Ephesians 3- Fellow Heirs

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. – Ephesians 3:4-6

The Jews had forgotten their responsibility. They were the chosen people of Yahweh. He had entered into a covenant relationship with them and set them apart for a purpose. However, the Jews had taken their chosen status, their intentional “separateness,” and used it to create a society of eliteness that looked down upon those who were outside of the covenant.

But this was not the way it was supposed to be. From the days of Abraham, the nation of Israel was set apart to be a blessing to those around them, pointing them to Yahweh. They were to be examples of how men should love God and treat their fellow man. God’s purpose, of course, was to bring those who were outside the covenant relationship into the covenant relationship.

Reaching all the way back to Genesis 12, we can see God’s intention for all men. (Well, in reality we can see the good news of salvation all the way back in Genesis 3, but it is made more specific in Genesis 12). In His promises to Abram, God tells him: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” One of the reasons that God was going to bless Abram was so that he could be a blessing to all the people of the earth. God’s blessing was not limited to one person.

The promise and charge is given again in Genesis 22, the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. After God has told Abraham to stay his hand, He makes this promise to him: “I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” Again, all the nations of the earth would be blessed through the line of Abraham.

From Day 1, the God’s chosen people were meant to be a light to the world, an example in the midst of their pagan neighbors of what it means for men to love God and to love each other in a godly way. By extension, since we believers are grafted into God’s chosen people, that responsibility is ours.

Praise God that it has been His intention from the beginning to save everyone that He chose, including Gentiles! And now we are the chosen people of God, with the same status, rewards, and responsibility, to be salt and light, pointing the way to Yahweh through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 8- Grace Through Giving

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

 
Last night, several of us from EBC had the privilege of attending the North American Mission Board‘s Send North America Experience.* David Platt, the new president of the International Mission Board, was the keynote speaker of the night. I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Herschael York, who said, “I say this carefully and reverently: I have never met anyone on whom the anointing of God rests as powerfully and comfortably as David Platt.” It truly was an intense time of calling upon the ordinary believer to exhibit their extraordinary power in the Holy Spirit to preach, pray, give, and suffer for the gospel.

One of the many powerful statements I heard last night was this: “You may not feel rich. When we think of the rich, we all tend to think of those who have more than us. But I promise you, when most people in the world think of the rich, they think of us. The ordinary American.”

This passage in 2 Corinthians is timely, given our church’s focus on stewardship for the next few weeks, and I want to call your attention particularly to verse 1 of the chapter: We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.

Read that again, so that you do not miss the force of Paul’s statement there. The grace of God was given to the churches of Macedonia because they were faithful in giving when they had nothing. They experienced a pouring out of His grace that they would not have received if they had not given. Now, please do not confuse this with saving grace; their salvation and standing before God had absolutely nothing to do with whether they gave or not. No, this is a growing grace. The Baptist Faith and Message reminds us that “growth in grace should continue throughout the regenerate person’s life.” This was a grace poured out upon them as a result of their obedience to the end of making them look more like Christ.

Do you want to experience more of God’s grace? Prayerfully consider your stance on giving. If the Christian life is a call to suffering (and it is), why do we spend so much time and effort accumulating ease and comfort? Could it not be that God has lavishly blessed us with material wealth in this life so that we can spend it on investments in the next?

 

 

*For those who do not know, NAMB is the missionary sending agency for the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States and Canada. For the past several years, they have been focused on an effort to send out missionaries called church planters, who evangelize with the intention of creating new congregations in areas where there are few or none. Cincinnati is one of their target cities in the Midwest. If you’d like to know more about church planting in the Cincinnati/NKY area, come talk to me. I’d love to discuss how you can partner with church planters and future church planters (that’s me) in the area.

Romans 12- How Should We Then Live?

If you’ve never read the book “How Should We then Live” by Francis Schaeffer, I highly recommend that you do so as soon as possible. The central premise of the book is that, when we base society on the Bible, on the infinite-personal God who is there and has spoken, it provides an absolute by which we can conduct our lives. Now, that has nothing to do with the content of this article. I just really like making book recommendations and needed to use the title of Schaeffer’s book to set up what I am going to talk about. *Shrug*

If you will recall, the first eleven chapters of the book of Romans are Paul pouring out his heart and laying forth the most complete explanation of Christian doctrine we have in Scripture. He expounds on sin, justification, predestination, election, sanctification…basically every big word you’ve ever heard at church. And he is so enraptured by the glory of God in this long discourse on doctrinal matters that he often erupts into spontaneous praise for the God who is worthy of more praise than we could ever give. Instead of seeing doctrine as dry and boring, he finds it joyous and life-giving. (Side Note: If your understanding of doctrine doesn’t prompt you to erupt into praise like Paul does, you don’t understand the doctrine the way Paul does. Think about that for a bit.)

But, in chapter 12, Paul takes a turn. Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t get any less intense. But he makes a switch from doctrinal to practical. It is almost as if he anticipates his readers’ question: “Alright Paul, how then should we live?” For most of the remainder of his letter, Paul answers that question with myriad examples. And his premise is that it is because of all this doctrinal truth that we live in the way he will prescribe.

I’m not going to rehash everything Paul says, the specifics are pretty clearly spelled out from here in chapter 12 through the rest of the book. But it can be basically summed up with what he had told the Corinthians in his first letter to them, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

Your body, your mind, your life no longer belongs to you. Every fiber of your being is now, and will be every day from now on, a living sacrifice to the Lord. We must come to understand this foundational truth about the Christian life if we are ever going to fulfill the rest of what Paul calls us to in the rest of his letter to the church in Rome.

It is because we realize that we do not belong to ourselves that we can use our spiritual gifts for the good of the body and not for selfish gain. It is because we realize that we do not belong to ourselves that we can outdo one another in showing honor. It is because we realize that we do not belong to ourselves that we can bless those who persecute us. It is because we realize that we do not belong to ourselves that we can overcome evil with good. (It is because we realize that we do not belong to ourselves that we do not chastise others for being really late on their blog posts).

Our lives are a sacrifice. We must offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to the Creator of all things, surrendering daily to His Spirit as He transforms us into the image of Christ. To this we are called, and in this we find our joy.

 

Acts 26- A Defense Before the King

Paul was nothing if not consistent. Through persecution, pain, and chains, he never ceased to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That was Paul’s calling (as we see in vv. 16-18) and he stayed true to it in times of plenty and in times of scarcity.

Another note of consistency we can see in Paul here in Acts 26, is the way in which he shared that good news. In fact, if you look at nearly all of Paul’s missionary speeches, they follow a fairly basic pattern. I will lay out the pattern below, then show how this can be an effective way for us to share the gospel, as well.

Paul starts his defense in verse 4, recalling his deeds from his youth. He describes how good of a Pharisee he was (in other letters, he would call himself a “Pharisee of Pharisees”). He tells how this “faithfulness” to the Jewish tradition led him to persecute, coerce, and murder those who followed The Way.

Then, he tells of His incredible encounter with the risen Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. So powerful was Jesus’ entrance on the scene that the men fell from their horses and Paul was blinded by the great light. Jesus revealed himself as the Lord God, and tasked Paul with taking the good news to the Gentiles.

Finally, Paul tells of his life since his encounter with Jesus. He obeyed the command of the Lord to tell the good news, first in Damascus, then Jerusalem, and all over the known world. He called them to repent of their evil deeds and turn to God, then live in a way that reflected their conversion. Then, in verse 22, he declares even to Festus and Agrippa the gospel message, that the Christ, who is Jesus, came to suffer and be the first to rise from the dead, so that the light of God might be known to both the Jews and the Gentiles.

In Paul’s defense before Agrippa, we can see a perfectly natural way to share the gospel of Christ. It consists of three simple stages: 1) Our life before knowing Christ, 2) how we came to know Christ, and 3) what our life has become after meeting Christ. After telling our own story, it just leaves us the task of telling the work that Jesus did on the cross to save sinners.

Is this the only way for a believer to share their faith? Of course not. There is certainly a time and a place for tracts, apologetics, philosophy, and the like. And yet…it seems that Paul preferred, for the most part, the simplicity of his own story and the simple (yet profound) truth of the Gospel. We are in good company when we favor simplicity in sharing the truth of Jesus Christ.

Acts 19- Transforming the Culture through Power of the Gospel

Once again, we come to a chapter with so much movement of the Holy Spirit, it is hard to know where to begin. What a privilege we have to be able to read about the mighty works of God as He established His Church!

I want to focus, though, on the second half of the chapter which provides both a unique look at the influence the followers of the Way (the term used for people who followed Jesus before they were called Christians) had on the culture around them and a challenge (I think) for us today.

So, let me set up what is happening here. A silversmith named Demetrius, who seemed to be a very wealthy man in Ephesus, met with several of the other craftsmen and complained that the Christians were having such an impact on the people of the city that their idol crafting was no longer a profitable enterprise. He worked them up into such a frenzy that they began to riot because of the loss of business.

Imagine that! The Christians were leading so many of their friends and colleagues to Christ that the temples of the Roman gods were going out of business! The crafters of the idols were essentially declaring bankruptcy and rioting because no one was buying their wares.

Note, however, the difference in the way that these Christians went about transforming the culture compared to the way we tend to do so in modern days. They did not form Political Action Committees to lobby the proconsul for favorable laws. They did not post on their social media walls about how terrible Caesar was and how he was ruining the empire. They did not boycott the local businesses.

They shared the gospel. They understood that true change can only come through the transformation of the heart by the Holy Spirit. And in the city of Ephesus, He came in power.

Pray to God that He sees fit to send His Holy Spirit in such a way in our city. That the churches who fail to preach to gospel in Erlanger would close because so many have come to know Christ in a saving way. That gay bars in Cincinnati would close because their patrons have repented and trusted in Christ. That the proprietors of stores who sell pornography in Florence would be forced into bankruptcy because no one buys their product. That the pimps in Covington would come together and riot because no one “purchases” their women anymore.

That will come only because we are willing to share the gospel, when we have “persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods” (v. 26).

Pray. Then, go and speak.

 

M. Eric Sherwood

Acts 12- The Word of God Increased and Multiplied

Acts 12 is such an eventful chapter, is it not? It starts with pain, with several followers of Jesus meeting violence and the death of the apostle, James, the brother of John. The Jews were thrilled about this, so Herod throws Peter into jail, as well. A very difficult time for followers of Christ in Jerusalem.

Then we have 2 miracles recorded: First, Peter is dramatically delivered from prison by an angel of the Lord and makes a daring, secret flight from the city. The furious king has his guards put to death for their failure to keep the prisoner.

Then, in a shocking display of arrogance, Herod makes a grand speech to the people of Tyre and Sidon, after which he allows the people to worship him as a god. Immediately, the text says, an angel came and struck him down for failing to give God all the glory.

Saints are dead. Kings are dead. Apostles are miraculously rescued from prison. Eventful, to say the least.

And, at first, I was having trouble deciding on which story to write about. “All Scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). There are so many great theological truths that we can glean from these dramatic accounts, where to begin?

Then I read verse 24, tucked away and unassuming next to all of the miracles. “But the Word of God increased and multiplied.”

To quote one of my favorite musicians:

“The Book of Acts is not about the acts of the Apostles
But the acts of the Holy Spirit impacting with the gospel
Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria to Africa,
Empowered your servants like Stephen when they were massacred

You take Christ’s objective cross work and vindication
And then apply it to the elect through regeneration
You saved us from the lake of fire, make us like our great Messiah
Graciously you take us higher- praise to you, our Sanctifier.”

When we read through the Book of Acts, we sometimes have a tendency to get so caught up in the truly awesomeness of the great miracles and boldness of the apostles, that we forget the purpose of each of those signs. Each and every dramatic account in this book is to point to the saving power of Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, and to call unbelievers to repent of their sin and place their trust in Christ.

If we miss the great work of the Holy Spirit convicting, regenerating, and sancifying, then we have missed the point of the book. Thank God for His gracious work through His Spirit to increase and multiply His Word.

I’ll close with the chorus of the song that I quoted earlier, let these words be our prayer:

“You gave us breath, you gave us life
Opened our eyes to see the Christ.
Holy Spirit, we worship You.
Spirit of God, we worship You.

Now you live inside of us.
You help us serve the God we trust.
Holy Spirit, we worship You
Without You we can do nothing at all.”