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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.
Broadcast #540,.Starting in Jerusalem
Series Special Message
| Sermon ID | 41716215174 |
| Duration | 35:47 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Acts 1:8 |
| Language | English |
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