Clough: The Nation Israel-The Church Lesson 2

North Stonington Bible Church – 10-15-02

Last evening we started talking a little bit more about the ascension and session of Christ, that we worked on during the conference, and what we’re doing here is kind of like a three part mini-series. Last night we dealt with the ascension and session, and the next event after that; the next event after the ascension and session is of course Pentecost. That’s in Acts 1-2. We worked a little with Pentecost and review a little bit about how the Church responded to that event and what we found was that as Peter got up to address the Jewish community about what was going on in Pentecost it was a very Jewish centered sermon in which he argued that Jesus Christ was again, for the second time, inviting the nation to accept Him, and the Church itself wasn’t really visible there.

This morning, the second in this three part series, I’m going to deal with when and why did the Church begin. And the third one will be on how the Church has its own place, distinct from that of Israel. Behind all these three there’s a motif; throughout evangelicalism, I think largely because Bible teaching has been minimal in our so-called evangelistic fundamental churches, what Bible teaching there has been has often been unsystematic, there’s a craving for order. And as a result of that we have a strong influence of Reformed Theology coming into the evangelical circles. Now there are many things about Reformed Theology that are good. We have to give the Reformers credit, and their followers, for clarifying the gospel, of arguing that indeed, it’s the authority of Scripture, not the authority of the Church; it’s the sola fide, we’re saved only by faith, not by human works, and those are grand themes that Reformed Theology clarified for us, and we wouldn’t be here without that. But to revert back to where the Church was in 1650 is in effect to say that for the past 350 years or so the Holy Spirit hasn’t led to any further clarification. We don’t believe that; we believe you want to get beyond the Reformation in some of the eschatology and ecclesiological issues of what the Church is, where it fits in God’s plan and so forth, that has been largely clarified after the Reformation and after that 200-300 year period.

So that’s what we’re trying to do here by showing the uniqueness of the Church Age, that the Church Age is something radically new in history, it is not to be identified with Israel, it does not replace Israel; the Church has its own function in history in the large scheme of things, and we, as individual believers need to know that because our lives are part of this so-called Church, and God is doing something with this. So that’s the theme of what we’re working with.

This morning we’re going to step back again just a little bit and look at the ascent and session and Pentecost, just as a little bit of background and then we’re going to move on to discuss the issue of the Church itself. Let me draw a little picture of where we’re at. In the conference we talked about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and His ascent, and that was a surprise to the people in that time because the Lord Jesus Christ during His earthly ministry on the timeline, back here He invited, invitation number one, He invited the nation to accept Him as King, and until the nation would accept Him as King, they weren’t going to get their kingdom; that’s the bottom line. And so the nation rejected in.

If you turn to Matthew we’re going to look at two passages in Matthew that show this. Jesus prepared the disciples for His rejection. Halfway through each of the four Gospels, almost at the height of His popularity the Lord started a new theme in His ministry by teaching in parables, whereas He had not before; it’s as though He were deliberately staying out of the public eye, as though He would begin now to teach in code, and the disciples saw that and they were troubled, and they asked Him why, why all of a sudden are you obscure, and the basic reply the Lord Jesus Christ gave was that for those who reject, they have heard enough, and I will teach such that they do not understand any more; for those of you who have accepted Me, I will teach, in parabolic form and I will train you how the parables reveal Me.

In Matthew 22:2 he tells a parable about the kingdom of heaven. He says it “may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. [3] And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. [4] Again he sent out other slaves, saying, Tell those who have been invited, Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered… [5] But they paid no attention and went their way….” In verse 6, “and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. [7] The king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire.”

Now here you have two invitations and finally a destruction of the city. And the second invitation, beginning in verse 4-5 is different from the first invitation. In the first invitation the messengers come to those who are invited to the wedding feast. Obviously the wedding feast in Jewish lore is the kingdom of God to come on earth. And they’re invited, the people whom have been invited is the nation Israel. And so the messengers go out to those who have been invited; those who have been invited say they’re unwilling to come, verse 3.

Then the second invitation in verses 4-5, the servants go out, same people, but this time the resistance is greater, and in verse 6 the people who go out to invite the people to the wedding feast are ceased and killed. And so the question then is, when did the first invitation happen and when did the second invitation happen. We know the third event, verse 7, that’s AD 70. So when did the other two invitations happen. The first invitation happened during the Gospels and the second invitation happens at the beginning of the book of Acts and we saw last night Peter fulfills that in Acts 2 and 3 by his addresses. And throughout the book of Acts we begin to have the murder of the prophets who are coming to Israel. But this is all Jewish, the Church is not really in view here; the Church is something new that’s going to come and be clarified through Paul and the New Testament epistles. But this is very Israelitish, very Jewish here.

Matthew 23 things steam up a little bit more and here’s where there’s some really nasty confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees, very strong conflict here. In Matthew 23:33 the dialogue and the conflict keeps escalating and escalating until finally Jesus comes out with some of the strongest language He used in His ministry. He says, “You snakes, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?” Can you imagine Jesus saying this, the gentle, meek Jesus of popular imagination? But He said this because there was a big issue at stake. He said, “Therefore,” now notice the sentence structure in verse 34, read it carefully, He said “I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city.”

So now verse 34 is a prediction of what He’s going to do in the book of Acts; I am going to send them. Now how is He going to send them because He’s missing; Jesus is off scene. He’s going to send them because He’s ascended and seated at the Father’s right hand and He’s going to send the Spirit to these people; and you’re going to kill them and you’re to crucify them, see He’s predicting that second invitation. “That you may now,” verse 35 is the purpose clause, this is why He’s going to send for the second invitation, “that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. [36] Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation.” See, there’s the prophecy of the fact the King is angry and He’s going to come and He’s going to burn their city. [37] O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks [under her wings, and you were unwilling.] [38] Behold, your house is being left to you desolate.” Then He makes the announcement in verse 39 that is one of the controlling verses of our present history, and that is that “I say to you, from now on you shall never see Me until you say,” that is the nation Israel, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD.”

So what He is saying here is until Israel accepts Him as the Messiah and looks forward to Him the kingdom is not going to come and you’re not going to see Jesus Christ. We said last night in amplifying that that some scholars believe that that will be the fulfillment of the fall cycle of the Jewish calendar, just like the spring cycle, Passover and Pentecost was fulfilled with real events.

That’s the way things are left here, and the kingdom has been put off. So the Jewish kingdom that will come when Jesus Christ comes back has been shoved ahead in time, and injected now in this space is the inter-advent age, the age in which we live. And it’s in that age that we have the rise of the Church; the Church is an entity that has been injected, as it were, into this postponed period, where the kingdom can’t come because the nation through whom the kingdom is going to come hasn’t got right with the King.

Now that raises the question then, if the early chapters of Acts deal with that second invitation and you have the address mainly to Israel, not to Gentiles even, for a few chapters of Acts, when did the Church start. How did the thing that we are integrated with when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and we’re born again, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, this entity, this Church, where did it start in all this. Well, you can diagram the book of Acts in this first part of the period this way: it starts out with a lot of Israel and very little of the Church, and winds up with a lot of the Church and very little Israel at the end. So we have 28 chapters of this transition and we’ll speak more of this.

But right now we want to make some specific references to tie up when did the Church begin. Turn to Matthew 16:18 because it tells us when the Church didn’t happen. In Reformed Theology there’s a lot of vagueness about what constitutes the Church, so let’s sharpen our vocabulary. Words are tools of thinking and we can’t think clearly if we don’t have defined terms. Some in Reformed Theology hold that the noun “Church” refers to every believer in every age. That’s one definition of “Church.” That means the Church existed in the Old Testament; that means it existed prior to the flood. So if the Church includes all believers of all ages, then it always has existed. Another definition is that the Church really began with Abraham and some in Reformed circles hold to that position, in which case the Church originated within Jewish circles and continues into the book of Acts.

But in Matthew 16:18 it’s quite clear that the Church had not yet been built because Jesus says, “I will build,” future tense, “I will build My church; and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” So we can at least argue from this point that the Church did not exist at the time of the Lord Jesus Christ. So if that’s the case we have to put the Church origin after, some time after this point. Well, if it didn’t happen here and it obviously wasn’t true in the Old Testament, then when did it happen?

Turn to Ephesians 1; Ephesians is one of the epistles that speaks a lot about church structure and what it is. What we’re trying to do is talk about accurately define what we mean by “church.” In Ephesians 1:22-23 it’s clear that Paul says the Church is something in union with the ascended and seated Lord Jesus Christ, for He says, “And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, [23 which is His body…]” but you’ll notice that verses 20-21 speak of the ascension and session of Christ. So it’s clear from this passage that the Church has to be after the ascent and session of Christ. It is contingent upon that. So if that’s the case then we can draw some conclusions and some of the conclusions we can draw is that if the Church did not exist in the Old Testament the way we are defining “Church,” if it did not exist during the time of Jesus, but there were believers that lived in the Old Testament, then the Church is not synonymous with believers. In other words, the Church is a special subset of all believers in all times, in all areas. The Church is a special group of believers, and it particular it’s the special group of believers who (and we’ll prove this later) believed on the Lord Jesus Christ from Pentecost on to the present hour. What we’re rooting for is that the Church is not to be defined in terms of soteriology, because there were people who got saved long before the Church existed.

The Church is something else; it’s a group of believers who are oriented in this age to a certain mission and a mission that is unique to this age that was not true of Israel. Said another way, the Church is not a national entity; Israel had a government, it had civil legislation, it had secular rulers, kings versus the priest. The Church does not have that structure. Now here you begin to notice something; this starts to clarify what the Church is and what the Church is not. The Church is not to be equated with a nation; the Church is not to be equated with the institution of government. The Church is not imposing itself by the sword. It’s not like Islam; Islam has always identified itself with the sword. Mohammed before he died he was already conquering with the sword because Islam can’t separate itself from the state. The body of Christ has very little to do with the state actually. The body of Christ is something else.

There was a briefing that was given to the apostles prior to Christ’s departure that apparently is not recorded, apparently wasn’t thought about much by them, it wasn’t remember, either it wasn’t remembered or it wasn’t considered really important, apparently because the three synoptic Gospels don’t report this briefing. There’s only of the four Gospels that record it and that’s the upper room discourse in the Apostle John’s Gospel.

So you you’ll turn to the Gospel of John and we’ll just highlight some of the features of that briefing that the Lord Jesus Christ gave preparatory to His departure. John wrote this Gospel later than the other Gospels. So presumably John wanted the Church to understand some things about itself and as he had lived for years and years in the Church Age, remember John was probably one of the last apostles to die, he had a perspective that the other guys who wrote earlier, years and years and years earlier, did not. And so alone tells us what the content of that briefing was, and we call that historically the upper room discourse. So it constitutes John chapters 14, 15, 16 and then there’s the prayer that concludes it in chapter 17. So we’re going to look very quickly and survey and observe some of the highlights of this briefing because this briefing tells us certain things about what we call the Church. We can put up here, while we’re talking about this term “Church,” it is not a government and it is not a nation; it is not a building, it doesn’t have a temple, it’s missing all these things, but it has a very precious set of blessings.

In John 14:1 the briefing begins, and at this point everyone who is being addressed in the upper room discourse is a believer. What had happened in the previous chapter in this Gospel? In John 13 we got rid of the first accountant for the Church, not that all accountants are bad, but we got rid of the guy that was operating all the books, he had cooked the books, shall we say, for the benefit of himself. And we got rid of Judas Iscariot and now it’s purged. So we have all believers, so everything from verse 1 forward is addressed to believers. Jesus argues from verse 1, right from the start, that you are to accord Him in the Church the same belief that you would have accorded God Himself coming out of the Old Testament. [“Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.”]

In John 14:2 He says there’s a new place; for the first time in the Scripture He refers to something other than Israel and the kingdom on earth. He said, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.” Now He’s going into heaven, He is ascending and seated at the Father’s right hand, He says I am preparing a place for you. Now this is something new, this is not the classic Old Testament idea of the kingdom on earth. This is something else, “I am going to prepare a place for you,” that is the people to whom He’s making this address.

And He goes on and there’s a discussion with Thomas and so on. By the way, showing you that Thomas is a great illustration, I just divert here, one of the things about reading Scripture and to prepare yourself in witnessing situations and discussions with non-Christian is learn to see that what modern people call problems are not modern. One of the things you get all the time is well, we are a sophisticated age, we don’t think like those ancient people, those people were so naïve. They had skepticism in the Bible, and where do we get our expression “doubting Thomas” from? There was skepticism, as intense in ancient times as it is in modern times. Well if that’s the case, that’s good. Why? Because the Bible gives us how they handled it, the same problem then that we have today. Thomas is one of those points. So Thomas does his little thing here, and then there’s some more discussion.

Come down to John 14:16, and He says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter,” or “Helper, that He may be with you forever.” Now when is He going to ask the Father? After He ascends. So this is a work that’s going to be done in heaven. See, one of the things about the Church is that its origin is in heaven; it was triggered by events in heaven. Israel’s origin was on earth, with Abraham, walking around where the modern state of Iraq is. So the Church has a heavenly origin, distinct from Israel that had an earthly origin. “I will ask the Father, and He will send you another Helper,” or a Comforter, “that He may be with you forever.” So now there’s a new relationship between believers and the Holy Spirit and God, because this had not happened yet because He said “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter,” meaning He hadn’t at this point. So you see the sophisticated differences here; the Church is a set of believers who have a relationship with God different from that of the Old Testament.

Then He goes on and describes various things and we’ll come down to John 14:30, and He said, “I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, but he has nothing in Me,” and the other feature that we remarked about during the conference when the Lord Jesus Christ ascended to heaven and the Father accepted Him, He accepted Him because He was perfect humanity, He had perfectly succeeded in living a life on earth, that was in total conformity with God’s will, and so right here in verse 30 another feature has happened. Now we have a human being, the Lord Jesus, in whom Satan has no legal claim; he cannot touch the Lord Jesus. Remember Satan is the world’s first lawyer and throughout the Scriptures he always appears as the guy who’s making an argument before the throne of God. You know the book of Job, well now God, have you seen this clown down here, You’ve protected him; now I’ll tell you something God, he’ll deny You to Your face if you’ll just let me work him over a little bit. And so there’s a dialogue in heaven and we’ve got to go through a big long argument and Satan loses his case but he’s the accuser; he’s like a lawyer, he’s always accusing and that’s his picture from one of the Scripture to the next. But here he has no case and it’s remarkable because this is the first time this has ever happened in history; the first time a member of the human race can walk unscathed without the prosecutor coming after Him. Satan has no case against the Lord Jesus Christ. So the other thing is if we’re in union in the Church with the Lord Jesus Christ ascended and seated we are in union with someone who Satan has no accusation against.

Continuing in John 15:1 we go into the vine and the branches, and He picks up another theme here and that is that believers in the Church Age have a particular union with Jesus Christ. And in particular we are to express that union, because in verse 4 and other verses, verse 4 is a greatly repeated verse in John’s writings, “Abide in Me, and I in you.” Now that’s an address not given to Old Testament saints. That’s an address not given during Jesus’ earthly ministry. That’s an address given only for those believers who lived since Jesus sat down at the Father’s right hand; “Abide in Me, and I in you,” it’s imperative, it means that we are told, it’s a command, it’s another synonym for the filling of the Holy Spirit. So there’s this new relationship of union with this ascended seated Lord Jesus.

Turning further through this discourse and this briefing, in John 16:8-11 Jesus announces that through the Church something is going to happen in human history different from before. So He says… let’s go to John 16:7 to get the background, “It is for advantage,” for your comfort, “that I go away; for if I do not go away the Helper will not come; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Again the Holy Spirit coming down to earth on the Day of Pentecost, “I will send Him to you. [8] And when He comes,” He gives a three-fold ministry of the Holy Spirit in human history starting in 30 AD. This was a ministry the Holy Spirit did not have prior to this time; that’s why it’s a different dispensation. It’s these fine points that Reformed Theology never clarified; they didn’t have time to clarify it, too busy fighting with Rome. But we’ve had 300 years since then to think about these things. So there’s been some growth and maturity theologically. In John 16:8 the Holy Spirit is going to “convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.”

Now that means that whatever the Holy Spirit does, regardless of through whom He works, it may be a mission, it may be you in the work place, it may be a student in the classroom, however He’s working, it may be through literature, through radio, through the internet, however. However the Holy Spirit works He’s doing certain things and it behooves us to understand what He is doing. You know, we’re always kind of sloppy and we manage to do things halfway some decent things, but the point is behind that the Holy Spirit has an agenda. And one agenda is to convince the world of its sin, and the way He is going to do that is by putting forward the person of Jesus Christ, whether people accept Him or reject Him. Now the Holy Spirit obviously convicts of personal in other ways, but the theme here is different in this dispensation, the central concern is to make Jesus Christ the issue.

Now we know that He’s making Jesus Christ the issue. As I said last night, I have a son right now that’s right near the 38^th parallel in Korea and he was e-mailing me how when some of the chaplains would go up there because we have a lot of troops along the line, have had since the Korean War “ended,” (quote, end quote), and these guys are up there and they have chaplains come up and of course we have chaplains for everything now, and it’s interesting to notice that the North Korean guards, when the see the chaplain come up with a cross go into a frenzy, they yell at him, curse at him, and the guy that comes up, the Buddhist chaplain, they never bother him; they don’t bother any other chaplain, Jewish chaplain, Buddhist chaplain, Monk, but it’s the guy that has the cross, and they can’t stand it and they’ll yell across and so on, fire guns in the air once in a while trying to scare him, this kind of stuff. Wait a minute, what’s the problem here, you guys got a problem with Christ? Yeah, they do, and people have a problem with this. As we said in the conference, look at the problem and slack that Franklin Graham got for ending the prayers at the beginning of the Presidential inauguration “in the name of Jesus Christ.” I mean, the media just about dropped their teeth that he would have the audacity to pray in Jesus name in front of everybody else on national TV. So just so they got the point Franklin Graham went to the U.N. a few weeks later and did the same thing. They had an aids conference and so there was everybody, you know, world dignitaries and he ended that prayer in the name of the Lord Jesus. So maybe what he’s saying if you want me to pray I’m going to pray in Jesus name, if you don’t like it don’t ask me to pray; it’s very simple, but I am not going to be embarrassed or intimidated to not pray in Jesus name. Everybody else uses it as a slang term; if you can use it as a slang term I can pray in His name; you got a problem with that! So that’s the offense of the person of Christ; the name Jesus Christ has a spiritual power to it and I think you’re aware of that. So that’s the fulfillment of one of these agendas that the Holy Spirit is working; He’s making the person of Jesus Christ to be the rock of division.

Now come down to John 16:10, “Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you no longer behold Me.” The second theme of the Holy Spirit is that there’s only one righteous person. There’s only one righteous person accepted with God and that’s Jesus. Nobody else got invited to sit at the Father’s right hand; anybody else ascend to heaven and sit at the Father’s right hand? No, only one person does that, that’s Jesus Christ. That means there’s only one source of righteousness, not Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed didn’t get invited, nobody else got invited, sorry for all you guys that believe in pluralism; that’s not true, only one Person got through the door, evidently God isn’t a pluralist, He only accepted one person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then the third thing, “concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.” That means he’s lost his case, and it’s downhill for him and the Church Age has something with that downhill thing and we’re going to develop that further.

In John 16:13, another feature of the Church Age. “When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. [14] He will glorify Me; for He will take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.” That’s a prediction for the addition to the Old Testament which we call the New Testament. So the Church Age is built on additional revelation, not previously given.

Then we have not only the new revelation but we have in John 16:24 a very practical every day thing. He says, “Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask, and you will receive, that your job may be made full.” In other words, believers in the Church Age have an authority in prayer that no Old Testament said had. Isn’t that interesting? Every believer can go before the throne of God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and have an authority in prayer that David never had, and he’s the guy that wrote all the Psalms. And we have that, not because we’re so great, not because we’re better, it’s because God has authorized us to send the petition in to Him with the authority of Christ. It’s rather sobering because if you think this through it makes you petition a little more careful, because if you think about what you’re saying when you pray, and you understand that when you are praying and you’re claiming in Christ’s name, you’re claiming that this petition lines up with the perfect Lord Jesus Christ here.

We saw how they did that in the book of Acts last night, and I just mention this in passing; if you look at the prayers in early Acts and watch how the Church prayed back then, it was remarkable in the sense that they used Scripture so much. And I mentioned a friend of mine who I deeply respect and a person who is far ahead of me in his prayer life, he once said that how he learned to pray so well was that he was mentored by an old guy who basically was a troubleshooter on the mission field; this guy would go around and give first-aid basically to [can’t understand word] missionaries and he saw so much of the carnage, the spiritual carnage on the mission field, of missionaries who just were casualties in the war; it’s tough out there, and one of the things he learned was that we’re not using prayer properly, we’re not using it well, we’re not using it accurate, and so forth. And one of the tools that he uses, a very practical tool, is he said when you’re kind of flobbering around trying to figure out how to pray something, he says if you will go to a text of Scripture that deals with that issue and pray God’s Word’s back to him. This is not praying the rosary kind of thing; this is, however, in one sense like it in the sense that it gives you a practical step by step thing. You can take the Lord’s Prayer and go through it, it’s got some principles in there.

But in Acts 4 when the Church faced the persecution of Peter, what did they do? They went back to Psalm 2 and they actually quoted Psalm 2 and they said, “Why do the heathen rage…imagine a vain thing,” and the to show you they understood what they were doing they weren’t just blabbing Scripture, they said and Herod and Caesar and Pontius Pilate, they have ganged up against Your Son, Jesus, and they’re harassing us now; now Lord You said that this is going to happen, these guys are doing what You said is going to happen, now You look at what they’re doing and You grant us boldness to hang in there and do our thing. So mentally what happened was they went back to Scripture to control the circumstance that was bothering them, and that’s a great discipline to remember, a great tool, that when you’re in the middle of the crud and you need to pray, and you’ve got to know Scripture well enough to do this, this gets back to turn the TV off and read the Bible, and learn some things, learn some passages that you can use and trot out in the times of pressure, and then you go through the Scripture and if you do that you know that your petition lines up with what He wants you to ask because you’re asking Him on the basis of His Word. So it’s like you’re using that negotiation, sanctified negotiation. Lord, what did you say here? You said this; now I’m holding You to Your Word. So that was one of the things that this fellow has used down through the years. But the point I’m making here is that we have this new authority in verse 24.

And finally, if you turn to John 17:23-24, when He ends this briefing in a big long prayer, here’s the destiny of the Church. Now this again is the destiny of the Church, “I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me. [24] Father, I desire that they also,” now check this one out, “I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which You have given Me; for You loved me before the foundation of the world.”

Now what an awesome thing for the age of the Church; now think about what He’s asking there in verse 24. Read is slowly and let the words impinge on your soul. “I desire,” this is the Son talking to God the Father, and He’s expressing a desire of His heart, “I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me,” that’s the believers in the Church, “be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory,” now you talk about self-esteem, I mean what more can we hope for than to have the God of the universe say I want these people to come see Me in My glory. What a fantastic destiny for the Church. See, there’s some powerful stuff here, and that’s why “to be absent from the body is to be face to face with the Lord.” You know, some terrorist may blow you away like happened, you never know what’s going to happen if God pulls His hand of restraining grace off this country, and we begin to fear a little bit; that’s new for American. And they’re getting some of the wraps pulled off here because we’ve messed around the last 200 years, particularly the last two decades, kicked God out of the schools and this and that, and where was God on 9-11? Well, He was where you wanted Him, out of the way. So if the hand of God’s restraining grace is pulled back we’re going to see more of this. As Christians we’re going to suffer along with the rest of the country because we live here and we might as well get used to it. But we have something better, that transcends all of that, and that’s our destiny to be with Jesus Christ. That’s the focus and destiny of the Church.

Well, that’s the background for the Church and now what we want to do is go a little bit further and draw some of this together. After Pentecost occurred this thing called the Church began to become more visible. Now let me recite some of these things and then I’ll give you some hard verses for it. If you read through the book of Acts you read one event after another where the Church becomes more and more visible. Let me give you some: there are three petitions at Pentecost in the book of Acts; there’s originally the act and event of Pentecost, but three times after that there are at least mini-Pentecosts; Acts 8, the Samaritans experienced union with Christ. Now that’s a shocker, they were considered by Jews as mongrels because they were half Gentiles and half Jews. So all of a sudden now the Holy Spirit isn’t working just with Jews; He’s working with Samaritans. The Samaritans, ghetto people, they’re going to be integrated with the Church? Yup! You mean God treats them like He treats us? Yup! Well, what good thing is this; see this is the awareness something different is going on here, this is not Old Testament, this is something new.

And then the second mini-Pentecost happens in Acts 10 and who gets integrated in the Church there? Cornelius and the Gentiles; you mean you’re going to let Gentiles into this movement. Yup! Well, that’s a new one; yup! And the third time you have a mini-Pentecost is really a strange one, that’s in Acts 19 and disciples of John the Baptist who had been won to the Lord through John the Baptist get integrated into the Church and I believe that’s a picture of the Old Testament saints that as the Church expanded out into the world it encountered people who had previously trusted in the Lord before they heard the gospel of the New Testament, and they were integrated into the Church. [Tape turns]

… integrated into the Church; that’s one theme in the book of Acts. Let me show you a second theme. Another little thing to notice about the book of Acts is in Acts 7 the speech of Stephen. Stephen was different from the Galilean Jews because Stephen was a member of the Diaspora, he was a guy who was a well-traveled person. He had lived outside of Palestine and he had a wider view of the world, and if you look at Stephen’s argument in Acts 7, he’s emphasizing that Israel’s reason for living, for existing in history has to do with a world mission. He says your Torah and your temple both originated outside of the land of Palestine. And his argument is eloquent, but what he’s pointing to is Israel has a larger mission than just Israel. So that’s one.

Then in Acts 9 you have a third thing you want to notice about the book of Acts. Paul, on the Damascus Road, hears the Lord say something; anybody remember when the Lord appeared to Paul on the Damascus Road He said something that I believe Paul must have chewed over for decades until it becomes articulated in excruciating detail I his epistles. Do you remember what Jesus said to Paul on the Damascus Road? Paul was going out to murder Christians, he had the warrants right in his hand, and all of a sudden he sees the Lord, and the Lord says Saul, why are you persecuting Me? Now was he persecuting Jesus? Jesus was in heaven, how could he be persecuting Jesus in heaven? Yet Jesus uses this peculiar language; when you lay your hand, physically touch one of these believers you’re touching Me. Now here’s a guy who’s out to murder people, these people are bad people, I’m going to get rid of these people, solve this Christian movement right away, I’m going to knock it off. And all of a sudden he’s confronted, by the way, he sees Jesus from heaven, and the Lord says to him you’re messing with Me.

Now if you were Paul, when you back off and think about that, what does that do for you as far as envisioning the role of believers in Christ? You see, why Paul for the rest of his life started talking about we are “in Christ,” we’re in union with him. Those words stabbed to his heart on the Damascus Road. When I touch a Christian I touch Him; that means that believers on earth the very moment are in union with Jesus Christ. That means that in the Sudan when Muslims are slaughtering Christians in the Sudan while the U.N. watches and does nothing, while this goes on, who are they murdering? Who are they touching? The Lord Jesus Christ. Just keep it up, watch what’s going to happen. You see what a strength this gives the body of Christ and how it gives endurance. Yeah, you can go ahead, you treated Christ the same way so that’s expected.

It’s also a tip on how to handle these kind of things politically; I was pointing out that they have to persecute Christians. Why? Because the hatred for Jesus Christ has to be exposed for what it is. Now you start talking that way and all of a sudden people go what, what did you say? Yeah, your hatred for Jesus Christ has to be exposed for what it is so that’s why you have to kill Christians. Well this puts the whole conversation on a little bit different track.

So as we go on we come to the end of the book of Acts; turn to Acts 28:29, how interesting this book ends. Here’s the very end of the early church history. “And when He had spoken these words, the Jews departed, having a great dispute among themselves.” See, they’re still disputing the person of Jesus here. [30] And he stay two full years in his own rented quarters, and was welcoming all who came to him, [31] preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered.” Now why is it unhindered? Because verse 28, “Let it be know therefore, that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will also listen,” or “surely listen.” So now by the end of the book of Acts Israel has thoroughly as a nation rejected Jesus Christ, and therefore this message goes out more and more to the Gentiles.

So let me try to summarize, and in doing this let me go to 1 Corinthians 12:13 a moment; out of all this we can make these statements. Here’s why the Church began at Pentecost. Remember what I said, the whole point this morning is why and when did the Church start. Here’s the answer.

The Church began at Pentecost because of these reasons: One, it had not formed in the Old Testament, it had not formed during Jesus earthly ministry, that’s the Matthew 16 passage, Paul also says that this is a mystery not revealed in the Old Testament. It was not until the ascension and session of Jesus, we saw that in Ephesians 1. And finally here in 1 Corinthians 12:13 we have the tip. Pentecost was when the Holy Spirit came and there was a baptism of the Spirit, and Paul finally says, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” So the Church began when the Spirit began doing this thing. And when did the Spirit begin to do this thing? On the day of Pentecost. That’s why we say the Church is a group of believers in the age that began with Pentecost and it will go until the Church is raptured. This age is the Church Age made up of people who are believers, just like they had believers in other ages, saved the same way, by faith, no difference in the gospel here, but there is a difference in our position, the Church has a unique position.

What is that position? Let’s think about the position for a moment. When did the Church form? Pentecost. Why did the Church form? Well in this verse, 13, what is the name of the Church; what’s another name that is one of Paul’s favorite terms for the Church? Body of Christ. Now think about that for a minute; here’s the Lord Jesus Christ, He’s sitting at the Father’s right hand in heaven, the Church is down here, believers on earth, and yet what Paul says is that the Church down here is the body and He is the head. There’s a union between them from heaven to earth and somehow all during the 1900 years we’ve had so far of Church history it is a building of His body. Now why is it necessary for a body to be built? Because the body is going to be used for something in the future and the Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t do His thing as far as bringing the kingdom until He has a body to do that. So the Church is a necessary element in the ongoing program of God so that when Jesus Christ is complete, when this body is complete, then we can go to the next step in history. But so far that body isn’t complete. Every time someone is won to Jesus Christ that’s one more person added to the body.

Well, what is the body doing all this time? Let’s contrast it for a moment; what was Israel doing? What are the commands given to Israel usually? It’s usually commands having to do with the land or the surrounding nations; you go through the Old Testament, sample the prophets. Now if you go through the New Testament and sample it do you have any mention of the Church dealing with the nation, a particular nation? That’s not the kind of thing you read in the New Testament. But what do you read? You read incentive to “abide in Christ,” to submit to His will in the various areas where we can, there are commands in there particularly that have to do with spiritual conflict. The book of Ephesians that has so much of instructions to Christians ends in chapter 6 and what do you find in chapter 6? “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may do battle…” our battle is not with flesh and blood but it is with principalities and powers.

So you see this body, what’s happened here? The head, Jesus Christ, is now above the angels, so Satan is down below Him but Satan can still attack the body. He can’t touch Jesus but He can get at Jesus by attacking the body. So this is why Jesus warned us that the world is going to hate you like it hated Me, because we are in union with Christ and we are a target; it’s a way he has of getting back at Jesus Christ. So our union with Christ causes us to become a target in the spiritual war and that’s why Paul says to “put on the whole armor of God,” and he gives us the filling of the Holy Spirit and these other things to do with our lives. What did Jesus do in His humanity? Did He rely on the Holy Spirit or did He rely on His deity? Think about it; during His earthly ministry when Jesus faced temptation, did He fall back on His divine attributes or did He trust the Lord to work through Him as a human being? He trusted the Lord to work through Him, and that’s why in Philippians we are to have the mind that was in Christ Jesus.

In other words, during His kenosis and during His impeccability, during all of His earthly ministry He demonstrated for us how He handled the situation. Was He assaulted by Satan? Yes He was. Did He meet it successfully? Yes He did. Did He meet it because He was God or did He meet it because He was a man filled with the Spirit? He met it as a man filled with the Spirit. So you see the model of the Lord Jesus Christ is almost like He was a test pilot and during His earthly ministry, recorded in the Gospels He proved out, in His humanity, it’ll work. And that instruction is given to us a hundred different ways in the New Testament, all those commands in the New Testament, they’re basically so we can function in union with Him, facing the same principalities and powers He faced.

This is a war that’s going on and it’s been going on for centuries. One of the ways of looking at this war is to think about how it’s different than Israel. During the war in the Old Testament the issue was the physical existence of Israel; he’s going to get Israel, and Satan tried everything he can to destroy the nation Israel. But it was a local target. Now what’s the problem Satan’s got strategically? He’s got a little problem now because if he targets the church in America it pops up in Korea; he goes over and tries to hit the church in Korea and it pops up on Japan; he blasts Japan and he goes over to China. You see his problem, now it’s proliferated on him and he’s got people from every race, ever political subunit, and this is for missions, you see why missions fits into this? Because what missions does, it spreads the body around and ultimately when the church is finished through mission work and different people groups the Son of Man comes to accept His kingdom. Does He have representatives from every race, everything? What does the Bible say that stand before Him? People of every tongue, of every nation, of every culture. Satan has been unable… not only has he been unable to stop the Lord Jesus Christ but he will ultimately be unable to stop an insurrection against his kingdom of darkness in every nation on earth. As people have defected one after another, led out by the gospel, led out by missionaries doing their thing all over the place, or individuals like us because we are actually all missionaries, and he’s got this massive insurrection, worldwide and globally going on as people trust in Christ.

So what is he doing? The war goes on; he has to get back at Jesus by attacking Christians, and we’re in the war and we revert back to Scripture. That’s why going through the Bible, there’s no substitute for it. Television isn’t going to do it, internet is not going to do it, it’s going through the text of the Word of God. You’re under fire and I’m under fire and we can be casualties or we can be victorious, but you’ve got to know your weapon and you’ve got to know what the enemy is doing and you’ve got to be prepared and there’s only one way of doing that and that’s to listen to Him because the Holy Spirit was given to us to teach us the Word. “He will lead you into all truth.”

Father, we thank You….