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SECTIONS:
Dispersal
Persecution
Demonstration
Sanctification
Completion |
WE HAVE had hard times in
recent years. We had a quarter of our congregation hospitalised
with major illnesses last year. Some of us have had more family
and close friends die than you would expect, all in the last
year or two. Others have relatives and friends dying right now.
There has been too much grief. But "...I don't believe he's
brought me this far to leave me." as the song says.
Stephen was stoned; the Jews
cut Christians adrift. And the Church entered a new era of mission.
There was no more hiding under mums’s skirt. Christianity
had to stand alone. It was hard times for the Church. But they
made the choice: they would not be beaten. They faced it with
their Lord, who had gone before them, even to the cross.
You heard that the Believers
were scattered when the persecution began. All but the Apostles
left Jerusalem.The exciting experiment was over, and the crunch
had come.
Where did the Christians go? The Bible tells us,
...all except
the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
Some might have gone down south,
into the deserts. It had long been the home of dissenters and
malcontents. It was where David hid during those long years of
conflict with King Saul. No one would find you there.
Probably many headed north, towards Galilee and Syria. Many of
the original disciples came from that area. So Samaria was a
good stop along the way, far enough from Jerusalem, but near
enough for them to return if things cooled down.
Philip went north, to Samaria. He stopped there, and preached
Christ to the people.
It’s not so important to us where they went. What is important
is the effect that difficulties had on these Christians. You
might think hard times will stop Christianity from spreading.
And sometimes it does. But only if Christians choose to let hard
times stand in the way of the gospel.
Today, we are looking at five
positives from difficult times. These are...
- Dispersal creates dissemination
- Persecution fuels proclamation
- Demonstration promotes decision
- Sanctification demands separation
- Completion in one place means
continuation in another.
Dispersal creates dissemination.
In late September last year, several people received envelopes
or packages containing a fine white powder. It was not cocaine.
It was anthrax spores, a deadly bacillus. A number of people
were exposed, some took sick, and, despite treatment, four or
five died.
While that powder stayed in the envelope, it was pretty safe.
As soon as it was scattered, it deadly. It not only struck the
US, it touched the whole world. You wouldn't even open a packet
of flour without a forensic report now, would you? And how many
Australians got anthrax?
This is God’s plan. Our task is to infect the world with
his goodness. We are that little bit of yeast scattered through
the dough, multiplying until the entire lump rises.
There’s a new no-fridge wine cooler pack just out. It's
a kind of jacket made of a double layer of thick vinyl plastic
filled with a thick liquid. On the side is a metal button. When
you press the button, the fluid around the button becomes cloudy,
and the cloudiness rapidly spreads through the entire liquid.
The plastic jacket also becomes very cold, chilling the wine
in its bottle.
How do they do it? It’s called a supersaturated solution.
You know how you can make a sugar syrup and sometimes it’s
just got too much sugar in it, so, when it's cool, you only have
to drop in another couple of grains of sugar, and it all turns
into hard candy? It's the same kind of thing.
In the back of that metal button are minute cracks, so tiny you'd
never know they were there. And in those cracks are microscopic
crystals of the substance in the liquid filling. When you press
the button, it pushes in and those cracks open up. A dozen or
so invisible crystals fall into the solution, and it just solidifies.
As it does so, it takes up heat from the surroundings, so it
cools your wine bottle. Nifty?
And when you have drunk your wine, you put the bag in hot water,
or microwave it, and it becomes liquid again, and new crystals
reform in the depths of those microscopic cracks.
That's what God's plan is for us. We are like the metal disk,
and, when God pushes us, even if it’s through difficulties
and trials, Christ, who is in us, is brought into contact with
the world around us, and, if there is that responsiveness in
our society, then communities crystallise out, each centred on
Christ. The more dispersed we are, the more points there are
where that process can occur.
It isn't God's desire that we should suffer. But he turns difficulties
of all kinds into instruments of good — even the cross itself!
Our dispersal leads to dissemination of the truth of Christ,
as long as we are prepared to allow him to touch our world through
us.
Persecution fuels proclamation
We read,
Those who had
been scattered preached the word wherever they went.
Sometimes we think that if we
are good, nice people, that is enough, that we bring Christ to
the world through being likeable. I act that way far too often,
and I think most of us here do, too. We like to be liked, and
we don’t want to do anything to stop people liking us.
It’s important to be caring, to be helpful, to think about
others. But the gospel isn’t about being nice, or about
being good citizens or friendly people. It’s about sinners
like you and me being saved by the power of Jesus.
And
...how can they
believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they
hear without someone preaching to them?
The scattering of the disciples
because of persecution took the life and the power of Christ
wherever they went. But the persecution also fuelled proclamation.
They preached wherever they went.
It wasn’t just the “professionals”, the apostles,
who preached, either. One of the greatest impacts of early Christians
on their world was the women. Some of them were formidable preachers,
and they held their own with any man. One pagan remarked, “What
women these Christians have!”
This was every member ministry in action!
Yes, they spread out and took Christ with them; but they also
proclaimed very clearly what they believed about him.
Very often, it’s when we are comfortable that we fail to
speak out for Christ. But when we are uncomfortable, we won’t
lose our comfort through being bold, so we are bold. Maybe the
church today needs a little more discomfort.
Doesn’t Amos say,
Woe to those
who are at ease in Zion...?
The form of that passage is a
funeral lament. Amos is saying, “People who get comfortable
in their faith are dead already!”
If the going gets tough, the Christians get preaching. Let’s
get preaching, then!
Demonstration promotes decision
We read,
When the crowds
heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid
close attention to what he said. With shrieks, evil spirits came
out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed.
When God’s people are under
pressure, they cease relying so heavily on their own smartness
and start learning to rely on the power of God through our Lord
Jesus Christ.
When we had that disruption the other week, and ordinary measures
didn’t work, you saw what happened when the evil spirit
was rebuked in Jesus’ name, didn’t you?
How did you feel about our faith when you saw Christ’s power
demonstrated in that way?
I can tell you that I was overawed. They don’t teach us
in College how to do that. I have all the skills to know that
I should refer someone like that to specialists. But would specialists
have sorted out what was happening there? What I learned in College
was right, it just didn’t go far enough!
Jesus really does have power over evil spirits, just as we have
seen from time to time with healing. When Christ works through
us it boosts our faith -- and the faith of those we serve. We
need our faith boosted.
Imagine if someone came and routinely healed the sick and drove
out demons! Wouldn’t you want some of what he had?
Jack Deere was a fundamentalist pastor, who was convinced that
those things didn’t happen today. He invited the respected
conservative evangelical psychiatrist, preacher and writer, John
White, to speak at his church. And, at the end of his week there,
White had a time for healing prayer and people were healed, and
demons were driven out! Jack Deere hated it, because it shouldn’t
happen; but he couldn’t deny what he saw.
Deere’s life and ministry were turned around on that day.
He saw that Jesus was alive!
It’s when we are under pressure from life that we can choose
to trust Jesus in things we previously thought we could do for
ourselves. That’s when we will discover the amazing grace
and enormous power of Christ!
And when people see that it is real, they will respond. You might
not like the words a preacher uses, but you can’t deny the
evidence of changed lives.
Sanctification demands separation
When Simon saw
that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’
hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this
ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the
Holy Spirit.”
Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because
you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have
no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not
right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord.
Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your
heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive
to sin.”
Something our passage teaches
is the risk involved in ministry, particularly when the ministry
is driven by outside forces.
Yes, we need to disseminate the truth. We need to proclaim it
from the rooftops! But we must be on guard against what I like
to call, “Easter Show Evangelism.”
When we are driven to new things, even old hands at being Christians
are prone to think that it’s all one big show. You can get
sucked in by the excitement of the moment, proud of your own
power, self–satisfied and sure that God has made you something
extra special.
Simon the Samaritan was right into all the hoopla. Because this
thing wasn’t planned, because it arose from a reaction to
persecution, there were no contingency arrangements, there was
no team to refer people to, and Simon thought he had some new
power at his fingertips to put in the bag with his chook entrails
and his pigs bones.You can’t do that. No matter where we
are, no matter how we got there, we have to be on guard. Yes,
there are blessings if we do it God’s way. But Satan always
lurks nearby, ready to pull us down the path of radical self–interest.
If we are sanctified people, if we want to remain sanctified
and holy, we have to decide that, no matter what, we will not
let promises of wealth, intimations of power, or the slime of
self-satisfaction draw us away from a close relationship with
the Lord who paid the full price for your life and mine. Sanctification
demands separation. You can't drag God down to the level of a
commodity, traded to the highest bidder. That was what Simon
was doing.
Finally, completion in one
place means continuation in another.
Philip performed a great and world–changing ministry in
Samaria. I call it “world–changing” because this
was the first time that the gospel had ever gone outside strictly
Jewish bounds. Philip had taken it to the outsiders, to the heretics,
to the boat–people. And they were responding in droves,
just like many of the Iranian and Iraqi boat–people who
have come to Australia recently.
But his ministry had to end. Philip was an evangelist, but not
a consolidator. Not everyone is. Philip could get people to believe
and express that belief, but he couldn’t finalise the spiritual
processes. He needed to move on. But I imagine that he would
have wished he could have stayed.
We read,
When they had
testified and proclaimed the word of the Lord, Peter and John
returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan
villages.
Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the
road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem
to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian
eunuch...
God took Peter and John back
to Jerusalem, and he took Philip out to the desert road from
Jerusalem to the coast. Not likely places for ministry, but God
had a plan, and he was leading them in it.
Difficulties often dislodge us from our comfortable places, and
set us moving. We aren’t called to stay under the doona,
but to put on our jeans and our boots, and get walking! If we
have finished where we are, it’s so that we can begin somewhere
else. God has no retirement plan!
Conclusions
We have had many difficulties. We have had major sicknesses.
Many of us have lost more friends and family than we ever expected
to in such a short time. We have had periods of conflict and
doubt. Yet God has brought us through them all.
I was talking to a friend on Friday, and he told me to put the
fear of God into you all. I said that I was encouraging you —
I hope — not making you afraid. And I was reminded of what
architects always say, “If you can’t fix it, feature
it.” If an architect has a house to design and there is
a great rock, too big to blast away, in the middle of where the
house is to go, if he can’t remove the rock, he finds a
way to make the rock a special attraction of his design.
I guess that’s what God does. In his sovereignty, he allows
even the actions of evil people; but the worst atrocities can
become a redeeming feature in the hands of his son, Jesus.
What troubles have we faced? What difficulties still confront
us? We don’t have to be defeated. We can choose to find
God’s leading and keep pushing ahead, until all Marrickville
is part of the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ.
AMEN |
