The Acts of the Apostles 70

Subtitle: Paul Returns to Antioch

Acts 18:12-22.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 30, 2024.

In our passage today, Paul finishes his 2^nd Missionary Journey, which has taken him through the central area of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and throughout the coastal cities of Greece.

We pick up with him ministering in the Greek city of Corinth, where the Lord has told him not to fear because there are many in the city who belong to Him.  Paul ends up ministering there for at least a year and a half.  This is what sets up our story in verse 12.

Let’s look at our passage.

A charge is brought against Paul (v. 12-17)

There is a reason why Paul spent longer in Corinth than he did in many other cities.  It has nothing to do with God loving Corinth more than other cities.  Part of it has to do with the receptivity of the people in the city.  However, how many places did Paul not visit?

The good thing is that these cities generally became hubs of evangelism into the region around them.  Paul isn’t the only one that can tell people about Jesus.  Aren’t you thankful for that?  Paul was faithful share the Good News of Jesus to others who would then become faithful in sharing such to new people.  This was true within nations, regions, cities, and even within the lives of you ministers like Timothy and Luke.

There is a passage in 1 Thessalonians 1:8 where Paul is praising the church there for its faith and evangelism.  He says that “from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place. Your faith toward God has gone out…”

We are not given a direct timeline, but we know that Paul, believers of the Jews and Gentile God-fearers had separated from the synagogue at some point.  The church of Corinth essentially began in the house of a man named Titius Justus next to the synagogue.  Even Crispus who was the synagogue ruler had believed and joined these followers of Messiah Jesus.

We eventually come to this scene where the leaders of the synagogue have brought Paul up on charges before the Roman Proconsul, Gallio.  There charge is stated in verse 13.  They accused him of persuading people to worship God against the law.  It wasn’t against the law to worship God or the gods.  However, the Romans did have a policy that only religions recognized by Caesar could be promoted.  This was not about Romans approving of a religion, but rather about keeping control over disputes, uprisings, and unrest.  They had recognized Judaism as a legitimate religion that had a certain amount of protection under Rome.  Thus, the charge is about Paul starting a new religion.

This reminds me of China’s policy.  There it is illegal to proselytize people to any religion.  However, if a person asks you about your religion, then you are free (it is lawful for you) to speak about your religion to them.  It is different, but in general, it is a similar control mechanism.

We are told that Paul begins to give his defense, but is interrupted by Gallio.  Paul is not promoting a new religion.  He actually represents all that the people of Israel had been praying for and preaching about for millennia, the coming of Messiah.  This is just an in-house disagreement over who Messiah is.  Yet, Gallio doesn’t give Paul a chance to defend himself.

Gallio points out that he would hear the case, if it had something to do with a wrong that Paul had done to them or some knowledge they had of a wicked crime that Paul had committed.  However, he then warns that he is not interested in judging matters that have to do with words, names and Jewish law.  Of course, this is all about Paul naming Jesus as the Messiah.

Now, it is very likely that Paul looks even more Jewish than the Corinthians Jews that are charging him with promoting an illegal religion.  Paul didn’t quit being Jewish.  He dressed like a first-century Jew; he talked like one.  I believe that Gallio sees a group of Jews trying to charge another Jew that is clearly not from Corinth, i.e., he is actually from Judea.  He either knows this is a squabble among Jews about Jewish things instinctively, i.e., from past experience, or he has information from others.  Of course, their Jewishness is not the reason that there is a dispute between them and Paul.  This is a problem for all people of every kind.  We can be very creative in our ways of disputing with one another.  Regardless, Gallio immediately sees that this is another one of those internal Jewish matters, and he is not interested in being dragged into it.

On one hand, these are proper words.  The government of a people should have no part in judging, or controlling matters of faith.  Of course, if our disputes over religion break into criminal activity- God forbid!- then government should intervene in regards to the criminal activity.   Again, I will point to China as a place where Christians are told what they can teach and promote in their churches.  This is inappropriate for any government, much less one that is atheistic.

On the other hand, I get the sense that this has nothing to do with Gallio trying to do the right thing and give justice.  It seems that he is more annoyed with “these Jews and their squabbles.”  Note that, just years prior, Claudius Caesar had made the Jews leave Rome because of disputes over a man named “Chrestus” (see last weeks sermon on this).  Gallio has some knowledge about this rising dispute within Judaism that threatens the precious Pax Romana.

Let me put a finer point on this.  The squabble is the result of God moving in this Corinthian synagogue and some of the Jews didn’t like it.  Gallio is more like these Jews he is standing against than he would like to admit.  Yes, from time to time, we see the Roman government helping to shield Paul from his fellow Jews.  However, this very same Rome will eventually put Paul, Peter, and others to death.  Rome didn’t like this move of God any more than some of the Jews in the synagogue.  Rome executed Jesus who is the very essence of God’s move in His Church. 

This is a spiritual dynamic.  Those who are resisting the work of God are a hodge-podge of many powers, beliefs, and people.  They don’t always like each other.  It is a very dog-eat-dog arena.  At this time, Rome is the top dog, and it is letting these Jews charging Paul know that it is in charge.  So, let us not imagine that there is anything more going on here than exactly that.

We are then told that Gallio drives Paul’s accusers from the judgment seat, the bema seat (bay-muh).  No doubt, this means he had some guards do so.  They are driven from the place of presenting cases back into the area of spectators. 

This is a human bema seat, and not even the highest one at that time.  Any decision by Gallio can be appealed to Caesar by a Roman citizen.  It is one thing to receive or not receive justice in the bema seats of this world.  However, one day, we all will stand before the bema seat (the judgment seat) of Messiah Jesus.  Paul reminded the Roman believers of this in Romans 14:10.  “But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you view your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” (LSB).  Paul reminds them that both sides of any matter will stand before Jesus.  What will he say of your squabble then? 

Jesus warned us of judging one another.  He didn’t say we shouldn’t judge because there is something inherently wrong with making judgments.  Rather, he points out that we are going to receive the type of judgment we give to others, and that we will receive it in the measure  (much or little) that we give to others.  This is a shot across the bow of every human being from the One who will sit on the greatest bema seat ever raised up.  Jesus warns us that he will give us what we gave to others.  This ought to humble all of us, but it generally doesn’t.  Most people give a “meh” over such statements and continue on judging others unfairly and harshly.  The sad thing is that, when Jesus judges them, it will be harsh, but completely fair.

We have all failed in this.  Can we be freed from that future judgment?  Yes!  The Holy Spirit brings stuff to our mind from time to time.  It is called conviction.  Conviction is not condemnation.  Condemnation tells you all the ways you have failed and tells you that you can never get out of it.  It motivates you to quit and go your own way.  Condemnation is not from God.  It is from the devil and our own soul.  Conviction is different though it too starts with how we have failed.  The Holy Spirit points out our failures so that we will feel sorrow, repent and put our faith in Jesus.  When we confess that Jesus was right and turn to him for forgiveness, then he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).  “God, I was so judgmental.  Please forgive me because I don’t want to be that kind of person, much less be judged by Jesus when I stand before him.”  Of course, the Holy Spirit will also lead you to tell people you are sorry for your harsh judgments.  This is called works that are worthy of true repentance.

In 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, it says, “Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for [d]his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” (LSB).  The point is that we are to do what we do to please Jesus.  We must be less concerned about dragging others before courts in order to obtain justice, than we are about the day in which we will personally be judged by Jesus. 

The amazing thing is that God created humans in such a way that we can be redeemed!  No matter how broken you are, your life can be redeemed (has been redeemed by Jesus already) when you turn to him in faith.

The ruler of the synagogue, Sosthenes, is then beaten.  The New King James Version mentions that this is done by “Greeks.”  However, the word “Greeks” is not some of the ancient manuscripts.  Scholars are left with trying to determine what was the original wording?  The manuscripts that don’t have this word essentially say that “they all took Sosthenes…and beat him before the judgment seat.”  So, is the emphasis upon the Greeks doing it, or was it a simple “they all?”

It seems most likely that the word Greeks was added rather than removed.  There is no evidence that scribes were purposefully removing words from the original writings of Scriptures ever.  So, how could they justify an addition?  Sometimes a scribe would put an explanatory note in the margins of a manuscript.  Later scribes who were copying the manuscript before it became too old to be useable would generally continue the note in the margin.  However, some would put the word in the text, perhaps unsure as to why it was put in the margin or accepting it as inspired testimony from the past.

Why would a scribe feel the need to emphasize this was the Greeks doing this?  The “they all” in the scene could be read as those who were on the plaintiff side.  This would have Jewish people beating up a Jewish ruler in the court.  This seems improbable, though we could suppose some sort of anger that they were made to look bad in public.

The Greek insertion, or marginal commentary, would help to make clear what was happening.  Sosthenes is attacked by the Gentile observers as a public rebuke of bringing a frivolous case before the Proconsul.

This penchant for mob violence is a theme throughout the New Testament, but also in the testimony of history.  Paul and the Christians are not on the side of beating up their accusers, and neither should we be.  It is not good to be “in one accord” (v. 12) when we are doing evil because we will find it rebounding back at us (v. 17).

There is a possibility that this Sosthenes later became a Christian.  First, we already know that Crispus, who also was a synagogue ruler, had become a Christian.  Secondly, in 1 Corinthians 1:1, Paul mentions a fellow brother Sosthenes that is with him when he greets the Corinthian believers.  I wonder if this beating at the hands of the Gentiles was used by Jesus to get Sosthenes attention?  Regardless of whether this is the same Sosthenes or not, this is the kind of God we serve.  In His mercy, God allows hurts and pains to come into our life because they soften us up to what His Holy Spirit is trying to say to us.  In fact, Saul of Tarsus, Paul, came to know Jesus through an eye-damaging affair, and that was done by Jesus himself.  God is not looking for reasons to reject us.  He is faithful to work daily through the good things of life, and through the bad, to draw us into relationship with him, to repentance.

Paul returns to Antioch (v. 18-22)

At this point the story turns and moves very rapidly.  Paul is going back to his home church in Syrian Antioch.  However, he takes time to go to Jerusalem first.

Verse 18 tells us that Paul “still remained a good while.”  This can be interpreted two different ways.  Verse 11 tells us that Paul stayed in Corinth for 1.5 years.  Then, we had the event before Gallio, and then, we have the statement that Paul still remained a good while.

These can be seen as sequential.  Paul was there for 18 months, and then, this charge before Gallio occurred.  Following that, Paul still remained a good while.  That last phrase is nebulous, but it would be interpreted to mean that Paul was most likely there for another 6 months to a year, for a total of 2 to 3 years.

However, verse 11 can be seen as a kind of thesis statement for the section that follows.  Overall, Paul stayed there for 18 months.  During that time, this event before Gallio occurred.  Following it, Paul stayed there for a good long time, but still encapsulated within the year and a half.

Regardless of how long Paul stayed in the city, it is clear that Corinth was very open to the Gospel, even though it was a very sinful city.  Sometimes people who are in the depths of sin are more open to the Gospel because they are daily suffering the bondage and ill-effects of it.  We can’t always know the people or places that will be receptive to the Gospel.  We can only be faithful to follow the leading of Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

Luke mentions hair being cut off in Cenchrea because of a vow.  Cenchrea was a port city to the east of Corinth.  Luke spends very little time on this, so neither will I.  It seems to serve as the reason why Paul will later tell the Ephesians that he cannot stay with them, i.e., the vow requires him to go to Jerusalem within a certain time.

Some will try to say that it wasn’t Paul who made the vow.  However, this is highly unlikely.  All the other verbs are clearly telling us what Paul did.  Even when it mentions Aquila, it does so in a prepositional phrase.  It literally says that Paul took leave of the brethren and sailed for Syria with Priscilla and Aquila.  The most natural way of reading the hair cutting (it is a participle) is that it is describing Paul.

Some immediately connect this to the Nazirite vow spoken of in the Old Testament.  It involved not cutting the hair until the end of the vow, as well as not eating or drinking of the fruit of the grape vine, nor touching any dead body.  However, a person could make a vow regarding their hair without it being a Nazirite vow.  If it was a Nazirite vow, it begs the question as to why the hair was cut off in Cenchrea and not Jerusalem.  A Nazarite vow requires that the hair be cut and offered up with a sacrifice at Jerusalem.

We really are missing too much information to be dogmatic about any of this.  From time to time, Jews would make a vow to Yahweh. Typically, they were either consecrating themselves to a task, or there was something they were desiring from God.  So, what is Paul doing?

Some are troubled by this as if a vow represents Paul hypocritically lapsing into Judaism.  This is a nonsense argument.  First of all, Paul’s teaching was not about getting rid of anything that looked like Jewish things.  He was concerned that certain Jews were trying to require that Gentiles follow the requirements of the Jewish Law in order to be acceptable to Jesus. 

Thus, Paul’s argument to Gentile Galatians is that they should not be circumcised.  They are acceptable to Jesus by the spiritual circumcision of the Spirit, not of the flesh.  He even warns them that they are in danger of cutting themselves off from Christ in such acts.  However, we should not make the non sequitur conclusion that Paul would say the same thing to a Jewish Christian who had a new baby.  “Whatever you do, don’t circumcise that baby or you will have nothing with Christ!”  The church in Jerusalem was made up of a large majority of Jews.  They still did Jewish things, dressed Jewish, went to the temple, etc.  However, they were putting their faith in Jesus now.

Ask yourself, is making a vow to God a Jewish thing or a Christian thing, a law thing or a Spirit thing?  It is clear that many people have made fleshly vows to God, thinking that they can manipulate Him, or impress Him into giving them what they want.  If this is your purpose, then you will be unsuccessful.  In fact, people have made foolish vows.  We are warned about how we make our vows.  We need to do so humbly and led by the Holy Spirit.

There is a holy place in our relationship with God where the Spirit of God moves upon our heart and we vow to put our cell phone away for a week, or social media usage.  This is not a Christian thing or a Jewish thing.  It is a person-having-a-relationship-with-God thing, a person who is having a real relationship with God.  This is not something that everybody has to do.  It is a personal thing that surfaces in the life of a person as they serve Jesus.  This would have been Paul’s heart in the matter.

Next, we see that the ship makes a stop in Ephesus.  It appears they are stopping for supplies, trade, or both.  Paul took advantage of this to go to the synagogue and reason with the Jews and Gentiles who were there.  It appears that the Ephesian synagogue was open to hearing more.  They wanted him to stay longer, but he declined due to a timely need to go to Jerusalem, most likely having to do with his vow.

This may be why we are told that Priscilla and Aquila remain in Ephesus.  They could continue their trade of tentmaking while helping the Ephesian believers to understand how the work of Christ fulfilled the Scriptures and what God wanted believers to do in this new era of Messiah.

However, Paul does promise to return to them, God willing.  We do not need to turn this into a required ending to every sentence, but every servant of the Lord needs to have this humble attitude.  Of course, God often works through our godly desires and intentions.  However, He sometimes has a different plan than we do.  Paul is not rejecting them by not staying.  Rather, he is fulfilling something else between him and God.  When that is satisfied, he will attempt to come back, but even that is dependent upon what the Lord allows or tells him to do.

We should note that the Gospel is not dependent upon any one person.  Yes, Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles, and God works powerfully through him among them.  Yet, God’s sending of Paul to another place besides Ephesus does not limit what He can do there.  Even people who are being led by the Holy Spirit need to remain humble about what they think is God’s will.

I should remind us that the Holy Spirit forbade Paul from going into the province of Asia, of which Ephesus was a major city, on the first missionary journey.  Yet, he is now here speaking to the Ephesians about the Gospel.  So, we see God’s timing without explanation.  In chapter 19, God will allow Paul to come back and spend 2 years here on his third missionary journey.  Thus, “God willing” is a phrase that recognizes the sovereignty of God in matters of direction and timing.

Paul boards the ship again and sails to the cost of Judea, landing at Caesarea.  They travel from the coast up to Jerusalem.  To give you an idea, the temple mount is about 2,428 feet above sea level. 

Jerusalem is not mentioned by name here.  Rather, it speaks of him greeting the church.  No doubt, he also gives a description of his journey and what God was doing among the people of Greece.

Paul then goes down to Syrian Antioch (modern day Antakya Türkiye), his home church at this point.  It is good to have a home, and a home church as a base of operations.  It represents a safe place, a strengthening place, a re-energizing place, and a place of people who love and support us.  He could share with them the results of their labor of financial support and prayers for him and his missionary group.

We might even think of that as we go out from our churches each week into our daily lives.  We return again, whether at the end of the week or periodically throughout the week.  It is meant to be a place of people being real and loving with one another.  May we be a people who are quick to repent, quick to forgive, and quick to support God’s work in one another’s lives.

Return to Antioch audio

The Sermon on the Mount XVI

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy III

Matthew 7:1-6.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 7, 2024.

We are going to look at the second area that is a pitfall for hypocrisy in our life today.  It is in the area of relationships with other people, particularly difficult people. 

Even when we hold people in higher esteem than things (see the last two sermons in this series), there are certain people that we have trouble loving, or even getting along with them.  This area of how we deal with difficult people in our life can set us up for becoming hypocritical.

Let’s look at our passage.

In our relationship with people (v. 1-6)

Most people in the world are very familiar with the first two words of Matthew 7:1.  They can quote these two words far quicker than John 3:16.  “Judge not!”  Or, a loose paraphrase, “Don’t be judging me!”  Of course, this is not the whole sentence, and the sentence separated from the context can be misleading.

Think about when you were a kid.  If you selectively picked words out of what your parents said, and pretended like that is what they said, would they be happy with that?  Parent:  “Son, under no circumstances are you to go to the party at Bobby’s house.  I know that his parents are gone for the weekend.”  Son thinks to himself.  “hmm.  Dad said “go to the party at Bobby’s house!”  No parent is going to accept that kind of selective hearing.  The son will be in trouble.  This is what many do with the Bible when they take those first two words as a shield for all manner of sins.  “Don’t judge me!”

However, this is not exactly what Jesus is getting at, and the rest of the verses make this abundantly clear.  Jesus gives us a maxim, or pithy saying, that is very general, but it gets you thinking.  Notice that the rest of the verse says, “Judge not…that you be not judged.”    There is a connection here between the first judgment and a second judgment that will come later.  The emphasis is not on a blanket statement of never making a judgment.  Rather, it is an emphasis your judgment being directly connected to a judgment that will come later.   It is better to see this as a strong warning that cannot be separated from the consequence of being judged yourself.  It calls for us to look down the road at how my current judgment of a person could affect my own judgment.

It's purpose is not to create a world where we never make judgments, but rather a world in which we are all very careful in the judgments that we do make.  It is sort of like a sign that says, “Road closed, bridge out ahead.”  Many people who take the time to read that sign will go a different route and save themselves a lot of time.  However, another person may read that sign and drive on by it, not because they ignored the sign, but because they considered it and recognized that their house is on this side of the bridge.  It is okay for them to drive by the sign.  Yet, notice that they will have taken the time to consider the sign and the warning it was giving.

Verse 2 drives home this point of a consequential judgment, which is what Jesus is really getting at.  Essentially, he tells us that we will receive back the kind of judgment and the measure of judgment that we give to others.  Thus, if you are tough in your judgments of others and you do it a lot, then expect a lot of tough judgments coming back your way.

This begs the question.  Just who is this future judge that Jesus has in mind?  We might imagine that he is simply saying that we should be judgmental to others so that they will not be judgmental towards us.  However, our life experience tells us that this is not how it generally works.  No matter how well you do something, there will be people who like it and people who don’t like it.   People’s judgments of you often have nothing to do with how you have judged them or others. 

Jesus is talking about God judging us, whether His temporal judgments during our life, or His eternal judgment at the end of our life.  Be careful how you judge people because you are going to receive from God the same kind of judgment, and in the same measures, that you gave to others.  Can you survive that?

This does not mean that we can cause God to judge that our sin is okay by not judging the sin of others in our life.  However, this ties to his statement, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”  He doesn’t mean from others, but from God.  Of course, cursed are the unmerciful for they shall not receive mercy.

So he is concerned with how we judge and our quickness to do so.  We are not being wise and are not carefully thinking through what God might think about this.

In verses 3 to 5, we see that Jesus does not intend for us never to judge the actions of a person.  He is rather concerned with our hypocritical tendency never to judge ourselves the way we judge others.

I have actually had a co-worker come up to me and ask me to get a wood chip out of their eye.  He was working with a chainsaw, and a chip landed between his eyelid and eyeball.  There was no damage, but the eye was extremely aggravated, and he had been trying to remove it by himself for a while.   It was large enough that I was able to sweep it out with my finger.  I still remember his sigh of relief when I got it out.

This illustration of specks and planks that Jesus gives are actually about sins and faults that we may see in one another.  They are not good (literally or metaphorically), and life is better when they are removed.  Yet, we can be guilty of having great mercy, and seeing the best motivations, in all that we do, and then having no mercy for others (at least for certain others that we don’t like).

You may be correct in your judgment that they have a fault, or a sin, in their eye.  However, you could be overlooking the fact that you have something much worse going on in  your own eye (life).  This does present a comical image of a guy who has a board sticking out of his eye and telling his brother that he has a speck in his eye.  “Hey, let me fix that speck for you!”

Jesus speaks about our motivation.  “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”  What is going on in your heart and life that you spend a lot of your time judging the condition of others, but you don’t even take a second to consider bigger issues in your own life?  If we took just one second to consider our own faults and sins, it might make us a different person.

He also touches on the audacity of it.  “Or how can  you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?”  Yeah, just how are you able to justify such hypocrisy?  Don’t you know that God sees your poor job of acting righteous?

Only a person who has cleared their own eye (or asked another to help them do it) can help another person clear theirs.  First of all, you can’t see clearly to fix someone’s speck when  you have a plank in your own eye.  Even if you genuinely wanted to help, you would only make things worse.  The power of having dealt with your own sin is that it helps you to be far more sensitive and careful towards others, instead of harsh and uncaring.

Jesus is not leading up to saying that we should never judge.  He is actually leading up to saying that we should spend time on fixing ourselves first, and then we will be able to rightly help our brother.  That will end up being a way that pleases God instead of bringing down His judgment upon us.

Verse 6 may look like it is unrelated, if you don’t look closely.  Even when you clear your own eye so that you can help your neighbor, you still need wisdom.  You may have a perfectly clear eye, have helped a thousand people clear their eyes.  You may even be a professional doctor of getting specks out of eyes.  But, the other person may not be interested in you removing their speck.  In fact, they may not agree that they have a speck.  Perhaps, they simply don’t like you and don’t want you poking and prodding in their eye.  We need the wisdom of God that is supplied by the Holy Spirit in our life.

Jesus uses the images of dogs and  swine.  Dogs represented people who had given themselves over to wickedness.  They are people who give no thought to God and His ways.  Instead, they love to do the opposite.  Swine were connected to Gentiles who were separated from God.  These are both pictures of the spiritual state of individuals who surely have many specks and planks in their eye.  Yes, they need them removed.  However, they won’t take kindly to it.  They will end up trampling you if you aren’t careful.  If a person is not ready to be helped, whether that is a lost person hearing the gospel, or a Christian brother who is offended and doesn’t want our help, then we should back off and pray for them.

Notice that he pictures it as throwing holy things to dogs.  The holy thing is helping a brother or sister remove moral specks or even character specks in their life.  Holy places require special caution.  When you are going to meddle in the spiritual life of a person, always remember that this is a place that God is working on them.  You represent a holy God who is wanting to help them become holy.  It is a holy work.  You may want to remove your shoes and tread lightly.  This is God’s work and you can help him only by being sensitive to that.

A follower of Christ should be able to help others because they have been working on themselves, and they are being careful to be led by God.

Let me close by dealing with Jesus referring to some people as dogs and swine.  We can be quick to be offended, but he is not saying that people are born dogs/swine, and will always be such.  Similar to the parable of the soils, the point is not that we are stuck in categories.  Rather, that people may be ready, they may not be ready.  They may be repentant, or they may be given over to sin at the moment.  There is a timing of God that all people who want to help others would do good to heed.  Wait for it.  Pray for it.  In fact, you may not be the one who God uses to help them remove the speck.  However, you have still helped them by being a person who prayed for them, and were careful not to injure them through insensitivity to your own sin and insensitivity to their readiness to receive help.

May God help us to judge carefully and have His heart of love for others.

Pitfalls for Hypocrisy audio

The Acts of the Apostles 51

Subtitle: Struck Down by God

Acts 12:20-25.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on August 13, 2023.

We are going to talk about the judgment of God today.  Judgment is not only about negative things.  It essentially speaks of a decision.  In a courtroom setting, a judge, or jury, will render a decision regarding what actually happened, and what will set it right.  Biblically speaking, we are to give the decision of God, Who is perfect righteousness and not a respecter of people.  He is not swayed by the rich and the powerful, but neither does He automatically give all decisions to poor people.  He renders a decision of truth and righteousness. 

Of course, not all judgments are between two parties.  God makes decisions regarding each of us as individuals.  He works in our lives to offer us a love of the truth.  Our decisions in response to His decisions will bring forth His next decision.

God's decisions can also differ in their permanence.  Some are quick and permanent such as Herod Agrippa's death in our passage today.  Other decisions are slower and less permanent, leaving greater room for repentance (God trying to get my attention), but in the end, they all lead to a permanent and final decision from God, one way or another.

Some struggle with cases where it seems that God allows evil to continue without judgment, and others struggle with situations in which it seems that God does not protect the righteous.  You may have noticed that I used the word "seems" in those sentences.  We don't know all of God's decisions, nor all of what God is doing.  Yet, we can be confident, as the Word of God reveals, that it is God's decision to work for the good of those who love Him and believe on Jesus, and that it is His decision to work for the destruction of those who refuse His mercy.

Only God is able to make decisions that affect the whole sea of humanity in a righteous way.  He deals with us as individuals, but He also deals with us as a part of a group (even many different groups).  Even with Artificial Intelligence, we will not be able to duplicate the wisdom of God.  So, let's not even try to build an AI god that we can bow down to in worship and receive decisions for all of humanity.  What do you think?  Is that a good plan as we go forward?  I think so.

We have already tried artificial gods.  What is the devil and his cohorts, but artificial gods, pretend gods.

In the end, the wicked will not go unpunished, and the righteous will receive the reward of God Himself.  Twice in Isaiah, as he comforts Israel with God's planned mercy, they are warned that there is no peace for the wicked.  In other words, it doesn't matter whether you are in Israel or the Church.  God will not give His peace to the wicked.  So, those who build wicked empires under the umbrella of either cannot claim the promises of God for mercy.  If they want those, they will need to repent of their wickedness and follow Jesus.  To the wicked, God will give no peace, but to the righteous, the repentant, He has peace like a river!

Let's look at our passage.

Herod Agrippa steps over the line (v. 20-23)

If you are trying to figure out where "the line" is, whether as a kid with your parents, an employee with a boss, or a person with God, we can always find the line by continuing to push forward.  You will find the line, but it will be after you have crossed it, after it is too late to help you (at least in that moment).  The repercussions of finding the line of God's grace are devastating, destructive, and often permanent.

Herod Agrippa I came on the scene of Israel relatively quickly from a standpoint of ruling.  Between 38 and 41 AD, he went from ruling over a small area around a city near Damascus to ruling over all of the territories that had been known as Israel.  Since the death of Herod the Great circa 1 BC, Israel had been broken up into at least four different kingdoms, sometimes ruled by Herod's offspring, and sometimes ruled by Roman appointed governors.  Thus, it had been 40 plus years since there was one king over all of Israel.

This caused many of the people to think that God was restoring the kingdom to them.  It helped that Herod Agrippa was very favorable towards the temple, its priests, the annual feasts, and he even would read The Law of Moses (Torah) during the feasts. It also helped that he had begun to deal with the apostles of Jesus.  This would make him a "Defender of the Faith." 

The Christians knew that they were mistaken.  God was not yet restoring the Kingdom.  The leaders of Israel would have to repent and believe on Jesus before "Times of Refreshing" could come from the Lord.

In his arrogance, Herod steps over the line and God removes him quickly (i.e., within three years, so much for the restored kingdom and the Defender of the Faith).  Israel would never again have a king ruling over all Israel.

Our story starts out by mentioning a tiff between Herod and the people of Tyre and Sidon, two cities north of Israel on the coast in what we would call Lebanon today.  We are not told why Agrippa is angry with them.  However, it affects their ability to obtain food, which mainly came from areas within Israel at that time.  Herod had clearly cut them off, and the city leaders are trying to get back into Herod's good graces so that they can have food again.  The first century Jewish historian Josephus tells us that Agrippa had been holding games in honor of Caesar.  During this time, the leaders of Tyre and Sidon talk Blastus, a personal aid to Herod, into helping them get back into his graces.  They put on a festival to celebrate people who are taking vows for the sake of Herod Agrippa's safety (how ironic).

We should notice that we keep running into people trying to curry favor with a higher power: Herod with Caesar, the leaders of Tyre and Sidon with Herod, and later we will see that there are also flatterers of Herod involved.   In this case, the festival is doing something religious to curry favor with a man.  This is a terrible motivation that would never be acceptable to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus tells us that those who swear before God, making oaths to Him, should not do that at all.  Rather, we should simply let our "‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’"  Vows fit in this category of oaths that people make before God.  Yet, we should note that we cannot control how God blesses.  You should be very wary of the idea of vowing to refrain from something or to do something, while asking God to honor it by giving another person safety.  Yes, we can pray for people, but that is far different than making public vows for the safety of a powerful figure.  There was nothing honorable or godly about what they are doing.

We should do what we can to glorify and to honor God, and how He blesses will be up to Him.  Some groups do this with the concept of indulgences.  They teach that you can give money or do certain acts that will help a loved one be released from "purgatory" sooner.    There are other groups that do the same thing with baptisms.  You can be baptized on behalf of someone who died long ago as an unbeliever.  God doesn't work that way.  We can pray and minister to people while they are alive, but once they have died there is nothing more we can do for them.

So, when you pray for people, you are asking God for grace in their life.  You may even be quite specific about the way in which you want God to help them.  Yet, we are always praying that God's will be done.  It is up to Him in the end.  We can't control it, or manipulate it by great spiritual feats of fasting etc.

In this case, the people of Tyre and Sidon are Gentile pagans.  They do not understand the way of the God of Israel, and their religious vows are before pagan deities.  Do they really care about Herod's safety?  They do so only so much as it turns into food for their cities.

Luke tells us that Agrippa addressed the people from his throne in his royal apparel.  His speech affects the people so much that they keep shouting out that this is the voice of a god and not a man.

We have some extra details from Josephus in his Antiquities.  Apparently, the robe of Herod was made entirely of silver in some kind of textured weave.  As he sat on his throne and addressed them, the morning light shown through to where he sat and shimmered of this silver clothing.  The crowd was actually put off by the display in shock at what they were seeing, almost horrified.  However, some flatterers of Herod began shouting out that he was more than a man.  Crowds can be easy to manipulate if you move at just the right time.  A couple of shouts here and there can get the pausing crowd to join in.  So, the crowd comes out of its shock and joins in declaring Herod a god.  Besides, won't he surely be pleased enough to give us food now?

Herod was clearly a master at the art of "shock and awe."  You flash your great power to intimidate the people.  "Look what I am driving."  "Look how much my suit costs."  "Look how many people are in my entourage."  "Look how hard it would be to get near me without dying."

The flash of power is an age-old technique that is used when the powerful are on the road, or when you come into their domain.  They always have opulent, impressive palaces.  This even happens in the United States of America.  We may not have kings and nobles, but we do have impressive palaces in the capitol cities of our States, and several palaces in Washington D.C.  These granite, domed tributes to power say to everyone who comes near, you are tiny people and we are amazing demi-gods.  Of course, they have these palaces at the expense of the people.

People currying favor from those flashing great power has always been a problem. Christians should be immune to this because of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.  However, we have many of our own religious palaces throughout the world, and many Christians are stuck in systems of currying favor with the powerful.  May God help us to wake up and repent!

We are told that Agrippa is "immediately" "struck" by an angel of the Lord.  It doesn't appear that the angel manifests, but rather operates from the spirit realm.  Josephus basically agrees with this.  He tells us that powerful stomach pains come upon Agrippa and he is taken from the place.  Over the course of the next five days, he endures torturous pains and finally dies.  This may seem to contradict Luke, but it doesn't actually.  Luke says that he is immediately struck by the angel, but then "he was eaten by worms and died."  Notice that being eaten by worms does not happen in a moment.  It is a process.  This is not a true contradiction, only further information.

We are also told that this happens because Herod did not give glory to God.  If everyone who didn't give glory to God had this happen, there would not be very many people on this planet.  This is a particular decision of the Lord.  We really need to be humble as we analyze and talk about the decisions of God.  You will never build a decision grid that help you know exactly what God will choose.  Some who appear to do worse things than Herod are not immediately struck, and others who appear to do less may be struck.  We can become stuck in the quagmire of trying to figure out the why and why not of God.  In this area, we simply need to trust Him and have a healthy Fear of the Lord in His ability to judge.

Now there are two problems here.  The willingness of powerful people to accept the adulations of the desperate people, and the willingness of people to idolize those in power.  There is very little looking to God, and very much looking to powerful people in our Republic.  Who should we blame more?  In Herod's case, he probably has more blame because of his knowledge of the Scriptures of God.  The people of Tyre and Sidon in general are not aware.  What about our Republic?  Are those in power more to blame or are we the people more to blame?  I would say that we are equally guilty because of the witness of God's Word throughout our States.

Give honor to whom honor is due, but there is a line between properly honoring people and giving them honor that should only be given to God.  I know; I know.  No one is bowing down and genuflecting to these people yet.  But, God knows our hearts.  There are far more people giving far more lip service to God than you may realize.  Our true devotion often goes to powerful people, even in the Church.  We must stop looking to governmental servants as if they are the gods that we must appease in order to obtain their good graces.  Rather, we must put our trust in God.

Jesus warned us in Luke 6:26, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets."  We need to be far more careful in our activity, whether as a person in authority, or people who are under that authority.

God is able to judge quickly, but even the long-lived are judged.  Don't be deceived.  God is not mocked.  In innumerable ways, there were decisions in the life of the long-lived, wicked person.  You may never have seen them, but they were there.  They then stand before Jesus.  He isn't impressed with all that they were.  God did make a decision, and it is a warning to us all.  Don't think that because you live long that God is saying that you are okay.  In fact, not everyone who dies young does so because God is judging them as wicked.  Sometimes the righteous are removed early in life to spare them from wicked things that are coming.

So, how do I know that I am good with Jesus?  You get on your face before Him and you pray through until His Spirit gives you the confidence that you have truly repented.  You know because you are in a day to day relationship with Him through the Spirit of God.

The Church continues in ministry (v. 24-25)

Well, so much for the restored kingdom, at least in those days.  We know that the kingdom of Israel will be restored at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  He will sit on his father David's throne ruling over Israel and the earth.

Luke now turns from such a gruesome scene to God's work among the believers, a much more wholesome affair.

We are told that the Word of God grew and multiplied, even as the words of Herod Agrippa came to an end.  God's Word is powerful because it comes from Him.  It is the power of God for salvation to those who believe its testimony about Jesus.

Yet, the Word of God does not spread itself.  God calls all believers to be part of His Gospel spreading work.  There are still a few people out there who need to hear God's Words of Life.  We must look for every opportunity to share.  As we do so, some will believe and be saved.  Where the word grows, the Church grows.  However, where the Word dies on the vine, the Church shrivels in true, spiritual power.

The problem is that we can't just take a Bible and memorize all the words to get spiritual power.  Paul said that, "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."  The words of the Bible were given by the Spirit of God.  They are spiritual words, and natural-minded people cannot perceive them properly.

We must never lose sight of this.  These are not just the words of men talking about natural things.

This is part of the problem in Christian academia.  We treat the Bible like it is just the words of men.  Yes, they give lip-service to God's involvement.  Yet, in so many ways, they give the greatest weight to the human element behind it.

I have seen this in Christian groups that wrestle with how to get our Republic back on track politically.  You can be talking about Jesus and someone will complain about it.  "Why are we talking about Jesus?"  Of course, the right answer is that we will not get this Republic back on track by ignoring him.  Yet, they will inevitably say something like this.  "I'm a Christian too, but what we really need to do is get more money in the hands of this political group and vote in more Christians into this office or that."  These are the times that try men's souls, and no amount of claiming you are a Christian can make you think like someone whose faith and hope is in Jesus!

It is good to notice that Luke breaks up the delivering of relief funds to Jerusalem by Barnabas and Saul with the activity of Herod.  At the end of chapter 11, the money is gathered and sent.  At the end of chapter 12, we are told that Barnabas and Saul finish their ministry and return to Antioch with John Mark.   In other words, all the while Herod is doing his thing, the Church is still doing its thing.  They didn't wait for Herod to be removed and then ministered.  The Church keeps marching forward with Jesus.

How many powerful men have tried to stop the Church, Jesus, and the Bible.  They are dead now and buried in the dirt.  But, the Church of Christ marches on.  It doesn't stop.  Their attempts always fail whether they are eaten by worms or not.

Lest we be too proud, let us remember that there is no peace for the wicked.  Regardless of Christ's promises to the Church (I will never leave you; the gates of hell will not prevail against it), if you have a wicked kingdom built up in the Church or in a church, beware!  It will not work.  God will eventually bring judgment down upon your wicked kingdom and destroy it, while the true Church of God marches on.  The Church of the Spirit of God, and not the Church of the flesh, of the letter, of the tradition and trappings of the flesh, will triumph in the end.  There is no peace for the rest.

Let go of all that stuff that you are clinging to saying, "My great name...my great heritage...my great family name..."  If you can get your family name on the altar and let it burn down to ashes to the glory of God, then you be ready to move forward with God.  This doesn't mean that God wants to take your family name away.  It just means that we too easily become too stuck in things.  We become too proud of things in the natural.  We lose sight that it has always been by the Spirit and not by a family name, or even a national name.

So, Barnabas and Saul finished their ministry.  This was definitely a compassionate ministry to the physical need of the Jerusalem Church.  Yet, I am sure they also spiritually ministered to them by telling testimonies of what God was doing among the Gentiles in Antioch.  Physical ministry and spiritual ministry go hand in hand.  We should not ignore physical ministry because the spiritual is more important. 

There is a history in the United States where some people grew indignant that Christians would feed people, but expect them to hear a sermon to receive the food.  Some churches even began to think it was a sign of high morality to feed people and no longer share the gospel.  They would only share the gospel if a person asked them to do so.  Do you know who has that policy today?  Communist China does.  You will get in trouble if you share the Gospel with people unasked.  We may look down on the communists, but some people in the Church of America have had the same policy for nearly a century.

Of course, when would you ever have to choose between sharing the gospel and giving people food.  We should do both.

Believers must keep their eyes upon Jesus and the work that He has given us to do.  If we are always looking at the wicked, questioning why God doesn't deal with them immediately, then we will be sidetracked and weak.

I believe that the prayer in Acts 4 is quite instructive here.  After their release from jail and being threatened by the Sanhedrin, they prayed, "Lord, look on their threats, and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus."  They weren't praying for worms to eat the intestines of their tormenters.  They were praying for boldness and the attendant power of God to minister in the face of those threats.  May God help His Church today to quit worrying about the wicked and start praying for boldness to minister in the face of the wicked for His glory, and His glory alone!

Struck Down God audio

It's Me Standing in the Need

2 Samuel 12:1-14.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on the Sunday preceding Dependence on King Jesus Day, July 2, 2023.

The story of David's sin with Bathsheba can be found in 2 Samuel 11.  It is a dark stain upon the otherwise righteous life and impeccable character of David.  I mean a stain so dark that it causes many to balk at how he could have done these things without having been like this all the time before it.  Chapter 11 ends with the statement that is translated in many versions as saying that David was "displeasing to the Lord."  It literally says that "it was evil in the eyes of the Lord."

Temptation is a powerful thing.  It started with David walking on his rooftop in the cool of the evening.  From his vantage point, he happened to see a woman bathing who was a striking beauty.  He should have walked away at that point.  One cannot control that first moment of seeing something that you were not attempting to see.  However, lust took root in David's heart.  He had "beheld" her too long with his eyes.

The Bible speaks of  making provision for the flesh.  In this case, David did not know who this woman was.  He could have left it at that, but his desire pushed him to inquire about the identity of this woman.  It was then that he found out that it was Bathsheba, the wife of one of his elite warriors, Uriah the Hittite.  He should have immediately walked away.  She was the wife of another man, and thus, not a potential prospect for him (even though he had plenty of wives at this point). 

Now that he knew her identity, David's lust pushed him further.  He sends for Bathsheba to come to the palace.  It is not clear how she is talked into coming to the palace, but it appears she was as willing as he to commit adultery. 

It is not clear if David intended to continue meeting with her, but she later sends back word to David that she was pregnant.  During this story, her husband Uriah has been with the army of Israel across the Jordan.  They were battling against the Ammonite city, Rabbah (the modern city of Amman).  We don't know how long they had been away, but Uriah's absence made it easier to commit the adultery.

David had a problem.  Uriah would know that the baby could not be his.  David had no doubt made some promises to Bathsheba.  To solve his problem, David calls for Uriah to come back to Jerusalem under the guise of quizzing him about how the war was going.  After this debriefing, David tells him to go home, even sending food to his house as a reward for all his faithful service.  Of course, David believes that a man who has been away to war for months would immediately jump on a chance to be intimate with his wife.  Thus, Uriah would never know that the child was not really his.

However, Uriah did not comply.  He was too noble to sleep with his wife while his brothers in arms were still at war and perhaps dying on the field.  They couldn't sleep with their wives, and neither would he take advantage of his trip home. 

David finds out the next day that Uriah did not go home, but slept in the servants quarters of the palace.  He tried one more trick by having Uriah eat with him and attempting to make him drunk so that he would lose his inhibitions and go home.  Still, Uriah exercised restraint (unlike David) and again slept in the servants quarters of the palace.

David had to send him back, and so he sends him back to the battle with a letter for Joab the General.  It basically told Joab to put Uriah in the front of the battle and then have the men pull back so that Uriah would die.  Joab complied, and Uriah died at the hands of the Ammonites.

How could David have done such a horrible thing to anyone, much less a man who had been faithful to him during the many years of running from Saul?  David had chosen to act like the very man he had replaced, abusing his power, and unrighteously seeking the life of a just man.  He did all of this to satisfy his lust.

This brings us to our passage today.

Nathans story (v. 1-6)

One has to believe that the Spirit of God had been convicting David all along the sordid path of his sin.  At the moment of seeing her, it would have been there.  "Walk away!"  But, David didn't listen and pressed on.  "Don't ask who she is!"  However, David did it anyway.  "Don't send that servant to fetch her!"  Yet, he did.  "Don't take her into your bedroom!"  "Don't call for Uriah!"  "Don't send him home."  "Don't get him drunk."  "Don't write that letter!"  "Don't give it to him!"  All along the way, David trampled the warnings of his conscience and of the Spirit of God, letting his lusts drag him away.

Sin often creates problems and we see David scrambling to cover up his sin.  However, he reached a point where he was no longer scrambling and it appeared that he had gotten away with it.  Yet, when we refuse to listen to God, He has ways of getting our attention.

Let's recognize that David did not just commit two sins, adultery and murder.  He was daily sinning against the Lord who had loved him, protected him, and raised him up to be king of Israel.  He was sinning against God every day he hardened his heart.  David was trapped in his sin.

However, God cared about Uriah's family.  He cared about Israel, and about what David would become if he was allowed to get away with this sin.  God cared how David's actions would affect the strategic position that he had within God's plan of redemption for Israel and the nations.

In 2 Samuel, God had promised David that the Messiah would come through his line, and that he would sit upon the throne of David forever.  This sin was an obstacle to the work of God through David and so God steps in by sending Nathan the prophet to David.

Speaking truth to power can be a dicey prospect even when God sends you.  God can protect you, but He can also be testing the authority to see if they will abuse his servant.  Think about it.  What happened to most of the prophets?  They were killed by the powers to whom they spoke the truth. 

Today, in America, people are slobbering at becoming a prophet.  They are going to schools, and studying the lives of "prophets," so that they can learn to be one.  However, becoming a true prophet of God is akin to receiving a death sentence in this world.  It is heartaches and humiliations galore, not a giddy event.

Telling David a story allows Nathan to slip the truth in before David spits it out.  You remember the song.  "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..."  There is a lot of medicine that we need, but we don't want to swallow it.  We don't want to hear it.  We are sick and tired of hearing it.  We put our fingers in our ears and then angrily go away so that we won't have to hear it.  Of course, in doing so, we have just testified against ourselves.  On the day that we stand before God, He will ask us why we didn't listen.  We may then reply that we couldn't have known.  Yet, God will play that moment back to us, and we will be silenced.

Nathan's story is a classic rich man versus poor man plot.  David would quickly empathize with the powerless poor man, having been the youngest of a lot of brothers.  Also, he had been falsely accused by Saul who was the previous king.  Saul had hunted him like a deer throughout Israel, seeking to put him to death unjustly.

The story is very straight forward.  A rich man who has plenty of lambs to slaughter, and plenty of money with which to buy a lamb if he needed, is contrasted with a poor man who had nothing but a ewe lamb that he had purchased.  It was a family pet, much like we would keep a pet dog.  Like any pet, this lamb had become very dear to the poor man and his children.

One day a traveler came and stayed with the rich man.  Instead of feeding him from his own flock, or buying a lamb from the market, he takes the lamb of the poor man and feeds it to his visitor.  Though nothing is mentioned, the poor man would have never agreed to this.  So, we are left to imagine what the rich man did to take the lamb, no doubt a group of his hired hands roughed the poor man up.  Of course, such details are irrelevant.  How does a person come to a point of such gross sin?

Of course, this is an analogy.  The traveler represents the temptation and the lust of David being stirred up.  Like a traveler from afar, lust shows up and asks for lodging for the night.  He should have told it to go lodge somewhere else.  However, David wished to entertain this traveler.

Though Nathan did not ask for a decision, David explodes with great anger.  He is quite passionate in declaring judgment against the rich man.  He calls upon the Lord as a witness, "As the Lord lives!"  He then declares that the man will die.

Now theft was not a capital crime in Israel, just as it isn't in our Republic.  His statement that the lamb will be paid back four times shows that David is quite aware of Exodus 22:1 and its prescription.  However, because the rich man did this thing "without pity," David wants him to die.

Mitigating factors are things that lessen the gravity of a crime.  Perhaps a man was an orphan, very poor, and had no food.  Such a person who steals a lamb in order to keep from starving is not going to be judged so harshly.  However, the rich man has aggravating factors.  David thinks that his riches and insensibility requires death.

It is an interesting dynamic that people who are overly harsh in their judgments are often hiding sin of their own.  They refuse to repent, and thereby punish themselves, so they take it out on others.  David himself is guilty of several capital crimes.  You might think he would be adverse to capital punishment.  Instead, he insulates himself by becoming overly righteous.  Sometimes people can become so bad that they lie to themselves.  "I'm okay, and it is everyone else who is wrong!"

Jesus alludes to this in Matthew 7:5 when he talks about judging.  "Hypocrite!  First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."  When you have fought against sin in your own heart and mind, you tend to be more compassionate without excusing the sin.  You know that fighting sin is hard, so you work hard to help your brother come clean before God without crushing him with harsh words.

Every son is disciplined by their fathers.  As earthly fathers, none of us are perfect in our discipline.  If you have any kind of heart for them at all, you try to do your best.  Of course, no kid likes the discipline they receive at the time.  However, discipline doesn't have to be perfect to do a good work in us.  By its very nature, being disciplined to do anything in life builds strength and tempers a person.  It can be directed in better paths latter, but the foundational skill is there.

This is why many in our society enter the work force and cannot keep a job.  They were never disciplined, and taught how to discipline themselves at home.  Parents know that life is tough, and if a person is not disciplined, it is even tougher.

The same thing is true spiritually.  Let's get real.  The effects of sin are devastating, and harsh.  If you are not disciplined, get ready for a lot of lumps.  Of course, there isn't a one of us who hasn't received their fair share of lumps from sin.  However, God is gracious to keep reaching out to us.

Nathan waits until David's response is made, and then, he masterfully reveals that the story was a picture of his actions with Bathsheba.

The meaning of Nathan's story (v. 7-14)

"You are the man!"  With this simple sentence, David quickly sees that Nathan knows everything, and that God is not going to let him get away with it.  You are the man in this story David.  And, this time, you are not the poor, persecuted man.  You are the abusive, rich man.

Nathan quickly moves to the judgment that God has given.  Notice that God is not as harsh in His judgment as David was in his.  You could say that God didn't keep the Law of Moses.  I remember a Jewish man asking me a gotcha question.  "Is there grace in the Law of Moses?"  I told him that there was grace all through the Law of Moses.  He was surprised that this would be my answer as a Christian.

The prophets of Israel understood that the Law could not save them in and of itself.  David himself got it.  In Psalm 51, which he wrote following this event, he writes that if God really wanted the blood of bulls and goats that he would give it.  Instead, what God really wanted was a broken and contrite heart.  Such a man God would not turn away.

Have you noticed that our society seems to be exalting a principle of not having to pay the consequences of sin.  However, mercy is not mercy unless sin is sin.  What I mean is this.  If we detach sin from its natural consequences, then we are no longer being merciful.  We diminish sin to something that isn't your fault, poor you.  We enlist the taxes of the rest of society to mitigate, and even erase as much of the consequences as we can.  This is not mercy; it is insanity.  It creates a society of thankless, entitled brats who have lost connection with reality.  It also creates an elitist class that grifts off of the tax pools that are enlisted to "help these poor people."  Yes, they are poor, and yes they need help.  But, this is the last thing these grifters would ever hope to happen.  Thus, every year the helpless and hopeless pool grows larger, and the pot of money needed to "help them" grows larger, and the amount of money that ends up in the pockets of the elite and their cronies grows exponentially. 

This is why God designed homes to be a protected environment for kids to learn about the consequences of sin.  Parents are not perfect, but they have the greatest interest in this child maturing into a man or woman that is able to discipline themselves for their good, and the good of society.  Believe me, when you leave home and go out into the world, the stakes become much higher, and the consequences of a poor choice can mean your life, and much more, your eternity.

We should see consequences as the grace of God that tell us that we can't ignore and run from sin.  It tells us that it is better to nip it in the bud because the effects of sin grow exponentially the longer we cling to it.

David was running from his sins, and it needed to be nipped in the bud.  God had staked a lot on David, but he doesn't hide his sin.  He makes him face it publicly.  In fact, God knew what David would do when He removed Saul and placed David in his place.

It is important to recognize that the Bible does not present King Saul as all wicked, and King David as all righteous.  They both are raised to power as good men, and they both end up in a place of abusing their power and being rebuked by God.  So, what is the difference between Saul and David?

The difference is this.  When confronted with their sin by the Lord, David repented, but Saul blamed it on everyone but himself (including God).  David turned away from a heart that is hardened against the ways of God with a broken and contrite heart, but Saul hardened his heart and persisted in his ways of wickedness.

This has always been the difference between the righteous and the wicked.  It is not that the righteous have never sinned, or haven't sinned as much as the wicked.  It is that they repent when God sends the message, "You are the man!"  Of course, we need to walk repentance daily.  It is a trap to think that you no longer have to worry about repentance because you did it already.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus identified with His Church knowing what a mess we would make of it.  Jesus is not for our sin as a Church.  He despises what it does to us and to a fallen world.  Don't be deceived.  He will always rebuke and discipline the ones He loves.  He will not walk arm and arm with us and pretend like our sin is no big deal.

However, God is not afraid to be connected to us and our sin.  We are His Church. He is faithful to do the work of purifying His children, and His Church as a whole.  Ultimately, the end times will bring forth a polarization of the external Church into a false church vs. a True Church.  Christ will allow the Beast to destroy one and will stand in defense of the other.

An aggravating factor is that David sinned in the face of great blessing from God.  David had difficult times during the years of King Saul.  Yet, God protected him, and sent men to rally around him.  God gave him victory over Goliath when no one else had the faith to stand against him.  God blessed him as a victorious general in Saul's army.  God blessed him with a family, and ultimately that his dynasty would last forever.  Verse 8 shows us God's heart.  "If that had been too little, I also would have given you much more!"

We should note that it was normal for kings throughout the world to have whatever women they desired under their rule.  In fact, it is even still normal for presidents today to send word to a woman, married or not, that the president is interested.  Power goes to people's heads, and people will protect and feed the lust of an individual simply to stay close to the levers of power.  No one would have batted an eye at what David did if he were in a nation other than Israel.  However, this was Yahweh's land.  The God of Truth, who raised up kings and put them down at His leisure, made this a different story.  The God of Israel would not countenance such a thing without repercussions.

However, I am talking about America today!  We have been so blessed, and we have been gobbling up blessing after blessing, to the left and to the right, just shoving it into our mouths like a bunch of porky pigs.  Still, we just don't have enough.  We have to go out and straddle the planet with our military and global corporations, taking as we please and cloaking it in a deceptive cloak of morality.

We do similar things in our cities and towns.  Family members do it to family members.  In so many ways, we are gobbling up the grace of God, and we are taking it for granted.  You can't do that for very long and survive the wrath of God.

Yet, God in His great grace is faithful to send voices out of the wilderness to tell us a story, to try and get our attention.  I believe that God is greatly displeased with these united States of America.  I think that He is trying to get some Nathan's to rise up and confront the people of this Republic.  Yes, truth must be spoken to our government officials, but the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court are not the highest human authorities in this land.  No.  The highest human authority in this land is We the People who ordained and set in order the highest human law of this Republic, the Constitution of these united States.  The rebuke must first be heard by We the People, and a response of repentance must first be walked out by We the People before God will hold our criminal servants in government accountable.

Ours is not a message of destruction.  God gives grace to David.  He deserved a death sentence, but God actually wanted a repentant heart that would quite the lawlessness.  There is hope in repentance.  God hasn't cast you off yet.  He is not calling for your death!

David  is told that he has despised God's commands (v. 9), and then later that he has despised God Himself (v. 10).  David knew the truth of God, but in this moment he wanted to sin.

It is a great blessing to know the heart and commands of God.  Many people in this world don't know their right hand from their left hand.  It doesn't excuse their sin, but it does mitigate their guilt before God in comparison to ours.  Some might say that no sin can be mitigated, but our sin can be done with aggravating factors that make it even worse.

Yet, over the top of this, David did his sin anyways.  He then continued to sin in order to cover up his previous sin.  Temptation and sin is precisely a trap.  The bait may be delicious, but now Satan has you in his hands.  He will manipulate you into more and more sin, worse and worse sin, in order to defeat the work of God in your life and sphere of influence.  Sin knows no boundaries, and there is no "bottom of the barrel."  There is only a descent into the abyss, into the bottomless pit of degradation and wickedness.

The word "despised" has the sense of lifting your head disdainfully against God and His Word.  Is this not a picture of our Republic today?  Is this not a picture of many Christians who give lip service to God, but despise His Words in their hearts and actions?  Let not a man bound by sin think that he can have freedom.  God will be faithful to send gracious rebukes, but if we do not repent, we will continue in slavery to sin and the powers that He places over us.

Nathan tells David that his actions had given the enemies of the LORD occasion to blaspheme (v. 14).  There were those in Israel who refused to serve Yahweh in their hearts.  There were also some who refused to believe that God had removed Saul and placed David on the throne.  They hated the ways and decisions of Yahweh.  To blaspheme is to declare things as true that are not true of Yahweh and His work. 

This is happening all across our land today.  Some of it is the fault of the Church.  We give ammunition to the enemies of God when we hide sin and refuse to deal with it.  This also gives ammunition to the spiritual powers to keep them from coming to see the truth of God and switching allegiance.

In this case, it is most likely that the blasphemy would not be centered on the idea that there is no Yahweh, or that He is not really about righteousness.  They would speak out against the decisions of Yahweh that were pronounced by prophets like Samuel and Nathan.  They could even reject the idea that a Messiah figure would come from the line of David.  How can a righteous man come from such a line?  One can't in the flesh, but by the Spirit of God, all things are possible!

It is one thing for people to despise God and His ways when Christians do what is righteous.  Jesus said in Matthew 11:6, "Blessed is he who does not stumble because of me."  Jesus had done nothing wrong, but he knew many people would not understand what He was doing.  However, the American Church is not pure.  We have become like David in many ways.  Have we also insulated ourselves so that we don't have to hear the voice of the Nathan's in our land?

Let me end with talking about God's mercy on David.  David would not be executed, and God would not cancel the covenant promise that He had made concerning Messiah.  Furthermore, God would remove David's sin from him. 

This is not favoritism.  This is about God's love for all sinners of the earth, and grace for those who will turn from their sin, repent, and turn towards Him and His righteousness.  Messiah would not come from a perfect family of a perfect tribe of a perfect nation.  God's work within all of us is at its best mercy upon a sinner who deserves death.  Even the people that He uses in our lives are merely sinners saved by the grace of God.

In the midst of God's grace is also chastisement.  The child would die, and David would continually have trouble with "the sword" among his family.  On top of this, God would raise up one who would sleep with David's wives in the full view of all of Jerusalem.  This was done during the rebellion of his son Absolom.  God sends a signal to Israel and to the nations that no man, no matter how much authority God has given him, is above the Word of God and the call to repentance by anyone in society.

America has been sinning for a very long time, but the greatest problem is those who claim to know Jesus who are refusing to repent.  They don't want to give up their authority and will not be held accountable to any religious notions.  Do you remember the phrase, "No king, but King Jesus!"?  Just like God knew Israel would fail from the beginning, so God was quite aware of the faithlessness of this nation that would grow through the centuries.  Yet, He decided in our favor during the War for Independence.

We must quit looking at the nations when God is saying, "You are the people!"  We must quit looking at the sin of others when God is saying "You are the person!"  We must once again become a repenting people, even as we pay a chastising price for past sin.

I believe that God can and will give mercy to this Republic if we will humble ourselves and turn away from our wicked ways.  We have to quit excusing sexual immorality in the Church.  We have to quit excusing the sacrifice of our children for a better life.  We have to quit eating, drinking, and being merry in our own houses while the rest of the Republic goes to hell in a hand basket.

Let me close by reminding us of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Eric Metaxas talks about this in his book, Letter to the American Church.  Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January of 1933.  November 6, 1932, on Reformation Sunday, Dietrich was preaching from Revelation 2 in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin.  All the bigwigs of society were there with many pastors in attendance.  This prophetic message focused on the message to the Ephesian Church.  "I have this against you, that you have left your first love."  They were celebrating the work of Martin Luther and that they were the spiritual descendants of him, the Lutherans.  Yet, the harsh pill, the medicine, you are not at all like Martin Luther.  He stood against every demon of hell in order to follow the Spirit of God in obedience to Jesus.  Yet, this group would not take a stand against the Nazi Party's racist policies.  The Church of Jesus could never compromise with such ideologies.

Dietrich was pushed off as a young man who was just looking for a fight.  Years of experience would tame him.  This is often true, but Dietrich was not looking for a fight.  He was simply seeing that they were already in a fight that precious few could see, a fight for the soul of Germany.

Metaxas says that there were 18,000 pastors in Germany at the time.  Three thousand were like Dietrich and stood steadfast against the Nazis from the beginning.  Another three thousand were Nazi lovers who had no problem with the invectives and signaled threats against the Jews.  That left twelve thousand (2/3rds) in the middle.  The problem for Germany was not the 3,000 Nazi-loving pastors, but the impotent two-thirds in the middle.  Some of the 12,000 eventually woke up, but after it was far too late to save their society from the great evil that was threatening it and the world.

Metaxas mentions that Hitler took power in January of 1933.  Bonhoeffer was already scheduled to make a speech via radio address in February 1933.  His topic was servant leadership.  As Bonhoeffer described the kind of leadership that Christians must exhibit and require of their leaders, the power to the whole radio station was shut down.  It had become to late to make a difference as Hitler quickly began to flex his power and take control of the media in Germany.

We can point to lost people who are doing lost things as the problem in our society.  They are a problem, but they are not the problem.  The problem is not even those lost pastors, bishops, and denominations that embrace wickedness in the name of love and tolerance.  No. The problem in these united States of America is the two-thirds of pastors, elders, and Christians who are on the fence about how to move forward.  The enemy does not care if you don't embrace wickedness, as long as you are feckless and afraid to take a stand exactly where the Holy Spirit is calling us to take a stand today (like Dietrich against Hitler, and David against Goliath).  God is looking for people in His Church who love truth more than their reputation, or a nice cushy position.  Martin Luther lost his place in the Roman Catholic Church.  He was hunted by the powers that be.

God will be gracious if enough of us wake up, and say yes to the Spirit of God.  Our actions right now actually say that we are just here for the American Dream.  But, have you ever considered what Jesus' Dream for America is?  We can stiff arm the Spirit and try to get back to "normal," having a good Church service with wonderful music, happy family, happy BBQ in the afternoon while watching sports.  It is not that these things are wrong and bad, but that they become all that we are living for while people are dying in a lost state, going to hell, and  we are losing our Republic.

Perhaps you are of the ilk to simply give up.  Yes, that's what happens when people sin.  Que sera, sera.  O, friend, you don't want to go through what can be next, and how bad things can get. God is removing the middle ground because it always belonged to Satan in the first place.  We must choose this day whose side we are on.  And, the only way to stop it is to repent and follow Jesus. 

Pick up your cross and let's follow him!

It's Me audio