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We are currently studying the Acts of the Apostles, taking one of its major sections per evening. And tonight we must concentrate on the third section of the book, and for that purpose, let us read a few excerpts that will help us take our bearings in that particular section. Beginning then in Acts of the Apostles, chapter nine and verse thirty two. Acts nine verse thirty two: And it came to pass, as Peter went throughout all parts, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.
And there follows the story of An- Aeneas, who was healed from his paralysis, and of Dorcas, who was raised from the dead. But in passing, we notice the description that Luke is pleased to give to these people. Peter, he says, came down to visit the saints. Then there follows the major story of Peter's visit sent of God to Cornelius. And in chapter ten and verses thirty four to thirty five, we read Peter's summing up of the lesson that God had taught him in this whole affair.
Chapter ten verses thirty four and thirty five: And Peter opened his mouth and said, of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him. When Peter returned to Jerusalem after that visit, his brethren in Jerusalem called upon him for some explanation of his, what seemed to them, extraordinary behavior. And he came and reported what things God had done to them.
Chapter eleven verse eighteen sums up their reaction. Chapter eleven verse eighteen: And when they heard these things, they held their peace and glorified God, saying, then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life. After that, in this, uh, third section of Acts, Luke tells us how the gospel came to Antioch and how the church was formed there. And finally, he tells us in chapter twelve how that about that time Herod the king put forth his hand to afflict certain of the church and killed James, the brother of John, with the sword and imprisoned Peter.
But the angel of the Lord came and delivered Peter out of prison. So now let us read chapter twelve verse eleven where once more Peter perceives the significance of what has been done. Chapter twelve eleven: And when Peter was come to himself, he said, now I know of a truth that the Lord has sent forth his angel and delivered me out of the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews. Finally, in this section, there is a sequel to that story, when Herod, in his political dealings with part of his kingdom, sat him down upon a throne and made an oration.
Verse twenty two tells us of chapter twelve, that the people shouted, saying, the voice of a god and not of a man. And immediately an angel of the Lord smote him because he gave not God the glory. The Lord give us good understanding of his holy word. In this series of studies of the Acts of the Apostles, we are taking each of its major sections, one per evening, and the thing that is interesting us particularly is to notice at what points and over what matters the early church diverged from Judaism.
Because it is our thesis that if we can observe at what point the early Christians diverged from Judaism, we shall then be perceiving what they regarded as being essential Christianity. Essential doctrines and beliefs of the early church that they could not compromise without ceasing to be Christian, and therefore points of doctrine and practice over which they diverge from Judaism that was not prepared to go along with them. Now, last week we considered the first half of section two of the, uh, book and found that there it was a question of the early church in relation to the Jewish temple.
And first of all, we found it was in relation to the Jewish temple as the place and locus of Israel's worship of God. And we notice wherein the early Christians came to diverge from Judaism. First of all, in relation to the temple at Jerusalem, and then secondly, in relation to the Samaritans and their worship of God in Samaria. Before we turn to what must be our main consideration tonight, that is section three, I want just to say a few words about the second half of that second section of the Acts, and we shall perceive that these sections are not watertight compartments, but they run on the one into the other as the narrative naturally proceeds.
So for a moment then, I ask you to think with me about the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and then the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. For in those two stories, we still think of the early church in relation to the temple at Jerusalem. Only now we think of the temple not so much as the place where the Jews worshipped God and served him, but as the center of the Jewish testimony to the Gentile world. We as Christians should never become so proud as to forget that of the, that in the early centuries before the Lord Jesus came, and indeed for some years afterwards, the Jewish temple at Jerusalem formed an exceedingly important part of God's witness to the nations.
We should not despise it. And the testimony for which they stood among the nations, we as Christians still stand for it if we know our business. And so we think of that Ethiopian eunuch, one among many, many thousands of men and women, doubtless from all over the ancient world, for whom the Jewish temple at Jerusalem proved a veritable blessing from God, as it stood to witness against the absurd and crude and immoral and intellectually unsatisfying idolatry of the ancient world.
There were, you'll see, three elements, maybe, distinctive in Judaism, as she stored amongst the sea of pagan idolatry to witness for God. There was, in the first place, that she stood in testimony for the true and only and invisible God. God transcendent above all time and space. The true God, as distinct from idolatry. In all the other pagan nations of the world, God was not the creator of the whole universe, he was a part of the universe.
In many a pagan culture, the ancients had come by their gods by refusing initially to retain the knowledge of the true God, and then had debased the likeness of God into the likeness of a man, or even into the likeness of creepy crawly things. And men had come to deify the forces of nature as though they were the ultimate forces of the universe, much as modern man in many quarters still does. For if modern man too rejects the transcendent creator, then man is obliged to acknowledge that the ultimate forces of this universe are simply the great me- material physical forces, mindless as they are, yet they remain to this present the ultimate forces of the universe, if there is no God creator.
And Israel stood against the folly of idolatry to witness to the true God, saying in the words of Isaiah, I am God, look unto me and be you saved, all the ends of the earth, for there is none other. For if there be no creator, then man has no savior other than his own wits. And how feeble they are against the material and physical forces of the universe, you will not may need me to tell you. And secondly, Israel had stood amongst the nations as a witness to morality.
That the God of heaven, whom they worshipped in that temple, was also the God whose divine authority lay behind morality. That was not always evident to the pagan world. In the ancient world, perhaps the last place on earth you look for for morality was the temple. For in the ancient world, by and large, sacrifice was merely a way of persuading the gods to be on your side and against your enemies. It had precious little to do with truly moral behavior.
And in the stricter sense of that term, of course, temples were the seats of sexual immorality to the nth degree. If in the ancient world you had to concern yourself and wanted to concern yourself with morality strictly so s- so described, then you went not to religion, you went to the philosophers who try to fathom what is man's duty, among other things. Israel stood head and shoulders above all the other nations in that she not only worshipped the God who was the unique sole creator of the universe, but she stood among the nations to say that the creator was concerned with morality, and all his divine power lay behind the sanctions of his holy and moral law.
Thus did ancient Israel stand for a certain moral health among men. And finally, Israel and her temple stood amongst the ancient world for the glorious, glorious assertion that there was point and purpose in history. They maintained that the world was not just going round in circles, getting nowhere. They maintained against Stoic and a good many other philosophers that there was a purpose in history, in as much that Israel was God's chosen people, and one day through Israel, God would introduce his Messiah.
And Israel prophesied in the name of God that one day God would intervene in our creation, and the Messiah would come, and God would restore all things and bring creation to its glorious fruition, a purpose for which it was ultimately made. Thus did Israel stand for a gospel of hope among a world which, as Saint Paul reminds us, was without God and without the hope of Messiah, and therefore without any hope. Israel then, as God's testimony to the nations.
As soon as we see that Ethiopian chancellor coming up to Jerusalem, we perceive how effective Israel's witness had been. This strange temple, the only one in the world that didn't have an image in it, where people worshiped the unseen God. And he had come up from Ethiopia to the temple at Jerusalem, doubtless tired and sick of the crudities of pagan religion, and seeking after the true God that Israel professed to know. He'd come up to Jerusalem for to worship, insofar as Gentiles were allowed thus to do in the temple.
And on his way home, he was reading a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And now we notice a fourth thing for which Israel stood unique amongst the ancient world. She had a book that she claimed was inspired of God, namely the Holy Scriptures. And the Ethiopian was going home with this tremendous treasure in his hand, God's particular self-revelation to men through the Jews. With all that, of course, Christianity had no quarrel whatsoever, and if we know our stuff, we still stand for all those four things as Christians in a pagan society.
But then we might well ask, what has Christianity to add then to the Jewish testimony? Why it has to add this much? For listen, as P- as as Philip came up to the chariot of the Ethiopian, the Ethiopian was reading from Isaiah and had got up to the early verses of Isaiah fifty three. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation, for he was cut off. And said the Ethiopian to Philip, of whom speaketh the prophet this, of himself or some other man? And beginning at that self same scripture, Philip preached unto him Jesus.
That is to say, Philip preached as a good Christian that this figure of Isaiah fifty three was none other than Jesus Christ. That this suffering servant who was to give himself for the iniquities of many, who was to be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, upon whom would be the chastisement of our peace, that that person was none other than Jesus, who recently had been crucified in Jerusalem. Beginning from Isaiah fifty three, Philip preached unto him Jesus. There, of course, Philip diverged from mainstream Judaism.
Alas, what caused so many tears? That Israel, through whom that prophecy was given, denies that it refers to the Lord Jesus, and therefore, to this day now, have no message of redemption to preach. Israel has a law, and her faith in that law made her a missionary of a kind. Throughout the dispersion, her synagogues, like the temple in Jerusalem, were centers of witness.
But when you've said that, you've almost said all, haven't you? When did you find any Jew coming round your door and seeking to bring you the story of forgiveness of sin? Why aren't they concerned about us Gentiles? Why don't they mount evangelistic campaigns? They've got an Old Testament full of gospel, why don't they come and preach it to us. And the answer is they have no redemption.
Once upon a time, they had a system of sacrifices that when a man sinned, he could bring a sacrifice of an animal, and it could be killed and its blood shed, and in the name of God, forgiveness could be pronounced. But for centuries, they've not had a temple where they could offer any such sacrifice. They have no means of redemption. And you know, of course, it's very difficult to be an evangelist if you haven't got a message of redemption to preach, isn't it? At least I should find it so. I believe the law of God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. I do indeed. I believe it. My reason tells me it is right.
It's rational, this law of God. My emotions tell me it's a wonderful and delightful thing, the law of God, and that every- if everybody lived according to the law of God, what a delightful world it would be. Do you know why I come- don't come round your front door urging you to keep the law of God? Because I could say to myself, but gooding, my dear man, how would you have the cheek to do it? You keep it first, and then go and tell the others to keep it. And the fact that I can't keep it perfectly takes all the puff out of me. I wouldn't think of coming around your door and telling you to keep it. I can't keep it. And therefore, if all the message I had was merely keep the law, I shouldn't be a missionary.
And then he said, I hope you wouldn't be either. I'm going to tell you what will bring me round your front door one of these days, is this message, that when this world was lost because we couldn't keep God's law, there was one who died in our stead, God's servant, his suffering servant, and he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we were healed. By his knowledge he justifies many. Oh, that will bring me to your front door. Oh, what a message it is. For if God has a savior that can save me from sin and forgive me my sin, then he can save you from your sin.
If God, the great creator, the author of the moral law, nevertheless has loved me and given his son for me, then he loves you and gave his son for you. And you won't mind me coming along to tell you, will you? That I'm such a sinner, but God died, sent his son and died for me. Obviously, he'd die for you too. Here then is another of those places where the early church diverged from Judaism. Sad it is that Judaism didn't come with the church. Some years ago I was lecturing in my old university city and trying to expound some passages in the Old Testament to a student gathering.
When a young gentleman accosted me afterwards and said how interesting he found it to hear a Gentile talking about the Old Testament. He said, why don't our rabbis do that? I said, I don't know. I didn't know they didn't anyway. No, he says, they're always talking about the Sabbath. Oh, I said, is that so? Why don't they, why don't they get up and expound the Bible? I said, I don't know. They've got some gorgeous stuff to expound, haven't they? All those tirades against idolatry, goodness me, we modern Gentiles need to hear that stuff and to break off our idolatries that are everywhere around us, the consumer society and materialism and such like things. I said, why don't they? I'd love to hear it.
So we had dinner together, and presently I found myself saying like this, you know, I as a Gentile, I mean, I do admire your law. If the rabbis got up on their hind legs and preached it, wouldn't it be marvelous? I believe it is right. God's absolutes. I said, I'll tell you something else about your law. Uh, I believe it. The trouble is I've broken it. And you know, if we break the law, we can't say it doesn't matter anymore, can we? Either the law matters or it doesn't matter. And if you're going to say with one breath it's marvelous and ought to be kept, and the next minute when you break it says, well, it doesn't really matter.
Well, then you might throw the whole thing out. As I said, what impresses me is that in your Old Testament, you know, when somebody broke the law, God didn't say it didn't matter. The man had to bring a sacrifice. The blood of an animal had to be shed to put away sin, that the honor of the law might be upheld. I said, tell me, friend, the blood of those sacrifices, did it actually put anything away? Did it do anything? No, he said it didn't. I said, I didn't think it did, really. I said, it was only a symbol, wasn't it? Yes, he said, it was a symbol. I said, of what?
Oh, well, he said, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't impress me. Yeah, I'll tell you an interesting thing, he said. We had the chief rabbi around here the other week talking to our Jewish society in this university. He said, do you know what the subject of his lecture was? I said, I didn't know at all. He said, it is that we Jews must find a substitute for the doctrine of the atonement. Oh. For there's no gospel without atonement. But if that be so, then let us remember that the thing that makes Christianity distinctive from Judaism lies now in the heart of this message that Jesus is the suffering servant, the atoning sacrifice for sin.
Throw that away, let it go by the board, then the Christian church itself has no gospel to preach, and will lose its missionary endeavor, will it not? It is not my business to throw stones in the direction of any glass house, but just to observe the objective historical fact, it has been a sad thing in this last fifty years to see how many churches have abandoned the preaching of the cross. They'll preach the incarnation. They'll preach the resurrection, they'll preach morality.
They say they don't like to hear too much about the blood of Christ and his atoning death. But when you cease to preach the atoning death of Christ, that Jesus is the suffering servant wounded for our transgressions, then you cease to have any gospel. And tell me whether you can still claim to be Christian, if you cease to preach the atoning sufferings of Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, from the Ethiopian eunuch, we pass to Saul of Tarsus.
And you perceive we're still on the theme of, uh, Judaism as a missionary force, uh, are we not? For now, in Saul of Tarsus, we meet a man who became the biggest missionary the Christian church has ever seen, barring Jesus Christ our Lord. The man that took the gospel to the Gentiles, called of God to be the apostle of the Gentiles. A man that made that great movement out of Judaism, taking the gospel to the Gentile. So we must for a moment stop over him and his conversion. Try what produced this missionary Saul of Tarsus. For again, let us not be proud as Gentiles.
It was Judaism in one sense, wasn't it, that produced at this juncture in history this vast missionary movement. They're going out of Judaism through the very world with its message. At one stage, Judaism produced it. And we've seen one reason, as some Jews discovered that Jesus was the suffering servant. Pray then, what made Saul of Tarsus into the missionary that he became, taking the gospel to the Gentiles. And it's a very interesting conversion story, for as you read at the very beginning of chapter nine, on the day that Saul of Tarsus got converted, he was, at least in the morning, doing what Saul of Tarsus, uh, determined to do, what was his life's work as he then conceived of it.
He got letters in his pocket from the high priest at Jerusalem, and he was a careering up the road to Damascus, following these nasty little Nazarenes who were beginning to go everywhere after the persecution of Stephen, and they were beginning to go everywhere preaching the Lord Jesus, and Saul of Tarsus was determined to stop them. What a perversion of Judaism he thought it was, going out prattling these things to the Gentiles. They were to come back to Jerusalem. That's what they were to do. He had letters in his pocket authorizing him to bring them back to Jerusalem. Back to Jerusalem, I think, must have been the motto on the front of his chariot. Back to Jerusalem.
Had he gone on like that, there would perhaps have been very little Christian missionary work. Back to Jerusalem was his ideal. And then he got converted. How did he get converted? Well, there came a light from heaven, of course, and he was struck blind, and then there was sent to his lodging a gracious man by the name of Ananias, to whom God appeared in a vision and said, Ananias, now I want you to go and meet Saul of Tarsus, and I want you to tell him certain things. Pay notice what God told Ananias to tell Saul of Tarsus. Had it been you and I going to see Saul of Tarsus, you might have said, well, what that man solely needs to know is the forgiveness of sins.
Go and tell him, Ananias, how he can find peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ, how he may know his sins are forgiven, how he may know how to get hold of eternal life. Doubtless Saul heard of those things presently. That's not quite the message that Ananias brought him. Ananias was sent unto him to tell him that this is a chosen vessel unto me to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. That is to say, in the very moment of his conversion, he was told that he was chosen to get out from Jerusalem, to bear the name of Christ before the Gentiles.
Now there's a tremendous lot hinges upon that. Judaism up to this point had quite been prepared to cope with Gentile converts. Only if you became a Gentile, you had to come and join the Jews. Yes. You had to come and acknowledge the temple at Jerusalem. You had to be circumcised. You had literally to become a Jew. Couldn't be saved and remain a Gentile. Then become a Jew. Now God was about to do something different. Let us see how Luke helps us to see the proportion of the thing.
Do you remember last week we talked of, uh, Stephen? And Stephen, in his defense, began his message with these words, men and brethren, the God of glory appeared to Abraham and said, get thee out of thy kindred and come into the land of Gaea. With that auspicious event, the very beginnings of Judaism took place. God visited the Gentiles, appeared in all his glory to Abraham, brought Abraham out of the Gentiles and started the Hebrew race. Brought him out of the Gentiles, and Abraham began to be a pilgrim and a stranger, separate from the Gentiles.
The God of glory appeared to Abram. That's how Judaism began. God took them out of the Gentiles. Ah, but now we've come to another big turning point in history, and this time, not quite the God of glory, but a light out of heaven shone all around Saul of Tarsus and said to Saul of Tarsus, Saul, get back to the Gentiles, man. Back to the Gentiles. Yes, do you see, because when God called Abram out of the Gentiles and began the Jewish nation, it wasn't so that the Jewish nation could forever remain a little nation all walled around by themselves, hugging their blessings to themselves.
When God chose out Abraham and started a new nation and made of him a pilgrim and separated them and his seed from the Gentiles, it was so that eventually through him and through his seed, all the Gentiles of the world might be blessed. And now, in God's good time, the moment has come, the plan has matured, and Israel that have been coked up inside their wall all these centuries are now going back to the Gentiles like God intended they should. Taking the glorious message of Messiah to the very uttermost bounds of the earth. This is the God of the ages, the God of history, now moving on his plans one bit further.
So that just as you may look upon Abraham as the turning point, the tremendously important turning point of history for the Jew, so you may now look upon the Saul of Tarsus incident as a similarly important and significant turn in history. You say, what converted Abraham? The sheer glory of God. Oh, the sheer glory of God. Compared with all the glitter of the civilization of Ur of Chaldees. Ah, yes, but what was that compared with his glory? And all that stupid idolatry stuff. When you saw the real thing, the glory of the living God, it brought Abram out of Ur of Chaldees, a pilgrim for the rest of his life.
What turned Saul into a missionary? Proud Jew with all his Jewish tradition superior to these nasty little Gentiles. Ha ha. If they wanted to get converted, well, let them humble themselves and become Jews and join the Jewish nation. It's the only way to be saved, is joining up the proud Jewish nation. And what turns Saul into a missionary? Oh, a light from heaven. As instinctively he cried, who art thou, Lord, dwelling in all the glory of the Shekinah glory of the presence of God, the voice came back, Jesus. Jesus? What, the Jesus that hung upon a cross?
This is God. Yes, this is God. God whom Saul worshipped ignorantly and thought was a God of such glory as Gentiles had to come to him or be lost. He discovered that, uh, he was the God who, for our sakes, became incarnate, himself left heaven, came on his great missionary journey right down to our planet and went out to the darkness of the cross to reach a world, for God so loved the world, and Paul discovered something about the nature of God and the glory of God.
God in Jesus Christ had become a missionary to our world. And that changed Paul forever, didn't it? No longer hugging his privileged to himself, he discovered one who, being in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be held on to, to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and humbled himself and took on him the form of a servant and was found in the likeness of man. And being found in man's likeness, he humbled himself and became obedient to the death of the cross, that he might bring salvation to a world.
And being converted meant following the footsteps of a God like that. There's God in all his glory, in all his moral dignity, in all his transcendence. That was a right and proper message for Judaism to preach. But when Jesus Christ came, it added another side to God's character in our eyes, didn't it? God, the transcendent Lord, above time and space, now showing himself God, the God of redemption, the missionary God, in time and space, reaching out to the lost.
And what, uh, happened at the, uh, historical side, we could say also apply to our own little lives, couldn't we? The God of glory appeared to us like he appeared to Abraham... and called us out of the world. We shan't be much good for God unless that happens first, shall we? If I have seen the true glory of God and seen how false and empty the glory and glitter of this little world is, it will make a pilgrim of me, will it not? Ah, but when the glory of God has made a pilgrim of me, then presently the glory of God will send me back as a missionary into the world.
What a delightful balance. For if the glory of God called me out of the world but left me there, what a one-sided man I should be, shouldn't I? I need to be made a pilgrim, brought out of the world. I need to be sent back into the world as a missionary. And what other practical lessons shall we draw from it? Well, we might perhaps stretch a point and say this. Hmm, God give us more and more young folks going out to the foreign mission field, to the far west, to the third world, to goodness knows where. Let's observe this, that when we go out with the gospel to other cultures, we don't have to turn them into Irishmen as well as Christians.
Nor even, tremendous advantage though that might be in the eyes of some, turn them into Englishmen as well as Christians. There are some people who thought that that's what our job is, isn't it? They go abroad to hot and tarts, they go abroad to exceedingly civilized and sophisticated societies, they take the gospel, that's marvelous. Along with the gospel, they take all sorts of English customs and ecclesiastical associations and goodness knows what else. And to be a Christian, you are, you get the impression you have to be not only of faith in Christ, you have to be an Englishman as well. What an unfortunate mistake. That was all Judaism's idea. When Paul got converted, he saw how false that was now.
That wasn't going to be any longer like that. That's how it used to be in Judaism. Now it is that God is going out to the Gentiles. They don't have to become Jews in order to get saved. Of course, the Jews didn't necessarily like that, not even some of the Christian Jews like that idea. They thought that was going a bit far, but the fact it was. And because we've not always, uh, appreciated it, you know, there are some Asiatics that I know, and they think the gospel is a Western thing. Got associated with Western culture, do you see, when all the time it wasn't, is it?
For our Lord was an Asiatic according to the flesh. Not a question of getting people to come into our center, that's Judaism. It's a question of going out to where they are. That's Christianity. Ah, but we must hurry on. For if now we've got it straight, uh, the differences between Christianity and Judaism over this matter of the temple, not only in worshiping of God, but in also of our evangelical witness to the world. You see what a different thing Christianity is from Judaism. Now, of course, we must be prepared to follow one of the implications of that.
And section three of the Acts of the Apostles hits the nail completely on the head by his very first words, when it says that Peter presently came down to visit the saints. Saints? What on earth are they? What is a saint? Well, anyway, whatever a saint is or is meant to be, we are now about to meet one of the problems that the early church met when they started seriously to take the gospel out to the Gentiles. And that long, long story about Peter going to Cornelius, of course, sums up the whole difficulty. God wanted to send Peter to preach the gospel to the Gentile Cornelius, but God knew that good apostle as Peter was, he wouldn't go unless something special was done to the man.
Why wouldn't he go? Well, because, to put it briefly, he was a saint. That's the first time you've come across it in all your experience, that sainthood would keep a man from going to preach the gospel. But that's how it was. For Peter had been brought up with the idea of holiness that was particularly Jewish and a very strict version of Judaism at that. That in order to be a saint, as you ought to be, according to that particular section of Judaism in which he had been brought up, in order to be a saint, you couldn't go and enter into a Gentile's home and take a meal in a Gentile house.
Why not? Well, because they wouldn't, uh, uh, observe the laws of purity and cleansing in that Gentile home. More young folks going out to the foreign mission field, to the far west, to the third world, to goodness knows where. Let's observe this, that when we go out with the gospel to other cultures, we don't have to turn them into Irishmen as well as Christians. Nor even, tremendous advantage though that might be in the eyes of some, turn them into Englishmen as well as Christians. There are some people who thought that that's what our job is, isn't it?
They go abroad to hot tubs, they go abroad to exceedingly civilized and sophisticated societies, they take the gospel, that's marvelous, along with the gospel, they take all sorts of English customs and ecclesiastical associations and goodness knows what else. And to be a Christian, you are, you get the impression you have to be not only of faith in Christ, you have to be an Englishman as well. What an unfortunate mistake. That was all Judaism's idea. When Paul got converted, he saw how false that was now. That wasn't going to be any longer like that. That's how it used to be in Judaism. Now it is that God is going out to the Gentiles.
They don't have to become Jews in order to get saved. Of course, the Jews didn't necessarily like that, not even some of the Christian Jews like that idea. They thought that was going a bit far, but the fact it was. Because we've not always, uh, appreciated it, you know. There are some Asiatics that I know, and they think the gospel is a Western thing. Got associated with Western culture, do you see? When all the time it wasn't, is it? For our Lord was an Asiatic according to the flesh. Now the question of getting people to come into our center, that's Judaism.
It's a question of going out to where they are. That's Christianity. Ah, but we must hurry on. What if now we've got it straight, uh, the differences between Christianity and Judaism over this matter of the temple, not only in worshiping of God, but in also of our evangelical witness to the world. You see what a difference in Christianity is from Judaism. Now, of course, we must be prepared to follow one of the implications of that. And section three of the Acts of the Apostles hits the nail completely on the head by its very first words, when it says that Peter presently came down to visit the saints.
Saints? What on earth are they? What is a saint? Well, anyway, whatever a saint is or is meant to be, we are now about to meet one of the problems that the early church met when they started seriously to take the gospel out to the Gentiles. And that long, long story about Peter going to Cornelius, of course, sums up the whole difficulty. God wanted to send Peter to preach the gospel to the Gentile Cornelius, but God knew that good apostle as Peter was, he wouldn't go unless something special was done to the man. Why wouldn't he go? Well, because, to put it briefly, he was a saint.
That's the first time you've come across it in all your experience, that sainthood would keep the man from going to preach the gospel. But that's how it was. For Peter had been brought up with the idea of holiness that was particularly Jewish, and a very strict version of Judaism at that. That in order to be a saint, as you ought to be, according to that particular section of Judaism in which he had been brought up, in order to be a saint, you couldn't go and enter into a Gentile's home and take a meal in a Gentile house. Why not? Well, because they wouldn't, uh, uh, observe the laws of purity and cleansing in that Gentile home, and therefore, if you went into a Gentile home, you got richly defiled.
So you couldn't go. But then you just imagine the difficulty. How can you go and preach the gospel to somebody if you're not prepared to drink coffee with him? And what do you say when you get invited and you refuse to go? I mean, you just imagine, had it happened, here's Peter walking on the street one day and talking learnedly to James about the gospel and how marvelous it is, and up comes Cornelius and says, good morning, sir. Uh, yes, I believe you're Peter the Apostle. Yes, that's right. Oh, I'm delighted to meet you, sir. Uh, I, uh, was wondering, I know it's a lot to ask, I was wondering, would you come and have dinner with me? Well, thank you very much, says Peter, but I, I can't.
How about I tell you I wanted to, I wanted to ask you about this Jesus, you know, and how man can find peace with God through Jesus Christ. I want to know about this Jesus. Why, though, says Peter, anything you ask me here. Well, no, says the man, that you can't with all the people milling around, you see, it wouldn't be convenient here. No, you come home to dinner with me and we can talk in peace. No, no, I prefer to do it here. Well, why, why would you want to do it here? Come home, you see. Oh, no, I can't. Why not? Well, I'm a saint. Oh dear. So you're a saint. Oh, I see. Well, that's good to know.
And you mean I'm not a saint? Well, n- not really. I see. So my house isn't good enough for you? Well, I wouldn't quite put it that way, but you see, but your house is a de- well, not, not, not a de- de- I mean, well, I mean, it isn't. Yes. Very difficult to explain, isn't it? Oh, I see. And you're a saint because you're a Jew, I see. And suppose Caiaphas were to turn just a little bit rough and say, now tell me, Peter, what about, uh, I mean, Cornelius turned a little bit rough. What about that fellow Caiaphas and Annas? Are they saints? Oh yes, they're saints. Oh. No, they're saints because they're Jews.
I see. Oh. And I'm not a saint because I'm a Gentile. Oh. Difficult what? How would you preach the gospel to people if that was your concept of sainthood. So if the gospel is going out to Gentiles, something will have to be done about this concept of sainthood and to get it clear in the Christian mind what Christian sainthood really is and how it works. Here then is another of those tremendous divergences between Christianity and Judaism.
And it was taught to Peter by the vision of the sheep coming down from heaven, full of creepy crawly things of unmentionable kinds, and the voice coming to Peter and saying, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. And Peter said, not so, Lord. Now I want you to notice, if you will, one or two things very carefully. When the sheep came down from heaven full of these unclean animals, and the voice said, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. Peter, of course, said, No, no, nothing like that has ever entered my lips. Now, please notice what the voice said. It didn't say, Oh, Peter, come off it, you stupid chap. I mean, absolute nonsense, all this business, these pernickety little business about not eating crab and not eating pig and things like that.
Oh, Peter, narrow-minded man, ditch it all that stupid stuff. No. And we mustn't speak like that either. It wasn't narrow-mindedness on Peter's part. The Old Testament forbade him to eat it. God's own laws in the Old Testament have said Peter wasn't to eat it. That wasn't narrow-minded. God is never narrow-minded. What was now happening is not that Peter was to be got out of narrow-mindedness. Something that God was going to do to make a change, said the voice to Peter, what God has cleansed.
Don't you call that common? So what had been the point of those Old Testament laws about eating things? Whatever the many considerations, these come into it. That God had been teaching them the difference between the holy and the common. Yes. If you had gone up to the tabernacle in Jerusalem, for instance, or the temple, you would have come to a big wall. Outside was common, inside was holy. Doesn't mean that outside was bad, but outside was common. Inside was specially consecrated to God, that is holy.
And if you came to the Jewish nation, over the Jewish nation was the word holiness to the Lord, for God had chosen them out of the common herd of men, that they be set apart for God. You shall be unto me a holy nation. All the earth is mine, but I've chosen you, and you are my special people. The rest of nations were in that sense common. Israel was specially chosen and consecrated to God, and thereby became holy. In Jerusalem, there are two kinds of saucepans. There were the ordinary saucepans in everybody's house. They were common. Let's hope they were clean, but they were common anyway. You do anything with them, sprouts, potatoes, anything you like.
There were another set of saucepans. They were holy. You only found them in the temple. They were devoted to the cooking that went on for the sacrifices, holy. And there was that difference between holiness and what was common. And Israel had very rightly been brought up to believe that they were holy, they were specially devoted, specially called a separate nation dedicated to God. And the rest were common. That was perfectly true. It was equally true that now that distinction was to go, and the middle wall of partition be broken down.
And Jew was no longer going to hold a privileged special position, holy, and all the rest common, but all were to be on the same footing before God. No longer ever after that is Peter going to be allowed to call any man common. Of course, there was the other reason. Israel was called upon to be clean as well as holy. And the Gentiles, I'm afraid many of them were tainted with all sorts of moral and spiritual uncleannesses, and God in his mercy had kept Israel as far as he could from them by putting a big wall round them.
That wasn't narrow-mindedness either. Some of you parents have got teenage daughters, sixteen, year old. There are parts of London you wouldn't want them to go, aren't there? There are parts of Paris you'd forbid them to go. Why is that? Because you're narrow-minded? No. Because you think your daughter is better than anybody else's daughter? No, because you jolly well know that her human nature is like anybody else's human nature. And you know right well to send an innocent child like that into such circumstances would be for that child to get corrupted. And so, as a parent, so long as she is a child, you put a wall around her, very properly so do you put a wall around her.
She hasn't yet the defenses that you've built up. It would be absurdity bordering on criminality to let your early teenager go into society like that. They put a wall around her. And God had done that for Israel in the ancient world. Because the ancient world was a filthy place. It wasn't because Israel in their hearts were better than the Gentiles, they were just as bad. To have let them mix among the Gentiles would have been courting disaster. It was bad enough as they were.
And for centuries, God put the wall around them. And these two sides of the question, holiness and cleanness, God symbolized for them in the very food that they ate daily. As you would for infants using symbols to press home a truth that there was clean and there was unclean. But that couldn't last forever, could it? Your teenage daughter may not be the person to send to some of the back streets, even of Belfast or London, or Paris. If somebody doesn't go, the gospel may never come.
You don't send your, your, your, your, your youngster, do you, of ten years old, to take a bouquet of flowers to somebody that's suffering with smallpox, huh? That would be madness, wouldn't it? Now they've got to be isolated. But if a doctor and a nurse don't go, the smallpox victim will die. Somebody's got to go. Somebody that's got the defenses against it. And can walk where there's danger and remain undefiled. And outside the wall of Judaism, there was a big vast world lost in its sin and filth.
How would God reach them? He never reached them if Israel are going to be forever cooped up within this wall, not even allowed to drink coffee with them. So how will I read them? Why, this way round, there'll have to be a new method of holiness. A new concept of holiness. And now we see where the church begins to diverge. Holiness, what is holiness anyway? The real grown-up adult thing.
What is the Christian basis and concept of holiness? Well, Luke begins his story with two little narratives. There's the story of Ineas, and there's the story of Dorcas. Luke came down to visit the saints, and he found there Aeneas. Well, now, whether Aeneas was a saint or not, I couldn't actually, uh, assure you one way or t'other. There's a little bit inside me that hopes he wasn't a saint, and then perhaps he was. Anyway, Aeneas was paralyzed.
That wasn't his fault. Dorcas couldn't help that. Been paralyzed this eight years. So paralyzed, he lay on the bed, and what was worse, other people had to make it. Couldn't even make his own bed. Jack couldn't. Well, that was, that wasn't his fault. No. What could Christianity say about that? Here comes Peter, he says, Aeneas, my boy, Jesus heals you. Up gets Aeneas. Make your own bed, said Peter. So he got, just imagine that. See a man making his own bed. Well, when the locals saw that, they looked on with open-mouthed wonder. They said, something's happened here. Wow, Rulon Aeneas getting up and making his own bed.
And multitudes of them turned to the Lord. They saw a miracle had happened, yeah. You'll forgive me if I spiritualize that little incident, won't you? Holiness is not just a negative thing, all the things I don't do. I don't do this, and I don't do that, and I don't do the other. Holiness is a positive thing. And sometimes our concepts of holiness are such that the world's idea of us is people that don't do this, and they don't do that, and they don't do the other.
And the world isn't very impressed. Oh, but if the power of Christ got so hold of us that we got up and, so to speak, made our own beds, that the world might be, uh, persuaded to look on and ask the secret, yes? What kind of a person are you in your church, for instance? Do you make your own bed? Or do you have to have other people do everything for you? You can always recognize people that make their own bed, you know, in the church, because they never complain.
What's the sense if you make it yourself? You find the people that complain, they're probably the ones that don't make their own beds, so they feel free to complain against those that do. What? And then there was that woman, Dorcas. She was full of good works that she did. This holiness is a positive thing. It was among the Jews. You get a real good Jew, a good holy Jew, then you'll be full of good works. And Christianity doesn't say that's wrong, at least I hope it doesn't. Dorcas was full of good works, and the clothing department saw after the widow's social relief and things.
What will Christianity say to her? Well, she died. Ah, but Christ, who Peter raised her from the dead. And as she rose from the dead and was led into the next room where all the widows were with Peter, there were all the widows showing Peter the garments. Wasn't that nice? She rose, and there were her works in front of us. Yes, Christianity has that to say, because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, because one of these days all who trust him will be raised from the dead. So what? Well, this is what follows. Therefore, my brethren, you always be abounding in the work of the Lord, because you know that because he's risen from the dead, your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
How marvelous. You've sewn a garment for Mrs. O'Flacarty, she's ninety four and a half, and you've just sewn her a garment. You say, well, she mayn't last out till October, but I think it's worth doing, you know, Paul dear, the one she's got full of holes, and uh, somebody says, but is it worth it? You say, yes, as a Christian, I can't see the woman like that, and uh, she's a dear boy, I'm going to do it for her. And you make it for her, and she only lasts the next two weeks, and then she goes home to glory. You say I've wasted my time. Not, you certainly haven't. The Lord is coming, you'll be raised from the dead, and there'll be Mrs. O'Flacety's bed jacket, so to speak. Well, I don't know what, in what eternal forms bed jackets come, on that let's not ponder.
But the Bible says that when we stand before the Lord, when the Lord comes, we shall receive the things done in the body, whether they be good or bad. We shall see them again. The Christian view of holiness is not to despise works. Christianity agrees with Judaism that a great essential part of holiness is the positive doing of good works. So where is the difference then? Well, finally, we better listen to Peter going to preach the gospel to Cornelius.
And he enters into Cornelius, and he says, you know, now I know of a truth and perceive of a truth that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable with him. Well, having said that, I don't know if Peter would ever be invited to preach the gospel in Finike. Imagine starting up a gospel sermon by saying that in every nation he that works righteousness is acceptable with God. Is that how you preach the gospel? I've heard other versions. I've seen the preacher shake his fist and say, look here, all your righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
Have you? I'm glad Peter didn't begin like that in Cornelius's house, because it would have been difficult. You just imagine Peter walking in saying, there you are. Well, now all you Gentiles, I want to tell you plainly, your righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Wait a minute, says Cornelius, wait a minute. Had an angel in here the other day. He said that my good works had come up before God as a memorial. Who was right, you or the angel? We do have to be careful, don't we? What? How we preach the gospel. You say, but wait a minute, Mr. Preacher, all our righteousness is our as filthy rags.
Yes, yours are. Yes, of course they are. And the prophet who had to complain that on the behalf of his nation was being very honest. He said, you know, us Jews, our very righteousnesses are as filthy rags. I'd leave you to guess what our sins are. And when we see ourselves as we really are, yes, every one of us would admit our righteousness comes short. But pray don't let that, uh, lead us to give the unconverted a wrong impression. But sometimes I fear we do. We give them the impression that God isn't interested in good works. God doesn't like good works. God is against good works.
That's nonsense. God is for good works. And if you're going to turn people into saints, this is what you want to get them to do. They've got to be brought to become people that shall be full of good works that are pleasing to God. God is not against good works. And Peter's had to learn this, that if a Gentile does good works, God doesn't say, oh, you're a Gentile, ten percent off for you. If a, if a Jew does good works, oh, you're one of mine, jolly good stuff, ten percent on. And conversely, if a Jew does bad works, God doesn't say, well, never mind, you're one of mine, aren't you?
We'll overlook that. We are dealing with a God of Christ's holy holiness. His objective is good work. Doesn't matter who does them. Then what is the secret of a truly holy life? How shall I come to the point of producing works acceptable with God, really acceptable? Here's this Gentile, as best he knows how he wants to please God. He- he's been doing all sorts of things, he wants to please God, and God has noticed and approved he is a man that wants to please me.
The man will never be saved by those works. Never. But he's telling God he wants to please God, and God who reads men's hearts has got a preacher prepared to come and preach the gospel for the man, so that the man might get saved. Then listen to how it's preached. You know, I used to think we Jews were better than you. I discovered that isn't so, Cornelius. In every nation, he that doeth righteousness is acceptable with God. I tell you what, Cornelius, I, I, someone you'll be very interested in. You're interested in good works, Cornelius, my man?
Let me tell you about Jesus Christ. Oh, what a marvelous life he was and his was, you know. He, he was anointed with power and the Holy Ghost, and he went about doing good and healing all that was oppressed of the devil, for God was with him. What a life of good works it was. Delightful. Says Cornelius, yes, that's marvelous. Where is he now? I shall have to tell you, says Peter, that we Jews murdered him. You murdered him? Yes, we murdered him. But you Jews, with all your fancied holiness.
Yes, I'm afraid so. With all our ritual, with all our holiness, we murdered God's son. That exposed that holiness as bogus, didn't it? I tell you, Cornelius, now he's raised from the dead, and the marvelous thing is, you know, it's Jesus Christ that's going to be judged. Not a question whether I as a Jew are better than you as a Gentile, or you as a Gentile are better than I as a, better than me as a Jew. It's a question of how you stand before Jesus Christ. He's the judge, Cornelius. And he's the judge.
We're sinners, we Jews. We murdered God's son. How about you, Gentiles? You better than us, Jews? Are you not sinners too? The marvelous thing, Cornelius, let me tell you this, is this next thing, that though he's judged, God has declared that in his name there is forgiveness of sin. Foundation number one of true Christian holiness, Jew and Gentile, both of them bankrupt sinners before God. Saved solely through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It still remains the truth. We're not saved by our works, none of us, neither Jew nor Greek. God isn't against your good works. If you're wanting to please God by doing good works, he takes notice of your heart. You'll never be saved by those good works. If you want to please God, he'll send the missionary to you, and he'll preach you the gospel in these terms that you, Jew, Gentile, Hottentot, or German, in common with the rest of us, have sinned. We stand condemned. On that same common platform, sinners before God, and the message is that God loved us, and Christ died for us, and through him there is forgiveness.
Together we start forgiven, simply through faith in Christ. And secondly, when Peter got home to his brethren in Jerusalem, he reminded them that there was a second part to this, uh, gospel of holiness. What was that? He said, you know, brethren, as I stood there preaching the gospel to these Gentiles, I couldn't help it. I didn't do it, he said. I will ask you, James, to believe that. I couldn't stop it happening. It wasn't really my fault. He said, all I did was to stand there preaching the gospel, you see. And as I preached, the Holy Ghost fell upon them as on us at the first. I remember the word of the Lord Jesus.
You shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. God gave them his spirit, Gentiles though they were. They put the two great facts together, forgiveness through the death of Christ. Baptized in the Holy Spirit. This, the two foundation platforms of true Christian holiness. Forgiveness, but not to go out and do as you like. Forgiveness leading to a holy life, not simply because we're hedged around with rules and regulations.
Forgiveness followed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within, by his holy images, to make and to keep us clean. What big topics they are, but the clock says we must cease our thinking for this evening. This has become clear, that this, these two things are the secret of Christian. Then there's a world of difference between that and the old Jewish concept of holiness. The Lord, by his spirit, work in our lives that we be Christians, not only in name, but Christians who are manifestly Christians, because their holiness is truly based on Christ.
Shall we pray? Our Father, as we come at these simple foundational truths of our Christian faith, perhaps from a slightly different angle from which we've been accustomed to, but yet see them again. Help us, Lord, to perceive the wonder of them and the glory of them, the majesty of them. And help us, Lord, to take our lives by thy grace and set them aside the pattern of thy holy word. We do believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, as our Savior.
We have no other hope but he. But Lord, we pray thou wilt use thy word by thy spirit to conform us to the image of Christ, that we may be a people not Christian in name only, but Christian in quality of character, in our holiness, in our zeal for thy gospel, in our love for the world around us, lost in its sin. To this end, bless thy word, we beseech thee, and part us now with thine evening blessing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
