Back in the mid-nineties I was working in the golf business for a couple years. One course I worked at in Vancouver required $75,000 to join and there was about a 3 year waiting list, then it was about $350 a month for monthly dues as well. In the winter I went down to a very exclusive private course in Palm Springs to caddie, and the membership fee was $750,000 to join, and this course was only open from October to April. It’s funny I never saw one famous person that I recognized anyway, just to tell you how many rich, unfamous people there are out there.
Could you imagine if any of us had to pay that kind of membership fee to be part of the family of God? Yet much of the unbelieving world continues to believe that we do have to meet some kind of human requirements to be saved and bound for eternal life with God.
The great apostle Peter struggled with this. Early on it was being a circumcised Jew that constituted membership in the family of God. But through the vision we heard Peter have last time, and his run in here in chapter 10 with Cornelius, Peter says in verse 34, “I see very clearly that God shows no favouritism or partiality.” This wasn’t the end of the struggle for Peter though. One of the things he often struggled with was his reputation. How he would appear to other elite Jewish Christians.
I would suggest that this is something we continue to struggle with in church. We may not say that there are membership requirements to be a Christian in our churches, but does our behaviour say otherwise sometimes? That maybe our reputation does matter a little too much.
What if a person is divorced? What if they have doubts and questions about the Bible? What if they are poor and maybe don’t smell very good? What if they have a mental illness? Membership requirements don’t have to be verbally stated, they can be communicated with a look, with avoidance, and so on.
If we go to the second chapter of Galatians we see that the least of the apostles, Paul, has to rebuke the greatest one, Peter. Let me read it in Galatians chapter 2 beginning in verse 11-16…
Isn’t that interesting, see the bad example and hypocrisy that Peter shows. Its all right to eat with the Gentiles when there are no other Jews around who were still hung up on the membership requirement of circumcision. But as soon as a few of them came to Antioch, Peter was afraid of criticism. And Peter by his example led even the very faithful Barnabas into hypocrisy.
Maybe you have a real heart for the down and out and want to see them get saved and be part of the church. But you are afraid that others might judge you for associating with them, because they may not fit in. I guarantee you there are people out there, who desperately want to know God, but are afraid of the judgment they will get if they are divorced, or living in sin, or like to have a couple glasses of wine on the weekend, or smoke cigarettes, or don’t know what they’re supposed to do in church on Sunday mornings. And somehow, the church has given them the impression that they are not welcome. When these would be the people that Jesus sought out the most.
So Paul straightens Peter out by reminding him of the only membership requirements necessary, and that is by having faith in Jesus Christ, and not by obeying the Law. And I think Paul here is making a statement that refutes the idea some hold, that one day the Temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and the old Jewish worship system will continue. He says,
“If we have faith in Jesus, are we then still guilty if we don’t follow the Law? He says “No, in fact I am sinning if I rebuild the Law that Jesus tore down, represented by the temple. We died to the Law and stopped trying to keep the membership requirements, so that we might truly live for God.”
And let me paraphrase the most important part of that passage in verse 21 of Galatians 2 where he essentially says, “If I try to keep the membership requirements of the Law, then I am degrading, nullifying the work of Jesus Christ. His death becomes meaningless”.
So back to Acts 10, Peter expresses the requirements in verse 35. Now are him and Paul in agreement? Peter says the following before he goes to Antioch and has this run in with Paul. He says, “In every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right, is acceptable to Him.”
Would we, would Paul agree with that statement? The question is, does fear of God and faith in Jesus mean the same thing? Down in verse 43 Peter does say that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through Jesus name. So what is he saying?
I don’t mean to bog you down with words, but I think it’s important here to define a couple of these words, so we don’t misunderstand and fall into the trap of believing that Scripture contradicts itself. When we hear the phrase “fear the Lord” in the New Testament, the Greek word is “phobeo”, does that sound familiar? The word fear here in English and in Greek means fear. And it is used in that culture, “to treat with deference or reverential obedience” when it talks about God. Of course deference means to “defer to” which ultimately means to submit to.
So fear of the Lord in the Bible means to obey God out of reverence. It is a verb, not a noun or a feeling. And everywhere in both testaments this fear of the Lord is recommended strongly.
Now does the doing what is right mean obeying as well? Yeah. But do both of these mean following the Law? The answer is no, so Peter does not contradict Paul here even though he falls back into this kind of behaviour later in Antioch. The Law is that which made you right with God and part of the chosen people in the Old Testament. Primarily here referring to circumcision, and more broadly to the sacrificial worship system prior to Christ.
Paul never says you don’t have to obey God, in fact he strongly commands the opposite even though we are saved by faith. Okay, so what does faith or belief mean here? These are essentially the same words, coming from the same root. Basically the word believe is pisteuo, and the word faith is pistis. Pisteuo or “believe” means literally to have pistis in. To have faith in or more accurately to “entrust oneself to” – that’s belief. So what does faith mean?
The literal translation is “persuasion”, to be persuaded by and have conviction in. You see these words get thrown around in Christianity, but we need to make sure we have the right meaning of them as they were spoken and meant to be taken at the time. And they all refer in one way or another to submission and obedience, because of the greatness of, and trust in God.
Doctor Christian Smith who is a sociologist and researcher, about a decade ago, coined a term, “moralistic, therapeutic, deism” or MTD. He said this is the religion most North Americans practice under the banner of Christianity. He says,
MTD describes what most Americans really believe about God:
• God exists—he created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about yourself.
• God does not need to be particularly involved in your life, except when he’s needed to resolve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die. You’d be amazed how many “Christians” believe that today.
He says, Of course, this is a Trojan Horse gospel—it sounds nice and positive, and apparently “good people” propagate it, but he says, its belly is full of lies.
Unfortunately, the way we use the words believe and have faith in, tend to support this kind of Christianity, which has very little sense of God’s authority and our submission to it, which is the primary message of the entire Bible. More so even than grace. And Paul, Peter, and James would all agree with that. It starts with grace, but grace is only necessary because we do not give God authority over our lives.
We are free from the Law, but a disciple of Christ is to strive with all their might as Paul says, to obey everything Jesus commanded. Our righteousness or doing right, is to exceed that of the Pharisees. And let me say this, the Bible is very clear that Christianity is a doing religion, and not just a believing religion.
Remember James? He is Jesus’ half brother who didn’t even get converted until after Jesus died and was resurrected. In His famous passage about faith having works or it is not a saving faith, that phrase is followed by “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe this – and shudder. How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without works is useless?”
That doesn’t contradict Paul, it does what Paul himself does later, it defines what faith is. Faith is something you have, but it’s something you have that causes you to do. If you don’t do, you don’t have faith, because faith can only be tested by doing.
So let’s hear Peter witness about the gospel in verses 39-43… We see here that even as he was talking about Jesus dying on the cross, being resurrected on the third day, and appearing to eat and drink with the disciples, the Holy Spirit fell on all who were listening.
Now what is the sign here that the Spirit has come upon them? They speak in tongues praising God. Now if we go to Peter’s explanation of these events to the Jewish believers in Jerusalem in chapter 11, we see him say in verse 15, that the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as it fell on us at Pentecost. And how was that? Who interpreted these other tongues and what kinds of languages were they? They were praising God in human languages that could be understood or interpreted by people present from other regions whose native tongue was that language.
But unlike in Jerusalem when there were Jews from every nation on earth to hear these different languages, at first it appears there were only Greek speaking Gentiles here at Cornelius’, so what languages were they speaking? Well the answer is in verse 45 where it says that there were some Jewish believers with Peter, and very likely some of these were those who were from other nations that were present at Pentecost, and once again they heard these Gentiles now praising God in these Jewish believers native tongue. So they could interpret what was being said as praises to God.
Then in verse 48, Peter commanded them to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. Remember Peter says baptism essentially replaces circumcision as a sign of inclusion. So let me just say to those of you who are believers here and anywhere, and you have not been baptised as a believer, I think Scripture supports the idea that baptism is a command. And it is a command that is the membership card so to speak of inclusion in Christ’s family. It’s not the requirement for membership, but it is the card that let’s the club know that you are a member. And you don’t have to meet any other requirements other than real faith in the workings of Jesus Christ, and the acceptance of his Spirit, to be baptised.
So if you say I’m not ready to be baptised, are you not saying, I am not yet sure that I’m really a believer? I’m sorry, that’s how I see Scripture. Now I can’t say for sure that you need to show your card at the gates of heaven, but it sure makes me wonder if this couldn’t be one of the criteria for Jesus saying I never knew you. But at the very least I would think Jesus would ask why you didn’t do the most basic act of membership in His church.
So we’ll pick up next time in verse 19 of chapter 11, and I won’t go into the first 18 verses because it’s really just Peter’s recap to the Jerusalem believers of what happened at Cornelius’ place, so that they would also include Gentiles fully into the family without the old membership requirements.
I just want to say something about my preaching. Some of you may like what you get when other preachers speak who use more object lessons, props, funny stories and plenty of interesting illustrations. The truth is I’m not that creative, probably one of the reasons I am not very good with teaching kids. I see my role as a prophet in the sense of proclaiming God’s word.
But as we go through the book of Acts and some of Paul’s letters, part of me is glad about my lack of creativity. I have heard many sermons by very popular preachers where you hear very little of the word of God. It is mostly entertaining commentary supported by some small passages of scripture, designed to make people feel better or solve some modern problems.
What I see in the Bible is very simple preaching that says, this is Jesus, this is what he has done, and this is what you must do. I can totally relate to Paul when he said, “I did not come proclaiming the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing amoung you except Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in fear and weakness and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” He also said that this eloquent wisdom of man can empty the cross of Christ of its power. The word of God is the power, not our fancy sermons.
Paul also said to his young and up and coming protégé Timothy in his second letter, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching (they’ll fall asleep), but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions…”
Now Jesus used relevant illustrations and parables, but he actually said that one of the reasons he did that is so that most people wouldn’t understand what he was saying. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using a modern illustration to emphasize and help us understand the true meaning of a passage of scripture. But that passage must be the centre of the message, not a throw in so we can say it our talk was a Christian sermon.
Perhaps God has not gifted me with anything other than a total reliance on the word of God which is the power, so that I couldn’t tickle your ears even if I wanted to. We want to hear about God’s love and forgiveness and all of that is true. But it is also true that Jesus equates love with obedience on our end, God gives us commands out of his love so that by following them we can have a good life, and most importantly, have eternal life with Him.
I don’t think judging from Jesus and the apostles, that God cares too much about us being happy in this life. What he wants for us is to have His peace, being assured that we have eternal life with him in spite of circumstances, so that we can be content in all circumstances, and serve Him under the power of His Spirit. And if that means making us uncomfortable, then that’s what he will do in his love, and that’s what I will do in His service.
All it took here for these people to be converted and have the Holy Spirit fall upon them is to hear the truth with no frills. Maybe we in the church of the 21st century need to take a minute to think about that. Because I think any of us would agree that what we see in our churches today are not that many Spirit powered, obedient, set apart Christians like we saw back then. So what have we created with our human ingenuity in the church? I am going to trust in God’s methods even if everybody doesn’t find them appealing. Because I love God and I love His people.
