Join us as we dissect the complexities of biblical teachings and their relevance today. Our focus centers around Pauline theology, illustrating how the Book of Acts portrays the significant change in religious authority and practice. Through a series of engaging discussions and illustrative graphics, we unravel the intricacies of Christian living by grace as Paul teaches, offering listeners a pathway to a guilt-free and empowered spiritual journey.
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Bob Enyart Live. Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Christ. And a lot of Christians have this vague sense that Paul is just a good example for us to follow. You know, he’s a real godly man. But it’s a little bit more in-depth than just that. In fact, we are supposed to imitate Jesus as Paul imitates Jesus and not as, say, Peter imitates Jesus. And so when Paul says that, it’s a lot more specific about of a command than we think it is. It’s way more specific. And to get into some depth on that, we are going to my father’s sermon on living for Jesus like Paul. This is part one. Let’s jump right into it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good morning, Denver Bible Church. Now and then at our home, we have a young guy stay with us. And no, I don’t mean Hudson. Hudson’s not that young anymore. This is another guy. And this past week, he said to me that he and his mother had been reading the book of the Acts of the Apostles. He’s gone all the way through. And he said, for the life of me, I cannot understand this book. Just don’t understand it. So I showed him a chart that I’ll show you in just a moment. Sometimes you can tell when someone catches on to an idea, like a light bulb turns on in their head. So today’s sermon is titled, Living for Jesus Like Paul. Living for Jesus Like Paul. And it’s a reminder for many of us, reinforcing what we’ve studied from the Scriptures for many years. But for others, it may be new to you what I’m about to present. And I’m going to do this sermon in pictures and word pictures over the decades that we’ve been teaching the Bible together. over a quarter of a century on the radio. My wife’s work is called The Plot. It’s an overview of the scriptures and a critical review of the plot online. It starts out saying that the plot has 9,000 Bible references. And I thought 9,000, that cannot be true. It just can’t be true. And so we looked into it and yeah, on every page, there may be three or four Bible verses quoted you know, spelled out, but then the references that are in there, like where it says the Bible sometimes refers to Israel as the fig tree, and then there’ll be a parentheses, and then you’ll see Isaiah such and such, Jeremiah such and such, Matthew such and such, so that people who read it and they doubt, they could look it up. But today’s message is going to be different from a standard Denver Bible Church sermon in that this is a sermon in pictures and word pictures to help us remember something that is absolutely essential for understanding the Bible and for living the Christian life, the way that God wants us to live, and the way that he has offered to empower us to live. There’s another way to live the Christian life that doesn’t work well. and it often ends in discouragement. People, what we call backslide, Christians who love the Lord will end up feeling guilty and slide away from Him so that they’re not praying to Him and worshiping Him when they wake up in the morning. He’s not the first thought on their minds. So, our study of the Scriptures, just like the study of the book of Acts. It arises from an overview of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. If you study the Scriptures and you get an overview, then you could dig into the details, and it turns out that an overview of the Bible is the key to its details. There are so many particulars in Scripture that are so confusing to so many, to millions. And we could ask, well, do you understand how this book fits into the plot of the New Testament? And they might say, no, not really. Do you understand how the New Testament fits in to the arc of the story in the scriptures that God has revealed to us through actual historical dealings with his people Israel and then with the world? And folks who are trying to understand What God has said in the Bible about the end times or about the Sabbath or about tithing or any number of other topics, they may be confused because there seems to be verses that say do this and verses that say don’t do this. And how do you put it all together? How could you possibly put it all together unless you had an overview? And so this first graphic I’d like to show you from the longtime teaching here at Denver Bible Church, it is a chart of a way of looking at the book of Acts. And when we consider the book of Acts, as with so many historical accounts, the vast majority of historical accounts, even dramas that we might read in a novel or watch in a Hollywood film, they’re typically based on the characters, main characters, protagonists, antagonists, minor characters, the character arcs, what’s going on with these people who are the main persons in this story. And this chart, it’s a ribbon chart, and it’s of two people in the book of Acts, the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul. And if you notice, they’re both color-coded. So Peter is that blue color and Paul is the red color. And it’s a chart of how many times their names appear in the book. Now, that’s somewhat superficial, no? Because certainly there could be pronouns that could change the perspective. And there’s other ways that somebody’s influence might be significant, even if they’re not being named. But as you go through the book of Acts and you read it, you find out that this kind of perspective is substantive. It’s very telling. It’s significant. And so our young friend who said he read through the book of Acts and he really didn’t understand the point of someone could view it as a series of discrete accounts, separate stories and events that really don’t fit into an overall arc. For example, at one point early in the book, there are two people, a husband and a wife, and they don’t give to the church enough money. They don’t give as they said they were going to give. And what happens to them? God kills them. Speaking of tithing today, actually, Cheryl and I have attended services, one service by the president of a Christian network, Lissy Broadcasting, and that was his text, and it was on giving, and that went on for two hours, his message about why if you don’t give, God may kill you. And here’s the proof in the Bible, and his own sister said, didn’t give, and God killed her. That was Lester Summerall’s message as part of an over three-hour service that we attended here in Denver. So is that the point of that story in the book of Acts, that if you don’t give enough money, you’re likely to be killed by God? That’s not the point at all. Did it happen? It absolutely happened. Why is the account there in the Bible with Ananias and Sapphira? Why is it there? Ananias is a unique name among Hebrew names. It’s only in the book of Acts, the name Ananias. And there happened to be three different people in the book of Acts named Ananias. And each one, what happens with each one, tells a very different and important story, the part of the story, so we can find out what’s happening with Israel and then what’s happening with the body of Christ. And that there’s been a transfer of authority from Israel to the body, from Peter to the Apostle Paul. So as we look at this chart… Let’s see this here. It shows us the number of times each is referenced in the 28 chapters of the book of Acts. And if you notice, it demonstrates Peter and Paul’s changing influence in Acts based on, in this case, the number of mentions per chapter. And it shows us Paul’s influence increasing as Peter’s decreases, and that’s not coincidental. And if you have read a commentary on the book of Acts, and they didn’t point out that it was a transition from Peter’s authority to Paul’s authority, and the transition point was Acts chapter 9. where God then tells Paul that he is the apostle to the Gentiles. If you read a commentary and it left out that observation, the commentary is wrong. its message, for whatever gems you can pull out of it, its message is wrong, and almost certainly, even if it’s a Baptist commentary, almost certainly you’ll end up getting a legalistic message of how to live the Christian life from that teacher, from that commentator, from that author.
SPEAKER 02 :
Remember in the Garden of Eden,
SPEAKER 03 :
What began this battle between good and evil that has consumed the history of mankind? And in fact, that consumes the lives of every individual. Even the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 7 said, I battle my flesh. I battle. The things that I want to do, I don’t do. The things that I don’t want to do, they are the things that I do. And he pleads with the Lord and falls on the Lord for God to help him in this situation that he is in. Now, when you take Romans 7, that battle that Paul’s describing, how does a legalist interpret that battle? And how does someone who’s living by grace like Paul interpret that battle? Well, a legalist is someone who’s keeping a set of rules that for their Christian life. They might say, oh, I know I didn’t get saved by the law, but I live my Christian life by the law. I live my Christian life by these rules, these do’s and don’ts. That’s how I know how to be holy. And I live by those rules. And either I’m going to admit that I fail or I’m going to suggest that I’m approved based on my own keeping of my own rules that I’ve decided upon, whether they come from the Bible or otherwise, I’m approved. And so as a legalist, I’m not going to admit that I struggle with sin because that is too painful for me. Because my identity in Christ as a Christian living my daily life is based on me being approved from the standard that I am holding to. So I can’t really admit that I have a struggle. Whereas the Apostle Paul is teaching us what it means to live by grace. And he says, I have this struggle with my flesh. I have been redeemed, but I have not been delivered from my flesh. We keep our flesh until we see the Lord, and it’s then when our flesh falls off of us. But from now until that day, as we live on this earth, we are dealing with our flesh. Our flesh has not been redeemed. I have been redeemed, my flesh has not. And so what the legalist says about Paul’s struggle in his daily Christian life is they say Paul had no struggle. He had no struggle. So the whole chapter says, I have this struggle. They say he had no struggle. He’s describing the struggle from before he was saved. That applies before he was saved. But now as a Christian, he has no struggle because Christians, we don’t struggle. We live a holy life. It’s like, well, then why did he write what he did to the Corinthians? Why did he write all that stuff? And how about to the Galatians? And pretty much the whole message of Paul is now that we’re Christians, here are the ways that we can overcome the temptation that otherwise will destroy our Christian testimony. And he says, I’m so sad about you Christians because you’re sinning in ways that are worse than the ways of the world. There’s no need to do that.
SPEAKER 02 :
And here is how you can live by grace.
SPEAKER 03 :
So this battle started in the Garden of Eden when God placed Adam and Eve there on day six of creation. And he planted two trees in the midst of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And what does that mean, the knowledge of good and evil? If Adam and Eve had not sinned, or in the time they had not sinned, could they know what good is? Could they know what good is? Yeah, they knew God. God is good. And if they had not sinned and they’d gotten on some months or years without falling, and here’s Lucifer trying to get them to disobey God, could they have known what evil was? They sure could. The holy angels, they didn’t have to eat of that tree to know what evil is. The holy angels, those in heaven who are righteous, did they have to eat of that tree to know that the devil, that Lucifer is evil? No. Did they have to eat of that tree to know that God is good? No. So what is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Well, that phrase, the knowledge of good and evil, is the synonym for the law. That’s what it is. So God sent Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles. That’s us in the body of Christ. Jew or Gentile together, we’re all the same. With the covenant of grace, that is very different from what he gave to Israel through Abraham and then Moses, the covenant of law. The covenant of circumcision, where you have to abide by all these do’s and don’ts, or the covenant of grace. In the covenant of grace, it’s of course still possible to sin, but there is no law that can condemn you. So that’s why Paul says in Christ, there is no condemnation because we’ve been delivered from the law. We died to the law. That which held us no longer has any influence over us. The world is under the law, Paul says, and guilty before God, but the law was not made for the righteous, but for the wicked. And those in Christ are righteous, not by our own standard, but by his righteousness. So, when we find out that in the book of Acts, it starts out, it’s all about Peter, and then there’s a transition that begins. Acts chapter 9 is the transition. And then Peter, he testifies of Paul’s authority, and he makes it clear that what Paul is saying is true. He knows it’s true because God has showed Peter that what Paul is saying is true. But then it’s all Paul, wall to wall. Except where Peter appears briefly, it’s because he’s affirming Paul’s message.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s all just extraordinary. So before Paul…
SPEAKER 03 :
We followed God as he revealed his will through the prophets and then ultimately through Jesus Christ. Once Paul came, Jesus and the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write something that’s very different. He writes in his epistles, imitate me. That’s bold, isn’t it? It’s almost egotistical. Paul writes, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Now, couldn’t he just skip the middleman, save us all a lot of grief, and just say, imitate Christ? Well, there’s a reason that God inspired Paul to write, imitate me as I imitate Christ, because that transition where it was all Peter and the 12 apostles and Israel is now Paul and the body of Christ and the covenant of grace. There are things that differ between these two because law and grace are not synonyms. They’re not synonyms. So for example, Jesus was circumcised. True or false? On the eighth day, according to the law. Did Paul tell his converts that they had to be circumcised? No, he said, if you circumcise, you’ll be cursed. That doesn’t mean culturally, as is done around the world, not by Muslims, they circumcise to obey their religion, which is a false religion. But in much of the world, There is circumcision that occurs for cultural reasons. But what if someone is circumcising for theological reasons because they think they have to circumcise because God gave that to Abraham as an everlasting covenant circumcision and Jesus was circumcised according to the law the New Testament says. So were the apostles. So shouldn’t we all circumcise? Are we all Going to hell because God says, I will cut off from my people anyone who will not circumcise? Are we in danger of hellfire? No. Well, then what happened? What’s the difference? How did we go from circumcision to uncircumcision? It’s because God called Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles whom God called the uncircumcision. We might think of circumcision as an Old Testament thing, but the New Testament references circumcision and uncircumcision twice as much as the Old Testament. In Decatur, Alabama, an atheist came to one of our Bible seminars. It was on the Bible overview, so it had quite a bit to do about circumcision. And he called up, he wrote for the local paper, and he asked if he could be comped to come into the to the seminar. And it was expensive. It was $50 to register. And we said, no, for unbelievers, it’s double. We’re not going to comp you. What, so you come there and mock Christians? No, we’re not going to comp you. Double that, I’m going to call the FCC. And so we said, all right, you just got to pay $50. If you register, you can come. And I’d love to have lunch with you. So I had lunch with them. So when he wrote his column about the seminar, he said, if I heard circumcision one more time, I was going to kill myself. And we can understand, right? Because Paul says, when I’m teaching you theology, am I looking at Abraham after he was circumcised or before he was circumcised? Not after, but before. Because after he was circumcised, he’s the father of Israel and their covenant of circumcision. But before he was circumcised, back in Genesis 15, he’s the father of the body of Christ, who those who are not justified by faith and works, but only by faith. That’s what Paul says about Abraham and why it’s important to use Abraham as an example, not in Genesis 17, no, no, no, but back in Genesis 15. So Paul would use Abraham as the example of how to live the Christian life, today we’re Christians, not by following the covenant of circumcision or the Mosaic law, but learning what it means to live by grace. That’s Paul’s message. And so that’s why in the book of Acts, we see this transition because when Jesus was raised from the dead, he sent the gospel of the resurrected Messiah to Israel and he gave them one more year as we read in Luke 13, but they rejected even their resurrected Messiah. So instead of giving them the kingdom, he cut them off temporarily and in part, and he grafted in the Gentiles with the body of Christ, not the circumcision under the covenant of circumcision, but the uncircumcised, which today are Jew and Gentile who trust in Christ. So if a Jew is saved today, believes in Jesus, he is an uncircumcised believer, even if he’s circumcised. Doesn’t matter, Paul says. It doesn’t matter. So when God switched from Peter to Paul in Acts 9, was it because he was mad at Peter? No, of course not. Was it because Paul was more talented than Peter and he thought he’d get a lot more done with Paul than Peter? No, that’s not why. It’s because he was turning from his covenant with Israel where they were to be the spokes nation to the world with their covenant of circumcision, he was going to Paul with the covenant of grace, where instead of 12 apostles going to the nations, God said, forget that, that’s on hold. Now we’ll have one guy, Paul, go to everybody. Does that make logistic sense? No, but that’s exactly what God did because God gave to the apostles the authority to bind and to loose. And that included them loosing themselves from their own great commission where Jesus said to the 12, go to every nation and preach the gospel. But then by Galatians chapter 2, they realized that their covenant had been cut off. Circumcision means to cut off. And God had grafted in the Gentiles in the gospel of the uncircumcision. So they agreed with Paul that he should go to the world and they to the Jews. And that’s it. The 12 apostles would go to the circumcision and Paul would go to the uncircumcision, which means the Gentiles, which means the whole world. And guess what? He didn’t skip the Jews either. Every city he went to, he went first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. Whereas the 12 apostles, they backed off of the Great Commission because they no longer had the message that was applicable to the Gentiles. Otherwise, we would still be circumcising like Jesus circumcised. And we would still be keeping the Sabbath, which means not working on Saturday. And we would be following the dietary law. And we’d be keeping the feasts. And we would not wear clothing of mixed fibers. And all those Thanksgiving sacrifices, those peace offerings, we’d be doing those too. Because Jesus, he fulfilled the sin offerings for atonement, but all the Thanksgiving offerings, we would be keeping the Mosaic law today if God had not raised up someone like Paul to say the things now differ from the way they were. And it’s a stark difference. And it’s a difference between legalism and living by grace. If you know how to live by grace.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’d like to show you another graphic where the Apostle Paul, he wrote 13 epistles and a chunk of the book of Acts is all about him.
SPEAKER 03 :
So if you add all that up, Paul wrote one-third of the New Testament. It was either written by him or about his ministry, one-third. And we have a graphic which shows the next graphic, Paul and everyone other than Paul in the New Testament. This is a graphic to get an overview of what is taught in the New Testament. And we see Paul in blue and non-Paul in purple. And Paul’s one-third of the New Testament, you see that there in the inner circle? One-third is colored for Paul. One-third is written by Paul or about his ministry. The rest of the New Testament was written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the epistle to the Hebrews, James, Peter, John. All the Jude and the book of Revelation, that’s two-thirds of the New Testament.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stop the tape, stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic Enyart jumping into the broadcast on living like Paul for Jesus. This was one of Bob Enyart’s sermons. This was part one for the rest of part one and for part two. You can find that by going to enyart.shop, that’s E-N-Y-A-R-T dot S-H-O-P, and sign up for the Bob Enyart sermons. You do not want to miss that. This was a sermon from 2017, September 17th. Living for Jesus Like Paul. So many great sermons in this subscription. It’s not just feel-good, Christianity, vague, Jesus loves you type sermons, but actually getting into the nitty-gritty, answering tough biblical questions. Again, nyart.shop, E-N-Y-A-R-T dot S-H-O-P. Just type that into your browser, nyart.shop.
