends, was put to death. Then the king had Peter arrested. Clearly he intended to kill Peter as well.

Acts 12:5- So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.

On the night before Peter was to be executed, God sent an angel into Peter’s cell. The angel removed Peter’s chains, led him past the guards, and brought him out of the prison.

Acts 12:11 – When Peter came to himself, he said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”

God had done a miracle. God had guarded one of the early church’s leaders. God had preserved Peter’s life, a life that God would use for another two decades before Peter’s martyrdom.

If you know the funny part of the story, you know that, when Peter arrived at the home of Mark’s mother, Mary, the people did not believe the servant girl when she said Peter was at the gate.

Acts 12:13-16 – 13 And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. 14 Recognizing Peter’s voice, in her joy she did not open the gate but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. 15 They said to her, “You are out of your mind.” But she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, “It is his angel!” 16 But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed.

Many a sermon has been preached here on the faithlessness of the people in the house. Why would they not have believed that Peter was there? Why would they not believe that God could rescue one of his apostles from the hand of a political ruler bent on his destruction?

But, dear Christians, how well would we have believed? How well do we believe in the power of God to overcome rulers today? How well to we believe that powerful political plots are as nothing in the sight of God? How well do we believe that the hearts of kings are as redirectable as water in God’s hand (Prov. 21:1)?

We are living in a hardened and hardening culture. No, the government is not on our side. In general, we face the kinds of things that are scary. We know that laws are being changed to restrict religious freedoms. Powerful cultural voices are speaking out against any who will not celebrate the supreme autonomy of mankind over any biblical commands. And, yes, it seems likely that things will get harder.

But, as I was reminded when listening to Michael Reeves’ presentation from the 2017 Ligonier National Conference, “After Darkness, Light,” the decline of our culture is not inevitable. God has checked the decline of western culture in the past. God did a work 500 years ago in the reformation that we simply would never have believed possible had we lived in that time. An. In Acts 12, God rescued Peter from certain death at the hands of a powerful king. God is not defeated by cultures or by politics.

We cannot guarantee that our culture will turn. We cannot be assured of rescue from our own prison cells should we be thrown into them. But, may we not be so foolish as to assume that anyone who believes that God can change our culture and check our slide into depravity is out of their minds. May we live confidently in the reality that, if suffering comes our way, the Lord will sustain us. But may we not assume that victory is impossible. If God could walk Peter out of that cell, he can walk us out of any cultural decline. 

It is a big problem when people do not believe what God says. It is bad when a believer does not believe what God says about them. It is bad when a non-believer does not believe what God says about them. It is bad when a believer does not believe what God says about other believers or about non-believers. We need to believe what the Lord says.

The apostle Peter ran into this problem, and learned a valuable lesson from the Lord. God called Peter to visit the home of a Roman centurion, a gentile, to share with him the message of Jesus Christ. But, before God sent Peter there, he made a point to Peter in a vision.

Acts 11:7-9 – 7 And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8 But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’

God showed Peter some animals, and he called Peter to eat. Peter refused, arguing that he would never eat a ceremonially unclean animal. But God then told Peter never to call unclean something that God has now called clean.

In that vision, God was primarily helping Peter to know that, since the resurrection of Jesus, there is no longer a difference between Jew and gentile. Whether a person was physically descended from Abraham or not, any person can be made into a child of God by God’s grace alone through faith alone in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone. So, Peter had no reason at all to avoid visiting the home of a gentile. There are not going to be two races in the house of God. There are not going to be two classes in the house of God. We who trust in Jesus are going to be made into one family.

What Peter had to grasp was that God is the one who speaks clean or unclean over a person. And Peter learned that he needs to believe what God said. No matter what his natural reflex, Peter has to trust the word of God over what his tradition told him.

This then leads us to understand that we too must grasp what God says about us and about others. First, for the non-Christian, God speaks about you. He tells you that you are in grave danger of facing his judgment. This is not because you are worse than other people on earth, but simply because you have failed to live up to God’s standard of perfection. The Lord says that you are under judgment if you do not turn from your sin, believe in Jesus, and come to him for salvation. It is vital that a non-believer learn to believe what the Lord has said about him or her before it is too late.

For the believer, it is vital that you grasp what the Lord says about those who are not yet in Christ. God says that these folks are in danger. We are not better than these folks. We are only forgiven by the grace of God. And so we should eagerly and happily warn our friends and loved ones that they need the grace of Christ.

Believers also need to believe what God says about other believers. If God has called a person clean, saved, beloved, a child of God, we need to affirm that. In a simple bit of application, that should do away with any sort of ethnic boundaries in the church. That was what God was doing with Peter. The gospel is for all people. People of Hebrew descent are not better than gentiles. People of any skin color are not better than people of any other skin color. Poor people are neither more or less the people of God than are rich people. Americans are not the good Christians while folks from other nations are lesser. God has made us into one people and called us clean if we are genuinely in Christ.

And, believer, how about believing what God says about you? This one may be the hardest of all for some of us. To some believers, the idea that God would look at you and call you clean, saved, a beloved child of God is really hard to imagine. We know our hearts. We know our failings. We know our shortcomings. We know our sin. We cannot imagine that God would really be able to see us without distaste, anger, or even hatred. But the Lord says that all who have turned from their sin and trusted in Christ have his salvation. God did it. God brought us to spiritual life, drew us to himself, granted us the ability to trust in Christ, and then granted us salvation and sonship because of the finished work of Christ. So, if you are a Christian, and if you still put yourself down as a worm, it may be necessary for you to actually speak about yourself in the way that God speaks of you and not to call unclean what the Lord has called clean.

Now, that last paragraph is not to excuse sin our make us full of ourselves. Left to ourselves, we are indeed objects of wrath. We are still to repent of sin and strive to live up to what God says about us. There is no room for arrogance in our lives. But, God calls those under the grace of Christ clean, and we need to believe what the Lord says about us even as we battle sin and long for the day when he will make our lives finally match the words he says about us.

Sometimes you can learn as much by what a person does not do as you can from things that they do. A reaction to a word or phrase can tell you something about a person. A lack of reaction can also communicate. This is especially true of something we see the Lord Jesus not do after his resurrection.

In order to get to the significant point, let us first be sure that we see an important biblical command. The first of the Ten Commandments forbids us from worshipping anyone other than the Lord, God, our creator.

Exodus 20:3 – “You shall have no other gods before me.”

I think that, in general, all people who know the Bible realize that God has clearly and completely forbidden us from worshipping someone not God. This is why, when Peter went to the house of Cornelius, he made sure that this good gentile did not bow and worship him.

Acts 10:25-26 – 25 When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. 26 But Peter lifted him up, saying, “Stand up; I too am a man.”

We can also see the same pattern from Paul and Barnabas when the people of Lystra tried to offer sacrifice to them.

Acts 14:13-18 – 13 And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the crowds. 14 But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out into the crowd, crying out, 15 “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. 16 In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. 17 Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” 18 Even with these words they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them.

Even an angel commanded the apostle John not to bow to him in worship.

Revelation 19:10 – Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

So, we can establish from Old Testament commands and New Testament practices that we are not to bow down to worship someone who is not God. Similarly, we learn from Peter, Paul, and an angel that the proper response of someone who is not God to a person trying to worship him is to put a stop to it. It would be blasphemy to receive worship as God for one who is not God.

Which makes something that Jesus does not do at the end of the Gospel According to John totally fascinating. Watch what Jesus does not do after he reveals to doubting Thomas that he has truly risen from the dead and Thomas responds.

John 20:27-29- 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jesus tells Thomas to come and touch him as Thomas had demanded to do before he would believe. Thomas responds with worship. He cries out that Jesus is his Lord and God.

Now, it is blasphemous for Jesus to receive this praise from Thomas, to not put it away, if Jesus is not God. If Jesus did not believe himself to be the Lord God, he should have told Thomas, “Don’t say that. I too am a servant like you.” But Jesus did not do so. Instead, Jesus affirmed that it is good for Thomas to see this, and it is even better for those who believe without having a physical encounter with the risen Lord.

By his refusal to correct Thomas, Jesus declares to us all that he really is the Lord God. Jesus is worthy of worship. Jesus is the one who made us, who paid for our sins, and who rose from the grave. He is not a mere man. He is not a prophet alone. Jesus is deity, the same God who gave the Ten Commandments, and he knows it.

Have you heard of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers? It is one of those things that began with New Testament Christianity, and it was recovered during the reformation. Sadly, many of us have not thought much about it, and that costs us in our understanding of the beauty of the gospel.

In Old Testament times, the nation of Israel had one priestly tribe, the Levites. Even as the nation traveled in the wilderness, the Levites had the job of serving as a tribe of priests before the Lord. They were physically to camp closer to the tabernacle, surrounding it and guarding it from the other tribes. In simple terms, the tribe of Levi served as a protective barrier, keeping the people of the other 11 tribes from coming too close to the holy things and incurring the wrath of God.

Numbers 1:53 But the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the testimony, so that there may be no wrath on the congregation of the people of Israel. And the Levites shall keep guard over the tabernacle of the testimony.”

The priesthood was a barrier of protection between the people and God. They kept the people from bringing the profane to the tabernacle. They also kept the people from experiencing the deadly holiness of God. This system was necessary to prevent the wrath of God from breaking out against the nation in such a way as to destroy all the people and put an end to the promises of God.

But, in the New Testament, under the New Covenant, the priestly system is done away with. There is no longer a class of citizens who serve as a barrier between the believer and his or her Lord. There is no longer a go-between to communicate to God on our behalf or to return God’s responses to us. Believers have direct access to the Lord God through our one great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, God in the flesh himself.

Ephesians 3:11-12 – 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

1 Peter 2:9 – But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

With the gospel came a new system for relating to the Lord. No longer are the people of God to approach a special class of people who shelter them from the Lord and from whom the Lord is kept at a distance from them. Instead, because of the blood of Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit, every believer is united in a common priesthood of all believers. Every believer has the right to approach the Lord God in worship, prayer, and obedience. Every believer has the right to read and learn from the word of God.

The danger of over-interpreting this doctrine should be apparent. God designed the church to work together as a body. This doctrine is not “the priesthood of the believer” but “the priesthood of all believers.” It is not an individualistic freedom to determine new doctrines based on whatever pops into your head. It is not an allowance to live to yourself, separated from the body of Christ, and constantly warped by your own limited understanding. Rather, the doctrine implies that we will unite in a community, a family, a body, a flock, a living temple of believers who all may approach the Lord in worship and prayer as we honor the Lord together, encouraging, teaching, and correcting one another.

Neither is the priesthood of all believers a call for every individual Christian to serve as a pastor. James warns us quite sharply that not all are to be teachers (James 3:1), and the standards for elders found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 clearly prevent some from serving in this role. Church elders are called by God to study the word of God and rightly handle the word of truth as they proclaim the Scripture to the body of Christ.

The beauty, however, is that no person in the congregation is any less a part of the community of the priests than a pastor or other church worker. A computer programmer, a stay-at-home mom, a retiree, a police officer, a carpenter, a judge, a flight attendant, all are part of the priesthood of all believers. Every person in the body may access the word of God. Every part of the body may come before the Lord to pray God’s good on all the rest of the body. Every person, even as he or she does his or her job, may honor the Lord through the work that he or she does. Teaching the word, catching criminals, debugging code, or changing diapers all may honor the Lord in the lives of his family of priests.

So, let us give God thanks for taking away the dividing barrier between his people and himself. Because of the final and perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we are no longer separated from personal communion with the Lord. No, let this not make you individualistic about your faith. But, yes, let it remind you that you may approach the throne of grace in the freedom and confidence of Christ’s finished work.

The Lord keeps his promises. Do you like this truth? Does it excite you to know that all the promises of God will ultimately be fulfilled? Before you allow yourself to be excited by those promises, remember that not every promise of God is a promise of soft living and easy futures.

As I came across the end of the book of Leviticus, I was reminded of some promises of God that not everybody keeps in their memory verse lists. Leviticus 26 contains many a promise of God. The early verses of the chapter contain many of the promises that prosperity preachers misuse, taking them out of their original context to apply them as blanket declarations of goodness for the people of God. But, a look at Leviticus 26 shows us that God was communicating with Israel that the blessings he was promising there were for the nation if it would obey his commands.

But, the vast majority of Leviticus 26 is not full of promises of goodness. Instead, the majority of the chapter is made up of the promised judgments of God on his people for when they, as a nation, refused to obey the laws that God had just given in the book. God knew that Israel would disobey. God knew that some of his laws would never be kept, not even once. And God told Israel exactly what would come to pass when they refused to obey him.

Here is one example.

Leviticus 26:34-35 – 34 “Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.

God knew that Israel would never obey the command to allow the land to rest for the Sabbath years. So, God told Israel what would come. If the land would not get its Sabbaths because the people obeyed, God would drive his people out of their promised land until the land got the rest that God had ordered back in Leviticus25.

Of course, if you know the history of the nation, they went captive to Babylon. Judah was captured and carried away from the land for seventy years. Why seventy years?

2 Chronicles 36:20-21 – 20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.

Judah was captured for seventy years because they had refused to give the land seventy Sabbaths of rest. God perfectly and accurately kept his promises.

Why would God give the Sabbath rest command if he knew Israel and Judah would not keep it? The law was given, not to save the people, but to help them recognize their great need of a Savior. Israel failed to obey. They drew down upon themselves the promises of judgment. The Old Testament illustrates that and helps us to see that God will keep all his promises and that, if we are going to be under his grace, it will not be because we earn it through obedience. Human beings are naturally disobedient. This is why we all need a Savior to fulfill the provisions of the law on our behalf.

So, are you glad God keeps his promises? It probably will ultimately depend on whether or not you are in a saving relationship with God. If you are forgiven in Christ, rejoice over God’s faithfulness. God promises salvation by grace alone through faith alone for all who trust in Christ alone. For such a person, there is great comfort in the fact that God keeps his word.

But, for the one who is opposing the Lord, please understand that God will keep all the promises he ever made about our judgment too. God is not faithful to promises of grace and yet unfaithful to promises of wrath. We must be under his grace or face his righteous retribution for rebelling against the Lord, our Maker.

It is often wise for us to consider what lies behind an action that we or others take. Quite often, the things we do, the right or wrong things we do, are symptoms of something much deeper in our hearts. Like the fruit on the branches of a tree, our behaviors come from deep down, at the roots of our hearts.

What has my attention as I write this is our behavior in the church. How often do we, if we are not careful, try to shape our actions in the local church to make ourselves look good? Because of the nature of the local church, the community structure, we can sometimes look at the church as a place to get ahead. Some like being a big fish in the small pond of the local body, and we try to get there by acting more spiritual than we really are.

Think of the different tactics we might use. We might pretend to sacrifice more than we are really sacrificing. We might pretend to be more spiritually rich than we really are. We might pretend to be doing well when we are really hurting deeply. We will put on all sorts of masks to try to get others to think we are stronger than we are, more disciplined than we are, or more sanctified than we are.

Sometimes the deception is active, intentionally pretending something you are not. Sometimes the deception is more passive, simply holding back from telling others the truth. But either way, deceiving others in the body, putting on airs, is not wise.

Back in the early church, as growth was taking place in Jerusalem, there was a couple who decided to take an active role in making themselves look spiritual. Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property and lied to the church about how much money they got from it. They wanted to pretend that they were giving to the church all of the profits of the sale, when in fact, they were holding back some funds for themselves. If you know the story, you also know that this led to the death of the couple, God striking them down for their actions.

Acts 5: 4-5 – 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.

Here is what is fascinating. In Peter’s words to Ananias, we see the problem. God was not upset that the couple did not want to give 100% of the profits. It would have been fine for them not to sell their land. It would have been fine for them to sell and say, “Here is 75% of what we got.” But what was not fine was for them to pretend they were giving more than they really were. The couple wanted to make themselves look good in the sight of others in the church, and they were dishonest in the process. They lied in their actions, being dishonest before God, and it cost them their lives.

And this all makes me wonder, how close do we come to being like Ananias and Sapphira? When we put on a false face of spiritual maturity when we lack it, are we not lying in much the same way? When we pretend to have given our all in some spiritual activity, but we really barely limped through, are we not lying like this couple? When we pretend to be different than we really are so that others in the church will think we are stronger than we really are, how different is that from Ananias and Sapphira?

Maybe it would be wise for us to consider the dangerous life of honesty, even in the local church. No, I’m not suggesting that every person in the body has to know every detail of your emotions. But, I wonder how much different we would be if being true to the Lord was our first priority instead of being seen by others as good, strong, or as having it together. May we tell the truth. When we are doing well, be honest. When we are doing well, do not exaggerate it. When we are struggling, be honest without exaggeration. When we need someone to pray for us because we hurt, why not say so instead of keeping it quiet? When we present a false face because we want to look better in the eyes of other people, we walk a dangerous line, one that I would bet Ananias and Sapphira would prefer not to have walked.