Acts: Acts 10:44-48
Gospel: John 15:9-17
Epistle: 1 John 5:1-6
Psalm 98 begins by praising the Lord
for all the wonderful things he has done.
In verse 3 the Lord is faithful to Israel, but from there the scope of God’s
salvation and work is greatly expanded. “All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.” In fact, it’s
not just humanity that has experiences God’s redeeming work, it is all of creation. Five of the nine verses deal with
nature. The Old Testament clearly
testifies to the Lord being a God of all the earth. God is not merely the God of Israel. He is
the God most High; the Creator of Heaven and Earth.
Some in the early church had a
problem with seeing God as the savior of the whole earth. They wanted to hold on to God as only a God of
Israel. Sure, they were happy to see
people come into the people of Israel, but the Gentiles were forced to become
Jewish. Mostly, this required gentiles
to be circumcised and follow the purity laws.
But, this was not what Jesus came to do.
He came to bring salvation to all people. Our reading in Acts is the story
of a group of Gentiles who receive the Spirit in the same manner as the Jews/circumcised. Peter’s question is how can we argue with
this? How can we argue with the Holy Spirit? If the Spirit sees fit to fill uncircumcised
Gentiles, then we ought to follow the Spirit’s lead. This message alone we ought to consider. Are
we following the Spirit or stifling his ability to work and lead in our lives.
This message is brought up again in
1 John 5. “Whoever belies that Jesus is
the Christ is born of God.” It doesn’t
matter if you are black or white, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, moral or
sinner, it matters that you come to believe that Jesus is in fact the Messiah
and the Son of God. Yet John never
leaves his Gospel at belief, for him belief is always shown in one’s fruit.
So in chapter 5, belief is followed by obedience. We will know who believes because they obey
God’s commandments. It is never enough
to simply believe; even the demons know who Jesus is. We have to obey and Trust Jesus as the Son of
God.
I think our challenge this week is
to consider who are the Gentiles in our culture? Who do we have a struggle seeing as being a
part of the kingdom of God? In our churches are we casting one group of people
to second class or forcing them to be something they’re not? This is a radical
message because it forces us to challenge our American culture and find
ourselves in God. If you have any
answers, let me know. I have a couple of thoughts but I’ll keep them to myself
for now.
Grace and Peace this week,
So give me your comments? Don't keep them to yourself? Who are our "Gentiles"?
ReplyDeleteMOm
My first thought was homosexuals. Most in the church treat them as untouchables. But I also think that each church might have their own Gentiles. If you're in a middle class church, you might be struggling inviting the poor in. If the Church has traditionally been white, and now there are more Hispanics or African American, then there might be a temptation to ignore them or to say, "sure your welcome to change, but don't expect us to change anything to make you feel welcome."
ReplyDeleteEither way, each church needs to figure out who they might be excluding.
Admittedly, I have 2 categories working here, one dealing with race and the other dealing with sexuality. We invite both, present them with the Gospel, and exhort them to live a life of holiness.