Acting Like They Acted in Acts

I have borrowed the title for today's entry from a sermon by Perry Crisp, pastor of Lake Fork Baptist Church.  (You can hear his sermon by going to the church's website lakeforkbaptist.org and clicking on the media tab then scrolling down to the sermon title).  It is a great sermon on the opening verses of Acts.

I love reading the book of Acts.  It always challenges me to see how ordinary men like me were used by God to take the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome.  It thrills me to see how an extraordinary God moves through men to accomplish His purpose of taking the gospel to the nations.  It wasn't always easy.  The resistance to God's movement did not always come from those outside the faith.  The reluctance of the apostles to obey the Great Commission reminds me of how human they were.  Consider these events:

• At the ascension, the apostles just stood on the hill looking up at the clouds that had received the Lord.  Two men (angels) had to get them moving.
• The timing of the Holy Spirit's coming upon them -- at Pentecost when there were people from all points of the empire -- gave clear evidence of God's desire for the nations to receive the gospel, yet they remained in Jerusalem.
• To get the gospel out of Jerusalem, God allowed persecution to drive the church out of the city, except the apostles!
• It was not one of the apostles but Philip, a deacon, who was the first to proclaim the gospel to someone who was not a Jew.  It is true that after seeing firsthand the work of God among the Samaritans that Peter and John preached the gospel to them, also -- on their way back to Jerusalem!
• When revival broke out among the Gentiles at Antioch, the apostles did not even go to see what God was doing.  Instead they sent Barnabas.  Barnabas found help not from the Jerusalem leadership but from Saul of Tarsus.
• It took an extraordinary vision from God for Peter to be convinced to enter the house of a Gentile and share the gospel with his household.
• When Paul and Barnabas reported all the wonders of God's work among the Gentiles during their first missionary journey, the apostles praised God but concluded that God had sent the two as apostles to the gentiles (the nations with a population of over 900 million) while the twelve were to  continue as apostles to the Jews (with a population of some 3 million).
• To even allow other cultures and ethnic groups to become Christ followers without having to adopt Jewish identity required a major meeting of the church.
• Church history records that the apostles eventually went to other lands (Thomas to India for example), but apparently the only way God got them out of Jerusalem was to destroy the city in 70 A.D.

The story of Acts is one of God's relentless push to overcome every hindrance to the spread of the gospel through all the world.  Commentators have noted that the last word in the Greek manuscript of the book is the word translated "unhindered."  It was not just geographical or political or religious barriers that had to be overcome, but ethnic and cultural barriers, barriers that existed within His own chosen ones.

Perhaps instead of acting like they acted in Acts, we should pray more to act like they should have acted in Acts.

As you pray today, let's ask God to show us what is keeping us from joining Him in reaching the nations.