Our speaker this morning is the Reverend Fred Klutt. Fred is a teaching elder in the PCA and Philadelphia Presbytery. We have had a relationship with him and his ministry called QIUM. I didn't ask him, but it's got to be over 20 years. And so he is a good friend, an old friend, and one who has had a effective ministry in our area, and more recently has been involved with a church plant to Russian immigrant Jews called Rock of Israel. So, Fred, it is good to have you here today, and we pray God's blessing on you as you bring his word to us. A few years ago, I was at a public meeting on a college campus where an Orthodox professional anti-missionary was speaking. And I asked him, he had an answer for everything, basically. But I asked him if he could tell me what the overarching theme of the Hebrew Bible was. And he's not usually at a loss for words, but he didn't know how to answer that question. He really stumbled and fumbled, and then he said, well, has something to do with Israel being a witness to God, and if they're obedient, they're blessed, and if they're not, they're cursed. But he said, we don't really think of the Bible in those terms. And that's very telling. That's exactly the problem, is that they don't think of the Bible in terms of how it all fits together. As a matter of fact, that was the problem in the first century as well, and why Israel failed to recognize the coming of Jesus. that redemption had arrived. That's why they failed to recognize what the apostles were preaching about. Not to be too hard on the rabbis, it seems like the apostles at first didn't quite get what was going on either. And they didn't fully understand what sort of redemption Jesus came to bring. And even to be fair to the rabbis, there are some glimpses in some rabbinic theology and some rabbinic writings where they're getting close to it. In fact, in some of the Jewish mystical writings, there's talk about the Messiah waiting in the Garden of Eden, waiting to restore the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life. Now, they're getting close to it there. hint, I would say, of a universal scope and the universal purpose of the coming of the Messiah. There's a famous Talmudic story concerning a Gentile who went to rabbi, there are two famous rabbis, Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai, who debated and had different schools of thought in the generation before Jesus. As a matter of fact, some of the questions people come to Jesus with really have to do with some of the debates that were going on within Judaism of that day between the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel. And Rabbi Shammai was approached by this Gentile who came to him and said, can you give me the essence of the law and the prophets while standing on one foot? And Shammai, being a very stern man, threw him out. The man then went to Rabbi Hillel, who was a different sort of man, and he stood on one foot and he said, do not do to others what is odious to yourselves. That's the law and the prophets, the rest is commentary, and he took him as a disciple. Now, if I were asked to stand on one foot, if I could do it here, let's see, if I were asked to stand on one foot and tell you the essence of the Bible, I would say, Blessing, curse, blessing restored. Or you could put it, you could say, Adam, the fall, second Adam. That's another way you could put it. That's the way Paul took it. That word blessing, I think, is a very critical, important word. And we kind of throw it around in a very cavalier way, don't we? We say, oh, that was a real blessing. Oh, this is a real blessing to me, that sort of thing. We don't really think about the deep theological meaning and significance of the word blessing. God created Adam and Eve under his blessing, right? He blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. That's a very important sentence in the Bible. God blessed them. He blessed Adam. Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on earth. And you see, we were created under God's blessing. We were created in a right relationship with God. That's what blessing means. I'm going to say a benediction at the end of the service. that you're familiar with in Numbers chapter 6 when it talks about God, His face looking at His people with love and smiling and His face shining upon them. And they're at peace with God. It's a picture of a father loving his children and being in a close fellowship. Everything is good between them. That's what that blessing that we hear in Numbers chapter 6 is all about. But when we sin, we all know we came under the curse of the fall. And you see, the curse is the opposite of the blessing. So you have the creation under blessing and then you have the curse that came from sin and from the fall. And then when God called Abraham, as the pastor is speaking about, he promised blessing to all the peoples of the earth. And you see, if you understand that promise of Abraham in the context of what went before in Genesis, what he's promising to come through Abraham's descendants is the overturning of the curse of the fall. That was just occurred a couple of chapters before in Genesis. And we don't often think of blessing that way. That promise of blessing has to be understood in the light of the creation under blessing and the curse that we came under. And then the restoration of the blessing through the promises to Abraham. And I would say that that idea of the promise of blessing coming to the world is the central theme of the whole Bible. And if you take that idea of blessing and you take that idea of be fruitful and multiply, It really, I think, gives you a key to understanding all of the scriptures. We see that idea in Galatians. And I think Paul understood this very, very well. In Galatians 3.80, he says, and the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. my brilliant theology I'm coming with. I just learned this from Paul. Galatians 3, 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. That was a civil penalty. in the books of Moses you would be taken and hung on a tree and Paul picks it up and says that Jesus and being hung on a tree fulfilled the curses of the covenant. Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. And so this idea of blessing, you see, is, I believe, of central importance. And what does blessing mean? Well, as I said, at first, man was created under blessing. He was at peace in the garden. He was in a right relationship with God. And God ruled as a loving father over his son, Adam. And Adam was created in his image. There was no death. There was harmony between Adam and Eve, between man and nature. most importantly, between man and God. And man was innocent. He had a pure heart. As a matter of fact, he walked around naked and was completely innocent and unashamed and unembarrassed, like my little two-year-olds used to do. By the way, on the back table, there's a chart that you're welcome to pick up. I think I made about 25 copies. It's called Getting the Big Picture, Blessing Cursed and Blessing Restored. So you can pick one up on the back table if you'd like to get that. If it runs out, I'd be happy to send you one or you can find it online. what God was doing and has been doing from the beginning. All this that was lost in the fall, all those things of a right relationship between man and God, between man and man, and harmony between man and nature, and having a pure heart, and no death and access to the tree of life, and no guilt and no shame, all that was lost in the fall. Everything was turned upside down. And so you see that Abrahamic blessing has to be understood as involving a restoration of what was lost under the curse. Blessing restored then means a restored relationship with the Father. It means the removal of guilt and shame. It means the removal of death and the tree of life restored. It means harmony restored between man and man and man and nature. And it ultimately means a renewed, purified, or circumcised heart is the way Moses and the prophets put it. You must have your heart circumcised. And so in order to restore full blessing, a second Adam needed to come and he needed to fulfill the curse. Cursed is everyone who is hung in a tree. He needed to fulfill the curse of the fall in order to restore blessing. by faithfully obeying the Father and regaining us right to the tree of life through his payment for our sins on the cross. And you see in the prophets, especially in the later prophets, if you read them, you see the theme of Eden restored and I think we really miss what's going on in the prophets if we look at some of these things and take them too literalistically. That song that we sang by Stuart Dowerman, who I know, the trees of the field would clap their hands. In that same chapter, it talks about instead of thorns and thistles, beautiful trees are going to grow. It's talking about the renewal from the fall. And the prophets seemed to understand that. And they talked about Eden restored. And there's imagery of Eden restored. And that's a central theme, I would argue, especially in the latter prophets, you see that. The messianic redemption, you see, has to do with Eden restored. If you look at Isaiah 11, which is one of the passages that both Jews and Christians will say, yes, that refers to the Messiah. Isaiah 11 has a picture of Eden being restored through the coming anointed king of Israel. That's a major theme, you see. It begins to tell us what kind of redemption, what kind of Messiah was to come. God's purpose of having a people created in His image and being fruitful and multiplying. That goes way back to Genesis there, right? He blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. He created them in His image. That's what the Messiah came to bring. And if you see those things throughout the history of Israel, it opens your eyes, the idea of being fruitful and multiplying. That gives you the context for that missionary call and acts to start in Jerusalem and go bring the gospel to the nations of the world. You know, the disciples asked the risen Jesus, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? It's in Acts 1-6. And it seems that at this point, even somewhat like the Pharisees, the apostles failed to really completely understand the nature and extent of the messianic redemption. They weren't quite fully getting it yet. And Jesus's reply is both enlightening and intriguing. He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power. when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." So what's the background for this call to take the gospel to the whole earth? Well, it starts with that idea of blessing and the commandment given to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. And that biblical theme of being fruitful and multiplying appears again in the book of Acts. When I was in seminary, Vern Porthris had us do something called the diachronic analysis. Vern, I remember those days well. And we'd take a theme and work it through the whole Bible. By the way, I met Diane Porthris as a brand new believer when she was with InterVarsity down in Maryland area. So we go back a long ways. But we're told in the book of Acts this, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith." That's in Acts 6-7. And then in Acts 12-24, the Word of God increased and multiplied. And I don't think Paul's language there in Acts 6 and Acts 12-24 is coincidental. He used this theme of being fruitful and multiplying in several places referring to the gospel, and it goes all the way back to Genesis, and I think it's really a theological shorthand that Paul is using to give us insight into what God's purpose is throughout the whole Bible, to be fruitful and multiply. And perhaps of the significance that Luke, who would have used the Greek version of Genesis in both these references and acts, uses the same two Greek words that were used in the Greek translation of Genesis 128. I don't think there's any coincidence here in the use of this phrase, be fruitful and multiply. And this is very similar to what Paul says, using the same two verbs in Colossians, where he tells us that the ultimate expression of this principle is found in the gospel being fruitful and multiplying. So it's nothing less than the reestablishment of God's original purpose in creation. A redeemed creation. The image of God restored. And now the fruitfulness and multiplication is the fruitfulness and multiplication of the gospel in the world. So when we come to the book of Acts, we think of these things and also the issue of speaking in tongues comes up, doesn't it, from our Pentecostal friends. I'm not going to get into a whole discussion of speaking in tongues and whether the gifted tongues are for today or not are going on. I don't think they are, but I'm not going to discuss it now. But unfortunately, that kind of debate really obscures the significance of the speaking in tongues in the Book of Acts. We get all hung up on this, whether it's for today thing, we forget to see the real purpose and meaning of the phenomenon of tongues in the apostolic times. At Babel, a rebellious and haunting mankind was divided by the imposition of a confusion of the languages, you see. And at Pentecost, the Jewish feast celebrating the wheat harvest and dedicating it to the Lord. At Pentecost, Babel was overturned as thousands of Jews and converts to Judaism from many nations heard the Word of God preached in his own native language and believed, you see. This is bringing together people. whereas Babel divided them in confusing languages. this is bringing them together as the gospel goes forward and we see in Acts an ever-expanding audience of the gospel. First they started in Jerusalem and then you had the Samaritans who were half Jewish, half Gentile people receiving the message and there are wonders and signs that accompany the Samaritans coming. Then in Joppa, by the way, Joppa is the same city that Jonah left and fled his mission. He didn't want to go evangelize the Gentiles, right? He got on a boat and he went the other way. That didn't work out so well. Peter was in Joppa when he received a vision to preach repentance to the heathen. And Peter then was called to preach to the Gentiles. And he preached to the Roman centurion Cornelius and his family in his home. And the tongues of Pentecost were repeated. You see, That phenomenon, the miracle of speaking in other languages, was connected to the expanding of the gospel to a greater and greater circle from the Jews to the Samaritans and to the Gentiles. And God's kingdom was going forward, uniting Jew and Gentile, overturning the separation between man and God and between men of different languages and tribes. You see, the fall was being overturned. And that division of Jew and Gentile then was coming about. We're really blessed to see in our congregational plan Russian speakers and English speakers together, Jews and Gentiles together, people from a Muslim background and a Jewish background standing side by side and worshiping the Lord together. That's a picture of the gospel and the overturning of the curse of the fall and the separation of man and man. Peter reported on the conversion of the house of Cornelius and that brought to the attention of the apostles, the Gentiles were also being granted repentance that leads to life. And so the gospel was becoming a message for all nations and Rabbi Saul, also known as the Apostle Paul, was gloriously confronted by the Lord as he hotly pursued the followers of the Messiah. He was an anti-missionary. You know, we have professional anti-missionaries today. That's what Paul was. So I pray for these guys today that God's going to get a hold of one of them. Paul was an anti-missionary. on his way to carry out persecution of believers. And God called him as a chosen instrument, God says, a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. And Paul began to preach to Jews and then to Gentiles, and soon the gospel was spread to Asia Minor and to Greece. And apostles had to meet in Jerusalem and wrestle over the implication of the inclusion of Gentiles. You know, originally in the church, it wasn't a question of, can Jews believe in Jesus, and are they still Jewish if they believe in Jesus? It was the other way around. It was, are we gonna let the Gentiles believe in Jesus without getting them circumcised and keeping kosher? Now we've dealt with sort of the opposite kind of question, but then it was, are we gonna let the Gentiles in, and what are we gonna require them to do? And so they decided that God was bringing in the Gentiles. And under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they came to recognize that not only were the Gentiles to be admitted to the Messianic community without being circumcised, but that their inclusion was what the prophets had envisioned when speaking about the restoration of the Davidic kingdom. In Acts 15, we see them saying that, that this is God raising up the fallen tabernacle of David, that God is restoring the Davidic kingdom through the coming of the Messiah and the Gentiles being called to follow him. And they finally came to see what had been promised to Abraham was being fulfilled by the Messiah. This was envisioned in the Psalms, one of my favorite Psalms, and maybe you've missed it if you've read it. It's Psalm 72. But if you read Psalm 72, which is clearly about the Davidic king, it says this, May people be blessed in him, and all nations call him blessed. If you read that Psalm, Psalm 72, it tells you that the promise of Abraham of blessings coming to all peoples now comes to fruition or will come to fruition through the Davidic king. And so the Abrahamic promise of blessing, that promise of blessing that had to do with overturning the curse of the fall That promise of Abrahamic blessing now becomes focused on the Davidic king who's going to bring that to the peoples of the earth. May people be blessed in him and all nations call him blessed. Psalm 72, 17. You're not looking for these things. It's easy to miss them. So we begin to see in Acts the development of a two-pronged mission given to the apostles. When Paul was brought before King Agrippa to defend himself against the charge that he opposed the law of Moses, he responded, to this day, I have had the help that comes from God. And so I stand here testifying, both the small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass. By the way, I have a lot of friends in Jewish ministry who are followers of a certain system of theology, the dispensational system of theology. who want to say the new covenant was hidden and wasn't really the main plan and uh... the church wasn't really the main plan that's traditional dispensational thinking but this verse is rather problematic because paul gets up and says to this day i've had the help that comes from god and so i stand here testifying both the small and great saying nothing but what the prophets and moses said would come to pass he's saying i'm just doing what the scripture said would happen in the prophets that the Messiah must suffer, and that by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles. And so the apostles in the book of Acts gradually began to understand the incredible implications of the Messiah's coming. It brought the fulfillment of the Messianic vision of Isaiah. Isaiah 49, one of the four servant songs in Isaiah. Most of us know Isaiah 53. And, you know, probably if you have one chance to open the scriptures with a Jewish friend and have them read the Bible, you know, have them read Isaiah 53 and don't tell them what part of the Bible it's from, and ask them who they think it's about. And nine out of 10 times, they're going to say, that's about Jesus. And then you tell them, well, that's from the Hebrew prophet, from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah 700 years before Jesus. My friend Rick Anderson came to faith when he was warned by anti-missionaries not to read Isaiah 53. He was on campus, and some Jewish Christians were speaking, and they put around flyers saying, these people are gonna tell you Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, and it's not. Rick said, I never heard of Isaiah 53. And he went and read it, and he said, but I think it is about Jesus, and he's a missionary now, so be careful what you warn people against. But another servant song there is Isaiah 49, five through seven. Listen to this. And now the Lord says he formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, that Israel might be gathered to him for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has become my strength. He says it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach the end of the earth. Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and His Holy One, to one deeply despised aboard by the nation, the servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves because of the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel who has chosen you. You see, this servant of the Lord can't be Israel because he's called to restore Israel. He's called to restore the remnant of Israel, the preserved of Israel. And God says, you're not gonna only do that, you're going to bring the Gentiles into my people. We see other places, Psalm 118, the stone that the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone for a new and redeemed community gathered from all nations. Bringing the good news to both Jew and Gentile was God's plan all along. The apostles had asked, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? The answer came that the good news would be preached starting at Jerusalem and going to the ends of the earth. Now, Jesus never denied the idea that the kingdom would be restored to Israel. It's interesting how he answered. He didn't say, no, you guys have got it completely wrong. It's not what you think it is. It's not going to happen that way. They actually had something partially right in anticipating the kingdom being restored to Israel. The problem is they had a deficient understanding of the nature of the kingdom and what kind of kingdom it was. and how the restoration would be accomplished. My understanding of the kingdom being restored to Israel is the Jewish people being restored to faith in Jesus. And as Jews come to believe in Jesus, the kingdom of God is being restored to them. And I look and pray and hope for a greater revival than we've yet seen. Today, the kingdom of God continues to go forward to both Jews and Gentiles. And it's the power of salvation, as Paul says, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Just as the gospel went out from the Jewish apostles to the Gentile nations, you know, I mean, Paul went out and preached to the Gentiles. And others went to other nations. There's a strong tradition that the Apostle Thomas went to India and preached in South India. And you have churches today even called after his name. the Jewish apostles went and preached to the nations. They took the good news to the world. And God calls us to take the good news back to the Jewish people as well. It says that the Gentiles are called to provoke Israel to jealousy. And so if you have Jewish friends, You're being called to provoke them to jealousy as they see your faith and your love of the God of Abraham, the promises given to Abraham. We're to bring the good news back to the Jewish people. Our great theologians of the faith, such as Calvin and John Murray and Gerhardus Voss and Jonathan Edwards and John Owen, all recognized that God still purposes to bring times of refreshing to the Jewish people through the restoration to the gospel. And by the way, Jewish Christians today are also involved in bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. One of the greatest missionaries to China was named Bishop Sharoshevsky, who was an Anglican bishop who had terrible debilitating arthritis, I guess it was, in the 1800s. And he typed out the Mandarin Chinese Bible. and in great pain. And that's still the basis I understand for the Mandarin Bible today. Other Jewish Christian missionaries went to Afghanistan and one died there putting together a dictionary that could be used for bringing the gospel to them. The second volume of the Book of Acts is still being written in missionary history. The bottom line for us is God has given us a glorious purpose. And I hope that's what you come away from this missions weekend thinking about. That God has given us, as his people today, a glorious purpose. He's given you as Lansdale Church a glorious purpose. You know, it's easy to get bogged down in mundane and parochial concerns. everyday life, the dull details of the daily grind, and even the dull details sometimes of having a church and making decisions about the property and other things. Often these dull details of life scream for our attention, don't they? It's very easy to be distracted by them. But we must not lose sight of our glorious purpose, the purpose to which we've been called, to be part of the restoration of all creation. You know, our Jewish mystical friends have something they call tikkun olam, the rebuilding of the universe. And they say that that's what Jews are to be involved in, the rebuilding, the restoration of the universe. And the way they describe it and their Gnostic philosophy and Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, is extremely problematic, to say the least. But they actually are onto something, in a way, that God has called us to be part of His process to rebuild the universe, to bring the restoration from the fall, to bring the blessing, the overturning of the curse, the promise of Abraham to all nations. What an amazing purpose we have in life. Your life as a believer is not without purpose and without meaning. It has the greatest, most amazing divine purpose and meaning and call. All of us have that as believers. So our witness for the Lord, our prayers for the advancement of the kingdom, our service to bind up the wounds of the suffering in the name of Jesus are all part of something grand and spectacular and wonderful and we're told by Peter it's what the prophets longed to look into. What we do as God's people today is what the prophets long to look into. So I want to call us to recommit ourselves to that service in our own neighborhoods, to recommit ourselves to his worldwide missionary enterprise, to recommit ourselves to pray and work in faith for the restoration of both Jews and Gentiles to that blessing, to the restoration of that blessing. that God promised Abraham the blessings of the Creator that our King Jesus has won for us and calls us to bring to the world. Let's pray together. Lord, how we thank you for this amazing redemption that you've called us to participate in what you are doing, to redeem a people, to redeem a fallen mankind, to bring eventually a new heavens and a new earth and a restoration of your image. You've called us to be fruitful and multiply in your work. Lord, forgive us when we've lost sight of that, Forgive us when we've gotten bogged down in everyday things, and forget that high calling that we have. Renew our hearts, Lord. Renew our vision. Each day, help us to see how you've called us, and what we're doing can be part of that calling. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.