8 . True To The Faith by David Gooding | PDF | Paul The Apostle | Resurrection Of Jesus 100% (3) 619 views 413 pages True To The Faith by David Gooding Original Title: True to the Faith by David Gooding Uploaded by Emanuel Dubei Description: True to the Faith Full description Download now of 413 You're Reading a Free Preview Whether it did or not, Luke concentrates our attention on the effect of all this on the proconsul. A reading of Acts, then, will invite us to examine the Christianity we profess and practise today, to see whether it stands with full-blown apostolic Christianity, whether it is still encumbered by the results of these centuries-old lapses, or is even now for the first time being tempted to compromise on essentials for which the apostles so unyieldingly stood. 'Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed' (Acts 13:28). And the same is still true today. And when they were (Acts 10:4648), it was the fact that they had already received the Holy Spirit that authorized their baptism, and not their baptism that brought about their receiving of the Spirit. They are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus' (Acts 17:57). We may of course wonder why people should feel conscience-bound to continue the use of types when they now enjoyed the reality. No, salvation and freedom were gifts, given them by God's grace and effected by his power. The question about its timing which was prominently raised in Item 1 has now been answered, equally prominently, in Item 4: Item 1: 'Lord, is it at this time that you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel?' But firmly as Paul believed and practised this principle, he would never have dreamed of extending it backwards from Christianity into Judaism. If the main story is to talk about holiness, what have these two preliminary stories to say that might be relevant to that? Buy True to the Faith (Acts) by David Gooding in Paperback format at Koorong (1882701208). 1 . What was the case that the emperor was meant to try (Acts 25:2627)? And on the morning of the third day the guard reported that the body was no longer there. Their defence against each new challenge confirmed the truth of the gospel for every generation of Christ's disciples. Paul shows that this is how he understood the Lord: 'As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if the character of God demanded it, history attests it: 'God has raised this Jesus to life,' says Peter, 'and we all are witnesses of the fact' (Acts 2:32)and at the moment of speaking, the 'all' referred to was no less than one hundred and twenty people.17. [p 255] In answer to their folly, God replies by declaring: 'I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill' (Ps 2:46). John 13:1820). (1 Thess 4:1317). They found themselves possessed of reason: the source from which they came, therefore, they reasoned, could not be less rational than they were. Of course, if they had had money with them, they would have gladly given it; and so ought we all in similar circumstances. Why, he has just heard Cornelius' explanation of what led him to ask Peter to come: four days ago an angel appeared to him as he [p 211] was praying and said, 'Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor' (Acts 10:31); and the explanation has taught Peter that good works are good works, and the fear of God is the fear of God, whoever it is that does the works and shows the fear. To this extent, then, both for man's own development and for the evangelization of the world, we could not wish for nature to be other than she is. Insightful comments and warm and piercing pastoral application are the features of this writing. A good apple put among bad ones does not improve the bad ones: they corrupt it. Their understanding of how this (to them) calamitous thing happened tends to be as follows. Now we may regard her story, if we care to, simply as a museum piece of ancient history, an extraordinary kind of miracle rare enough even in the time of our Lord and his apostles and infinitely rarer since, as again history has shown us. Among Jews he was prepared to live as a Jew (1 Cor 9:20). Negatively, these food laws had an immediate practical effect: they made social mixing with Gentile nations difficult, since Israelites could not eat Gentile food. But the qualifications for being a member of an apostolic evangelistic team were naturally more strict and demanding. Not so, according to Peter, for he adds: 'Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved' (Acts 4:12). Listen to Paul as he comes to the climax of his sermon on salvation. This appears eventually in the resounding climax of Peter's sermon: 'Let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ' (Acts 2:36). And when Paul departed they brought the young man alive and were greatly comforted. Second Investigation by the Council (Acts 5:1742): To call the apostles to account for their defiance of the ban on preaching in the name of Jesus, 1. Similarly, if God wanted people to see that all divine authority had been removed from the sacralism of the state of Judaea, the only way he could do it was by direct divine intervention. Unceasing vigilance is the essential requirement in shepherds. Luke later records (Acts 5:1216) that they healed all that were brought to them from the district surrounding Jerusalem. They were not typical of the priesthood in general, who tended to be Pharisees. . 'Shepherd the church of God, which he bought with the blood of his own' (Acts 20:28).4 With this we touch the mainspring of all true defence and shepherding of the church: the cost at which God bought it. They were eventually given the Holy Spirit; but at first they were made to wait. Stephen died for the difference between Judaism's approach to God and Christianity's. The Epicureans, whom Paul addressed in Athens (Acts 17:18), believed the world was made of atoms, and held a theory of evolution. Returned now to his heaven, he still stood inseparable from his persecuted believers, disciples, saintsand here was Saul, the supposed champion of orthodoxy, playing the impossible role of a modern-day pharaoh! They were positive commandments of the Lord laid on Israel by the Old Testament. We are thinking of what the old preachers used to call the value of a soul. They had, then, a difficulty! The only difference is that in those days (though not for longsee 1 Cor 15), such people were all outside the Christian church, not in it. Much as they disagreed with their ideas on salvation, there was one thing that impressed them. . In him the restoration of all things has already commenced. It is already far advanced. The high priest was president of the Sanhedrin. And when they were denied it, a long line of martyrs witnessed their noble protest. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, but only to a certain point; what he taught about Jesus was accurate enough, Luke explains, as far as it went; but the only baptism he knew was the baptism of John. A black official limousine could be conveying a drug baron to prison pending trial. 'You are well aware', he said, 'that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean' (Acts 10:28). He did more: 'he opened her heart to respond to Paul's message' (Acts 16:14). Of course there was more to the Christian gospel than the baptism of John; and when Priscilla and Aquila heard Apollos preach, they invited him home and explained the way of God to him more adequately. [p 504]. Read online free True To The Faith ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Indeed the Old Testament said that it was built on God's own orders (2 Sam 7:1213). And what is more, many Christians themselves, especially in places like Jerusalem, confused by the prevailing but false rumours about what Paul stood for, might well have come to the conclusion that he was a dangerous maverick, if not a positive heretic. And thirdly, he had been given a promise, sworn to on oath by God, that God would maintain his royal line upon his throne forevermore (Ps 132:11). . But reporting to the church at Antioch, Paul and Barnabas told how 'God . During a plague he advised the Athenians to sacrifice sheep at various places to the appropriate god, and when they did not know what god was the god appropriate to a particular place, they inscribed the altar 'To the unknown god', that is, of that particular place. If God had purified the hearts of the Gentiles by faith and declared himself so satisfied with that purification that he could give them his Holy Spirit, it was an appalling impertinence and insult to God for anyoneno matter how good their motives might beto imply that the purification God himself had effected by faith was not good enough, and could not bring a person salvation and acceptance with God by itself, but must be supplemented by circumcision and keeping of the law. The Nazirite vow is one example (Num 6); 1 Cor 7:2635 is another. Because you will not abandon my soul to Hades, But, according to Lukes account, difficult questions and challenges arose for the apostles as they began to spread this message. After passing through the region of Phrygia and Galatia they tried to enter Bithynia, and God had to intervene once more: 'the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to' (Acts 16:7). And no one had ever thought hitherto of suggesting that the doctrines of the Pharisees were treasonable! Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, i. Here then is what he told his audience: Repent then and turn [to God] so that your sins may be wiped out, in order that times of recovery7 may come to you from the Lord, and he may send the Messiah whom he has already appointed for you, that is Jesus. And secondly, its dogmatic exclusivism: its insistence that salvation can be found in no one other than Christ, that there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). . Had things gone altogether as he envisaged, he might well have found himself continuing to preach the gospel in the same way as before; and Luke's narrative might well have contained further summaries of his sermons. Let's take the analogy of another famous Jewish festival, Passover. But the fact is, as Luke is about to point out, that when Paul and Silas brought the gospel to Europe, the very first batch of Europeans they met violently resented it precisely on this ground that the gospel was contrary to their national ethos. David Goodings exposition echoes Acts powerful, unspoken exhortation to examine ourselves honestly to see whether the Christianity that we represent and the gospel that we preach and defend are uncompromisingly the same as those established by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. The first quarter of Section Five opens by mentioning twice in as many verses that Paul and his fellow missionaries were guided in their travels by the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:67). First, please observe, said Paul, this salvation from God was sent to the Gentiles: 'was sent' in the sense that in God's purpose and plan it was designed that it should be sent to the Gentiles (Acts 28:28). And anyway, after all the preaching that had gone on since Pentecost, and after all the other miracles, the crowd had no reason to be surprised at this further miracle or to wonder about its source. They had crucified the second person of the Trinity; he was offering them the third. 'Church and Temple in the New Testament'. They believed in the same one true God as the Jews did, and they accepted the five books of the Pentateuch as God's inspired Word. If Gentiles were prepared to abandon their idolatrous concepts of God, to put their faith in the God of Israel, and to convert according to the strict [p 181] rules of Pharisaism, he was prepared to welcome them as true members of Israel. . . Moreover, if it has been reversed, destroyed, abolished in the case of one man, Jesus Christ, so it can be, on certain conditions, for all others. Moses himself had warned them that when God raised up 'the prophet like Moses', that prophet would have to be listened to. He would convict the world of their fundamental sin of refusing to believe in the incarnate Son of God; would prove to them where the true rights of the case lay. KJV. . Once more the persecution is overcome. (Phil 2:611). But where has there ever been any serious evidence that he has even attempted to solve the problem of evil? We are told that it was an act of pious charity on the part of the priests to allocate Judas's field as a place where foreigners might be buried (Matt 27:7). . Nature was left as she was, and as she will be until the restoration of all things. Questions of worship, then: in the first story, what Christianity had to say about Judaism's orthodox temple and its worship centred in Jerusalem; in the second, what Christianity had to say to the nonconformist Samaritans who, though they accepted the books of Moses as God's word, rejected the temple at Jerusalem, and worshipped on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. It was an appalling scandal that Judaism's chief priests, to protect their corrupt financial gain, should kill the Son of the God they worshipped. But that is only one side of the story. 11 . Every detail of the day of Pentecost reveals that the prime purpose for the coming of the Holy Spirit was to witness to the Lord Jesus. What an undermining of the power of their testimony it would have been if, while they preached publicly that Jesus was the Messiah, and that all believers were his 'brothers', they had heartlessly allowed the poor 'brothers of the Messiah' to drag out their lives among them in poverty. To one and all I offer my sincere gratitude. His acceptance with God as his people's representative was obviously complete and permanent. Moreover, the session of the Sanhedrin, before which the commander had produced Paul, was an investigation, not a formal trial. But Paul and Silas did not have the resources, and they would not have done so if they had. Unknown to himthough he should have inquired firstPaul was a Roman citizen; and it was seriously illegal to string Paul up like that and flog him. To preach the resurrection is to preach a fact. . 3 Some have thought that Luke could not have intended a reference to teaching recorded by John, but only to teaching recorded in his own Gospel, as for instance at Luke 11:13. There will, of course, be such a judgment, and it will be Christ who does the judging. Even in the eternal state, we are told, there will be a new earth as well as a new heaven. So, too, the Gentile Cornelius, we are told (Acts 10:2, 4), gave generously to those in need, and his gifts to the poor came up as a remembrance before God. Surely they would be reasonable and listen to him as one who had always fought for them, and would not blindly dismiss him out of hand. Empowered by the Holy Spirit (e.g. 5 . So, then, the first half of Acts opens by introducing the king who saw no corruption, now raised to the right hand of God, to sit upon the very throne of God, demonstrated to be both Lord and Christ. It is, and always was, so: people of the ancient world found it no easier to believe in the bodily resurrection [p 475] of the Lord Jesus than people of the modern world do. Our first reaction on hearing this might perhaps be to dismiss this whole concept of holiness as nonsense or worse, and to attribute it to appalling narrow-mindedness on the part of Peter and his particular circle of fellow Jews. That means admitting the basic validity of all the major religions, confessing the limitations of all of them, Christianity included, and moving forward together in the search for ultimate truth. . Because, it seems, like the Israelites in the wilderness, they were not true believers. on November 10, 2020. (Acts 1:68). Real guilt, not [p 479] false psychological guilt, remains at the root of human unease; and unless it finds true forgiveness, honourably purchased by the sacrifice of Christ, it destroys peace of mind, corrodes all other values, and haunts the future. In the United Kingdom, at any rate, how rarely does a broadcast sermon state the Christian hope with the same clarity and emphasis as Peter did in the sermon we have just studied. Why could they not concentrate on his moral teaching and his wonderful insights into the fatherhood of God, on which everyone, Christians and Jews alike, could agree? (1 Cor 9:1920), Once more, then, the carefully balanced literary structure of Luke's narrative has called our attention to a healthy balance in the beliefs and behaviour of the early Christians. |. (Isa 53:56, 10, 11). . True to the Faith by David Gooding, Paperback - Barnes & Noble Many of us would have gladly read the message at Tyre as an absolute prohibition and have grasped at the reprieve it offered. But it could spell danger if the crowd took it up. It might, therefore, seem strange at first sight that the formal discussion by the apostles of the exact terms and conditions of salvation, and their formal doctrinal pronouncement on the topic, should come so late in Luke's narrative. The truth is that the world wants the church's charity; it does not want the church's Saviour. If some prophecy-monger predicted that the emperor was fated to die next [p 342] year, it might well have motivated political malcontents to help the prophecy towards its fulfilment. Notice the plural, 'synagogues' (Acts 13:5). . In the tabernacle and temple, not only did God dwell among men [p 149] in some sense, but, as we have earlier remembered, once a year one man at least was allowed to enter the presence of God on earth. They too urgently needed to repent. The hand of the Lord was with them, says Luke; and in that was the secret. There is no difference in God's sightin this there never has been. And Deuteronomy 13:618 also contains that law, and adds that if a whole city in Israel is found to have gone over to idolatry, then the rest of the nation must get the army out and utterly destroy that city and all its inhabitants and contents. It was not they who created the riot, arrested Paul, and tried to kill him! The modern expansion in our knowledge of the world has opened people's eyes to see that there are other, equally attractive, religions, drawing their nectar from other sources. His deliverance was a miracle. What a delightful gesture this was, and what a practical expression of the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ. Within those parameters he trains us towards maturity by allowing us to take the detailed decisions of life and work, using our common sense, our moral and spiritual judgment, under his watchful eye, in the light of his ultimate goals and standing orders. The Acts of the Apostles is about more than the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. . Calvary too was unique. If he uses the metaphor of buying, he does so in order to emphasize that we have no price to pay: 'Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! But unless it could be done, God's further revelation through Christ could scarce have been made. Whether the Western Text's addition is original or not, we should notice two things. One thing, they warn us, the modern mind cannot and will not tolerate any longer: the monopolistic claims of old-fashioned, fundamentalist Christianity. The centuries in Egypt away from the promised land were not an abandonment of the purpose but a stepping stone to its fulfilment at a higher level. They stand together in their common sinfulness. . But the very fact that he records these incidents in full when he need not have recorded them at all2 is surely significant. So we should stop for a moment and think through the basic presuppositions that made such discrimination seem a right and wholesome thing not only to ancient Jews but to generations within Christendom, and even to some of our contemporaries. They already knew of course; Luke has just told us that the reason why they arrested Peter and John was because they were 'proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead' (Acts 4:2). The problem they raised called undeniably for a theological explanation. If in betraying Jesus and having him executed by the Romans his contemporaries followed the pattern of initial rejection, we may be sure that one day the nation will repeat the pattern of subsequent acceptance.