Join us in this enlightening episode as Bob George takes us through the fascinating dynamics of the early church. As the gospel spread from Jews to Gentiles, conflicts arose around its acceptance and understanding. The apostle Paul, while under house arrest, continued to minister and write the epistles that shape Christian theology as we know it today. We delve into the deep-seated prejudices of that era and explore how the gospel intended to bridge these divides, uniting Jew and Gentile under Christ’s love.
00:00:12 Introduction to Classic Christianity Radio
Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George. Bob’s clear, timeless teachings on the complete forgiveness and unconditional love of Jesus Christ will transform your life as you learn about God’s amazing grace. Let’s join Bob as he teaches us from God’s Word.
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As we have discussed through this book of Romans, it’s amazing that as you study it from the context for which it is given, that we see once again this relationship between the Jew and the Gentile and the conflict that was there. Amy and I were talking coming in that it’s strange to me that it’s a very reversal today as to what took place back then. Back then, people, the gospel went first to the Jew. And to the Roman community, they thought, well, all this Christianity is just an extension of Judaism, so who wants that? We’re not Jews, so, you know, we’re heathens. And so it was looking at Christianity as being just an extension of Judaism, which the Gentile was saying, I don’t want any part of that. And then the gospel began spreading to the Gentiles, and then with that came the rejection of the Jews. And today, why, the Gentiles are the accepted ones, and the Jews look at it as a Gentile religion instead of a Jewish religion. So it’s just reversed. Everything is just reversed from what it was in the early days. And so the Apostle Paul, as he was coming to the end, really to the end of his life, which ultimately meant to the beginning of his ministry, because as he was in exile and as he was under house arrest is where he wrote the Scriptures. And, you know, you say… Does God work all things together for good? And you say, yeah, he does. Because when you stop to think of the energy of the apostle Paul, he had to do something to slow him down. And so prison, I guess, was the best place because he was all over the place. You talk about somebody who was on the move, he was on the move. And so I think that as he was under house arrest was the opportunity that still he had to say, I’m just going to write letters. Do you suppose that Paul ever had in his mind the implication of these things? I doubt it. but the issue is that they were scripture they were inspired by the Holy Spirit of God and thank God we got these things in our hands today because it’s through the Apostle Paul and his persecution and all of the things that he went through is why you and I are saved today and you’re gonna see at the end of this scripture where he actually calls it my gospel and I don’t think he meant that it’s my gospel and I’m the one who hung on the tree but it’s the gospel that was revealed to the Apostle Paul And it says to the other apostles as well, but Paul was the one where this mystery was revealed, the totality of the gospel, which included the Gentiles. And I think that’s what he meant by that, was this is a gospel that is to the whole world. It went first to the Jew, but then it went to the Gentile. And as we’ve discussed before, it is so obvious today that to the average person, and especially to the people of the Jewish faith, that they think that the opposite of a Jew is a Christian, where in fact the opposite of a Jew is a Gentile. And it’s not a Christian, it’s a Gentile. And in God’s economy, you have Jew and Gentile, and then you have the ecclesia, or the church, which are the called out ones from both Jew and Gentile. And then we’re called, those of us who’ve been called out, either from a Jewish background or a Gentile background, are called children of the living God. Paul, in one place, calls us the children of the resurrection. I like that term, the children of the resurrection. And it’s a new man. It’s a brand new creature. It’s someone that has never been created before. The church was not in the Old Testament. The church did not begin until the day of Pentecost. where believers were indwelt by the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. And when you say the Old Testament, folks, you’re talking about all through Jesus’ life because Jesus wasn’t under the New Covenant. He taught under the Old. It wasn’t that He didn’t like the New. It wasn’t here yet. He didn’t usher in the New Covenant until the day He died. So while He was alive, He taught under the Old Covenant. So in essence, if you were going to take a delineation of our Bible, you would start the New Testament in the book of Acts, not in the book of Matthew. because you really have your old cabinet that covered the life of jesus and then the book of acts is where the new cabinet started in which did not start until the day that jesus died and so paul is coming to the end of his life and it is a time where He is writing to the Roman believers, and he says that we talked about the fact as to how those of us who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to live to please ourselves but to please one another. And then beginning in verse 23, Now there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to see you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. So Paul was planning a trip to Spain, and I hope to visit you while passing through and have you to assist me on my journey there after I’ve enjoyed your company for a while. Now, however, I’m on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the saints there. For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. And they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessing, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings. So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this fruit, in other words, this offering, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. I know that when I come to you, I will come in full measure of the blessing of Christ. And I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me and pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there, so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and together with you to be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all. Amen. Now last week we went back over to the book of Acts. So if you’ll turn back over with me. And beginning in verse 21. chapter 21 and verse 17. You’ll remember last week that we talked about where this whole thing then picked up because he was talking about the fact that before I come to you in Rome… I’m going to go to Jerusalem. And I’m going to Jerusalem with this offering that was given by the Macedonian church. Now we pick up in chapter 21 that when we arrived in Jerusalem, the brothers received us warmly. And I’m just going to read a little bit here. The next day, Paul and the rest of us went to see James. Now again, who was James? James. He was the Lord’s brother and he was the pastor of the church in Jerusalem. So James was the pastor in Jerusalem having the marvelous assignment of trying to get the Jews that had been steeped in Judaism for all of these years to understand grace. And that’s why a lot of times people do not understand the book of James because it was a book where he had to subtly introduce the grace of God. You just cannot rip all of this law away from somebody and replace it immediately with grace. It has to get pushed out. You can’t take it away from a person. It has to be replaced. But James, on the other hand, we do have to understand that James was a legalist. And we have to understand that James, even though he was there to proclaim the grace of God, had a lot of baggage still on him. Even though he was the Lord’s brother, and even though he was pastor in Jerusalem, he had a lot of baggage. And it’s going to show you the baggage that he had. So they went to see James and all the elders were present. And Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And so he’s there to talk about what God did to the Gentile world. And how they were coming to Christ and growing in the Lord. And that should have been great news. But look at their response. When they heard this, they praised God. It’s just kind of like… Well, praise Jesus. That’s nice, Paul. Then they said to Paul, You see, brother, how many thousands of the Jews have believed? And all of them are zealous for the law. So do you think James might have been a little confused? Had he gotten the full gospel yet? No. No, he wasn’t free from the baggage of the law. He still had Jesus and he still had the law. Now, will that have to come out sooner or later? And those of you who have been under the law in your lives, under law that God never gave you because the majority of you sitting in this room are Gentiles and God never gave us the law. We have to understand that. You may have picked it up, but he didn’t give it to you. And you may be enthusiastic for it, but he never gave it to you. So what you’re doing is playing with a toy that doesn’t belong to you. And so what happened is we grabbed a hold of this toy that doesn’t belong to us. And today we sit as legalistic as the Jews ever thought of being. And Paul had to cut through that. And it made him about as popular as a Titanic sinking. people were not enthralled with his teaching. Because number one, he was teaching that the Gentiles have come to the same God that you’ve come to. And number two, he was saying that you’re no longer under the law of Moses, that you’re now under a new law, and that’s the law of Jesus. And for that, they tried to kill him. And we have to understand the animosity that was there. And so they responded to it. You see how many of the Jews, yeah, that’s nice, Paul, all these Gentiles are coming to Jesus. But have you seen how many Jews have come to Jesus too? And they’re zealous for the law. And we hear that you are out teaching and turning the Gentiles from Moses and telling them not to circumcise their children or to live according to our customs. You’re converting these Gentiles, but you’re not converting them to Judaism. You’re just converting us to this Jesus. And you’re telling them they don’t need our Moses. Mad as wet hands. Mad as you could get. And so Paul went down and we talked about last week, purified himself in order to keep from getting killed. But somebody saw him in the temple anyway and they stirred up the entire crowd against him. And in verse 36 of 21, you see the crowd that followed kept shouting away with him. Another way of saying crucify him, away with him. And they wanted to do with the Apostle Paul the same thing that they had done with the Lord Jesus Christ. And what was that? get rid of him away with him isn’t it funny folks how people think that if you can just get rid of the messenger it’ll end and jesus said if we didn’t speak up stones would speak up and proclaim jesus but all along people think if i could just get rid of him boy this thing would die no it won’t it’ll just go on through somebody else because jesus gospel is going to go on forever the word of god is going to go on forever And so they were crying away with him. Now let’s pick up in verse 37. As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, may I say something to you? And he said, do you speak Greek? Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led 4,000 terrorists out in the desert some time ago? So they thought he was somebody else. And Paul answered, I’m a Jew from Tarsus of Silia. a citizen of no ordinary city, please let me speak to the people. Now having received the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. And when they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic, in other words, now he was speaking to them in the tongue of the Jew, in Aramaic. brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense. And when they heard him speak in Aramaic, they became very, very quiet because these were Jews that probably had been stirred up by somebody saying, he’s that Egyptian. And so that’s who they thought they were after. And they found out that he’s one of them.
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SPEAKER 02 :
Paul said, I’m a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. And under Gamaliel, I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of the way to their death. That was the name of Christians back in those days was the way. They were the people of the way. Jesus said, I am what? The way and the truth and the life. And I persecuted them, I was followers to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison. So also, as also the high priest and all of the council can testify. And I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. He was a zealot and he was after anyone who named the name of Christ in order to bring them for punishment which ultimately would mean death. About noon I came near Damascus. Suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me and I fell to the ground and I heard a voice say to me, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord? I ask. I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting. He replied, My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. What shall I do, Lord? I ask. Get up, the Lord said, and go to Damascus. And there you will be told all that you have been assigned to do. My companions led me by the hand into Damascus because the brilliant of the light had blinded me. A man named Ananias came to see me, and he was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. And he stood beside me and said, Brother Saul, receive your sight. And at that very moment I was able to see him. Then he said, The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the righteous one, to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard.” And now what are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name. When I returned to Jerusalem, I was praying at the temple and I fell into a trance and saw the Lord speaking. Quick, he said to me, leave Jerusalem immediately because they will not accept your testimony about me. Lord, I replied, these men know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. He went out to beat them. He went out to torture them, punish them. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, and that is the turning point in Paul’s life as he was holding the coat of the ones who were stoning to death, Stephen, and saw Stephen raise his face to heaven, saying the same thing that the Lord cried out from the cross, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. Something happened to him. He said, I was… And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him. And then the Lord said to me, Go, I will send you far away to the Gentiles. The most unlikely person in the world to go to the Gentiles was the Apostle Paul, who was an authority of Jewish law, called a Pharisee of the Pharisees, trained by the greatest teachers in all of Israel. You would have thought he would have been the one to go to the Jew. And Peter would have been the one to go to the Gentiles. So what did God do? Took Paul, who had no credentials at all to go to a Gentile. He had been raised in Jewish culture and sent him to the Gentile and took old Peter, who didn’t do anything except kept fish, and sent him back to the educated Jew. What is the purpose of that? What do you see in that? That God doesn’t need your talent anymore. He just needs your availability. And we keep thinking, don’t we hear all the time, ooh, if this politician could come to Jesus. I’ve said to people before, if you were drowning, what would you rather have? A lost lifeguard who knew how to swim or a saved one who didn’t. So the issue that we’re dealing here is the fact that God doesn’t need your ability, just your availability. Any old bush will do. as long as God’s in it. And we keep thinking that we need to be educated and we need to be this and we need to have position and we need to have influence and all of those things are a detriment. Because God doesn’t need those things. All he needs is available people. If he needed those kind of things, he would have had all kings and political leaders. But what did he have? A bunch of tax collectors that people hated. A bunch of fishermen from Galilee. Just people who loved God. And that’s all he needs in you. It’s just a heart that loves God. He doesn’t need your education. Doesn’t need your degrees. Just a person who loves God. And he’ll use us. So he said, I’m going to send you to the Gentiles. Now the crowd listened to Paul until he said this, that I’m going to send you to the Gentiles. And when they heard that, they raised their voices and shouted, rid the earth of him. He’s not fit to live. Why wasn’t he fit to live? Because he was going to the Gentiles. Now, do you see, guys, do you see how much hatred there was on the part of the Jew to the Gentile? And how much hatred there was on the part of the Gentile to the Jew? Do you see that? It’s all the way through the scriptures. He’s not fit to live away with him. Why? He’s going to the Gentiles. Now, that’s how bad it was. Now that’s the height of prejudice, isn’t it? And so here are these two groups of people that hate each other. That God says, I got a mystery. What’s that? I’m going to bring you together as one. Going to create unity between you as one. And you say, you have got to be kidding. No, I’m not kidding. I’m going to make you a new creation where you’re no longer going to be a Jew or Gentile. You’re going to be a child of God. And I’m going to renew your mind so that all these prejudices will go by the wayside and you will see your Jewish brethren, your Gentile brothers to who they are, children of the living God. Now, that is a miracle that if that is ever seen by the lost world, they have to look on it and say there is no explanation for that apart from Christ. Now, are those prejudices still in existence today? You better believe it. And we talk about Germany and we talk about Hitler and how he persecuted the Jews. And you say, oh, that was back then. That wasn’t that many years ago, folks. And if another Hitler came on the scene, you could probably have the same thing happen to this very day because of the jealousy and all of the other things that take place between Jew and Gentile. On the other hand, When you have truly come to know Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, what happens to your heart as a Gentile toward the Jewish people? I hope it’s happened to yours. What happens in regard to that? You begin to love the Jew. You love the Jew just like you love the Gentile. You don’t see a difference in them. Like I said, Ed Hecht and I have lived side by side with each other in this ministry for well over 20 years. I don’t look at him as a Jew and he doesn’t look at me as a Gentile. We look at each other as children of God. We were just up in Chicago with a young man at our conference that is very, very famous. very, very into the ministry. And I don’t look at him as Jewish. He doesn’t look at me as Gentile. We see each other as who we are, children of the living God. But there’s a supernatural love that you have for the Jew. I don’t know what that is, but there’s a supernatural love that you have for the Jew when you truly become born again. You can’t sit around and be prejudiced toward anyone when you’re born again. You can’t sit around, and people have tried to do that, and we saw that in the South of people that were prejudiced toward black people calling themselves born-again Christians. That’s impossible. You’ve got to get rid of that garbage. There isn’t any prejudice that you have between black or white or purple or green. The fact is, if you’re in Christ, we’re brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re new creations. And you don’t look at people the way you used to. And there are many people who have grown up with those type of prejudices. And if you’re a child of God, you need to get rid of them. And prejudice isn’t colorblind. It can go both ways. And we have to understand that it can go both ways. And you’ve got to get rid of that kind of stuff. You can’t be sitting around saying, oh, well, they’re Spanish or they’re black or they’re white or they’re Asian or something. It doesn’t work as a child of God. A child of God sees people as who we are, children of the living God. Or lost people. And if you’re lost, you don’t need to change your color. You need to get saved. And so your whole attitude changes, should change. And if it isn’t, you’re not born again. It’s that simple. You’ve got a hard heart. And there’s a lot of people with hard hearts today calling themselves born-again believers whose hearts are still cold as a brick and they say, you better call yourself something else because there’s no way that you’re a born-again believer and still harbor those kind of things in your heart. And be happy with it. You may have them and say, Lord, this isn’t right. But if you have them and you don’t care, there’s something wrong with your heart. And so we have to get rid of those kind of things. God gets rid of those for us. We don’t get rid of it. He just replaces it with the thing called love. Which is what Christ told us to live by. So he says that he’s going to send them to the Gentiles. And they said, get rid of him. He’s not fit to live. And as they were shouting, now listen to anger. You think you get mad on the freeway. I haven’t seen any of you do this one yet. As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the commander ordered Paul to be taken into the barracks and he directed him. Now here’s a guy that has done nothing. He hasn’t done anything except preach the gospel to the Gentiles. So what do they do? Take him in and flog him. and questioned in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this, as they stretched him out to flog him. Paul was something else. I can’t wait to meet him. Paul said to the centurion standing there, is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty? Whoops! Now someone doing that could be put to death. And when the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. what are you going to do, he asked. This man’s a Roman citizen. The commander went to Paul and said, tell me, are you a Roman citizen? Yes, I am, he answered. Then the commander said, I had to pay a big price for my citizenship. Back then you could buy Roman citizenship. And so the commander said, I had to pay a price for buying. So obviously he wasn’t an actual born citizen. He paid a price for it. Well, Paul said, I was born a citizen. Those who were about to question him withdrew immediately. They wanted no part of him at all. And the commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains. And the next day, since the commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews, he released him and ordered the chief priest and all of the Sanhedrin to assemble. And then he brought Paul and had him stand before them. Now, we’re not going to go through all of these things. Paul went through the Sanhedrin. There was a plot to kill him. He was transferred to Caesarea, tried before Felix, and all of these things, and went up before Festus and King Agrippa. He had a bunch of trials. And in all of these things, he ultimately ended up appealing to Caesar and therefore sailed to Rome. And so going back to these last chapters in the book of Romans, we’re about to wrap this book up. He was writing to them prior to these things happening that I’m going to go to Jerusalem. We’ve just talked about what happened there and then on to Rome. Now he goes ahead to say, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Caesarea, in Centurion. Now, you have a bunch of names here. Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Jesus Christ, they risked their lives for me. Not only I, but the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets in their house. Where did the church meet in the early days? In a house? You mean it didn’t have any buildings with stained glass? Didn’t have a $90,000 organ? Didn’t have a youth program? Or an executive ministry? What did they do in that house? It says that they met daily for the apostles’ teaching and for fellowship and for prayer. Now, folks, do you see anything else in the Bible where the church was anything except meeting for the apostles’ teaching and for fellowship and prayer.
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Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another, and praise the Lord. Amen.
