Month: May 2021

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13

We are going through the book of Acts in our seasoned learners Sunday school class.  I like to watch  some of the movies based on the book.  Some are very accurate; some not so much. Even though the fishermen on the screen do not match the fishermen of my mind,  I am reminded why Luke’s book of Acts is such a wonderful record  of the beginnings of the church.

After the seeing the risen Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit, the apostles showed courage reserved for few in history. In Acts 4:13 Peter and John are examples of what should happen when we meet the risen Christ and are indwelled with the Holy Spirit. The Apostles had walked with Jesus for three years and had seen His many miracles. They had seen His compassion and wisdom. They had seen His strength and His resolve. Yet, they still did not understand Him.

That is one of the things that I enjoy the most about the Bible. Its pages are filled with flawed men who are strong and weak, wise and foolish, fearless and fearful. One might think that “fake” book of scripture might be filled with sterling characters whose minor flaws are quickly excused by pointing out the tough circumstances and questionable people around them. This certainly wasn’t the case with the Apostles who spent much of the time they were with Jesus being scared and confused.

When Jesus was arrested, they ran. When He was being tried they hid. When Peter was confronted, he denied. After Jesus was crucified, they were discouraged. They talked about the good run they had had, but it was time to go back to fishing. Of course, these are some of the same emotions we all struggle with throughout our lives, and I am sure that the apostles felt as justified as we do.

But then something amazing happened. Christ rose from the dead and presented Himself to them. Suddenly, these men who were hidden in an upper room discussing their return to normal life began to be strengthened. They saw the risen savior and touched Him. They received the Holy Spirit and were filled by Him. They suddenly had more wisdom and courage. They went from hiding to preaching boldly, and all but John would go on to be martyred for their message.

The apostles behavior, attitudes, and priorities changed.  It reminds me of a message I heard was on someone’s answering machine. “I am not available right now, but I thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a message after the beep. If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes.” It is though the apostles old acquaintance fear called them and they refused to return the call.

We should be able to do the same things the apostles did. We have seen the risen Christ through His Word and many other evidences. We have received the Holy Spirit. We know who Jesus was (and is) and what He means to this world. We should boldly step from hiding to the open proclamation of Him. We have had the same supernatural experiences as the men who walked with Him; we should have the same boldness. People should marvel that we have been changed and in us, they should now see Him.

Let’s not talk about how great it was that the disciples were changed; Let’s change who we are and talk about how great Christ is. Let the world marvel that we of lowly positions (most positions are lowly), seem to speak like we have some special knowledge and boldness- because we do.

Over the last couple of weeks we have taken a look at the rise of the nones in this country.  If you have not read the last two devotions you might want to just to get the context of today’s devotion.  We have been comparing the ministries of Peter and Paul in the book of Acts.  Peter’s audience was familiar with the Old Testament scriptures, so he used their knowledge in his presentation of the gospel.  Jesus, the greatest evangelist, Stephan and Phillip and others did the same thing.  On the other hand, Paul spoke to those who had very little understanding of the God of the Old Testament.  Paul tailored his gospel accordingly.

In Acts 17 Paul was waiting in Athens for Timothy and Silas to help him deliver the message of the gospel, but as he looked around at the incredible idolatry of the city he was moved to begin his preaching alone. He preached in the synagogue first as he always did,  and then went to the marketplace. We can be assured that the messages were the same, but that the approach was different in each of these places. In the synagogue he was speaking to those who understood his message even if they did not agree with it completely (like the population in the U.S. thirty years ago).  In the marketplace he was speaking to the common Athenians who were going about their daily lives probably unconcerned about things spiritual (like the people in the U.S. today). We do not know his exact speech in those two locations, but we do know that it peaked the interest of the local philosophers and got him an invite to the intellectual center of the city, the Areopagus.

“Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.” (Acts 17:18-21)

These two groups might ring a bell to us today. Epicureans pursued pleasure as the greatest purpose in life. They did not deny the existence of gods, but believed they were inconsequential to their lives. Stoics, on the other hand, were pantheists who believed everything is god, and that there was no such thing as a single, personal god. Between these two groups, we have a slice of our culture today. Many people fit into one of these groups or combined variations of them both. So did Paul pull out his synagog sermon for these men? No. It was a great opportunity to speak at Mars Hill, and he was going to deliver his message in the most effective way possible. He was going to tailor the “delivery” of his message without changing the “heart” of the message.

These people did not have scriptural knowledge. They knew little or nothing of the old testament stories and prophecies. They probably had not even heard of the Messiah. Had Paul started with those particulars, he would have lost his audience within a few minutes. He wanted to get to his message without losing anyone along the way. So here was his message paraphrased: “I was passing through and looking at your many finely carved idols and came across one with the inscription: To the Unknown God.” Paul connected with the people with something they understood- their own gods from their own culture. Paul continued, “I am here to proclaim to you the unknown God who you acknowledge but do not know.” He then described God in eight beautiful verses that tells what He has done, is doing, and will do in the future.

“Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it—He is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything,since He Himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. From one man He has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. He did this so they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.  For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.  Being God’s offspring then, we shouldn’t think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.

“Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because He has set a day when He is going to judge the world in righteousness by the Man He has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:24-31)

Paul did not approach these men with prophecies that were meaningless to them, and yet did not compromise on who Christ was and is. Although the cross is not mentioned, he spoke to them intellectually and honestly. We can be sure that Luke’s account of the speech is only a partial one because this would only be about a two-minute sermon and no one who got the floor at Mars Hill would squander the opportunity with a two-minute speech, especially Paul. What we do get from this sermon is a nice formula for approaching unbelievers with gospel.  First of all, know where people are before you talk to them- Paul knew he was talking to Epicureans and Stoics and he knew what they believed, so he started there. Secondly, find the need in someone’s life that Christ can fill- Paul knew that they believed in something greater than themselves (they had hundreds of Gods) and used that knowledge to introduce Christ. Thirdly, do not water down the gospel- Paul told of the power and nature of God and ultimately the resurrection of Christ.  We are surrounded by “Epicureans and Stoics” today and we cannot expect them to know what we know and treat them like they have grown up in the pews and have just gone astray. They may have never even visited a church.

Today’s churches need to follow Paul’s lead. If Peter would have spoken on Mars Hill, he would not have spoken to them the way he did the Jews in Jerusalem. When Paul spoke to the people in Corinth (his next stop), he did not use the same presentation as he did on the Areopagus. We cannot treat people of this century like the past century. We sometimes try to talk to the people on the street in the same way we visit with our friends in church.  We must start where they are, not where we are.  We must reach out and speak to others knowing they who we used to be before we knew Christ.

The nones are not bad people, just fed-up people. They don’t like organized religion because it too often paints and inaccurate picture of Christ and a too accurate picture of Christians.  If we want the nones to start checking the Christian box, we must give them more than religion. We must give them Jesus. We are Christians, not church-tains, so He must be the focus. We can no longer assume that those around us have any kind of Bible knowledge, so we must start there when conversing about the Lord.  As churches, once we get nones in the door, we need to give them huge helpings of Christ, not a few morsels. Only then will they be filled, only then will they come back for more.

Last week I wrote about James Emery White’s book The Rise of the Nones. The Nones referred to in the title are those people who indicate that they have no religious affiliation. Studies have found that since WWII the number of Nones has increased from 5% of the population in the 1940s to 20% in 2013. Over half of that number has come in the last 15 years.  White contends that one of the reasons modern churches are failing because they are using Peter’s method of witnessing in Acts 2 when we need to be using Paul’s methodology from Acts 17. Peter was witnessing to Jews who had religious understanding of God and the scriptures and he tapped into that knowledge while he witnessed.  On the other hand, Paul was dealing with the intellectuals of Athens who had little knowledge of God and didn’t particularly want any new knowledge of Him.  Consequently, Paul’s understanding of their unbelief shaped the way way he presented the gospel.  White believes that the churches are treating those outside the church like Peter’s audience when they are much more like Paul’s.

The “nones” are important to reach because the body of Christ can only grow when new members are added to the “church” not just moved around from denomination to denomination. The old Pink Panther movies were a riot and I think Peter Sellers was a comic genius. In one of the scenes of the first Pink Panther movie Inspector Jacques Clouseau is trying to get into a window with another man by standing on his shoulders, but he cannot reach. He says, “Wait, you can stand on my shoulders, you are taller than me.” Well, obviously, that doesn’t change anything at all. That is much like the modern churches. Exchanging members with other neighborhood churches does not increase the size of the Body of Christ. We live in challenging times, and as usual, the answers on how to meet the challenges can be found in the Word. We need to look at how Paul dealt with the problem of recruiting the uninterested because that is a majority of the people we deal with on a daily basis. In the meantime, we can do what Christ, through the Apostle Paul calls us to do… “I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:1-4)

There is no doubt that Bible literacy over the past eighty years has decreased exponentially to the point where the most common Bible themes and teachings elude the average reader. I taught English for many years and there are so many Biblical allusions in classic literature that at least some rudimentary knowledge of the Bible is necessary to understand many of our greatest literary works. Unfortunately, I saw fewer and fewer students who could recognize even the most obvious Biblical connections. Well-known Bible accounts such as Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark, David and Goliath, and others drew blank stares from the students. Every year I had to give more and more Biblical information to the students before I could explain how the allusion fit into the story. We are in a time where over half our population does not know who the vice-president is; do we really expect them to know who Lazarus was? We have to learn from Peter and Paul that the presentation of our message must be fitted to our audience.

Jay Leno once went into the audience to test their Bible knowledge. Only one person even ventured a guess on one of the Ten Commandments. “God helps them who help themselves?” he said.  Nope, sorry. Not even in the Bible, much less the Ten Commandments.  No one in the audience could name even one apostle, but almost everyone one of them could name the four Beatles.  A  recent Gallup survey found that only two of ten people know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount and typically most people can only name three or four of the Ten Commandments (not good, but beating Leno’s audience decisively).  Remember, we live in a country where over 80% of the people say they are Christian.  There is a simple Bible test that has been circulated among churches over the past few years. The average score is usually somewhere around atrocious. It is thought that practicing Christians should do well on this test, so the poor scores seems to indicate that there are a lot un-practicing Christians out there.  So the stage is set.  We are witnessing to people outside the church who say they are Christians but have no desire to go to church, read the Bible, or know the things of God.

Part of the problem in the U.S. is that Christians set the spiritual bar for the rest of the country.  If Christians are not in the Word, the rest of the population will be in the Word even less.  Would we really expect the average man on the street to know who the prodigal son is if most Christians have no idea.  If we, who claim to know God, don’t care to read His words, why would we expect others to.  In China the people have have little access to Bibles, but find time to read. In America we have unrestricted access to Bibles, but find little time to read- that is called irony.

For many years now many families have relegated their Bible study to an hour of church or Sunday school weekly. During these difficult covid times families are finding out how important it is to have consistent schooling. Education that is hit and miss is not very effective. Distance learning without social interaction has had its negative effect on almost everyone, and that effect has been very noticeable.  Sadly many cannot see the connection between this forced isolation in our country and the voluntary isolation in their spiritual lives.

Most parents realize that their children can’t learn math or science in one hour a week with no homework, but find it fully acceptable for Bible study.  This is a trend that has resulted in Biblically illiterate adults who think Sodom and Gomorrah are two guys with really bad names. Only 16% of Christians say they read the Bible daily. With those few Christians reading the Bible, how much knowledge does the rest of the population have?

When I have a problem with one of my vehicles I take it to my mechanic.  In explaining the issues to me he uses all kinds of terminology that sails over my head.  I smile and nod my head politely, but I am virtually clueless about what he is saying.   I have never studied the workings of a car and my knowledge is just what I have picked up on my occasional breakdowns.   My mechanic is sharing truths with me that he would like me to understand, but  his great deal of knowledge combined with my lack of knowledge makes it a pretty fruitless goal. This experience is similar to what Biblically illiterate people must be thinking when someone approaches them with spiritual ideas.   It is incumbent on us to keep this in mind when we speak to others about the Lord.  Paul understood that and we can learn a lot from his evangelistic methods.

Next week we will look at Paul’s approach in Athens because the people of Athens sound a lot like the people we deal with everyday.

Part 3 next week!

Author/Pastor James Emery White wrote a book a few years back called The Rise of the Nones.  Fortunately, you can see by the spelling in the title that it is not a book about gangs of black and white clad ladies overrunning the streets with rosary-bead num-chucks. The book, instead, covers a rapidly growing segment of the US and UK population. On almost every census form we see a list of various denominations followed by the category “none.”  In 1940 five percent of the US population marked none, meaning they had “no religious affiliation.” Fifty years later in 1990 it had risen to eight percent which is a very modest increase. Fast-forward eighteen years to 2008 and in that same U.S. study the number became 15 percent. After the next four years in the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s 2012 study it became 19.3 percent. That’s one in five Americans who do not affiliate themselves with a church. Unfortunately, this rapid increase does not seem to be slowing down any time soon.

The challenge for churches (and consequently for us as individuals) is multifaceted, and though answers are hard to come by, one thing is for sure- the church as we know it is in crisis, and we cannot ignore the problem and hope that it will go away. White says that one of the main reasons churches are struggling is because they are using an Acts 2 model with an Acts 17 culture. He believes that until we change that mindset, the church will continue to decline as more and more people check the “none of the above” box. As we look around the world the US and European countries lead the way for the ever-increasing number of “nones.” Britain has reached the twenty-five percent mark and Scotland leads the disintegration at thirty-five percent. Surprisingly, many African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries are seeing an explosion of Christian growth. Why the disparity?

In Acts 2 when the disciples experienced the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the onlookers supposed they were drunk because of their babblings and actions. But Peter set them straight when he said, “But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: (Acts 2:16-17) He went on to quote
more of the Old Testament regarding the prophecied day of Pentecost. Why is that significant? Because he was quoting the Old Testament without explanation. The people he was speaking to knew what he was talking about. They all had a deep belief in the God of the Old Testament. Paul was using scripture that they understood- that they cared about. They were deeply religious and had, since youth, been exposed the stories, prophecies, and people of the Word as it was constructed to that point. When Peter quotes Joel and later in the chapter takes words from Psalm 16, he does not have to explain those verses to his audience. Peter used scripture that the people around him already knew as a springboard to Jesus.

After he sets the table with Old Testament scriptures, he serves them up these hard words: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” (Acts 2:22-24) Peter, who denied Christ three times, hid himself from authorities, and made plans to go back to fishing, stood in the open boldly proclaiming the Messiahship of Christ, accusing the peoples of his death, and revealing His resurrection. Notice that there was a minimum of explanation because the people he was speaking to and would speak to in the rest of Acts, already knew where he was coming from. They were a monotheistic people who valued the Word and knew what Peter was saying because he built his argument on knowledge they already had.

Today we address those outside the church as though they have at least a rudimentary understanding of the Word, but this is a mistake. We are in a country where few have the most basic knowledge of politics and those stories are on the news, in the paper, and on the internet daily. Can we really assume that those around us have an understanding of scripture, that they all believe in one God,
and that they care about spiritual things? If we do, we are sadly mistaken. Peter knew that those around him knew who Joel was, who David was, and who the other prophets were. He used what his audience knew already to convey his message. Unfortunately, that is not the way the world is around us. If Peter would have walked into a gentile square with that same message, they would have stared at him like he was from Mars (if they knew where Mars was). Unfortunately, when we talk about the things of God to most people now, we are talking Martian to them and it has minimal impact.

The mega-churches in the 90’s and first decade of the two-thousands were based on what they called “seekers.” Unfortunately, we are having fewer and fewer “seekers” in our culture. The “nones” are not people who are seeking, but people who are just turned off by churches and other religious organizations. They are not necessarily agnostic or atheists, but just unchurched and happy to stay that way. They don’t see any draw to the modern church and have hardly any knowledge or background that we can tap into while talking to them about spiritual things. When many Christians think Joan of arc was Noah’s wife, how can we expect non-Christians to have a point of reference built on the Bible. Most of the seekers now are actually already Christians who are seeking a church where
they feel comfortable. We have very few converts in the church today, but a whole lot of transfers. Who then are we really trying to reach? The unsaved unbeliever or the disgruntled believer? What do we do to bring unbelievers from the chaos of the streets to the comfort of the church? Before anyone gets the idea that I am all for blue jeans, rock bands, and a watered-down inoffensive gospel that rewrites the scripture with the pen of political correctness, that is not what I am talking about. Too often we actually do fish for men like we fish for fish. Our bait (coffee bars, modern music, a parade of programs, nifty seating) gets them in the door, but what happens from there? When we catch a fish we don’t keep feeding it when
it is in the boat. It is caught and we can go on to the next fish. We need to make sure that we are not worrying only about the catching or only the about the caught, but both.

So if the Acts 2 model is not best for today, what is best? In our next devotion (this is called a cliffhanger) we will take a look at Acts 17 and Paul’s different approach to a different audience.

“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who remain, will be snatched away at the same time together with them in the clouds for a meeting with the Lord in the air, and thus we will be together with the Lord always. Therefore comfort one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)

“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal [must] put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:51-53).

These are very remarkable verses that describe the snatching away of the church to meet Christ in the air. This event is imminent, meaning that it could come at any time. It is unlike the second coming of Christ which needs certain events to take place before it can take place.

It is important to remember that the rapture and second coming are similar but separate events. Both involve Jesus’ returning. Both are end-times events. The rapture is the return of Christ in the clouds to remove all believers from the earth before the time of God’s wrath. The second coming is the return of Christ to the earth to bring the tribulation to an end and to defeat the Antichrist and his evil world empire.

That is a very brief summary of two cataclysmic end-time events, but the above verses have a very important place in our lives today. Even though the rapture will come on us without warning and takes place at the beginning of the seven-year tribulation (some disagree, but since this is my devotion, I will tell you what I think.  Others can disagree in their own devotions!), there are things that are going on in our world that give us hints that the rapture could be soon upon us.

The word “maranatha” is a Syriac expression that means: “our Lord comes.” It was used as a greeting in the early church. When believers gathered or parted, they didn’t say “hello” or “goodbye” but “Maranatha!”  Similiarily, Aloha in the Hawaiian language can mean hello or goodbye. Aloha also means love and affection.  However, there is no word that can express love more than Maranatha.  Christ promised His return and because he loves us, He will return.

It is too bad that Christians don’t have more of an upward look today. How it would change the church if we all looked at the return of Christ with certainty and conviction. How differently would we look at all those around us? I have a friend who says, “See you here, there (pointing upward), or in air,” instead of goodbye. It is really the three choices believers have- we will see each other on this earth, or in heaven, or in transit. A neat way to add the “where” in “till we meet again.”

It is true that certain things must take place before the second-coming at the end of the tribulation but many of those things have already happened or are happening right now. The stage must be set for the tribulation and anyone who has even the slightest interest in prophesy and current events can see that the table is being set for the end times. For instance, the nation of Israel was scattered across the face of the earth, but yet just fewer than 70 years ago was brought back together and is today one of the most powerful nations in the world. That process of scattering a people then reestablishing them has never taken place before. That had to take place as a prerequisite before all the other events could occur.

So, why worry (oops, I mean think) about all this? Because we never know when The Lord will come again. It is important that we are looking for opportunities to share with those who do not know The Lord because the instant Christ comes the chance to be part of the body of Christ will be lost forever. In fact, if you share with someone and that person accepts Christ, look up, because the word says that the rapture will not happen until the body of Christ is filled. That person that you just shared with might be the last one to fill it and so we all might be leaving right then!

One of my favorite men of courage is the British explorer Ernest Shackleton. I have read several books chronicling his incredible voyages to the South Pole. While on one of the voyages he had to leave a few men on Elephant Island because their ship was crushed and there was not enough room for the entire crew on the lifeboats. He promised them that he would return. Later, when he tried to go back, huge icebergs blocked the way. But suddenly, as if by a miracle, the huge icebergs shifted and a channel opened in the ice and Shackleton was able to get through. His men, ready and waiting, quickly scrambled aboard. No sooner had the ship cleared the island than the ice crashed together behind them. Contemplating their narrow escape, Shackleton said to his men, “It was fortunate you were all packed and ready to go!”

They replied, “We never gave up hope. Whenever the sea was clear of ice, we rolled up our sleeping bags and reminded each other, ‘The boss may come today.’” That is the same attitude that we should have!

We should not fear the coming of The Lord because it will be a glorious event, but unlike Elephant Island, we do know that there will be many “left behind.” We should do all we can to make sure that our friends and family are not part of that number by living our lives for Christ and sharing Him in word and deed. What incredible verses Paul left for us to remind us of the spectacular transfer of believers from this world to glorious presence of Christ. Let’s just make sure we are rapture ready and let’s encourage those around us to be ready as well! Like the men on Elephant Island we should be packed and ready to go. The “Boss” may come today.