The Acts of the Apostles 16

Subtitle: They Had All Things In Common

Acts 4:32-37.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, September 4, 2022.

Today, our passage deals with a theme that we saw back in chapter 2, verses 44-45.  There Luke was giving a summary of the daily life of those who believed in Jesus, and how they took care of one another.

Essentially, Luke is showing that they took care of one another like family.  Yet, it was more than that.

This was a special time in the Church in which the Messiah had come and the promised Holy Spirit was being poured out.  This Holy Spirit was moving powerfully among God’s people.  It was quite common for people to stay in Jerusalem even though they lived somewhere else.  They did not want to miss out on the almost incredible things that God was doing.  Similarly, they were gathering every day in the temple where the apostles preached Jesus and encouraged the believers.  This dynamic led to a period of time where there were many reasons why people would put off normal matters of business, work.

How we need to once again become a people who are led and impassioned by what the Holy Spirit is doing.  Don’t be so sure that you have the same kind of heart.  The Holy Spirit is not inactive in our day and age, and yet many act as if He is.  Only through prayer can we get to a place where we recognize what the Holy Spirit is doing, and where He is leading.  God help us not to settle for a good life that is ignorant of what the Holy Spirit is doing in our day and age.

Let’s get into our passage.

The believers care for one another (vs. 32-37)

The issue of lacking what one needs from day to day is front and center in this passage.  Jesus spoke about this in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:25-34.  He basically tells believers not to be anxious about their daily food, clothing, or shelter.  If they would seek the Kingdom of God first in their life, then they would find God supplying these things as needed. 

Notice that the emphasis is on our primary focus.  Of course, we will need to work, budget, and buy food.  However, we should never let this become our priority.  Jesus is speaking to people who often found themselves in poor circumstances.  They could have all kinds of reasons to become anxious and then be led into complaining against God (remember Israel in the wilderness).

In desperation, we can often live life at a very surface level that is focused upon survival and our fleshly needs.  Don’t get me wrong.  A person needs to eat, and be clothed, and have shelter.  Yet, when our life first worries about these things and then becomes consumed with them, then we are never happy.  People, who are eating and dressing quite luxuriously, people who are living in houses, or apartments, that are orders of magnitude higher than kings in the past had, can still find themselves anxious about that stuff because it has come to mean more to them than God and His kingdom.

Only Jesus and his purposes can satisfy our inner needs.  We have a promise from him that we don’t need to worry; we just need to put his kingdom first.

In this passage, we have a practical expression of how the early Church was making sure that no one among them fell into circumstances where they were going hungry, without proper clothing, or without shelter from the elements.

We should also note that there are two sides to this issue.  In Matthew 6, Jesus was speaking to the needy (really all of us).  The person in need is not told that they shouldn’t worry because the Church will cover all their needs.  They are told to make the Kingdom of God their focus, and then God would make sure that they had enough to eat, etc.  However, God wants to help us is His business.  Our job is to refrain from worry, and trust God to provide, as we do our best.

However, the other side of the issue is about those whom God wants to use to meet those needs.  God is amazing.  Whenever somebody lacks anything, God always makes sure that there is somebody who has plenty enough to meet that need.  This is not a matter of law or commandment.  God’s people are called to be volunteers out of love for Christ.  We give as the Lord Jesus puts it on our heart.  That said, this can become a cop-out for the person who is greedy and doesn’t want to give.  We can say that God hasn’t told us to help anyone, all the while our fingers are deep in our ears.  God is calling us to maturity.  If God has blessed you with anything, then you need to be asking for what purpose has He done this?  Only for you to consume?  This is more than unlikely.  We will be accountable for how we have used God’s things that He has entrusted to us, within this life that He has given to us.

Lastly in this matter, a person who lacks financially still has areas in their life where they can be used of God to help others.  Also, a person who is financially wealthy still has areas in their life where they have needs that only others can meet.  No one is wholly in one category or another.  This takes spending time in prayer in order to understand the ways in which we can meet others needs, and the ways in which we are still quite needy ourselves.

In verse 32, Luke says that the believers were of one heart and one soul.  This is similar to the phrase “in one accord,” which focuses on having a singular passion for God’s purposes.  The words heart and soul have lots of overlap and basically point to that inner life as opposed to our body.  The heart is pictured as a kind of control center of our thoughts on one hand, and of our desires on the other.  In essence, the believers were living in a way that was as if one person was doing all of the thinking and desiring.

The only way that a group of people can have one heart and one soul is by the help of the Holy Spirit.  Tyrants will use brute force and manipulation to control the people, but God doesn’t operate in this way, and neither should the leaders of the Church.  This can’t be done in the flesh.  Paul tells us to let the mind of Christ be in us (Philippians 2).  With this in mind, we can see our need as believers is to let the Holy Spirit direct our heart and soul to be like that of Christ.  He needs to direct our heart.  We need to have our thoughts conformed and our desires conformed to those of Jesus daily.  This is not an internal taking over by God, but a cooperation.  The only way this can successfully be done is through reading the Word of God, daily times of prayer, and walking with Jesus in obedience.  This is where we fight the giants internally in our soul.

Let’s look at verse 33 before we talk about the way the early Church dealt with financial needs in their midst.  It is pretty common in Acts to have a specific story about something that happened, and then follow it up with a general summation of what God was doing in the Church.  This verse is one of those summary style verses that lets us know that God was answering the prayer of the early Church.  We are once again reminded that God was working powerfully through the apostles as they preached about the resurrection of Jesus.  The great power is the dunamis power of God’s amazing work.  It is literally mega-dunamis.  God did extraordinary things through these apostles.  Just like the man lame from birth being healed in his 40’s, we are going to see more amazing miracles in the book of Acts.  These powerful demonstrations would not only let the leaders of Israel know that Jesus was multiplied in his followers, but it would also let Israel know that God had not abandoned them.  He was still pouring out His mercy and grace upon them.

This is an amazing thought.  They had taken the greatest gift of grace possible, God’s only Son, and crucified him.  Yet, here is God; here is Jesus showing them great and powerful signs and wonders.  He was essentially saying, “Even now, I will forgive.  Simply put your faith in my Son, Jesus!”

Just as there was great power through the apostles, so too, there was great grace upon the believers.  This is literally saying that grace, and that greatly (mega grace) was upon them.  It is easy to only think of grace in terms of salvation, but this term is broader than just salvation here.  It speaks to the favor, or good-will, of God resting upon them.  Jesus was not only dispensing mega powerful works by the disciples, but he was also pouring out mega grace upon his Church.  Jesus by his Spirit is the source of this overall atmosphere of God’s favor upon these believers.  This would be a supply in which they would display God’s grace among themselves, and it would then overflow into the larger community around them.

The early Christians were a people marked by the favor of God.  We can be mistaken in such judgments.  Perhaps, we may believe that the American Church is the most favored of God in every generation.  If we use the mind of the flesh to determine God’s favor, then we are guilty of the same sin of Job’s comforters, and the disciples themselves who thought wealth was a sign of God’s favor.  This was not the case with the early Christians.  The favor of God was upon them as obviously as the pillar of fire was to Pharoah that day.

Now let’s talk about the fact that the early Church took care of those who were needy in their midst.  When verse 34 says, “Nor was there anyone among them who lacked,” it does not mean no one ever had a need.  This is not some declaration that you will never have a need if you really trust Jesus.  No, many of them did have a need, a lacking.  However, those needs were being met by other brothers and sisters in the faith of Jesus.  Just like an adult son would take care of his aged mother when she is widowed, so they took care of those who encountered difficulties in life.  Most likely, they saw this number increase as persecutions led to many being arrested, imprisoned, and even executed. 

Down through the ages, the righteous have always wrestled with such things.  We are told that John Bunyan (author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and The Holy War) spent years in the Bedford County Jail.  It bothered him that his wife and child were home penniless.  However, God used believers to care for them during this time.  It was humbling, but John knew that he was doing God’s work.  So, his family lacked in the sense of having need, but they didn’t lack because God laid it on the hearts of believers to supply their needs.

Luke describes further why these needs would be taken care of.  In Acts 6, we are going to see that they had a daily distribution of food for widows, for example.  Verse 32 says that their attitude towards their possessions was not a selfish one.  Instead, they had all things in common.  This doesn’t mean that they liquidated everything and joined a commune as some cults promote today.  It doesn’t even mean that they treated all their property as belonging to the poor.  In truth, they knew that their wealth was God’s in every way.  Therefore, they were merely stewards of God’s stuff in this life that He had given them.  It is much easier to give when your heart is not stingily clinging to the things “you have amassed by your hard work.”

In verse 34-35, we see how they were covering the needs.  When it says, “all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them,” it does not mean that no one had houses anymore.  It simply means that, as it was needed, those who had an excess of possessions would sell them from time to time.  This money was then given to the apostles, and they distributed it to those in need.  This was all done voluntarily and as God moved on their hearts.

Luke gives an example of a man named Joses.  This is not the ½ brother of Jesus mentioned in Matthew 13:55. This man is a Levite who was from the Island of Cyprus.  The name Joses is a diminutive form of Joseph.  Clearly, Joses had been in Jerusalem early on.  Was he one of those people in the crowd hearing Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost?  Or was he one of the 120 who were filled with the Holy Spirit in the upper room?  Some even speculate that he was one of the 70 sent out by Jesus.  Of course, those possibilities are merely conjecture.  Yet, Joses became a very influential person in the early Church. 

We are told that the apostles called him “Barnabas.”  In fact, this is the name that will be used of him from here on in the New Testament.  Barnabas is Aramaic and means “Son of Encouragement.”  Interestingly, the term encouragement is from the same root as the term Paraclete that is used of Jesus to refer to the Holy Spirit.  It is essentially one who comes alongside of another to help in whatever manner that will help.  It is a very broad term.  In this passage, Barnabas encourages people by giving money to the apostles so that no one in the Jerusalem Church will lack what they need.  Later, we are going to see Barnabas standing alongside of Saul of Tarsus when he believes on Jesus.  Barnabas came alongside of Saul, who came to be known as Paul, and helped the apostles to accept Paul into their fellowship.

Just as there are cautionary tales in the Bible (think of Cain, King Saul, Nebuchadnezzar, Judas, and many others), so there are many who are encouraging examples to us, even exemplars of what we should aspire to be.  Clearly, Jesus is the Exemplar of exemplars, but it is good to see righteous individuals who do particular exploits in the name of Jesus.  Pay attention to the negative examples in Scripture that we should avoid becoming, and the positive examples that we should allow to inspire us to follow Jesus more avidly.

So, what about us today?  Our culture is not as conducive to being aware of everyone’s needs.  In fact, 1^st century Jerusalem was a far different culture than 1^st century Rome, or Thessalonica.  Paul actually tells the Thessalonians that some of their people were being lazy, not working, going from house to house eating food, and being busybodies.  Paul said that such people need to work hard and eat their own food in quietness.  This corrective teaching has a fine edge put on it in the statement, “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.”  (2 Thessalonians 3:10 NKJV).

Our culture loves to give lip-service to concepts like love and grace.  However, it often becomes perverted and twisted into something that is contrary to what God calls us to do.  It is not the Church’s job to make sure that no one ever goes hungry.  Sometimes a person has to experience powerful hunger pains in the natural before they ever come awake to the powerful, spiritual hunger pains that they have been running from.  It is our job to follow Jesus in truth.  It is our job to be led by the Spirit of Christ as we minister to and care for those who are believers and those who are lost.

May God help us to be open enough that others in the body would know if we are hurting.  This is nothing to be ashamed of.  It is an opportunity for Christ to demonstrate his compassion in us and through others.

All Things In Common audio

Where Are We Headed? Part 2

Subtitle: Stuck in a Fallen World

Colossians 1:16-17; 1 Peter 5:8; Exodus 34:6. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on March 20, 2022.

Last week, we talked about the delusion that humanity has embraced that we do not need God, or a god, to accomplish what the Bible says God has promised.  So, we talked about how we double down on intervention, treating society like a social experiment.  The biblical framework does not have a problem with intervention so long as it is surrendered to the sovereignty of God.

Today, we can see that the world as a whole is moving towards either thinking there is no God, or gods even.  Yet, we will posit that, if there are “gods,” they are merely a part of the universe and only more advanced than us.

Regardless of this, we are refusing to listen to God’s King, Jesus, who has revealed truth to us personally and through his apostles.  In a sense, we want there to be no God, or at least for Him to leave us alone and cede the universe.

Problems with God ceding the universe

There are some big problems with this idea that God could abdicate His authority over the universe, that is, for Him to act as if He doesn’t exist and let us do what we want.  Look at Colossians 1:16-17.

When we read this, we run first into the fact that everything was made through Jesus, and it was made for him.  The whole purpose of the universe was to be for Jesus, so Christ would have to be giving it up even after having died for it.  It seems that this is not an option, since He went through such great lengths to redeem it.

Yet, we run into another problem at the end of verse 17.  It says that “in Him all things consist.”  The word “consist” has the idea of being set, or established, together.  It is a picture of the many complex systems that exist and are even inter-related.  It is not entirely clear that all things would continue to stay together if God completely ceded His authority.  Thus, we would need God to keep everything in the universe running for us, and yet stay out of our affairs.

There is another problem with God ceding the universe that we can see in 1 Peter 5:8. Even if God agreed to keep the universe running, and give up His claim on it, we are not alone in this universe.  There are interdimensional beings who have already shown a penchant for enslaving and abusing humanity.  They are light-years beyond us in abilities and knowledge, and they have the character of a hungry lion towards us.  The devil and his angels want to devour us, metaphorically speaking, and perhaps literally for that matter.

The only way that we can win against them is to resist them “steadfast in the faith.”  This is the same faith that Jude spoke of in his letter, verse 3.  “…[C]ontend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”  To stand against them, one needs to do so with complete confidence in the God that we don’t want to believe in.  This is a big problem.

Now, we would need God to keep everything running, and we would need Him to keep any higher powers from messing with us, all while acting as if He doesn’t exist.

Finally, let’s look at Exodus 34:6. Several times, we see God proclaiming to Moses His own character, specifically, that He is gracious and has a steadfast love- this includes the notion of mercy.  If God really is gracious and loves steadfastly, could He agree to what we are asking Him to do?

Let us explore an illustration from the family.  Let’s say that your adult son loves to game with his buddies all of the time.  Sometimes they even come over and eat a bunch of food while networking their systems together to play.  Let’s say that your son comes to you and asks you to provide for the house to be used by him and his buddies, as well as keep it fully stocked with food, water, power, etc.  Similarly, they ask you to provide 24/7 security so that they can be safe.  And, they want to pretend that you don’t exist.  In fact, you should just move out and expect no more communication from them ever.

I’ve taken some time to put the picture on the table.  Now, put aside the fact that all parents would be highly offended at such a plan.  Could a good parent go along with such demands?  And, if they did, would this be good for their son and his buddies?  What kind of people would they become under such circumstances?  Perhaps, we should recognize that God is often the counter-balance to our wickedness.  A good God could not go along with this idea and still remain good.

Where would we end up if God allowed us to have it to ourselves?

If there was some way that God could agree to all of the above, where would we end up?  There are several possibilities of which I do not believe any of them end well.

First, we could destroy ourselves, which is most likely.  Even secular prognosticators of the future warn that we are most likely going to destroy the whole human race before we develop the technology to spread out.  This is what drives guys like Elon Musk.  We have to get some humans off of this rock before we destroy the whole planet and the humans on it.  Yes, many governments have continuity of government bunkers and seed vaults, etc.  However, that is a big risk to gamble that you can ride out any storm that humanity will be able to devise in 50, 100, or 1000 years.

Whether through war, or some other mechanism, our technology is at a level that such things are not so far-fetched.  If by some grace of God- irony intended- we were able to keep from annihilating all humanity, then we could only succeed to a degree far short of what we will want.

Do you remember the statements made as we entered the 1800s with the discovery of a small pox vaccine?  It was projected that science would vanquish all sickness and disease by the end of the century.  Needless to say, our gusto is somewhat tempered today.  In fact, we are seeing old “conquered” diseases come back as super strains due to the pressures that antibiotics have put on their reduplication over the years.  However, let’s say that we were able to fix our DNA, and genetically conquer all disease?  Well, we would need to fix the problem of aging.  What if we were able to fix that?  Eventually, our physical bodies would be the weak link.  Our quest to become ever more god-like in our powers would lead us to leave our biology behind and become machine, or we could attempt to go the Eastern Mysticism route and try to become pure spiritual beings.  Regardless, no matter how high we “ascended,” we could never be God, who is beyond this universe by definition and by logic.

Read this article by Eric Betz that was published on September 10, 2020, and is called The Big Freeze: How The Universe Will Die. 

“The comos may never end.  But if you were immortal, you’d probably wish it would.  Our comos’ final fate is a long and frigid affair that astronomers call the Big Freeze, or Big Chill.

“It’s a fitting description for the day when all heat and energy is evenly spread over incomprehensibly vast distances.  At this point, the universe’s final temperature will hover just above absolute zero…

“No normal matter will remain in this final “Dark Era” of the universe, which will last far longer than everything that came before it.  And the second law of thermodynamics tells us that in this time frame, all energy will ultimately be evenly distributed.  The cosmos will settle at its final resting temperature, just above absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible.”

We would always fall short, and we would turn ourselves into an unrecognizable, freakish shadow of what we once were.  What would we do when we hit the limits of the universe?  Would there be more than one of us?  Is this universe big enough for so many little gods?

Ultimately, our greatest problem is unsolvable by science.  The moral problem of man has its roots in a spiritual problem.  We are not in right relationship with God, and we are wicked.  Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can an Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?  Then you could do good who are accustomed to doing evil.”  God is not being bitter here.  He is putting His finger on the problem.

1 Corinthians 15:50 says, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”  Truth cannot be redefined to our liking.  Only truth can fix our moral problem, and without God, we are woefully short in that department.

If we do not have God, then the best we can do is become stuck in a material universe as fallen beings with no way out, that is, a prison universe, and waiting for an inevitable end of all things.  Who wants to be an immortal sinner who has ceased to enjoy life a 1,000 years ago, or a billion?  Who wants to be in the vice of the Big Freeze, unable to do anything but exist?

God loves us, God loves you, too much to leave us to ourselves.  He has promised to bring us to immortality and a perfect society in the way that is best for us, and in a way that works.  Perhaps, hell is best thought of as what this universe will become when God takes whosoever believes in Him into the Final State of the New Heavens and New Earth.  Or, perhaps, that is only wishful thinking.  Perhaps, we should turn back now and take His hand, and His offer to become a part of His family.

Part 2 Stuck audio

What Does God Really Want from Me? Part 6

1 Peter 4:10-11.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, February 20, 2022.

We continue today looking at the third purpose of serving one another selflessly through the natural and spiritual gifts that God has given us.  We are going to go back to 1 Peter 4, which we looked at during the purpose of spiritual growth.  You might read verses 7-9 just to refresh yourself on the context.

God gives gifts among us

Peter has been teaching us that a follower of Jesus will live in the light of the truth that all things are under the judgment of God.  Instead of looking at the things of this world and this life with the eyes of flesh, we look at them for the purposes of Christ. 

Part of that is loving one another.  In verse 10, Peter points each one of us to the gifts that we have received from God, and he tells us to use them to serve one another.  This is his main point.  It reminds us that we have the gifts we have in our life for God’s purpose and not just to bless ourselves.

Before we get into serving one another, notice at the end of verse 10 the phrase that Peter uses to describe how we should serve, “as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”

Everything started and will end with the grace of God.  Peter tells us that it is a manifold grace.  The word manifold means that there are different kinds of God’s grace and lots of them.  They are spread all over the world and some of those are gifts are within ourselves.  We have received them from God.  Imagine all of the things that are the grace of God that are all around us, and which we often take for granted.  This great diversity of God’s grace comes to all of us.  However, part of this sea of grace in which we swim is a particular gift that God gives to each one of us.

The word that is used for gift is where we get the word charisma.  Now, there is a Greek word for a gift that emphasizes that it is something that has been given.  However, the word used for gift here emphasizes that it is a result of grace.  It is literally the word grace and a suffix that tells us it is a result of grace, a gracious thing, thus a gift that has been given to us.

This word is used by Paul in the context of spiritual gifts, but it doesn’t only mean spiritual gifts like: healing, prophecy, a word of wisdom, and all the others.  It is a general term that speaks to both the natural and the spiritual gifts that God has given us.  The gifts that He has spread out among us are just a small part of His provision of a smorgasbord of grace.

Now, Peter gives two examples of gifts in verse 11: the gift of speaking, and the gift of serving.  These gifts are not a badge of honor to distinguish us from one another, but as an empowerment to do a service for God among one another.  This empowerment, or enabling, is two-fold.

First, there is the giving of the gift into our life.  Peter tells us to be good stewards, good managers, of this gift that God has given us, and to use it to serve others.  This is a way in which we love one another as he told us in verse 8.  However, it takes time to discover the gift that God has put in you.  Am I a stingy manager, or am I a manager who is using all of the stock for my own pleasure?  Am I a faithful manager who is serving others on behalf of Jesus?

Second, there is an enabling that comes from God as we step forward in faith to exercise our gift.  He enables us in the moment of serving and speaking.  In verse 11, Peter says that we should do so with the strength, and ability, which God supplies. 

It can be easy to be intimidated and shrink away from trying to bless others, but God is calling us to step out in faith out of a motivation of loving one another, and a motivation of faith in God’s enabling.

We must always keep this ultimate purpose in mind.  Serving others is God’s purpose in my life, but it serves a greater purpose too.  It brings glory to God the Father through Jesus Christ.  As Christians, we are representatives of Jesus.  It is important that we are connected to him, growing to be like him, and serving like him.

Just as the only way to the Father is through Jesus, so the only way to bring glory to Him is through Jesus.  Jesus is the solid ground (foundation) upon which we stand, and He is the strength and empowerment by which we do so.  Also, He is the one that we will be like when He is finished working on us in this life.  He is the one to whom belongs all the glory, and all the power of ruling, in this universe. 

Always remember that when you serve others, you enter into this holy act of bringing glory to God and take your place beside the Lord Jesus Christ.  May God help us to selflessly serve one another and bring glory to God the Father!

Serve part 6 audio

Refusing to Repent

Mark 1:14-15; Matthew 11:20-24.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on October 10, 2021.

Repentance in the Bible is not just a word that means to change your mind.  The etymology of the word breaks down into that concept, but the biblical texts make it clear that a change in mind needed to include a change in action, i.e., a real change of mind that involved remorse over error and desire for the righteousness of God.

When we think about the Garden of Eden, we see that Adam and Eve are place in a paradise and have perfect fellowship with God.  However, they are cast out of this paradise because they rebelled against God.  On top of this separation, a curse is placed upon the world, Adam and Eve, as well as the devil.  The Bible calls mankind to repentance, and proper repentance will involve turning away from our ways, and back to God and His ways.  When we do that, God helps us to get back “home.”  Yes, a person may have never been a believer when they turn to faith in Christ, but in a very real sense, salvation is coming back home where we were meant to be and what is good and right.  Only God can help us know how to get back home as an individual or humanity as a whole.

Easier said than done, eh?  Let’s look at our first passage today.

Jesus calls us to repentance

When Jesus started preaching, he called people to repentance (vs. 15).  In fact, repentance was the core of the message that he proclaimed.  He is essentially saying, “Change your mind and believe God’s Word!”  We will come back to this in a moment.

First, let’s ask ourselves, “How many things am I doing because I don’t really believe what God’s Word says?”  This is important because many people who say they believe in God’s Word fail to actually do what it says.  When you ask them why, it always boils down to some kind of excuse.  “God can’t expect me to …”  Anything that follows those words is just me rejecting God’s Word.  Let’s put that on the back burner for a bit and let it simmer.

In the first century AD, the times were changing.  They were changing specifically because God was beginning to do something different.  Israel’s service under the law was coming to an end.  They needed to step into a “mature son” status.  You see, God’s goal is not for mankind to be laboring under 613 laws on into eternity.  Like parents giving their children a bed time, it is not their intention that their kids will always go to bed at 9 PM, or whatever, when they become adults.  Instead, they hope to train them in good habits so that they can make good decisions for themselves later.  This is the picture of a mature son, one who is able to step into the family business and even run it, without running it into the ground.

The times were changing for the Gentiles too.  For over a millennium, they had been stumbling in the dark of false religion, worshipping false gods, and chasing false hopes.

How did they get in that situation?  When 8 humans stepped off Noah’s ark, all mankind knew the truth of God.  Over the years, different families began to wander away from the truth of God, until they were seduced to reject God’s command and build a tower to the heavens.  In an attempt to connect with “gods” other than the true God, they rebelled against the King of Heaven.  This brought judgment and scattering.  Like the casting out of the original parents, the Gentiles are cast out of favor with God.  He gives them over to their faulty thinking, and the doctrine of demons.  They end up in a place of letting go of the truth and embracing lies, walking in darkness, and their minds debased.  God was gearing up to change this through Jesus.

Israel and the Gentiles were actually in the same boat spiritually.  We would expect the Gentiles to be lost and far from God, but Israel had the truth of God and gave lip service to it.  Yet, Israel had become lost like the blind nations around them.  They did so by layering their own reasoning over the top of God’s Word.  Little by little they had created a false system that only paid precious little tribute to the blazing truth delivered by Moses.  Yet, despite this, God was ready to bring the grace of truth to them.  Always remember this, in your life, or the life of a nation, the world, there always comes a day when God steps in.  He does so to change the situation.  The question is, “What will you do in that critical time?”  Listen, friend, none of us can change ourselves, but we can believe God when He purposes to change us.  This is what Jesus, and John the Baptist, were doing.  They were telling people to come and receive from God the grace of the changing of their situation.  They could go from being lost without hope, eating pig slop, in destitution, to coming home to the Father where they belonged.

Jesus tells us to repent, and believe in the Gospel.  The Gospel, the good news, is that both Jews and Gentiles can now enter into the Kingdom that God had promised through the prophets.  It was happening in their day!  Imagine how incredible this must have sounded.  For 400 years before John the Baptist, Israel had not had a true prophet give them a new word from God.  For 600 years, they had been under the thumb of the Gentile powers.  Even before that, their kings had been mostly evil and the nation languished under the lack of righteousness and favor from God.  It was during this time that God promised Israel through His prophets that an Anointed King would come forth to save Israel and even the Gentiles.  He would fix all that is wrong with the world under the administration of a global messianic kingdom.  However, precious few qualified to enter this kingdom because most people had quit truly believing.

Israel and the Gentiles represent two classes of people.  Those who have the truth, some believing, but most not.  And, those who are trapped in the lies and ignorance that they have inherited from their father, who inherited it from their father, on and on.  Both classes can be boiled down to the essential problem: they are not believing God.  So, the bad news is that our sins separate us from God and His coming Kingdom, but the good news is that we can participate in it if we will repent.

The key to the Kingdom promised by God is to repent and believe Him.  Change your mind about all the ways in which you have not believed Him, and start believing Him in your life.

Repentance is a little different for each one.  A gentile would have to leave his religion and embrace a new religion, the truth.  Whereas, an Israelite would have to let go of some tradition, but others they would keep.  In essence, they would get back to the simple truth of God’s Word instead of following the human reasoning of rabbis.

In the first century AD, God was giving a new prophecy, a new decree.  The Law of Moses was ending with its sacrificial system, dietary laws, and laws of cleansing.  It was time to enter the Kingdom of God.  No one would get in (gets in) because of their race, religion, or pedigree.  Jew and Gentile alike can only get in through repentance and believing God’s call to enter the Kingdom.  Particularly, He requires all men everywhere to believe that Jesus was sent by Him to be the Anointed King over that Kingdom.  To believe this is to become something radically different than you were the day before.

Now, let’s go to Matthew 11:20-24.

Jesus rebukes the squandering of grace

When you don’t take advantage of grace, you don’t realize how important it was when you had it.  Like the prodigal son, most in Israel had wasted the immense grace that God had given them as a people.  They were headed the wrong way and would miss out on the Kingdom if they didn’t change.

Jesus points out that the cities of the Galilee had received a large measure of grace in the fact that Jesus did most of his ministry and miracles in them.  If you were to plot the ministry of Jesus geographically and by amount of time, you would see that the cities of the Galilee received the lion share of it.  Why?  Most likely because Jerusalem rejected him and tried to kill him when he went to it and its surrounds.  The grace of God was there for them, but they kept pushing it away, and therefore others received more grace than they would have.

It is not enough to be the recipient of a lot of grace.  We can make our prayers focus on asking for more grace, but we should be careful.  What are you doing with the grace that He is giving you?  Are you pushing it away like Jerusalem, or are you sucking it up like the cities of Galilee and yet not truly believing in Jesus?  The cities of Galilee were fortunate because of the hardness of other cities, but that just puts them in a place of being even more accountable.

Jesus warns Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum that they are headed for a harsh judgment.  There are two aspects to the judgment of God.  There are temporal judgments that happen throughout life and attempt to draw us back to God.  Like a shot across the bow, they are to get our attention, and warn us of a greater judgment looming over us.  The second aspect is eternal judgment.  This is a final judgment and it is too late to repent when you receive it.

These temporal judgments are times when God holds us accountable for our choices, good or bad.  I believe that America is in such a time.  We are under the temporal judgment of God.  What we do today, repent or continue in obstinacy, will determine what we experience next.  Yes, this is a dangerous time because choices have consequences.  However, even now God is offering us grace by showing us how great our sin has become.

Clearly, Jesus is looking ahead to the eternal judgment because he speaks of Sodom.  Sodom was no longer in existence.  There could be no more temporal judgments for Sodom.  She was in Hades awaiting the Judgment Day in which they would receive their eternal judgment.

So, what is meant by this statement?  “It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.”  I believe it is left cryptic on purpose.  It is intended first to shock the hearer, and second to warn them of harsher judgment.  How could it be harder for a person from Capernaum to survive The Judgment Day than a person from Sodom?  And, what would that look like; what does that mean?  Again, it is not spelled out.  However, the power is in neutralizing that inane ability of people to look at others and think they are better than them for all the wrong reasons.  Sodom is surely in big trouble when it comes to The Judgment Day, but Capernaum was in even bigger trouble.  Are the cities of America in any less trouble?

We didn’t have the physical ministry of Jesus like they did, but we have received far more grace than Sodom, and many other cities of this world.  In fact, we should not take credit for the great amount of grace we have received.  Like Capernaum, we have received such great grace because it was actively being rejected and pushed away by other places.  To have received great grace is to be held to a much higher standard at Judgment Day because God is just and hands down judgments that are righteous.

Repentance is better late than never.  We have received a great light.  The Gospel has been powerfully preached all across this great land.  However, we have been rejecting the truth of Christ and his rule.  We have been refusing to enter the Kingdom of God as decreed by the Father, and we have attempted to blaze our own path to an alternate Kingdom of our own making.

The Kingdom of God is both present and not yet.  Those who truly believe can participate spiritually in the Kingdom of God, while we await the physical return of Jesus.  Meanwhile, we live out our faith in Jesus through daily repentance.  To enter the people of God is to join a group of repenters, penitents.  The problem is that we are blind to all the ways we are rebelling against God’s truth.  In His grace, He works by His Holy Spirit to open our eyes.  Thus, we are to be walking in repentance daily.  Always humbly keeping our eyes on Him.

I hope that you are part of the repentant remnant in this land that is believing God.  The beauty is that during temporal judgments you can still repent and believe God.  If you tarry too long, temporal judgments become eternal judgments for some.  Even now, many are dying and entering into eternity.  What will their judgment be?  Those who believe God will do the works of faith, the works of God.  May the Lord help us!

Repent audio