***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: You’re going to have all this beautiful music, I want to be worn next time, I want to talk first. Let’s bow together in prayer, will you? Blessed Lord, we are thankful for the beauty of music and for the praise from the heart, the redeemed heart. We’re glad to know that we are closely connected with you. We’re glad to be a part of your people and to have a share in your great work. And we ask this evening now as we come for these minutes over thy word, you will open our hearts and prevail over every hindrance that may be there. You will remove our inattention and our prejudices and our indifference and any set that we might have against your perfect will for us in our time. Give us the grace this evening to have ears to hear and hearts to obey as you speak in our midst. In Jesus’ name we pray it. Amen.
This evening I’m speaking to you about the Apostle Paul, for he is, more than any other one person, the fulfillment of the final segment of the book of Acts. You will recall that I have given you the outline of the book of Acts from Acts 1-8, where Jesus, speaking to his apostles, told them that their hopes for an earthly kingdom would not be realized, and that so far as any such kingdom was concerned, it was none of their business. It was in the hands of God only, and said unto them that they should tarry at Jerusalem until they were baptized with the Holy Ghost. And he told them after that, he said very simply, then you will be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.
Now the way you spell the uttermost parts of the earth as far as the book of Acts is concerned is P-A-U-L, Paul. He was God’s means of reaching to the uttermost parts of the earth.
That is characteristic of God’s working. Whenever he got ready to do the work which he did in the first century, he did not provide a plan. He provided some persons. First of all, he provided the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not hand a rule book out of heaven and say, this is the way you’re going to do it. Here’s the perfect picture of doctrine and practice for you to follow and all will be well. It is the failure, the secret of the failure of all revolutions, or almost all revolutions, that they idolize plans. They believe that there is some set of arrangements which can be made and possibly put into law so that ever afterwards the problems which they are concerned with will be solved. Here comes someone and says, if you will simply give the tools of production to the worker, you will find step by step that all of the evil that we see on the face of the earth is removed and gradually, if you’ll just follow this plan, it will be taken care of. But whenever God got ready to redeem this world, he did not give a plan. When he sent people, he called Abraham, and he called Moses, and he called the prophets, and he called John the Baptist, and there’s nothing less like a plan than John the Baptist. And he came out of the wilderness, a wild man walking around in animal garments and eating locust and wild honey, which was pretty good stuff, but he was a wild man. And on him the Word of God sat, and everyone heard him and said, this is a prophet of God, because the Word came with power and with authority.
And this man then said, behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, and it was Jesus Christ, another man sent by God, more than man, but man. And he didn’t give him a plan, he sent a person. And whenever the day of Pentecost came, a plan did not stand up and preach. It was a poor, bumbling fisherman who stood with other poor, bumbling fishermen and carpenters and publicans and proclaimed the Word of God. It was not a plan.
There is nothing less planned than you can imagine than the book of Acts. God said it will be so, and it was so through the people whom he called and in whom he lived, and it will be so today in your midst. God will not give you a plan which will solve your problems. He called you to solve the problems. He gives you the power. He says to you, stand where you are in the Spirit of Christ and the apostles and in the purity and the power which they manifested, and you will see the kingdom of God go forward. There’s no plan that will do that. It is God’s purpose to exalt men and women and boys and girls by giving them his power as they are prepared to exalt him.
And the plan for the evangelization of the ancient civilized world, as we might loosely call it, was to call a man out who was prepared and to put his spirit upon that man and that man went and established the kingdom of God in Rome. And from there onward to the ages around the world, the people in the influence of Rome have carried the gospel. The great missionary movement of the 19th and 20th century came basically out of Rome, not the city of Rome, certainly not the church of Rome, but all of that area in Western Europe and Eastern Europe in some part, and in the United States, which were influenced by the movement of thought through the Western world.
Paul was the man who picked the kingdom of God up and set it from the shores of Palestine in Rome.
When Paul was called, he didn’t exactly have that in mind. If you look for a moment in Acts 9, the 15th and 16th verses, you will see the call which was given to the apostle Paul. This call did not come in the time when Paul had his great Damascus road experience. If you wish to follow the old story, that was just God getting his attention. But he got his attention, and now Paul is waiting in Damascus, and God sends a brother Ananias to him. And here’s what he tells Ananias to say to Saul, the Lord said unto him, Go thy way. Verse 15, For he, that is Paul, is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name. Now watch this, because this is Paul’s call and Paul’s commission, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and then tacked on to the end to the children of Israel. To the Gentiles, to kings, and to the children of Israel.
It is not given to Paul to announce the great discovery, which we’ve called attention to earlier, for example, in Acts 10 35, where Peter says, In every nation, he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him. It was Peter’s job to open the kingdom to both Jew and to Gentile, but it was Paul’s business to carry through. And he gets the commission to the Gentiles and to kings, and incidentally, to the children of Israel.
But you can put that last part in brackets, because Paul’s ministry was primarily to the Gentiles and to kings. And as you look at his work in chapters 13 through 28 of the book of Acts, you will see a sharp division. Beginning with Acts 13 and following, you see him ministering to the Gentiles. But beginning with Acts 21 verse 31, you see him ministering unto kings. You see, God does not use words loosely, and Paul was literally to minister to kings. He was to minister to kings in the most unlikely of manners, namely as a prisoner. And it was as a prisoner that he was picked up and carried before kings and had opportunity to give his testimony and to spend many days living in the very household of Caesar, from which the gospel went forth throughout the civilized world.
Now let’s ask a question. Why Paul, why not Peter is a very simple answer, but it contains a very important principle because we often mislead ourselves by talking about what God can do. God can do anything. God could have caused a Blue Jay to write the New Testament. It wouldn’t have been any problem at all. He could have done that. When these people came forth in seeming repentance unto John the Baptist, John the Baptist said to them, you say you’re the children of Abraham. I tell you, God can raise up of these stones children unto Abraham. But he didn’t do it, did he?
The question is not what God can do, but what God will do. How does God work? That is what we must learn as we cooperate with him. God does not bulldoze us, steamroller us. He invites us to work with him as intelligent free beings, and therefore it is important for us to understand how he works.
And we see something very important in the Apostle Paul. And the answer why Paul is very simple, Paul was qualified. He was not altogether qualified by things that he had attained in himself. Indeed many of his attainments were things he had to set aside. But it was very important that Paul was a Jew educated in Greek culture and a Roman citizen. Those three things. I don’t have time to spell out all that that meant tonight, but he had to be a Jew in order to make the initial connection. Salvation is to the Jew first and then under the Gentile. That doesn’t mean that the Jew has a special privilege, it means he has a special responsibility. It came through the Jewish nation and Paul was a Jew, a Benjamite, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Whatever there was to be had in it, he had had it. He had been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most respected, if not the most respected, rabbi in Jerusalem in his day.
But you see, he was also a Greek. He was educated in a Greek city. Tarsus is a Greek city. Roman culture, he was born there and he was a Roman citizen by birth. But he had to speak to a Greek culture. And that’s why Peter did not do it. Now remember, as I say, God could have caused a blue jay to write the Blue Testament, but he didn’t. He chose someone who knew what he was talking about and to whom he was speaking. He chose people who could go into a situation where they had never heard of Moses and the Jews and preach the gospel.
I want to illustrate that. Look with me briefly, if you will, please, at Acts 14, beginning with verse 8. Here we find Paul on his first missionary journey. And I doubt that you have seen this before, but I want to call attention to something that is very important. Paul here is ministering in the power of the gospel. This is, I say, on his first missionary journey, and he is up in Asia Minor, just really over the hill from his old town, hometown of Tarsus, not that far. It’s the same sort of culture. He is in Lystra, and in Lystra we see there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet. His feet didn’t work. He was lame from his mother’s womb. He had never walked. The same heard Paul speak. I wish I could comment on every phrase, but just look at the richness of this. The same heard Paul speak. The word created faith in this man. Now watch. Who steadfastly beholding him, Paul looked at him, and he saw that this fellow had faith to be healed. Now, this is one of those cases where the faith to be healed resides in the healee, if you wish. Right? Paul doesn’t always reside there, but sometimes it does. And this fellow heard Paul speak, and he believed he had faith. Not all was the rule, but it was in this case. Paul looked at him and said, I see what’s in that fellow’s mind. And so Paul said to him in a loud voice, he didn’t sort of whisper to him in case no one would hear, you know. He said, well, I’ll try this out softly first, see if it works. In a loud voice, he called out to him, and he said, stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked. And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voice saying in the speech of Lyconia, the gods are come down unto us in the likeness of men.
Now, this is what I want to say to you. You see something very strange here. You see, in a Jewish setting, they might have said, wow, is this Elijah? Or possibly Jeremiah? But who do they think they might be in this setting? Well, they scratch their heads and they say Barnabas must be Jupiter, because he’s the big one. And that little one that does all the talking must be Mercury, right, because he’s the chief speaker. Now, you see, this is extremely important. And you had better believe that Paul learned a deep lesson in this setting. Paul said, I am all things to all men that I by all means might save some. And Paul learned, among other things in this setting, what he’d been prepared for for a long while, and that was not to quibble around about people’s understandings of where you’re coming from. Straighten them out about the essential.
Now what he does is he goes to work right in that setting. Verse 13, the priest of Jupiter, they don’t fool around about it since their boss has come to town. Verse 13, they’re going to get right down to business and they go out with a sacrifice. They brought oxen and garlands under the gates and would have done sacrifice with the people. But then Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they rent their clothes, they tore them, and ran in among the people, crying out, sirs, why do you these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that you should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven and earth and the sea and all things that are therein, who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless, he left not himself without witness in that he did good, and he gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.
Now I want to ask you how many times you see Moses mentioned in that sermon? How many times do you see sacrifice mentioned in that sermon? The law, you don’t see it mentioned at all. Paul was a prepared man. He knew right where to strike.
Look again in Acts 16, 12 through 15. Here we are in Philippi. This is the second missionary journey. And here we have Paul in Philippi, and God has given him a vision and called him there, and he had had it down that he should obey, and so he went. Look at verse 13 of chapter 16. There’s no synagogue here, there’s no temple here, there’s probably no Jewish community at all. But Paul went to where the people were. On the Sabbath, we went out of the city by a riverside where prayer was wont to be made. And we sat down and spake unto the women which resorted thither, just women, women’s meeting that came there to pray. Paul isn’t going to quibble about this stuff, about whether or not men are better than women. He had it all settled, yet very clear. He understood. It goes where the women are praying. And he speaks the word of God, a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God. Would you notice that? She was like Cornelius, wasn’t she? Here was a Gentile. The Bible doesn’t say, oh no, they weren’t worshipping God, it says they worshipped God. They worshipped God according to their knowledge, and God brought Paul to that place. And there he spoke the word of God, whose heart the Lord opened. See that was Paul’s confidence, he knew that that’s the way it was. The Lord opened the heart. That’s why we pray when we come to the service, oh Lord, open our hearts, open our ears, that we might hear. Whose heart the Lord opened, and she attended unto the things which Paul were spoken by Paul. And so on it goes.
I won’t take the time to go over it, but if you go again to the 17th chapter of the book of Acts, when Paul goes down the peninsula into Athens, and there was a synagogue there, and he had discussions in the synagogues, he nearly always went into the synagogues to preach to the Jews there. But he was taken to Mars Hill, and when he preached on Mars Hill, he said nothing about God coming to the Jews first. He spoke to them in terms of the culture that they had. Paul was a prepared man. He was prepared because he was not only a Jew, he was prepared because he was a Greek. And then he was prepared because he was a Roman.
On a number of occasions, on a number of occasions, Paul used his Roman citizenship, and we could spend some time even in Philippi talking about how he was abused and put in jail. And whenever they heard he was a Roman, they said, oh, you folks can go now. We’re very, we’re very glad to see you leave town. Because they had beaten them, and you were not supposed to beat Romans without trying them and without convicting. And Paul says in verse 37 of chapter 16 of Acts, they have beaten us openly, uncondimmed being Romans, being Romans, and have cast us into prison. And now do they thrust us out fiddly, that is, would they like to slip us out the back door? Oh, no, Paul says, nay, verily, let them come themselves and fetch us out.
But these incidents are not as of great importance as when we come into the 21st chapter of Acts and we see there Paul getting ready to stand before kings. And this debate finally came to a head because the truth of the matter is Paul was saying that Jews did not have to be circumcised also to be saved. Now, this is what got him in trouble. He got in trouble over that point. They had a big conference in Jerusalem. You find it recorded in the 15th chapter of the book of Acts. After Paul had completed his first missionary journey and returned to Antioch, the people at Jerusalem were upset. And they came down to Antioch in the first verse of the 15th chapter and they said, except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved. Well, they had a conference and there was a great discussion. And Peter said in verse 7, men and brethren, you know how that a good while ago God made a choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth, now Peter laid himself on the line here once again. He didn’t have to, but he did and we have to admire him for that. By my mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe and God which knoweth the hearts bear them witness giving them the Holy Ghost even as he did unto us and put no difference between us. Verse 10, now therefore why do you try God? Why do you tempt God and put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear, but we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved even as they? Peter had it straight. He didn’t keep it straight always, but he had it straight on this occasion and he stood up and spoke when it counted. And now the brother of our Lord, James, has a word to say in verse 19. Wherefore my sentence is that we trouble not the Gentiles which from among the Gentiles are turned to God, but that we write unto them. He just has to tack on a few things, okay, and some of it’s good and some of it, well, that they abstain from pollutions of idols and from fornication and from strangled things and from blood. Now you ought to look at that list, idols, pollutions of idols. Well fornication, obviously, things strangled. Now what’s that doing there, right? And from blood. It’s a strange list and we have to understand the power of the flesh that is as it is conditioned to accept the outward forms of holiness and righteousness and to capture and trap people. I want to show you just briefly the way, by the way, this was repeated as you go on over the 29th verse. They go back to Antioch. They take the message up to Antioch in the 29th verse of the 15th chapter that you abstain from meat offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication. They inverted the list here, which if you keep yourselves, ye shall do well, fare ye well.
I’d just like to show you how Paul, what Paul heard. If you look in Galatians, the second chapter, here is Paul’s report on the matter. He’s speaking of those in the fourth verse of the second chapter who came in privilege to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage. And he speaks in the ninth verse. Now this very same occasion, you’ll see the ninth verse of the second chapter of Galatians. And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and they go unto the circumcision, only that they would, that we should remember the poor, the same which I also was forward to do. Did you notice any difference in those instructions? He didn’t say anything about meat offered to idols, did he? He didn’t even say anything about fornications, didn’t think things strangled and blood. Now if you see that, you see the difference between Paul’s mind and the minds of those who were trying to say, in essence, if you’re going to be a Christian, you’ve really got to be a Jew.
Now you see, there’s another side to this. If in order to be a Christian, you don’t have to be a Jew, well why should the Jews do the Jewish thing in order to be Christian, right? That hurt. That really hurt. If you look at the book of Acts, you’ll see at the end of the 12th chapter, Jerusalem stops functioning as a spiritual center. Jerusalem simply stops functioning as a spiritual center. It becomes the recipient of charity, and it becomes the chief troublemaker for Paul. And it stopped functioning because it insisted on holding the grace of God down to cultural forms, and insisting that if you’re going to be saved, you’ve got to be a Jew. Now this really hurt, and many of those who still wanted mainly to be Jews first could not endure it.
So when Paul came back to Jerusalem, the 21st chapter of Acts, 20th verse, they have to talk to him about this, and when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, because Paul had told them about what God was doing among the Gentiles. When they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and they said unto him, thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are here which believe, and they are all zealous of the law, and they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither walk after the custom. Now you see that’s true, and that’s false. Paul had not told them they couldn’t be saved, or that they would be better saved if they stopped circumcising themselves, he didn’t do that, but on the other hand he very clearly told them that in order to be saved, you did not have to be circumcised, and he very clearly told them that the circumcision which mattered was the circumcision of the heart, and of the spirit, which God sees, and not man, he very clearly told them. So it’s true, and it’s false, and Paul set them at liberty.
Now because of this they decided once again that Paul should die, and they thought we’d better do it right on the spot, because if we fool around it may not happen, and so they started a riot in verse 21, and verse 31 of chapter 21, and as they went about to kill him, as they went about to kill him, tidings came under the chief captain of that band that all Jerusalem was in an uproar, who immediately took soldiers and centurions, and ran down unto them, and when they saw the chief captain and the soldiers they left beating Paul, and the chief captain came near and took him, and from there on Paul has a paid vacation all the way to Rome, and in the process he is able to stand before kings and to witness, he is able to write and to speak, because he was a prepared man, and God called him within his preparation as a Jew, as a Greek, as a Roman, and exalted him, because he found in Paul a man who is prepared not only by his education and his culture, but by his spirit, to live holy, holy, holy for the kingdom of God, and to let that kingdom go forth from him to everyone he contacts.
I wonder if we are free enough, I wonder if we are committed enough to be all things to all men, that we might by all means save some.
Many people say to me when I teach the book of Acts, they say why doesn’t it happen now? And I’m acquainted with many theories according to which it’s not supposed to happen now because we don’t need it. Now dear hearts, let me tell you, if you can look around on the world today and say we don’t need it, there’s something wrong with your eyesight. We need it desperately, and I’m not going to go into the details of various kinds of theories and interpretations which can scare up some grounds for the belief that nothing like this is supposed to happen now.
I say to you very simply, there is no clear indication from the scripture, none whatsoever, that similar events are not to happen now, none. There is a reason of course why just that will not happen, and that reason is simply this. This is not Jerusalem 35 A.D. This is the San Fernando Valley, 19 and 78. We couldn’t exactly use that, but we can use something like it, and that’s what brings me to the main part of my answer to the question, why doesn’t it happen now? Let me just say aside, there are many people who will tell you, oh it is happening now. We’ve been zapped by it and it’s just going on, great guns. Well let me tell you, I know a good deal about these kinds of situations and a lot of people who believe that they’re in a group that’s been baptized by the Holy Ghost and they’re just going, you know, just like the book of Acts. Well the only thing I don’t see is, I don’t see the world getting worried about it. I don’t hear people saying, you know, those who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And I don’t mean to criticize, but I would point out that whatever it is that is going on in many groups who consider themselves to be in the book of Acts groove, doesn’t have the effects of the book of Acts. And I think I know why, and I return to my point.
The main reason why this does not happen now is because there is not a group of people who are prepared to receive the contemporary equivalent of what was going on in the book of Acts. We have had the very possibility undercut by a systematic and pervasive teaching that we are not even supposed to follow Christ. That we are not supposed to do the things he taught. That we are not supposed to enter at the gate of the self-denial and surrender of all that we have, and to expect to see come forth by the grace of the Spirit of God in our lives the very things which were present in his life. We do not have a prepared people who in faith open themselves in expectancy to receive the equivalent of what happened here.
Let me say something to you, and I know that you have kind and loving hearts and it will not offend you, but I want to say something in all soberness. The great need of the world and of the San Fernando Valley is not simply another church. There are many, many churches in this world. That is not the great need of the San Fernando Valley. The great need is for a people who through intelligent devotion come together in love with one another to receive the teaching and the Spirit of Christ to minister to a needy world.
Will you be that people? This is your Jerusalem. This is your Judea. I speak to you individually. Will you be the one? Are you prepared for God to do what he will do in you here and now? That’s the question.
You may recall that some weeks ago as we opened this series, I told you the story of Elijah, and I want to play upon one of the verses which I read to you at that time. You recall that Elijah would not leave, Elijah, and Elijah said, oh, wait here while I go there, and he said, I will not leave thee. And finally, Elijah said to him, what is it you want? And Elijah said, I want a double portion of your spirit, and Elijah said, if you see me, if you see me when I go, you shall have it. After Elijah had gone, picked up the mantle of Elijah and walked back to the Jordan and smote it and said, where is the Lord God of Elijah? The book of James tells us that Elijah was a man of light passions as we are. And the question from our side is not where is the Lord God of Elijah, but where are the Elijahs and the Elishas of the Lord God? That’s you, that’s me. Where are the people who see the kingdom of God so clearly that they understand that there is nothing more important for them to do than to be filled with it and advance it where they are?
Where are the people whose faith is so consuming that they will not leave this issue alone until they have begun to see the reality of the kingdom of God in their lives? If with all your heart you truly seek me, you shall surely find me, thus saith the Lord. But Jesus said, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith upon the earth? And when you look about you and you see people giving their lives to automobiles, to the newspapers, to the most trivial, dumb, uninteresting, fruitless things, or worse still, giving themselves to those things which destroy and kill. What is it one million dollars a minute is it not now that is spent on arms by the nations of this world one million dollars a minute? Where are the Elijahs of the Lord God? Where are you? Have you got something better to do in your Judea, in your Judea, let’s pray. Oh Lord, move into our hearts and into our minds and give us vision, help us to see both the possibility and the great need of those who are ready to say I am all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now we’re glad to commend that work to your hands in this group and we are encouraged and thrilled to see the readiness of so many here to hear, oh Lord, bring it to fruition in their lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
We’re going to sing now number 302, if you have a decision you would like to make this evening, you’d like to come forward, meet me here, or if you’d like to slip out, go back to the choir room back this hall, I’ll meet you there in a few minutes for prayer and for counseling if you desire, and there are others here from the church who would meet you and welcome you, your decision, whatever it might be, if that is what is needed for you here tonight. Let’s stand together and sing.
May I just say this one word in closing? Don’t live with an unsurrendered will because of fear as to how you will accomplish what God wants you to do. Always remember this, when God calls you to do something, no matter what it may be, all that is required is the surrender of your will to Him. The readiness to learn and to receive the power to do, He will give, and you’ll know the joy of that if you surrender your will. And now this word from Paul, may the God of all peace sanctify you wholly and preserve your whole spirit, soul and body unto the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to whom be glory. Amen. Thank you.