Gooding, David: Reading and Understanding Luke's Literary Masterpiece

Thank you. You're welcome. Shall we just ask God's help that we might understand his word? It says, Lord, we remember when it was said, the teacher is come and calls to thee. Grant us, we pray thee, as we open thy word, that we might have that sense in our hearts that thou art present, calling personally to each one of us. To have yet further experience of thee as our teacher. Give us vigor of mind. And that perceptiveness that comes from thy Holy Spirit. Grant us, O Lord, so to hear thy voice. That we each one may catch something from thee, and be led and encouraged in the task of loving thee with all our mind. In thy holy name we ask this thing. Amen. Amen. You have asked me, as I have understood it, to speak on the topic, methods of studying the Book of the Acts. I suppose there are as many methods as there are people. Let we mention two of them and proceed to the method that I myself find particularly helpful. That one I will deal with at some length. First of all, of course, if we come to the book of the Acts, it is a story book. It is not, uh, a letter, uh, a reasoned exposition. It is an assembling of stories. And historical books of that sort, eh, in the Bible do raise, more than other books, uh, problems of how do you go about studying them? What do you do? Well, we can, if we like, as we come to the Acts, take the book as an assemblage of stories, and take individual stories and learn the lessons that they have to teach. For instance, we can take any one or all of the stories that deal with conversion and study actual incidents of people getting saved, see what led up to it and, and how it actually happened and what resulted. Or if we like, we could take through the, uh, uh, Acts of the Apostles the theme of the Holy Spirit, his descent and his consequent activities, and how people receive the Holy Spirit, and on what conditions, and with what implications. Or we might like to take another topic, say the topic o- of the church, and watch how, uh, people were, uh, converted to Christ and then began simply to meet together so that the church was born, and how through the spread of the gospel other churches sprang up. We might learn what they did, how they did it, where they felt necess- necessity later on for change, and in what direction. These and a number of topics you might take, uh, basing yourself on, so to speak, a string of otherwise isolated incidents. There would be another way of coming about it, of course, uh, and the second way does not, uh, uh, uh, cancel out the first. I- it is but an extension of the first. You could, if you like, uh, uh, approach the book with a historian's interest and a geographer's interest, to trace how in history Christianity spread from Jerusalem geographically through the, uh, then known world, through Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, then on to the uttermost parts of the earth. Many people have found it a very helpful scaffolding to use this approach, uh, in particular when they come, uh, uh, up to the mission, uh, and ministry of the Apostle Paul. They are won't to trace his journeyings on a map and follow him geographically, so to speak, in the spread of the gospel. The third method, uh, that I mentioned this morning, and the one that I, uh, uh, wish to illustrate to you, again, doesn't cancel out either of those first two methods. It is not everybody's cup of tea, and I'm certainly, I wish to emphasize that the method that I now shall pursue, uh, I do not claim for inspiration, as this is the only method of studying God's Holy Word. You may find it positively, uh, a, a, a hindrance, perfectly abominable. Well, if you so do, well, put your fingers in your ears now and forget it forever after. It is merely one way of studying Holy Writ. It smacks, of course, I suppose, a bit o- o- of the literary man's, uh, uh, approach. We who can't be scientists or geographers or historians have to content ourselves with reading books like this as though they were literature, do you see? And, uh, uh, my approach, therefore, uh, will probably be more literary than anything else. But let me just observe that if you follow the geographical method and the spread of Christianity, uh, in those times, you will, of course, notice that the spread of Christianity geographically raised a number of interesting issues. For you will find Christianity beginning to be preached against the background of Judaism in Jerusalem. To people that knew their Old Testament very well, and had already a God-given system of worship based on the temple. And the problems that Christianity faced in its early days, as it began to make its voice heard in Jerusalem, uh, were sizable enough, but they were different problems, as you might expect, from the problems that, uh, Christianity met when it branched out a bit further and came, say, to Samaria. And still different were the problems it faced when it left, uh, Asia and Asia Minor and came across here into Europe to preach its message against the background, not merely now Judaism, though there were Jews, of course, with their synagogues in these Gentile cities, but it had to preach its message against the background of spiritism, old pagan religions, intellectual philosophies, Roman politics, and, uh, as I say, it was the same gospel, but it is the most interesting thing to watch Christianity coming successively in these different geographical regions across successively different moral and spiritual problems, and watch Christianity coping with the problems. So you will find in every particular area, uh, of necessity, Christianity did need problems. It wasn't welcomed anywhere without opposition. And it is most instructive to see how God's Holy Spirit led the early church and the early evangelists in the development of their own understanding of Christianity, and how in the end, whatever the problems were, they triumphed. There is, uh, uh, therefore, at this level, a- a very, uh, another, uh, interesting, uh, uh, thing to observe. Christianity, according to the Acts of the Apostles, uh, didn't come down from heaven in the form of an act of parliament, all nicely tied up, uh, with a preamble saying that from, um, uh, one o'clock, uh, in the morning, uh, next Sunday, you will stop Judaism and you will begin Christianity. No. Christianity developed as men and women developed. As they met their various problems in these various areas, saw the problem and a- and said to themselves, I- I want to know what, what as Christians, what view we're going to take to this? And God's living Holy Spirit directed them gradually and bit by bit into all truth. So that in, in the Acts, you'll see Christianity emerging. And you will find very vivid lessons, uh, at this level that will show you exactly what Christianity is and came to be. Simply for this very reason, that when Christianity had to diverge from Judaism, as eventually it did have to diverge, and eventually leave it completely, the issues over which it had to diverge are, of course, fundamental to Christianity. They were so fundamental that Christianity could no longer stay as one synagogue amongst many among the Jews. And all the way along the line, we shall see Christianity diverging. We shall learn what Christianity is basically and essentially. And it will be most instructive because perhaps one of Christendom's, uh, greatest temptations down the centuries has been to lapse back into at least some of the religion from which it either was born or converted. You get Christianity going back to Judaism, with its forms and ceremonies and institutions and offices. Or you will get Christianity not coming clear of the mud of pagan superstitions, celebrating All Souls Day, for instance. You know what I mean, don't you? Festival, the old pagan festival of when the children go out to the, uh, cemetery and, and they bring back the dead spirits, uh, back to the homes, and they have a feast, you see. And, uh, after you've entertained the old spirits so long, you take them back again to the cemetery and deposit them there and hope they won't get up without permission for the next year. Real good, ripe, old pagan rite and ceremony. But you will find in some parts of the world, in Ireland, for instance, we have it. Uh... All Souls Day. And the kids still dig out their turnips, tur- turnips and put candles in, you know, to make them look like ghosts. What? I don't know why they do it. But it's a bit of old paganism, uh, still clinging to Christianity, or have been booted out long since. And for this interesting, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, view then on emergent Christianity, I would base myself on what I consider, you may not, uh, Luke's own literary, uh, divisions of his narrative. I follow J.M. Wilson here. This is not original with me, uh, neither praise me nor blame me. Uh, this is, as J.M. Wilson pointed out long ago, eh, Luke marks his narrative in his Acts of the Apostles, as indeed he does it i- in the gospel, by certain refrains that naturally divide up, uh, uh, the whole. Would you look, uh, if you have a text in front of you, at chapter six, verse seven. Meet the first of these refrains. And the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly, and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. Let's read the next one so that you can savor the sound of it, so to speak. Chapter nine and verse thirty one. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, being edified, and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost was multiplied. The third one, chapter twelve, verse twenty four. But the word of God grew and multiplied. Uh, then if you like, uh, chapter sixteen and verse five. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in number daily. You will begin to observe that we're going through the stages of its growth and increase in spite of its opposition. And then again in chapter nineteen and verse 20, so mightily grew the word of the Lord and prevailed. And the final crescendo, of course, in the last, uh, words of the Acts in, um, chapter twenty eight. and he abode two whole years in his own higher dwelling and received all that went in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all boldness, none forbidding him. It has broken through all the barriers and is steaming ahead, uh, without any hindrance. Now, if and suppose, uh, that that were Luke's intention by these refrains, divide up his narrative in some literary fashion, uh, you would in fact have, uh, six parts to, uh, the Acts. I, uh, uh, uh, will take those now, if I may, and, uh, illustrate with some of them, fill in with some of them, what are the leading themes, and perhaps in one or two of them do a little, uh, uh, literary analysis. But just in the first one, it's rather a big one and too big to do any literary analysis with, the first section from one to six is, of course, the story of the gospel beginning in Jerusalem. And it's, uh, uh, main theme is going to be, obviously, one of its main things is going to be about the Holy Spirit. After all, this is the section, uh, that it tells about Pentecost, that unique historic event. Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down from heaven. Christ baptized the infant church in the Holy Spirit. So inaugurating what you might call the age of the Holy Spirit. For, uh, whereas the Holy Spirit came upon men, uh, in ancient times before Pentecost, Pentecost was, after all, sui generis. It was a something of its own kind. Although the Holy Spirit was the power, for instance, uh, that, uh, uh, uh, used apostles when they went out in the days of our Lord's lifetime on their gospel missions, and by the Holy Spirit's power they cast out demons. In spite of that, the Lord Jesus said in his, uh, farewell discourses before he died, look, the Holy Spirit isn't come yet. Though he had used the apostles many times, he's not come yet. Uh, when I go, I will send him, but he can't come until I go. So obviously Pentecost is something distinct, it's something unique, it's something that never happened before. In a sense, on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came in a way he'd never come before. Came to remain. So then, uh, throughout that whole, uh, first section, you'll find many, many references, of course, to the Holy Spirit. You will find another, uh, uh, topic, however, that is repeated many times, uh, and that is the emphasis on things material. For instance, uh, one of the immediate results of Pentecost, so chapter two tells us, uh, was this, uh, verse, um, forty four of chapter two: And all that believed were together and had all things common, and they sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all according as any man had need. Or again, you will find, uh, in chapters four, in chapter for for instance, verse thirty four, Neither was there among them any that lacked, for as many as were possessors of ha- lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of these things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet, and distribution was made unto each according as anyone had need. And Joseph, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, which is being interpreted son of exhortation, a Levite, a man of Cyprus by race, having a field, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet, uh, striking contrast, of course, I may just interject, between old Judas mentioned in chapter one, who with the price of blood bought a field. Um, the gospel makes some reverses from this man, being a Levite and having a field that he ought to have, sold it. Uh, and then chapter five gives quite a, a, a longish story about Ananias and Sapphira a- and their regrettable, uh, deed, when they too, having possessions, sold them, but kept back some of the price, pretending that they were giving all. Quite a long story then on this matter of what they did with their material possessions. And the final story in this section, chapter six, verses one to, uh, six, is a question of the daily ministration, that is of money. The, uh, Grecian widows, uh, murmured, uh, and complained that they were being neglected in the daily ministration of the church's funds, relief funds, if you like. And so men were appointed to look after the funds of the church. And you may think perhaps it is not by accident that these two themes, so seemingly opposite, should be joined together in this first section. Tremendous emphasis on the spiritual side of life, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the most spiritual part of the whole New Testament, and yet an equal emphasis on the material side of life. And you may notice how Luke, uh, ties up that. The section begins by the appointment of apostles, A for apostles. Men whose task it was to see to the spiritual side of the church. And the section ends with, what shall we call them? They're not actually called deacons, but shall we put D so we shall, uh, know what they are? Uh, men appointed to look after the material things of a community. Two sets of officers, one at the beginning, one at the end. Luke has a habit of doing that kind of thing, uh, in his literary, uh, uh, uh, style, uh, similarities or contrasts at ends and beginnings. Uh, but it isn't merely a literary device. Luke is showing you this balance of emphasis in the early church, having both sides. The tremendous emphasis on the spiritual, the sane and healthy emphasis on the material. All right? Now I want to notice a third thing, which is, uh, uh, the, uh, major difficulty that they encountered. Uh, um, uh, chapter four, if you like. Where the opposition begins to break out. As they spake unto the people, the priests and captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, being sore troubled because they taught the people and proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid their hands on them. They were Sadducees. Would you look in chapter five and verse seventeen? But the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him. And then in a little parenthesis, Luke adds, which is the sect of the Sadducees? You won't hear much in Acts of the Apostles about Sadducees for a very good reason, uh, but here you will find them prominent, in fact, preeminent. Because the high priest and his party, as Luke now tells you, were Sadducees. And when it came to the government of that city and that nation, uh, what government they had left to them under the Romans was vested, of course, in the high priest and the ruling party, who were most of them Sadducees. There was inevitably a clash. In this city, where the immediate pe- the people immediately responsible for religion and in some parts politics were Sadducees, you now had, uh, thousand, five thousand people in this same city with their leaders, apostles, and their deacons. Well, of course, the high priest was forced to raise an eyebrow. What on earth is happening here? We are the leaders in this nation, well, these upstarts think they're doing. You can't, if you be in political or religious power, take no notice of a group of people within that small city, numbering about five thousand with, uh, apostles and leaders and deacons and things. What on earth they think they are? They're setting up a state within a state or something. They were a religious group immediately, of course, the, the, the, the high priest would be challenged because he was meant to be the spiritual leader of the nation. What else was going on? You will see, therefore, that in this first section, the first major difficulty that emergent Christianity faced was this clash between the leaders of the church and the church and the leaders of Jew. The issue between them, well, it was twofold, of course. It was over this person of Jesus Christ. As Peter pointed out to these men, you are the builders, said he, of this nation. You are responsible to build this nation, so to speak, but you've rejected the chief cornerstone upon which the nation should be built. You've rejected Messiah. You've murdered Messiah. Well, that's a big enough issue, uh, in all good conscience. Between these two groups, the Christianity now emergent, lies this vast gulf. Their attitude to Messiah, they've murdered, have the ca- uh, Sadducees, Messiah. According to Peter's claim. But there is another, uh, issue. Uh, Peter preached that Jesus was the Christ, and evidence and proof thereof was the coming of a Holy Spirit making this hubbub in Jerusalem. And that can't be so, said the Sadducees, that can't be so by definition because there isn't such a thing as resurrection. Oh come, you're mistaken here. As Luke later tells us in another section, you'll see Sadducees did not believe in resurrection. They didn't believe in angel. They didn't believe in spirit. They were the religious humanists of the day. They believed in religion and its beautiful aesthetics and its happy morals. But a religion that had this, uh, factor, that it believed in the resurrection of the dead, it believed in angel, it believed in spirit. A religion that was basically spiritual, that began by saying that salvation consists in a personal relation with a man that's been crucified and risen from the dead, begins in contact with us, which we stand o- with two feet on the ground in this world, with a man who is in that spirit realm, that there is contact between the two. This was utter anathema to Sadducees. Wouldn't have been so bad to Pharisees, but, uh, Sadducees of all people on earth. They were materialists. They were humanists. Therefore, perhaps it is not surprising for Luke, uh, of Luke to, to make these both part just for that. What is Christianity? If religion is the right term, I should perhaps ought to use faith. It is a faith that primarily stresses the reality of that spirit realm, demonstrated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and the utter necessity of this spiritual relation here and now with God, with Christ, risen Christ. That preaches that just as Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, so there is coming a great resurrection. This world isn't just going on and on and on forever with successive generations. There will come an end. Christ will come again. He who died and lived on our world, died, rose and went back to that spirit realm, is coming again. Back this same Jesus shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go. He's coming. He's merely waiting till his enemies be made the footstool of his feet, then he shall come. This is Christianity, and it contrasted then, and it contrasts now, but, uh, so very strongly with all versions of mere humanistic religion. The ancient Jews of the Sadduceean thought had long since, of course, learned to spiritualize away all notions of the Lord's coming. The Old Testament talked of it, of course it said Christ was coming, but they had pleased to take it not literally, do you see? Uh, they had said it can't be an event in history. No, so long as all Israel keep the law for one day, that that's Messiah count. You notice the tendency to humanistic reinterpretation. A self-contained earth, a God up there somewhere, but no spirit, no angel, no resurrection, no end of the world, no coming again of Christ when that world breaks into this. No, a self-contained flat of a religion. All right? And Christianity at the very beginning stands in tremendous contrast, believes in the reality of that world. Not only that Christ is coming again, but true religion is in our contact now, here now, with this risen Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of his Holy Spirit, come down from heaven and present with us. But now, lest you should go to a wrong extreme and think that Christianity is a kind of Gnosticism, that is, uh, also spiritually minded, that it hasn't any time for things material, like, uh, a lot of old, uh, Gnostics. That Luke, in his sense, um, stressed the other thing too. Spiritually minded as Christianity is, it is also equally concerned with the goodness and the necessity of things material. It isn't Gnosticism. It isn't even Plato's, uh, philosophy, uh, that is, if you will stick to, uh, Christianity and not let Saint Thomas Aquinas and various other people, uh, color your Christianity with Plato and Aristotle. Uh, it believes in the goodness of the body, the goodness of things material. And I needn't elaborate that, need I? Uh, I pointed out those summary passages dealing with this matter, our attitude to goods. It has both in. The rightness of things material, and of course, they're ever controlled by the Holy Spirit. You may sum up that kind of emphasis i- in the story that is told in this section. It is section, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, it's chapter three, the story of the man that was laid at the gate of the temple for healing. It may have a voice to our modern ears, perhaps, who knows. The apostles were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, and there was laid there a man who was lame from birth, seeking alms. His friends thought that this was a good tactic, you see. You can catch people when they're going into church or coming out. It's generally that they feel sizably religious and charitable. So they put the man on the steps to see, hoping, uh... I mean, isn't this what is religion is all about? Helping the poor? Isn't this what the church's job in the world? Is it? Uh, along comes Peter. Well, old chap, he said, if I had any silver and gold, I'd give it to you. But I haven't any of that at the moment. What I have, I will give. And in the name of Christ, he healed him. And the crowds came flocking round, and Peter made his comment. Look, he said, you stand here open-mouthed, wondering what's happened to this chappy. I'll tell you what's happened to this chappy. It's the name of Christ through faith in his name that's made this man strong and well. You were wanting my sixpence, weren't you? I got something vastly better than sixpence. I can talk to you about the Prince of Life, very source of life. But you funny folks, you will take my sixpence, but the Prince of Life himself, you murdered. Isn't that curious? You know, it's the world all over, not least in nineteen sixty nine. They have their edition of Christianity, their version of what it ought to be. Look here, why don't you shut up preaching? Tired of your preaching. We're tired of your doctrines. Now show us a bit of practical living. Give to Oxford. What is true Christianity? Oh, gentlemen, your Christianity will perish forever, if you listen to them. They want your shilling. They don't want the Prince of Life. And it would be utterly traitorous to him and to Christianity and to your non-Christian friends to let them get the impression that so long as they get your shilling, that's all that Christianity is about. It is primarily about the reality of that spirit realm, of men being reconciled to God, of receiving the very Prince of Life, of being ready for his coming, for this whole creation is going to move forward a great stage when he comes again. And to take the church's shilling and to reject her Lord is a pathetic tragedy. Doesn't mean we should be indifferent, of course not, they can have our shillings, they can have all we've got if we got them. Of course so. For Christianity believes, I say that again, in the goodness and, uh, and rightness and necessity of things material in the body. Of course, yes, let them have our shillings. But never let them trick you into thinking that you better play down the doctrines, the person of Christ, his resurrection, the need for regeneration, and end up with nothing that, with something that's nothing more than a social welfare institution. Well, that would be a denial of all Christianity is, uh, going back to sheer Sadduceeism. In section two— how long am I meant, I mean, when am I meant to stop? Now? Carry on now. It's the next 5 minutes anyway. Um, in in section 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 stories in section 2. Uh, the one is about, um, Stephen and the temple. Trial of Stephen, the story is. The second is, uh, uh, Philip going down to Samaria, conversion of people in Samaria. The third is the one about the Ethiopian eunuch, uh, led to Christ by Philip in the desert, and, uh, the other one is the story of Saul, how he got converted. Uh, they're very interesting, aren't they? For if nothing else, uh, the first two are the story, uh, uh, of Christianity against the background of Judaism's worship. The second two are the story of Christianity against the, the, the background of Judaism evangelical outreach. Any respectable religion ought to have those two sides, isn't it, Wato? Uh, worship and evangelical outreach. But now let's look at these two. They are a born interesting pair because, uh, uh, in the first one, Stephen's defense i- is concerned with his defense against certain accusations. He is supposed to have said that Jesus would destroy the temple and change the customs delivered to Moses. Temple. But you will remember, of course, that Samaria, it was precisely about this business of the temple that the Samaritans objected to the Jews. They had the same Pentateuch, if no more. They agreed that that was the Bible, the word of God, at least the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. What they differed was on the matter of how you should worship. As the Samaritan woman put it to Christ, now you say, don't you, that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship? Well, we don't actually, you'll see, and our religion is as good as yours, and we believe that it's in this mountain here, actually, should our be our headquarters be. All right? It was a question of worship. They were, if you don't mind my putting it, these were the Orthodox, and these were the non-conformists. Hmm. Yeah. And what did Christianity say to those two? Well, uh, it seems sounds somewhat a garbled version that Stephen's accusers brought, uh, before the court, but there was some truth in it, wasn't there? Uh, Stephen probably said what a late le- later writer, Christian writer, writing to the Hebrews, uh, said, that indeed the old temple was going. Yeah. It had been instituted of God, but its services would have to change, wouldn't they? And that old God-given worship with its sacrifices, uh, animal sacrifices pointed towards the coming of Christ, but now Christ had come and offered the supreme sacrifice. You didn't want any of these others. And the old priesthood was going, you know, priesthood with a high priest, oof, high priest. He was going too. You can't have two high priests, can you? And in Christianity, Christ is the high priest that would be utterly blasphemous for anyone else to attempt to be, wouldn't it? That'll have to go. And you don't want your incense now that you've got Christ, do you? And the early Christians were much more concerned with the true tabernacle that the Lord pitched, not man. Consequently, you'll, you'll, you'll find them happily meeting, uh, where occasion demanded and they hadn't enough, any more money, happily meeting in upstairs room where folks could fall out of the windows. Uh, uh. They weren't all get upset when they couldn't go to the temple anymore, because Christianity, it, it talks to you about the spiritual realities of which Judaism was only the, uh, foreshadowing. Alas, that Christianity should so frequently have fallen back to the Judaism from which it came. Ah, but you won't, um, you won't change a nation just overnight, will you? Actually, when they heard Stephen talk like this, they thought it was utter blasphemy. They'd never heard such blasphemy in all their life. Dear, oh dear me. What? Stop offering animal sacrifices? Well, it was in the Bible you had to offer animal sacrifices, wasn't it? It was in the Leviticus anyway. And didn't they believe that was inspired of God? And hadn't God commanded the Old Testament sacrifices? And who is Stephen to get up and and say you've got to stop? They never heard this twaddle in all their lives, put about by these ignorant fishermen, uh, and their supposed converts. How would you deal with folks like that? Which I read in the letter to the Hebrews. Well, one, it wasn't written. And so if it had have been, imagine you're going along, uh, to prove this to some rabbi from Hebrews, and you say, but my dear old man who wrote Hebrews, wasn't it one of your, one of your men wrote it? Agree with your men. Hm. So Stephen knew a thing or two. He didn't quote from the New Testament, he quotes from the old. He read them a lesson in history, actually, without v- with very little comment. He said, gentlemen, you will observe, if I may paraphrase him, that the Old Testament shows that God is a God of progress. God of movement. Hmm. For instance, you take our history. He called Abram out of Ur of Chaldees. That was very good. And he came into Palestine. That was lovely. Ah, but there came a moment when the very God who called Abram out of, uh, Ur of Caldas into Palestine, uh, told his descendants to go down into Egypt. Oh wow. You can imagine some of them saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, can't do that kind of thing. God called us out here. Well, so he did originally. But now the ways of God have say- taken a turn, and for the next four hundred years, there's going to be another, so to speak, age when it will be God's will there'll be down in Egypt. Well, down in Egypt they went for, for hundred years. Then a man called Moses came along, and he said, you know, we've come to a climax in history. God is on the move once more, and you've got to come out of Egypt. It took them a long time to persuade the Jews that was so. But you know, if you had been a Jew living in Egypt, when Moses the and the rest moved out, you'd have said, oh no, I'm not moving out. I'm staying in Egypt, you see, because God brought our fathers here, and I'm going to stay here. That wouldn't have been true conservatism, that would have been apostasy from the living God. For God was moving on. Well, they eventually got into the, into the land, you know, and Solomon, with great spuffle, uh, built, built a temple. Marvelous it was. He himself wasn't altogether too sure when he finished how long it would be there, for he said, will the God of heaven dwell in a temple made out of hands like this? And when the prophets came along, of course, they saw that this must, in its very nature, be only a temporary thing. Why, the heaven of heavens cannot contain him. Time would come when this would have to pass. In Christianity, you have reached another one of those great crises, and God was moving on once more. So it was no longer faithfulness to remain a Jew, it was apostasy from the living God to keep hold of that old temple worship. God was moving on. Lovely, isn't it? Christianity is a God of progress, you know. One of these days you won't keep the Lord's Supper anymore, will you? You'll be glad to have finished with it. Because the Lord's coming, there's going to be another big move forward. God is the living God. Then Stephen made the point that if you watch all the men that were raised up of God in those early crises to lead God's people in those times of crisis, the next stage forward, none of them was welcomed. They didn't like Joseph. They hated him and sold him. They didn't like Moses. They rebelled against him. And so on and so forth down the years. In fact, your rejection of all these God-sent leaders, says Stephen as he quotes the scripture, is not an example of praiseworthy conservatism. It's an example of resistance to the Holy Spirit. As against Judaism, then, with its own mere symbols, Christianity is the religion of progress. We must come past the old temporary symbols and into the reality, the spiritual realities to which they pointed forward. But Luke is a wise man, isn't he? Or is it the Holy Spirit, I wonder? Or, or both. When you come to Samaria, you will find the opposite side of the coin. So they went down to Samaria and had a most successful mission. Lots of them were saved, only they didn't get any Holy Spirit. Why was that? They've been baptized, says Luke. No Holy Spirit. How odd. So, uh, eventually, um, uh, let me read you the text just to, to remind you what happened. This is Acts chapter eight. And verse fourteen: now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who, when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost, for as yet he was fallen upon none of them, only they, they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. Well, there's one thing that convinces me that those Samaritans, apart from Simon Magus, were genuine converts. That is that they let Peter and John put their hands on them. If they hadn't have been converted, they would have spat in their faces. Jews don't have any dealings with Samaritans. In fact, Peter and John wouldn't have gone anyway. Not if they'd been all diehard Jews. And the Samaritans wouldn't have received them because of this centuries-long bitter feud between these two. Now, why all this fuss, you say? Why did God make those Samaritans wait for the apostles from Jerusalem to come and lay their hands on them before God would own that they were genuine converts? I think this is exceedingly important. Let's go back a bit in our thinking. Our Lord did tell the woman in Samaria, didn't he, that the time was coming when neither at Jerusalem nor, uh, in Samaria would you worship God. The whole question of religious headquarters was going to be struck out. Wasn't going to be any more spiritual headquarters on earth, neither Jerusalem nor Samaria. Right? That is quite true in Christianity. There is no headquarters for Christianity that I know of now, is there? Well, no undisputable headquarters. Save in heaven. Even so, God didn't say to these Samaritans, oh, well, look, let's forget the past, you know, we'll scrub that out. You had a difference with Jerusalem about where you ought to worship, oh, well, let's forget those kind of things. No, indeed he didn't. For if you were, were to remember, there was a very important reason behind God saying that Jerusalem was to be the place where those people should worship. When they entered the land, God warned them solemnly that they would have one place where God's name should be put, and here God would be worshipped. Uh, the, the contrast is here as distinct from every green tree, high hill, and other sort of numinous place that you could come across. Because God straightly warned them that if they started worshipping God in any old green tree or, or numinous dell, they would fall into abominable idolatry like the rest of the heathen did. They were to have one place of worship where God's worship would proceed according to Holy Scripture. Idolatry was always a very real danger in the ancient world. They weren't physicists, you see, were they? If a woman combed her hair at night and it crackled a bit, they thought a demon had got into it. Wow. And if the moon, uh, went into eclipse, they got all the bin lids they could and banged them as hard as they could to frighten the devil that had got hold of the moon. Oh, they didn't have astronauts. And, uh, uh, it was perilously easy for men in those days to turn to idolatry. Idolatry ever leads a man into bondage, you know. Makes a slave of him. Instead of being lord of creation, see he's now bowing down to sticks and stones, electrical thunderstorms, and, uh, shadows over the moon, all that kind of thing. He's meant to be an intelligent man, but he's gone down into to to idolatry, poor child. How will you know the difference? God said, look here, we'll have none of that stuff. You will come to Jerusalem. You will not be given free rein in your imaginative, uh, schemes to color and make religion a bit more attractive. You'll have an utterly idol-free temple with the plain word of God and great doctrines of redemption taught in its ritual. The The Samaritan Samaritans was affected affected to to... disagree. Oh yes, they had another scheme. Ah. They said they was as good as the Jews anyway. You didn't always have to go by the Bible. At least if the Bible had some more awkward bits in it, they found a way around that. They crossed them out and changed them. Oh. And does it matter? Oh well, you come with me down with Philip to Samaria and see what's happened. A certain gentleman, meet him do, called Simon Magus. Wow, the one local said he's after one, you know. So wonder. This man Simon Magus? He, he's the power of God that's called great. He had one or two psychological tricks up his sleeve, not have you. And lo and behold, they were nearly granting him divine honors, the old psychological quack. They had fallen a prey to the very thing that God was trying to save them from by demanding they come up to Jerusalem. You know, Caiaphas and Annas, they weren't the most spiritual men you ever met. They weren't like to be taken in by a quack like Simon Magus. Because at least they had stuck to God's word and his temple. The Samaritans, in cutting their roots with Jerusalem, had fallen a prey to deception. Before God will grant these Samaritans his full salvation, he says, look here, gentlemen, you will have to come and admit that true salvation comes through Jerusalem. You'll have to let those apostles come down from Jerusalem and own that in these centuries you've been wrong, that anything that's worth having comes from Jerusalem. Cool. Well, that's conservativism with a vengeance, isn't it? What? Yeah. I oi- I I I take leave to add, ladies and gentlemen, that if you have anything that's worth having in the spiritual realm, it likewise comes from Jerusalem. It comes through a Jew with the name of Jesus. Who is the Jews' Messiah. He is the root and offspring of David. He's the son of Abraham. He isn't a bright boy with a new brand of theology who has some wonderful insights. He is the, uh, flower of that great historic process down the ages. To read the record of it in this Old Testament. Never you cut your roots with history. If Jesus Christ is what he says he is, he is the Messiah prophesied through this special book that came through this special nation. He himself said that if you do not believe Moses' words, you won't believe his words. Alas for a Christendom that has these last hundred years cut its root with- roots with history. Doesn't necessarily believe that Old Testament's inspired. It doesn't believe in a literal resurrection. It cuts its roots with history and offices in its place, well, a Paul van Buuren existential philosophy, into which Christian terms have been, with consummate skill, fitted. Difficult job, anyway. To cut your roots with history, belief in the inspiration of Old Testament, Christianity is the flower of this great historic movement, is to land yourself in danger of being carried away with the most recent, uh, philosophy, which is only another form of bondage to the idolatry of the human intellect. Right now then, and these evangelical outreach. Meet the Ethiopian. Here is one form of Judaism evangelism. Their worship of God, their reading of the law, its purity, its high lofty morals were a great, uh, uh, uh, uh, lesson to the, um, uh, ancient world. Here was one man amongst many who found themselves attracted thereto, thoughtful man, high officer of state. He's coming up to Jerusalem to seek the true God, turning his back on the idols. There were many such men in various stations in life, uh, men in the army like the centurions, that good woman in the fashion trade, Lydia, mentioned in the Acts, uh, who were God-fearers, much attracted to Judaism's purity of religion, its morals, its law. The man came out to Jerusalem. He was going back evidently disappointed, wasn't he? Anyhow, he had within his hand a great potential, a great message of salvation, without knowing it. Why wasn't he converted up in Jerusalem? Well, it was because that exact passage, really, that God used to lead him to Christ and into salvation, and its message is the message that Judaism wouldn't have. Wouldn't accept that Isaiah fifty three referred to Jesus of Nazareth and his atoning sacrifice, and therefore they had no gospel. The law isn't gospel, you know. You may observe in history the Jews did a certain amount of evangelization, didn't they, down around Alexandria, in Alexandrian times? Yes, they did a certain amount of evangelization or propaganda, call it what you will, but there has only been one point in history where there issued from Judaism a mighty flood of evangelism to fill the world. And since that happened, it's never happened again. Why is that? What made Judaism erupt in that, uh, phenomenal way, never before, never after? The answer to that is you won't look at Philip. Law isn't gospel, you see. I myself would never find any, any power in the law. Why should I go around the next street even to tell somebody the law? Right, if I got to go and tell that man over there to be good all by myself, I wouldn't have the puff to go and do it. Ah, but I got more than law. I got gospel. I got the Savior. Ah, the Lord laid on him my iniquity, and by his stripes I'm healed. I couldn't tell the other chap that. I can go alongside him and say, oh boy, yes, I'm not what I ought to be, but you know, Christ has died for me. Die for you as well if you'll have it. It was that message that pushed old Philip out, running around in the desert, and uh, uh, the vast volcano of eruption that was Christianity. But mark it, if Christendom were ever to lose its message of the atoning death of Christ and lapse back into being merely a thing of ethics like Judaism's law, in that moment the steam would go out of its evangelism. Have you ever seen it happen? Pity that, uh, Christendom has sometimes grown ashamed of the doctrines of the blood of Christ, his vicarious suffering, his atoning death. But, uh, when you come to Sir, you find the biggest evangelist that Judaism ever produced. It wasn't you, wasn't it? The biggest evangelism that Judaism, evangelist that Judaism, Judaism ever produced. Oh, and what made him an evangelist? Well, it's an interesting little thing. Luke's literary methods, uh, uh, beginnings and ends. Uh, Stephen started his defense with the famous observation, uh, the God of glory appeared to Abraham. Yeah? The God of glory appeared to Abraham, called him out, and made him a pilgrim. God will ever do that. If God of glory appears to you, he'll make a pilgrim of you. When Saul got converted, a light from heaven shone right about him. Hmm. What did that do to him? I made a missionary of him. The God of glory appeared to Abram, brought him out of the Gentiles. The light from heaven shone upon Saul, sent him back into them. Why? It was the discovery of the deity of the Lord Jesus that turned Saul into a missionary. That Jesus was the Son of God. For in that discovery lay a tremendous implication. That this Jesus, whom he despised with all his heart, who was a learned rabbi, see. He could argue well, he could, he could, uh, excel in Haggadah and in, uh, halacha and midrash and all the rest of it. And as a professional, not a lot of time for these wild prophets from the lo- from the north with their evangelical fervor running around with strange doctrines about the second coming and this kind of thing. No! Nice conservative Judaism. Decent religion. Until he discovered that this despised Jesus, with his street corner preaching, was the Son of Of God. God. I wonder if we would recognize Jesus if he came around preaching around our street corners. Or would we be ashamed of him as a narrow-minded evangelist? It was the discovery of his risen glory, that this Jesus and God were one. Evolutionized Saul's life and sent him, the here erstwhile proud Pharisee, out to the despised Gentiles, uh, with the gospel. Well, I said more than my, uh, spent more than my time. Thank you for your patience. That's two sections of Acts, there are six. If you would, uh, like, as I close, uh, uh, my idea of what these other things are about, I would say that this is the social implication, this second section here, the social implication of the gospel. Uh, Christianity's idea of sainthood. Where now if the gospel's going to move out and come down to Gentiles, Judaism's notion of what it means to be a saint has got to be revised. So it begins this section, uh, Peter came down to visit the saints. Well, who else? But if you ask yourself, what is a saint? What is a saint? Judaism had its ideas of what a saint was. They wouldn't go and eat with Gentiles, they were saints, see. It's remarkably difficult to preach the gospel to a man that you won't eat with. And so in this section, you will find, uh, Christianity emerging, and Peter faced with the task of taking the gospel to a Gentile, which provoked him to rethink, think in the light of Christianity, his whole concept of sainthood. And the old middle wall of petition was broken down, sainthood became something else, but that's a long story. Um, this one is the doctrinal implications of taking the gospel to the Gentiles. Should you make Gentiles keep the law of Moses to be saved? Should you ask them to circumcise their babies at eight years old? Should you? Make it necessary for salvation. Wow. And the answer, of course, you know, very definite, no. They're saved by grace through faith. None of your Judaistic additions, please. And, uh, having talked about the doctrinal implications of Christianity, what Christianity is is distinct from Judaism in its doctrine of salvation, as in here is doctrine of sainthood. Uh, this one, uh, will discuss Christianity, as I said before, with you, in the light now of a pagan background, Spiritism. So such subjects as guidance of the Holy Spirit are raised. What's the difference between the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Spiritism? You know, the world longs for guidance, doesn't it? On the quiet, though people laugh about it, joke about it, they read old Lord Luck, don't they? And I don't know what who they have. I don't know Lord Luck, uh, well, you know, Virgil and Sagittarius and all that kind of thing. And spiritism, the world craves for some kind of guidance, doesn't it? And this section opens actually with the woman, uh, uh, who had a spirit of divination, didn't she? People came to her for guidance. And it opens with this discussion of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, uh, upon his servants, Paul and company, not to go here, not to go there, shepherding here, shepherding there, till at last they came to Europe. And then Christianity against the background of philosophy, for instance, at Athens, Epicureanism, Stoicism, uh, fatalism, and what have you, uh, and the atomic theory and all that. And, uh, I mean the Epicurean atomic theory. And this finally, this one here, is somewhat different from the rest. It is Paul's, taken up largely with Paul's defense of the gospel, in which, of course, both man and gospel are intertwined. There is some sense in which Paul was the gospel. Mind my putting it that way. He is the man to whom Christ revealed, perhaps more than any, the length and breadth of his gospel. What kind of a man was he? What was the gospel he preached? Against the background of Jewish accusations that these were a sect. Favorite way of trying to kill anything, call it a sect. Uh, nasty little sect. Splinter groups, all that. And against the background of political ac- uh, accusations that they were antisocial. The Romans would have to take a lot of notes of that. Paul is put on trial, and he, uh, is stood for the defense of the gospel, as he puts it. And Luke, uh, goes into great length here because you'll see, if Paul hadn't gone both to Jerusalem and to Rome to defend the gospel from all those charges that were being brought against it, there would have been many people, sensible people, who never would have bothered to listen even to the gospel. They would have said, what, Christians? Aren't they a little bit, uh, emotionally unbalanced people, nasty sectarian people. They wouldn't even dream of going to listen to them. Oh, how clever the devil is. He does the same kind of thing, doesn't he? Sometimes uses the Sunday Observer to do it with. Why, if there's any newfangled notion against the inspiration of scripture, it will have three issues, and somebody observed, won't you create front page news on A. K. Morton and his computer and such like things, and John Allegro's notions on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Uh, wow, it will get great publicity. And the result? Multitudes of people wouldn't begin to listen to you. There is wrong, not merely for preaching the gospel, but as time and opportunity, uh, are granted to defend the gospel, so that men's ears may be kept open to listen to it. Well, I thank you for your kind patience for listening to me so long. Here, I'll sit down.