Sunday, September 27, 2015

Spiritual Alertness To God’s Activity – Part II (Acts 11:19-21)




Not only did the Antioch church regularly process what God was doing, but also they purposely joined in what God was doing. As the Christians at Antioch looked around their multi-cultural city, they knew the church should reflect this multi-cultural framework, and they were willing to invest in what we today call “social capital.” Antioch was a bustling walled seaport city of approximately a half million people. It had theatres, coliseums, offices, stores, and government buildings found in large cities today. The official language of the region was kione’ Greek, although Syrian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and other languages were also spoken.

These early Christians were determined to reach their city for Jesus and equally determined not to allow language, race, or cultural barriers to prevent the spread of the Gospel. Oh, that today's church would have that same burning zeal to reach others with the Gospel of Jesus! Do you understand that less than five percent of American Christians have ever shared their faith with another person in an attempt to lead them to salvation in Christ? The Antioch Christians knew that God was at work in bringing people from all over the world to Antioch, and they chose to participate in what God was doing. Not only did they make a conscience decision to be evangelistic across racial and cultural lines, they made a conscience decision to cross cultural and racial lines in order to worship with those who were believers.

Friends, it’s “heart-check” time. How important is it to you to reach across racial and cultural lines for Christ? How important is it for you to worship with other races and cultures?

It is important that we realize that the Church at Antioch was an ethnically blended mix of people from all over the world, and which represented God’s heart. Understanding God’s heart in this matter caused the church to desire to reach their city and the world. This ethnically blended church started what we today call the “mission” movement!

God gave John the revelator a glimpse into heaven and he saw a great multitude worshipping God. Revelation 7:9 states, “I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” Verse 11 tells us that they all “fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God. Listen my friend; our churches should be a foretaste of heaven.

The Antioch Church was willing to change in order to be involved with God. Laying aside their personal preferences, the Antioch church loved others enough to break with tradition in order to worship God as one. With members from at least three continents in their membership, the church ceased worship in Hebrew. No longer were the language and past traditions their style of worship. Baptist Churches have done a great job at loving others on one level. We have loved others enough, literally to go around the world to ensure that people hear the wonderful message of salvation. However, we have not loved others enough to change our style of worship, so that we might worship with other Christians from other cultures.

Are you willing to place a Latino and an African American on staff to help reach the Hispanic and Blacks in your city? Are you willing to begin mixing Black Gospel with Southern Gospel music? Are you willing to share leadership with these other cultures? The Hispanic population in United States is the largest minority group. There are now more Hispanics in United States than Blacks, and it is projected that within the next thirty years the Hispanics will out number Whites in the United States.

Notice who made up the church staff at Antioch (Acts 13:1). Barnabus was from Cyprus. He was the Levite who sold his property and gave the proceeds to the Jerusalem Church (Acts 4:36f). The Apostle Paul was from Tarsus. Simeon was a Black Jewish Christian. Lucius was from Cyrene in North Africa. Manaen was a politician and close friend with Herod Antipas. The Antioch church was an International, multi-lingual, and multicultural congregation with staff representing three continents. So you see, churches diversifying staff is not a new thing, it is an old truth, going back past the Antioch Church to the heart of Jesus. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for “whosoever” will come.

A couple years ago, I was preaching at Charlotte Chinese Baptist Church in both their English and the Chinese worship services. Afterwards I talked with then Pastor Steven Wang, and asked him about the English service, thinking it was for second generation Chinese-Americans. I fell in love with Pastor Wang when he gave me his answer. He said God had convicted his heart and that of his church, that they could not be a Great Commission Church if they reached only the Chinese people. Oh, that God would give us more Pastor Wang’s and more churches like the Charlotte Chinese Baptist Church.

God longs for His churches to have multi-cultural, international, and multi-lingual staffs to lead multi-cultural, international, and multi-lingual churches. God has been patient with His people for hundreds of years, but in these last days, he is calling us back to an old truth. The Trinity is the DNA of the Church. Where God’s DNA is, God’s people hear God and obey His teachings. Church staff’s must diversify!

Now we come back to the question I asked in Part I. “Why did the disciples miss the miracle and the working of God?” The disciples missed the miracle and the working of God because they did not take the time to process what God had done in their presence. Dear Reader, Having read this blog, you are now faced with a decision. Are you willing to process that which God is doing and seek to understand God's purpose? Can you agree that God is working a miracle by bringing the people of the world to your City and State? Can you process the why of this social occurrence and understand that this is a God thing? All Christians need to individually and collectively pull aside with God and process this miracle. We need to be concerned about the action of God in moving people around the globe and not focused on bounders and the legality of this dispersion. Are you willing to join in and participate in the mobilization of the masses though helping to care for and share Jesus with those God is relocating? Are you willing to over-ride your personal worship preferences to help others come to know Jesus?

If not, then you heart will grow harder. You will become more distant from Jesus, and you will find it harder to recognize the next miraculous movement of God.

Spiritual Alertness To God’s Activity – Part I (Mark 6:44-52, Mark 8:17-21)





God is at work all around us and if we do not recognize God’s activity, we will have a hardening of our heart, and find it harder to recognize Jesus and his work the next time we encounter him at work. I challenge you to make a purposeful decision to join what God is doing and to make the life changes required to accommodate God’s activity.

Mark 6:52 tells us that the disciples did not understand God’s activity in the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus raises this same issue again in Mark 8:21 when he asked his disciples, “Do you still not understand?” Why did the disciples miss the miracle and the working of God in Mark chapter six? Christians still commonly make their mistake today. They had witnessed God’s activity, but they were not alert to what God had done. You see, when we witness God at work or have a personal encounter with God, it is extremely important that we process the experience. If we do not, it becomes more difficult for us to see Jesus working, to understand what He is doing, and to join Him at work.

One of the reasons churches grow cold and uncaring is that the church seldom takes the collective time to process the visitations of God. As a result, the member’s hearts harden and they cease to be able to recognize the Lord’s presence and work. God can move mountains all around the church and throughout the community, but the church members eyes are blind and their ears deaf, because their heart has become hardened and they no longer recognize God’s activity.

In the early church, Christians were being persecuted, and as they fled persecution, they carried the Gospel of Jesus to people all over the world. Since the turn of the century, once again, God is using persecution, poverty, and hardship to disperse millions of people. This time however, most are not taking the Gospel; they are being dispersed in order to receive the Gospel. This is God is at work, and Christians who are spiritually alert see what God is doing, and are joining a growing movement to share their faith across ethnic and cultural lines.

Just after the turn of this century, Aero-flight airlines landed 3-4 times a week at the SeaTac Airport in the State of Washington. At that time, there were 76 Russian churches along the I-5 corridor. The pastors of these churches got together and started taking the Russian pilots out to dinner and witnessing to them about Christ. In a few short years, word came back about a new denomination of churches in Russia called the Aero-flight churches. These Russian Pilots were going back home and bearing witness of their personal relationship with Jesus Christ and new churches were being born.

About that same time, a shipping container arrived in Seattle Washington with over fifty Chinese in it. Three were dead, and the rest were placed in the INS Prison in the Seattle area. Chinese churches quickly requested permission from the INS Prison and were granted permission to visit and even to share Christ with these Chinese. Eventually all of them accepted Christ as their Savior and wanted to be baptized. INS permitted the church to baptize the new converts. Eventually all of these Chinese were deported back to China, but they returned as Christians.

God has reversed the process he used in the first century, to win the world to him, but his plan only works if we understand what he is doing and are faithful in helping him. In the early church, God dispersed believers so that they might carry the gospel to the far reaches of the world. Today, God is dispersing the lost throughout the world that the lost might come to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. However, if this is going to happen, we must join God in what He is doing just as the Antioch Church did in the first century.

The Antioch Church regularly processed what God was doing. They were excited about their faith, and they allowed their faith in Christ to transform every aspect of their lives. The believers were so different that a “new” word had to be invented to explain what God was doing, and Acts 11:26 tells us that this new word was “Christian.” These believers were representatives, ambassadors of the Jesus Christ. They were the hands, feet, and mouthpiece of the Lord. These Christians knew what it was to draw aside in prayer and meditation and struggle with God. They were accustomed to observing God’s handiwork and they were accustomed to contemplating what that meant for them as the people of God.

They were observant of what God did in Acts 2; they understood the significance of Pentecost. They understood that God truly loves all people and longs for all people to have a personal relationship with him. God must surely detest that Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week, and the church the most segregated place. Listen to me, the DNA of the church is the Trinity. The Sovereign God of this universe is so large and so unique that it takes three Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit even to attempt to convey to our human minds - His greatness. When God said, “Let us make man in our image,” he was giving us a peek at His Trinity.

Through each culture, each race, each nationality, we learn a little more about God. God wants all races and nationalities to study and worship together so that we can draw from each other’s strengths. George Barna, in his 2009 research, compared religious beliefs of the four largest groups in the United States: Whites, Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians to that of the early 1990s. Compared to the other three ethnic groups, Blacks emerged as the most likely to engage in each of five church-related activities in a typical week: attending church services, participating in a small group, attending a Sunday school class, praying, and reading the Bible. They were also the most likely to have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life and to have an “active faith” (i.e., attend church services, pray to God and read from the Bible during the week). Barna concluded that “While the beliefs and behaviors of America’s white population have changed little since the early 1990s, the new research underscored that the faith of African-Americans is dynamic, generally moving in a direction that is more aligned with conservative biblical teachings.”

George Barna in his book, In High Impact African-American Churches, points out that Black Churches are having a far larger impact on society than White churches. He calls on White churches to observe and learn form our Black brothers. God is calling the church back to what the Christians at Antioch already understood – we have much to learn from each other.