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***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.

Speaker: So now Dallas you’ve got an extra few minutes here so we can we can really finish the whole book of Acts I’m sure.

Dallas: I wanted to continue briefly on the topic we were on when we quit last night because I didn’t quite get done with it and I want to remind you where we were and just read a passage or two and then go on to this evening’s lecture.

We were discussing the issue of how far the freedom which is in Christ extends. How far does it extend? We know that the restrictions of the Old Testament as they were interpreted by the Pharisees and by others and as they are flatly stated in many places in the Old Testament were restrictive in a harmful way as they were interpreted and as they were applied. There are some that are just very hard to understand. For example, there is a restriction, I believe it is in Leviticus, on who can be a priest and among other things a person cannot be a priest if he has a flat nose. If he’s too thin, if he’s too thin he can’t be a priest. If he has an extra finger, you know some people have six, five fingers and a thumb or any kind of extra equipment he could not be a priest and he could not enter into the worship of Israel except at a very great distance.

We talked last night at length about circumcision and what that meant. But now we see that many of these things are really very trivial and it was not we who discovered this. This was well known by the prophets for many centuries before Jesus came and they preached it plainly. It was well known by Jesus and he taught it plainly and forcibly. No question about it at all. It was not our discovery. It was not a discovery of the New Testament Church.

What we learn as we watch the marvelous way in which God leads his people is that they have the truth. For a long while before they accept the truth. Truth is a funny thing. You can’t just say important truths to people and they hear it and all of a sudden they’ve got it. I’m sure just from my own experience that if I were to ask us to talk about the important truths we’ve discovered, they would be things that we’ve seen in the Bible 15 times before and we’ve read them and if someone said, is that in there? We’d say yes, that’s in there. But then one day they grip our heart. They grip our heart, see. The truth lays hold upon us. And then we’re different and we don’t have to memorize it. We know it without memorizing it. Without memorizing it.

And that’s the kind of learning which comes as God works with his people. First he lays it out and they have it and it maybe even gets into their sacred literature. It may be the sort of thing which they will look at week after week, day after day. And then one day it grips their heart and the group and the individual. They’re changed. They’re no longer the same. And this was certainly true in some measure of what we have been discussing in these days.

And yet it took this tremendous explosion that we’ve seen of the Holy Ghost coming upon people and as I’ve described it blowing apart the old vessel, the old vessel turning against the treasure which it contained and forcibly expelling it. And then a long series of discussions until finally we’re in the clear. And people look around and see very clearly now the truth grips them. The truth grips them that God is not a respecter of persons. God doesn’t care what part of the country you come from. Doesn’t care if you’re male or female. Doesn’t care if you are a Jew or a Greek or a barbarian or whatever. It doesn’t matter. As far as God is concerned and then there is the creation of a group in which that is not just a theoretical truth, but reality. That’s the church. And in that a person who owns slaves and the slaves he owns sit down together. That’s revolutionary.

But how far does this go? Are we willing to say that of every kind of provision which we find in a given culture, it is merely a cultural matter? And I discussed some issues dealing with this last time. And I would now just like to read a verse or two about the fixed point that determines the limits of our liberty which is in Christ.

These again are familiar verses. First of all mark the 12th chapter and the 29th verse. Mark 12 29. And this this passage is really out of the Old Testament. It was again not something new. Mark 12 29. But as we know sometimes old truths look very new.

Now here there is a discussion and one of the scribes asks a favorite question of the rabbi. The 28th verse, which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered, the first of all the commandments is, Here O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

That’s the limit. The limit is love. Does anyone know to be able to quote John 13 35? John 13 35. That’s one you all ought to know. Would you look it up? John 13 35. Now you know it, don’t you? Now you know it. Now that’s one you ought to know and you ought not to depart from. Because there is so much confusion about who’s a Christian and who isn’t. By this shall all men know that you’re my disciple if you have love one towards another.

That’s the mark. Do you know of any creed of any institution in which that is an essential part? Do you know of any creed which says that in order to be a member of this group you must love the other members of the group? Do you know of any that says in order to be a member of the group you must love your enemies? You must pray for them that despitefully use you?

You see one of the great problems of our period is what I call creedal Christianity. And that is Christianity as defined by creeds. Everyone gets their creed and they say now this is really it. They look back down through history and they say now everyone else was more or less wrong but this one’s right. That’s like the person who says why do I go to this church? Why go to this church because this is the best church. There isn’t another church as good as this one. All the other churches are inferior. Is that why a person goes to the church? Is it the best church? No, that isn’t the basis for choosing a church. Who knows what’s the best church? Really? Who knows? The basis for choosing a church should be something much better than that which is a feeling of union of soul and purpose with a group of people who are together in a group. See? Love is the bond for the Christians.

By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love one for the other. Paul says in Galatians that love is the fulfilling of the law. Now when you go back and you read those verses in Paul’s letters and in where Jesus speaks about I’ve not come to do away with the law but to fulfill it, will you remember what that means? Love is the fulfilling of the law. That’s what the scripture teaches us and that is quite true. Why? Well Paul explains it. He says if you love people you’re not going to run over them. You’re not going to steal from them. You’re not going to hurt them. You’re not going to do all of the things which are forbidden by particular prescriptions and proscriptions in various parts of the Bible and various moral codes if you just love. And you know why we depend so much on these laws? It is because we love so little. We love so little. Not just us. There’s so little love in the world. Love is not a small thing.

Love is the limit of all of these cultural differences. When we find something that is vicious, if we go into a society in which there is a taboo on twin children and we see them taking those little children out and leaving them in the bush and perhaps the woman going half insane because her babies are being killed and doing everything risking her own life to somehow manage to get them in a situation where they can live, love tells us that is a bad thing. That’s a bad thing. If we go into a society and we see people worshipping things which don’t even exist and can do nothing for them except confuse them and mislead them, we say no. As Paul and Barnabas did as we read last night in Lystra, they said turn from these vanities and turn to the living God, the God who lives, who can do things, who does things. That’s love. That’s love. Love does not tell a Sioux chief as we saw last night to get rid of his wives in order to be a Christian when the most decent thing he could do was to hang them as he did. And love does not say when he goes to hang them so that he can deal with them, get away from us, we’ll have nothing to do to you. Love does not say that.

The limit is love. Now, so much then for that point and I want to move into the discussion for this evening as quickly as possible and move right along.

If you look at the outline on the screen, you see that I want to make a few final remarks about Paul, the last stage of Paul’s mission. What we have seen throughout the book of Acts is how the wrath of man praises God. The wrath of man praises God. The psalmist said it a long time ago and you see it over and over and especially in the book of Acts.

And this is especially and beautifully illustrated in Paul’s last years. Paul was a struggling itinerary missionary, a kind of circuit rider, circuit walker. He didn’t have anything to ride most of the time and he did not complain about his life, but boy it was a rough one. And if you read his descriptions of what he went through, you know that it was bad in many points of view.

Now then, after many years of this kind of work, after working out thoroughly the doctrine and practice of Gentile Christianity, after working it out thoroughly, after getting the concessions from the Judaistic section of the church, that Gentiles had an equal standing in the kingdom of God, after all of this he senses a leading, that he’s entering into something new. And when he returns to Jerusalem with a collection for the poor people in Jerusalem from the Gentile Christians and he goes through the western part of Asia Minor, there’s some very touching scenes around the 20th, 21st chapter of Acts, where he is saying goodbye to them and he says, I’m not going to see you anymore.

And this really tears them up because, you know, one of the most, I really can’t add anything to what Dave said about our gratitude for being here and all of this. It’s just hard to, it’s hard to appreciate what it is to experience the grace of God like we ministers get to. Because we experience it in groups that we’ve never met before and we go and we speak and all of a sudden something happens and we don’t know why, but there’s a love there and there’s an acceptance and an encouragement going in all directions, you know.

And Paul knew that. And those people that he had helped just loved him and he loved him so deeply. And you recall one place in Corinthians that he says, why you would have torn your eyes out and given them to me if you could have. Well, he had saved them, he had saved their lives. I mean, he had come and been the vessel through which they were delivered. And when he comes here in the 20th chapter of the book of Acts and the 21st chapter, to say goodbye to these dear people that he had lived with and who had helped him, because believe me, he was encouraged by them about as much as they by him. And Paul often got discouraged and his brothers and sisters lifted him up.

He tells them this heartbreaking story to them in the 20th chapter and about the 17th verse and following is the discourse with the elders from Ephesus who came to meet him. And he tells them how that he had served the Lord in their midst in all kinds of seasons. 19th verse, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, with many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying and weight of the Jews. And they really gave him a bad time. And how I kept back nothing profitable.

And then he goes on to say, behold, 22nd verse, behold, I go bound in spirit unto Jerusalem. That is, the Spirit has got handcuffs on me and he is taking me to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there save that the Holy Ghost witnesses in every city saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. Paul, like Abraham, went out not knowing whether he went. The only thing the Holy Spirit told him was, Paul, you’re going to spend a lot of time sitting around with chains on your leg. And that’s what he did for most of the rest of his life.

It didn’t bother him very much. It really didn’t and it didn’t slow him down at all. As he says in the letter to the Philippians, I’m in bonds but the Word of God is not bound. And he did some of his most powerful work while he was in prison. This is what we must remember when we thank God for our freedom. Freedom is a wonderful thing but we have to be careful because it may put us into bondage. It may put us into bondage to what we can do because we’re in such a good condition. Paul had the glory of sitting in chains and seeing the Word of God tearing across the countryside.

So to cut it all short, Paul went back to Jerusalem and you know the story of how he entered into the temple and those who hated his guts because he had undercut the position of the Jews as a nation. That’s what the pride of life is by the way. You know we spoke some time ago about the three things that are in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The pride of life is that which raises one up over another and seeks for dominance and dominion, manipulation, power. That’s the pride of life.

He took the pride of their life away from them. The Holy Spirit took it away from them and said you’re no better than anyone else. You don’t have any position of power. You’re just like on the same footing right beneath the cross, Jews and Gentiles all on the same footing. Paul and they hated him and they would find anything they could to get him. And the charge they got him on was that he brought a Gentile into a place in the temple where he shouldn’t have been. And they tried to kill him on the spot and tried to give him the Stephen treatment you know.

But he was saved by the Roman authorities, put in bonds, and from there on you know what Paul had a free meal ticket, free transportation, housing provided, everything, maybe even I think even had an expense account. That’s right. That’s exactly what Paul had. He never had to worry about where his meals were coming for years after that. His transportation was taken care of. Not only so but he had a direct audience with the absolute leaders of the Roman government and culture, both in Judea and Caesarea, across the Mediterranean and in Rome.

And so when he writes that letter to the Philippians he just casually drops it. He says we send you greetings all of us brothers and sisters here at Rome, especially those in Caesar’s household. Like trying to get rid of mice. Can’t do it. The wrath of man shall praise thee. All those mad Jews in that temple, if they had known what that was going to do, boy they had left him alone. They clear out, don’t touch him, it’s like a hornet’s nest. Just leave it alone knowing the same thing you can do.

Gamaliel told them that, didn’t he? Gamaliel told them, now leave that bunch alone. Leave them alone. If it’s not of God, it’ll die. But if it is of God, you’re going to wind up fighting against God. And that’s exactly where they were. And Paul spoke of them, as they that oppose God and themselves and are against all men. You know, opposition’s like that. It kind of spreads and takes over. You devote yourself to fighting something, pretty soon you’re fighting everything. Just fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. Why fight? You know, why fight? That’s what Gamaliel said. And Gamaliel was wise in that regard.

As Jesus said, every plant that my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. So you don’t need to go around pulling them up. I don’t need to. I don’t need to fight the weeds. They’ll be rooted up. God will take care of that. Well, they didn’t know that, so the wrath of man praised God. He witnesses at the highest level of the dominant culture. He had an end right at the top.

Now I’ll tell you something, God has his way of getting things done. And we must always remember that. And when we speak, as I speak, of the kingdom of God being held captive in the Jewish nation. And then again, it being held captive in a certain form of, quote, Christianity for many centuries. I have to be very careful and qualify that and say none of that time is wasted. Things are happening and they’ve been happening.

The word of God is like, the kingdom of God is like what? Yeast. Leaven. How does leaven do? Well, you just put it in the dough. Go off and leave it. The kingdom of life, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of corn that a farmer puts in the ground. And it rains. Sun comes up and goes down. It just comes up. First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn. That’s the way the kingdom of God is. It’s God’s kingdom. And he rules. And so he makes the wrath of man praise him as he goes through this process of bringing about a time when every person on the face of the earth with their own free will will glorify and praise him for what he is and what is good about him. That time when the earth shall be covered with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. He’s going to bring that to pass. He doesn’t lose any time. No time lost. Never. We must remember that when we see these waiting periods. He does not lose any time.

Now just briefly on this point, and I’ve written a good deal more this evening on the outlines because I’m not going to cover all of it in the talk because there just isn’t enough time, but if you would take down what you can in the way of notes.

During this last phase, hey wait a minute. There. During this last phase of the church, the issue of Jewish superiority and in principle any cultural superiority was settled. And the church conceded and established it as a general principle that no general cultural distinctions make the least bit of difference before God.

I want to read some of these verses now. They are the theme verses by and large of the course which you have on your sheets, at least the references, and I hope that you have studied them at length and meditated on them as the week has gone by. Let’s take them in the order which they’re up there. We’ve already studied one of them this evening.

Let’s take Galatians 3, 27, and 28. Galatians 3, 27, and 28. He says that the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. That is to say, if you study the law rightly, you’ll be able to recognize Christ when you see him. Do you remember that? At least as a possible interpretation because I hear this I think misinterpreted so much. And the way it is interpreted is the law came in order to make everyone feel so completely inadequate and hopeless and helpless that they would be willing to take whatever came in the way of the Savior. But no, it came as a schoolmaster so that we would be able to recognize Christ. It came to teach people, to teach a nation, so that at a certain point there would be people who could say this is the Messiah, this astounding thing. We’ve seen how hard it was to recognize him and it was the law which formed a group of people that were able, finally, to say yes, this is Jesus and Jesus is Christ, the Son of God. Even though Jesus was not much like what they had thought would be the Messiah.

So now, after faith has come, we’re no longer under a schoolmaster. We are the children of God. And verse 27, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ. Now being baptized into Christ is not the same thing as being baptized into water. It is what being baptized into water is supposed to represent and witness to. Being baptized into Christ is to be immersed in Christ. How would you do that? How would you do that? Well, that’s jumping ahead to something you’re going to be studying next week, I’m sure. You get baptized into Christ by being put into Christ’s body. The Lord added daily unto the church, such as should be saved. We’re immersed in the body and we have put on Christ. Oh, the richness of that and what it would take to spell that out adequately. And I’m just happy for you that you’re going to have a chance to be studying Ephesians and what else? Ephesians and Colossians together. You’d better bring your lead shoes, you’ll float home. That’s what you’ll do. Yes, sir. I don’t know. Dave, maybe we’d better stay here for this.

As many as have been baptized into Christ. Now once they’re into Christ, what happens? There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. For you’re all one in Christ Jesus. That is to say, all of the things which one of these groups used as an advantage over the other were wiped out, wiped out, wiped out.

You know, a lot of people say Paul was down on women. If they could only understand what this man was saying in that context to say male and female, you’re all one. Unbelievable. Listen, it was the standard view of all of the ancient cultures to my knowledge, the literature that in one way or another a woman was at best a kind of deficient man. That’s right. And I mean, I’m not talking about the dummies that gathered down in the bar to discuss their wives. I’m talking about the philosophers and the theoreticians of those days. For Aristotle, for a man to have a female offspring, just indicated he was a weakling. And a girl that resembled her mother was a walking insult to any man. A boy that resembled its father was a sign that man really had the, he really had it going, you know. He had the vital fire. A woman was a deficient male. That at best, and in fact, she was more like cattle.

And you want to keep that in mind by the way when you study what the New Testament says about divorce, would you? Because what the New Testament talks about as divorce is, has very little similarity to what is called divorce today. And we need to think about that because we’re in a kind of cultural bind on this thing of divorce. And it’s hurting us badly in the churches because a lot of people, a lot of people are being relegated to third and fourth class citizenship because they’ve been divorced. And a lot of people, it hurts so badly they don’t even show up at church no more. And there are all kinds of people standing around to grind them in the dirt. That doesn’t mean divorce is a good thing. Think about it, would you? Did you remember that when you find man-woman relationships discussed in the New Testament, it is not the same world that we live in now. In that respect, it is not the same world at all. Paul and before him, Jesus Christ, elevated the status of woman in a manner which is incomprehensible to us today. We cannot understand it. We can’t understand it.

Again, in Colossians 3, 10 and 11, Paul is telling people here that they are not to lie to one another, that they’re to put away anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication. Colossians 9, lie not to one another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds. The old woman too, by the way. The old human, okay? Or the old person with its deeds. And now, and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge. Oh, will you circle that phrase, renewed in knowledge. Not in feeling primarily, in knowledge. Knowledge is the basis of our salvation. It is our salvation more than anything else. It is knowledge. It is knowledge which saves. Put that to the test of reading the New Testament to see. Our feelings, our will are based upon our knowledge. That’s why the work of the ministry is the teaching of truth. And when that is done effectively, feelings follow, wills follow. It’s the teaching of truth.

Pray for the ministry. Pray for the ministry. Pray for the ministry. Everything will go right if the ministry goes right. And if it does not go right, nothing will go right in the church. The teaching of truth renews the man, the person in knowledge after the image of him that created him.

Here’s your creator back. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew. Circumcision nor uncircumcision. Barbarian. Now, you know what a barbarian was? It’s what a Greek called a non-Greek. A Gentile was what a Jew called a non-Jew. A barbarian was simply what a Greek called an interesting word for that barbarian. I won’t get into that. There’s so many things, but it’s a fascinating word. It means a person without a mind. Barbarian.

You see, Paul had a problem. He had trouble getting from the Greeks, from the Jews to the Greeks. Then he had trouble getting from the Greeks to the Romans because the Romans were barbarians. And if you read the progression, you’ll see how barbarian begins to show up after a while. And the reason is, is because he’s writing from within a Greek context. These nice people, you know.

The Greeks thought the center of earth was the Oracle of Delphi. The Jews thought the center of the earth was Jerusalem. We know it’s San Diego.

I am a debtor, Paul says, to the Greeks and to the barbarians. Both to the wise, the Greek, and the unwise, the barbarians. But now he doesn’t even stop there because he brings in Scythians. Colossians 3.11. Scythians. And so you look at that and you say, Scythians? What’s this Scythians? Huh? Well, that was the current equivalent of the naked howling savage, right? That’s who that was. I mean, he was just the livid end, really. The Scythian was about the meanest thing around. These were people who lived up where you might, right today, it would be eastern Russia and down in the Yugoslavia and in there. Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. Except it wasn’t, they weren’t so nice now as that. Scythians were some of the best fighters in the gladiatorial combat. And they had, I mean, they didn’t fight with all that armor on. They just, they were just excellent fighters and they used all kinds of strains. They were the, they were the naked howling savage. That’s who they were.

And when you read that, you read that, okay? From the Greek, the Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, the mindless barbarian, the naked howling savage, bond nor free, slaves or free. Christ is all and in all. Now, I’ll tell you, that was quite a thing to get established.

This one other passage, which again is our theme verse, 2 Corinthians 5, 16 through 17. 2 Corinthians 5, 16 through 17. I want to show you something here that everyone, do you know the verse, therefore if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature? All right, now I want to ask you, what does the therefore refer back to? Did you know that when you read therefore, that refers back to something, doesn’t it? And in this, in this context, we would be referring back to an explanation of why if any man is in Christ Jesus, he’s a new creature.

Now, he said, as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. For in Christ Jesus, there is neither da-di-da-di-da-di-da, right? Therefore, if any man be in Christ Jesus, talking about the same thing, right? Being in Christ.

All right, let’s see if we can tie that all together now. So you go back one verse to see why the therefore, what the therefore is therefore, as they say. In the 16th verse, well, here again, we have a wherefore. Wherefore to therefore. And it all goes back to the 15th verse, Christ died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. That’s the unity in the body.

Wherefore, because of that, henceforth, know we no man after the flesh. Now, what does that mean? You mean you never look at anybody’s nose, or their muscles, or their face? No, it doesn’t mean that. It means that so far as the fleshly characterizations which distinguish this group and that group, the Jew from the Gentile, the Scythian, and all the rest of that, the male from the female, we don’t know them.

What did Jesus say to the Corinthians in the first letter? He said, I’m determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. That’s the only thing he knew in them.

Watch what he says. Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh. Christ was a Jewish man after the flesh. But he wasn’t after the flesh, was he? Not much. And Paul says, though we have known him after the flesh, yet henceforth know we him no more. You want the plain English of what he’s saying? Is that Jesus is not even a Jew as far as we’re concerned. He is not a Jew. And that was a very deep teaching in the New Testament Church. That’s why in the book of Hebrews he turns out to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek, which as Dave has pointed out so beautifully, Jews hadn’t showed up yet, right? Melchizedek. You know that passage? In the book of Hebrews Jesus is not a priest, a Jewish priest. He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek and Melchizedek was just a plain old raw human being. Well, some of you groan, you know there’s a story there, but let me off on that one, okay? At any rate he was not a Jew. Melchizedek’s an interesting fellow, if he was a fellow.

All right, so now then we come to the 17th verse. Because of all this, therefore if any man be in Christ he’s a new creature. Old things, what are the old things? All those fleshly things which distinguish this kind of person from that kind of person, man, woman, black, white, Jew, Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond, free, poor, rich, they passed away. Old things are passed away, behold all things are becoming new.

That was a settled principle. Now it’s important for us to understand that because see we are not fighting that battle today. It is true that there’s still discrimination against people of all sort. But one thing was established then and it was never in principle nor much in practice doubted afterwards and that is that as far as the kingdom of God were concerned all of those distinctions did not matter in the least. That was established. It’s still established. It is a fact.

Even though some denominations worry about women preachers. And that’s a real problem. What do you do with that? Well, one thing is you don’t settle it by going back and quoting Paul on this because Paul didn’t live today. And what it was to be a woman in a church in that period just like what it was to be divorced as a woman in that period is very different from what it would be today. That it also doesn’t settle the issue just to say that. And the issue won’t be settled here this evening no matter what I say about it. My point is simply that even though there are issues upon which there’s some difficulties still remaining the Church of Jesus Christ for centuries has had it clearly settled that in the kingdom of God there is no difference on all of these matters.

And that’s a real step forward. That is a real step forward to the time when every need should bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That’s a real step forward. If we’re living on this side of it we can hardly imagine it. I mean we have to do things like put ourselves into the position that for example many black men and women had to endure a few decades ago in many parts of the country where they simply were treated as if they were different sorts of critters. And that helps a little bit but we can’t begin to grasp it.

What that what that means but our problem is different today and I want to turn to that and I want to spend the rest of my time this evening talking about that. We’ve been talking about what I call the Jewish captivity of the kingdom and now the rest of the time I want to spend on what I call for I think a good reason the Roman captivity of the kingdom.

I’m very careful to say here that in Roman I do not mean Roman Catholic. Roman Catholic is of course a contradiction of terms because you can’t be universal and be Roman. I mean you just can’t because Romans aren’t everything. See there are also Frenchmen and there are Scythians and all kinds of things besides Romans. So Catholic just means universal doesn’t it means it comes from a couple of Greek words together which means there’s just a translation of it which means on the whole taking the whole in. It’s the same same word or formation which in philosophical writings is used for the universal a universal.

And so I’m not referring Roman Catholic because actually the Roman Catholic Church is just one manifestation in some of its aspects at least is just one manifestation of what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is a system which I describe on the screen and this system was one which came out of the time in which the Roman principle simply is that although we learned that God cannot be bottled up within the pot of a particular national culture I say we still have trouble with that but in general we’ve learned it. Still within each of those cultures God was kept bottled up. There was a division between what is sacred and what is secular and put it bluntly and in part falsely there was simply the teaching that much of human life and much of the world would just had to go to the devil and that in order to manage salvation you had to move in the special places special times with special people and I’ve even picked up these words the otherworldly and thisworldly the afterlife is usually regarded as all belonging to God in one way or another but in this life God is limited to very special places like church houses very special times like when you’re on your knees praying or when you’re doing some particularly holy deed when you’re preaching teaching a Sunday school class

I told Dave while ago that if he and I stayed here much longer we’d be preaching one another sermon and I’m so glad for what he got into at the end of his because he’s saying just he’s right on in fact some of the same passages that I’m going to work on he was working on now we’ve been living in the same house and I have a feeling we’ve been talking the same person about this and I have a feeling that’s what’s been happening but we’ll see how that works out

The important thing is to try to understand that principle that there are many areas of life in which we really don’t expect God in any concrete way those areas are primarily human relationships of the ordinary sort we expect him maybe to be between the minister and us we expect it to be between us and God but what about the relationships with our parents or our children

I want to show you what I think is perhaps one of the very few most important verses in the Bible let it get another shot up here you don’t have to copy it I’m going to tell you everything that’s important in it anyway okay look at the last verses the last two verses of the Old Testament the Old Testament the book of Malachi fourth chapter the last two verses

In this passage we have the promise behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers lest I come and smite the earth with a curse

You ever ask yourself why in the world did he say that why did he say that reads a little bit differently in Luke 1 17 but it’s almost the same wording there I think there was some interesting change in thought reflected in this Luke 1 17 and he shall go before him this is speaking of John the Baptist Luke 1 17 and he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord we’ve talked a lot about people prepared and a lot of time talking about people being prepared how important that was

Well I want to tell you that great and dreadful day of the Lord has not come yet and do you know it has not come because the relationships in the family have not been healed and it will not come until it has been healed do you know the primary religious institution as far as human institutions are concerned it is not the church it is the family

Why did he say turn the hearts of the fathers to the children why not the mothers just a reflection of the fact that the mothers didn’t matter that much sorry about that it’s not me it wasn’t God it was just the times the fathers are the ones which mattered that much the hearts of the fathers what woman had no power anyway in the sense that the father had power the father owned the wife right along with the children

The heart so that why didn’t he say turn the hearts of the children to the fathers because children’s hearts don’t have to be turned to their parents they’re turned one of those pathetic things is how children love parents I’ve often wondered over this fact and I’ve mentioned it I think before in our discussions here maybe that in animals the parents will die for the children and for their litter or whatever unthinkingly almost but human beings will throw their children away not all of them but a terribly high percentage of them but the children desperately hang on to the parents that’s why the Bible does not tell children to love their parents it tells them to honor their parents that their days may be long upon the earth the land the Lord has given them but the father’s hearts need some help

The family relationships have to be healed before the kingdom of God can come in the fullness of which we’ve spoken this week and the verses which we referred to over and over it will not come until that time but now more has to be said because it isn’t just parents and children it’s the whole family the reason why it speaks in this way is because as I suggested this is really the only the only relationship which counted the important relationship in the family at this time was a relationship between the father and the children and most importantly the relationship between the fathers and the son hearts of the fathers as we turn to the children that’s just symbolic

And so when we began to look into the New Testament we see all of the relationships discussed and we see for the first time really in any depth discussed the relationship between the man and the wife Ephesians gives you the whole spectrum of relationships and Paul regularly treated at these and you can bet he preached on it over and over and over and over again

And in Ephesians we find him telling what the community is like and taking up these relationships one by one in the fifth chapter 14th verse and following he’s talking about this and the 21st verse is the is the general statement of relationships of love in the community submitting yourselves one to another that is characteristic of the community of God in which there is love now if everyone submits themselves to the others what does that mean everyone is a servant who is the greatest in the kingdom of God hmm the least and what does that mean in human terms the servant the servant was the least right right on the bottom he that is greatest in the kingdom of God is servant of all submitting yourselves to one another

Now what does it mean to submit ourselves to one another in the fear of Christ if we come to understand that and if we come to have that we have got the unity between ourselves that exists between the members of the Trinity hmm that’s right Jesus prayed that we would have the unity between ourselves that he and the Father have between them read it yourself in 17th chapter of John and he said when you have that unity the world will know that I am Lord in other words the earth will be covered with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea the world is waiting on that unity

We just had a taste of it thus far you know the day of Pentecost would never happen without that unity but that unity was not perfect on which it came look at all the disunity in that group after that it was only by the grace of God that that thing held together at all but it had more unity than most groups you could imagine and most much of the unity it had was created precisely by the pressure of persecution the persecution drove them together and in that unity not just persecution but that wasn’t the whole thing believe me it was their shared experience over those previous years the things they had gone through their devotional and intellectual and emotional growth and then the persecution finally created a receptacle of God

Now what how what God does in the world according to this plan which we’ve been talking about all week is directly proportional to the size of the vessel which receives him will you remember that directly proportional Jesus was very provoking in many of his teachings and one of the most provoking is where he says if any two of you agree on anything it will be done now why do you suppose you said two well try to get three okay and you know why he said two right and believe me now I’ve seen a lot of people pray themselves into very serious skepticism by trying to do that wrongly they say they think the agreement there talked about is the agreement where two people come in the room they say well what do we want done I want this done can we agree yes we agree bang nothing happens

Some of you have experienced the kind of agreement that’s talking about it is something that comes into a room and it is so thick you can cut it and he said where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst and you know what that thing is that comes into the room and is so thick you can cut it it’s Jesus and these people are brought together in him and I’ve had those experiences and you have to and I’ll tell you well that’s when you need your led shoes those are those experiences where you know that thing has happened you know it and those of us who are concerned to know the leadership of the Holy Spirit and what the voice of the Holy Spirit sounds like the best place to learn it is in that kind of prayer because you hear it you hear it and you don’t need to be told anymore what it is that’s that’s the power of two people

In now three four five two thousand five thousand a whole city what are you willing to try with that listen if the people in this room if half the people in this room if a fourth of the people in this room were to say we are going to come together in the unity of Christ we are going to pray wait learn until that unity happens this might very well be the equivalent of the Jerusalem of the first century this might be the place where the vessel is broken and the distinction between the sacred and the secular is wiped out this might be the place it’s going to happen do you know that it’s going to happen why shouldn’t it be you have you got something better to do

Well Lord I’ve just married a wife and I must go keep her company well Lord I just bought some oxen I bought some land I have to go look at it I can’t do that what is that person talking about are they completely mindless they got something better to do it takes a group the kingdom of God is not individualistic it is not individualistic man’s problem is man it is only when he comes together in God that the problems of man are solved

We don’t have an energy shortage in the universe did you know that energy isn’t our problem we don’t have a space shortage in the universe we don’t know what to do with what we’ve got it’s just hanging out there you know our problem is man we’re waiting for the new Jerusalem come down out of heaven from God and form a place in which God can dwell forever forever and in which his nature which is love will be reflected and rebounding and resounding from one person to another in distinct consciousness of their existence of their love forever

That’s why we’re waiting as I said God is not going to get a bunch of people together and rewire them put them on an operation table rip them open fix them up pour in no that’s not his way God is patient and what he wants cannot be gotten in that way you wouldn’t want someone to love you because they had a button which you could push or a string that you could pull and that started their machine into motion and then they loved you you wouldn’t want that

One most revolting things I’ve ever seen was somewhere and some someplace was an advertisement for lonely people you know to have these huge mannequins that will sit around in their living room male or female depending on your choice just to kind of you know give you something that looked like a human well things get pretty lonely that’s just an indication of how far apart we are starving to death for one human relations are unhealed unredeemed loneliness is a terrible thing it is a terrible thing and it’s one of the main problems of our overpopulated world isn’t that strange loneliness is one of the main problems of our overpopulated world you know why because we can’t get along with one another we can’t even see one another when we’re right right next to them we can’t look at one another like flesh and blood we treat one another like mannequins you know that that’s why some nut could think up some advertisement like that he probably sold a bunch of those just keep on playing dolls long enough and you’ve got it

Let’s look at some of these relationships let’s think about something these relationships are the substance of our lives if you take away what I am in my work what I am in my family what I am to my neighbors if you take away my special relationships my work happens to be teaching and writing and various things like that you take away those I’m not anything I am not anything when I’m you know that won’t make my body disappear it’ll just kill me inside I’ll die eventually probably much quicker my relationships are the substance of my life my relationships to other people is the substance of my life and until they are redeemed I may go to church regularly and it may do me some good but only a very small part of my life has been touched

The church I’m sure all of you are told this repeatedly the church is not the meeting house the church consists of the people of God but we use that language differently and now we’ve come to speak of churches being on the corner and so on that’s entirely against the New Testament teachings the church is the people of God in Paul’s language Paul practically oh more than half the time instead of speaking of the kingdom of God he was speak of the church the body of Christ with Christ as the head that’s his language for the kingdom of God the church is the kingdom of God like a mighty army moves the church of God so that’s the kingdom of God but in the ordinary sense of church if that’s my religion I practically don’t have any and it’s only because life is so desperate and hard that just taking an hour out means as much as it does

But you cannot you cannot experience the redemption of Jesus Christ in an hour or two hours a week or three hours a week or four hours a week you know how many hours it takes well I don’t know what seven times 24 is but that’s what it takes that’s what it takes when I’m asleep when I get up when I deal with my children when I deal with my wife when I work when I play when I lie on my back in the sand and look up at the sky that’s a holy moment or I’ve still got God in the sacred bottle and believe me dear friends we have him there

I don’t know about this fellow Dave Thompson I never knew him before but I am sure glad he’s been here and I’m sure glad he said what he did about the song of Solomon and I’m sure glad he said it just the way he did and he’s a braver man than I am but when you let something as important as sex be claimed for the secular Oh friends Oh friends it’s just about all down the tubes that’s not because sex is all of one’s life it isn’t but if you’re going to do without it you’d better have a special gift from God you’d better have a special gift from God

Now sex is something holy and if you haven’t gotten that over on the sacred side yet you better I don’t know how many couples I’ve had to counsel whose basic problem has been is that for years as Christians or as maybe they weren’t even Christians they just picked it up in the atmosphere somehow that well sex doesn’t really matter it’s a kind of a thing you maybe a necessary evil or something like that and pretty soon we see them hopelessly at odds with one another over that very point impossible to communicate impossible to do anything

You know when we read in Ephesians these words wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and usually we read that to people when they’re in trouble and you know what they say oh if I gotta do that that I’ve got to do that I don’t know how many people I have seen get into trouble in their marriage and then come and take this and try to do something with it and when it is only another hopeless burden to them I’ve got to submit myself to that crud they say oh they may not say that but that’s what they said in their heart because they were so hopelessly at cross purposes that they couldn’t honor their husband submit themselves to their husband love my wife like Christ loved the church guy looks at that and says oh that’s bad news you know what happened to him that’s right see the old devil has gotten a hold of that relationship and he’s turned it into vinegar turns into vinegar

You know it’s an almost hopeless mess we’re in on marriage and sex it’s an almost hopeless mess and the kingdom of God is not going to come until it’s straightened out and it won’t come in your life until it’s straightened out now God may have appointed you be a eunuch or whatever the equivalent that is if you’re a woman and if he did that’s fine you can straighten it out that way praise the Lord he’ll give it to you Jesus himself said that some people have this vocation but one way or another this has got to be straightened out it has got to be straightened out it is a central part of your life you’ve got to learn how beautiful and wonderful and joyous it is to love in a marriage relationship

Same way with kids oh my I have had such a hard time learning how to love my kids I’ve gone through all this jazz about well you don’t have to like them hmm Christian love you just have to love them you take care of you do what’s good for him and all that you don’t have to like them I know people who go through that with their wives and they say well you know Jesus didn’t think the church was especially pretty all those people he was dying for so it didn’t mean he had much delight in it you know he after all what did he do in Gethsemane he sweated great drops of blood right you don’t do that when you’re having great fun so you don’t have to have much fun with you you just sort of have to treat her nice and be courteous and put up with her and Paul says don’t be bitter against her I mean Paul must have known there was all kinds of reason to be bitter and so he said that right so he says don’t men don’t be bitter against your wives we what a mess what a mess we get ourselves into

And basically it all comes in the fact that we find our relationships to be a drag there’s no joy in them you know what it was like when you fell in love you know the delight oh what it was like I mean all the times you fell in love you’ve fallen in love a lot of times a lot of people they didn’t even love you but you still know what it was like sit there and just look at him look at him oh and it would hurt so good just to look you just sit there if eyes could eat you know they had to have marks all over them it’s just just just think you know when people are in love how they like to look into one another’s eyes a man who is in love may be in love with an elbow that’s true with an earlobe right I mean the silliest things are rendered hopelessly precious to us right isn’t that true hopelessly precious

When these little babies are born they’re so sweet if you just oh it’s the same thing almost they’re just so inexpressibly precious see a little child sleeping don’t see them they’re little hands all sprawled out across some pillow crazy dirty little rabbit there you know or a bear or something like that miss precious Oh precious is the only word you know that’s what that’s what was meant to be in human relationships you know that it’s no problem for me to submit myself to my children as I see them to be so precious I’m my children’s servant do you know that I’m my children’s servant I’m my wife’s servant they’re my servant I’m not over them in the Lord and they’re not over me in the Lord we are mutual submitters in the fear of God

And because of that relationship I can see them to be precious you know that song everything is beautiful in its own life God made everything beautiful everything is beautiful you get it cross purposes with the most beautiful man or woman in the world and they’ll look like a head of spoiled cabbage to you and smell worse it’s awful how people can fight with one another and tear at one another Paul speaks of be careful or you’re going to eat one another up you’re going to bite and devour one another and you say if you could stop them and say what are you doing how did this come about they couldn’t tell you and you say to them don’t you remember how precious her elbow was to you you could sit and look at it and think see there isn’t another elbow like that in the whole universe I just oh and he can’t even remember that he’d like to break it now

See these relationships have to be redeemed and when we talk about redeemed that’s what we’re talking about and when you read this about Christ and his church and the man and when we remember that remember how precious that is think of the preciousness that is in love see now love is fundamentally a matter of the will but it is not all will and don’t for heaven’s sakes don’t try to feed your family just on volitional love it’s got to have something else to it now of course don’t don’t go into that silly stuff about falling in love either nobody falls in love Adam didn’t fall he jumped we talk we talk about falling we talk about falling when we want to avoid our responsibility I don’t believe in the fall of man I believe in the jump of man that’s what we do in love too when when we say we fall in love we’re really jumping we let we want to jump and then say huh it’s out of my hands isn’t it wonderful out of my hands and then she can say ha I caught him caught him right he couldn’t do anything about it and then when he falls out or jumps out she says gee I’ve lost him I can’t do anything about it oh don’t play those silly games

We have to understand that these matters are combinations of will gift and growth will gift and growth we can’t love our children without willing to love them we can’t love our children rightly without a gift of grace from God he alone enables us to keep looking at them and seeing them as precious and beautiful and good and delighting in them just delighting in that’s love to delight delight that’s in love delight is what has got to be somehow one of the final words in human relationships is delight delight

That’s so what’s so bad about all these stupid commercials which come along and try to tell you that there are certain things that aren’t delightful in human being that’ll that can train you to the point where you will see people as ugly if they fit certain captions they’re ugly if they fit certain captions the hunchback of Notre Dame is beautiful God made everything beautiful everything God made is good but as Dave says from Ecclesiastes man has sought out many inventions many devices he’s done a lot of twisting a lot of turning a lot of distorting and he can look at something that’s beautiful and say yeah and he does that and he’s unhappier for it

Relationships between neighbor and neighbor have to be redeemed when we work we are in human relationships we have to have a sense of vocation it doesn’t matter if I’m putting caps on fruit jars in some cannery I’m sure machines do that now anyway it doesn’t matter what I’m doing I’m relating to people that relationship has to be redeemed in all of those relationships grace must come

Now what makes it so bad well what makes it so bad is that when we start this process of redemption the thing has already been so terribly messed up most of us don’t start it until we’ve already done so many things that it is so hard to just find a place to begin that’s what’s so great about the cross you know that there are a lot of thinking about the cross I don’t know of anything else that can just break the chain and just somehow clearly see that there is a power of forgiveness and sacrifice in God and in Christ that can come into those terrible situations where awful things have been done betrayals adulteries physical harm all kinds of things

Now I don’t know how it happens but I know that the slate can be wiped almost clean something better than clean really something better than clean you know there can be a new beginning and all the goodness and the preciousness and the sweetness in a parent and child relationship or husband and wife or a neighbor can be restored with a full consciousness that that is the guy that did that to me yes really or she’s the one who betrayed me and made such a fool out of me still that new beginning can come

One of the worst things we do is we equate forgiving with forgetting and that’s in the Bible that’s in Hezekiah you know to forgive is to forget forgiving isn’t forgetting God does not forget our sins I know I know the verse that’s in your mind from the Psalms but let me just say God does not forget our sins he forgives them and if we must interpret that in terms of forgetting in order to get the thoroughness with which he does it all right but Jesus stands as a lamb having been slain and he was slain for our sin they’re not forgiven they’re not forgotten they’re forgiven

Many people torture themselves trying to forget oh you probably will but you won’t do it by an act of will you can’t forget anything by trying just try forget it okay we say to one another all forget it we’ll do it sometimes try to forget something can’t forget anything but you can forgive you can forgive to forgive means I’m going to go on with you and I’m never going to make you suffer or remind you or punish you in any way because of that and I’m not going to behave in any way on the basis of what you’ve done that’s that’s forgiveness forgiveness means I’m not going to make you suffer I’m not even going to make you suffer by telling you I’m not gonna make you suffer I’m not even gonna do that so indeed forgiveness is usually just not said at least not explained

Forgiveness heals forgiveness allows us to the art this is the strangest thing in the world but when you forgive someone you can look at them and see they’re beautiful again you don’t see that that’s a gift of God that’s a gift of God don’t ever tell me you don’t get something for nothing the best things I’ve got were for nothing forgiveness is one of them

Now just think if all down the line of these relationships all these relationships were healed what would the world be like you couldn’t recognize it just think of the Jews seeing the Arabs is beautiful and the Arab seeing the Jews is beautiful just think of the various tribes in Africa where this old battle about national superiority is still very much alive they still think that the center of the earth is over by their cook pot you know they still believe that suppose the watusis will begin to look at their enemies and say they’re beautiful not just say it but really they see the preciousness in them

That’s the point at which they start saying look I have this old sword let’s put it into a plow let’s make a plow out of it okay and this little spear you don’t need that anymore let’s make a pruning hook out of that and all that fissionable material we’ve got stored up we don’t need a bomb let’s put it to some good use that’s the point at which we could begin to say with some genuineness in our currency in God we trust in God we trust

You want to see that you have to understand that that’s the mission of the church to bring that about and I want to just direct you to the Great Commission in the last chapter the last verses of Matthew most people think that the Great Commission tells you to go out and evangelize and it does but that’s not all it tells you to do it is predicated on the 18th verse and now given that we’re at this point in our study we should understand how it is predicated on the 18th verse of the 28th chapter of Matthew

That 18th verse says and Jesus came and spake unto them saying all dynamite is given unto me in heaven and in earth all dunamis all power you know when the when the woman with the issue of blood came and touched Jesus you know what ran out of it dunamis dynamite dunamis ran out most of the old versions say and virtue went out of it which is perfectly all right if you know what virtue means but who knows what virtue means now you know some people say well he lost his virtue that’s not what happened power power went out dunamis you shall receive what from on high power all power how much power all power is given unto him go ye therefore therefore the therefore go ye therefore and teach how many nations all nations that baptizing and teach means would best be I think translated make disciples disciples all nations baptizing him in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost period