Yearly Archives: 2020

Apostolic Boldness – Acts 4:13-22

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

“Boldness” (4:13) means courage, the thing the apostles were showing when they went right back to preaching Christ after being jailed for preaching Christ.  Just 40 days earlier they weren’t so bold (Mt. 26:56).  But the Lord had told them that if He rose, they’d rise too (John 11:25), so they no longer feared death. We don’t have to fear death either (II Cor. 4:14).

Why did Israel’s religious leaders marvel that “unlearned and ignorant” apostles could be bold?  To answer that, we have to figure out what they meant by “unlearned.”  They called the Lord unlearned (John 7:14) because He hadn’t been to their schools.  But people said He was bold (Jo. 7:25,26) because He was able to use the Bible against leaders who claimed to be experts in the Bible (John 7:23).

And that’s what the apostles did too (Acts 4:10,11).  The Jews would know what the psalm they quoted meant.  They knew God promised to lay the foundation stone of Messiah in Israel (Isa. 28:16) for them to build the kingdom church on.  But they also knew from Psalm 118:22 that God predicted they wouldn’t build the church on Him, but that God would make Him the cornerstone of the church anyway.

And when the apostles quoted the same psalm the Lord did to answer the rulers (Mt. 21:23,42), the leaders knew they had “been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).  Nobody since Him had been able to tie them up in knots using their own Bible like the apostles were doing here!

Not even the Lord’s enemies could say anything against the healing of the lame man (Acts 4:14), for they knew it was a legitimate miracle.  Compare that to modern “healings” you see on TV, where you don’t know the person being healed, so you don’t know if he was really sick or injured.

Israel’s religious leaders decide to have a closed-door meeting (4:15), in which they confessed they didn’t know what to do with the apostles (4:16), for they had performed a “notable” miracle, and everyone in town knew it.  So they decide to tell them to stop preaching Christ (4:17).  Obviously, nothing had changed since the Lord’s day, when those same leaders refused to believe, and didn’t want anyone else to believe either (Mt. 23:13).

After the private meeting was done, Israel’s leaders called the apostles back in (v. 18).  But how did Luke (who wrote the Book of Acts) know what they said in that closed-door meeting?  The Spirit could have told him (cf. II Kings 6:12), but it is also possible that some of those leaders later got saved (Acts 6:7) and told Luke.

Now since Israel was a theocracy, those religious leaders were also their civil leaders, and God’s people are always supposed to obey our civil leaders.  But Peter and John refused to (Acts 4:19), for they knew that we have to draw the line and say no when our leaders tell us to disobey God (Ex. 1:15-17; Dan. 3:18; 6:10).

Notice that neither Daniel nor his three Hebrew friends need-ed to do what their leaders said to do.  They didn’t need to go behind closed doors to talk over whether or not they should obey the command to disobey God.  Obeying God had become like second nature to them.  How?  By learning God’s precepts (Ps. 119:104).  If you’ll learn God’s precepts, obeying God can become like second nature to you too!

Peter went on to tell the leaders that even if God hadn’t commanded him to preach Christ, he couldn’t help but speak about the lame men he’d seen the Lord heal, etc. (Acts 4:20).

Fear of the people saved the apostles from these leaders (v. 21), just as it had the Lord (Mt. 21:45,46).

The man they healed hadn’t walked in forty years (Acts 4:22).  We don’t have miracles like that in the dispensation of grace.  But what we do have is examples of men who haven’t walked with God for forty, fifty, sixty years or more—and then get saved and begin to walk with Him.

If you’ve been saved many years but haven’t been walking with God, why not start now?  You’ll be eternally glad you did.

Video of this message is available on YouTube: Apostolic Boldness – Acts 4:13-22

Be Sure of What’s Pure!

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

“Unto the pure all things are pure…” (Titus 1:15).

Boy, a verse like that sure begs the questions, “Who are these pure people, and why are all things pure for them?”

Well, the word “pure” just means “clean,” as we see when Solomon asked,

“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?” (Pr. 20:9).

The answer to this rhetorical question is that none of us can make our heart clean!  That’s why we need God to save and purify us.  So when sinners believe the gospel, God saves them by His grace, “purifying their hearts by faith” (cf. Acts 15:9)—so much so that Paul could tell even the carnal Corinthians that they were “washed” clean because they were saved (I Cor. 6:11).

That means the “pure” people in our text are saved people.  But when Paul says that “all things are pure” unto the pure, it doesn’t take a Bible scholar to know that he can’t be saying that sinful things are pure for saved people.

No, in the context, Paul is telling Titus how to deal with “vain talkers…of the circumcision” (Tit. 1:10), unsaved Jews who were teaching the “vain jangling” of the Law (cf. I Tim. 1:6,7).  These teachers of the law were probably insisting that certain meats were “unclean” for the pure because the law said they were (Lev. 11:4,5,6,7,8 etc.).  For nearly 1500 years, Jews under the law would not eat impure foods.

Of course, Gentiles who were not under the law would eat anything.  That’s one of the reasons the Lord called the Gentiles “dogs” (Mt. 15:26), for a dog will eat anything!  Your dog might be a fussy eater, but even he will eat anything if he is hungry enough.

But today, in the dispensation of grace, we are all “baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles” (I Cor. 12:13).   That means when our apostle Paul says that “we are not under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:15), even Jewish believers are free to eat meats that God once classified as unclean.

That’s why Paul wrote that “commanding to abstain from meats” (I Tim. 4:3) is one of the many “doctrines of devils” that we should avoid (v. 1).  If you take a doctrine that God gave specifically to people in one dispensation and impose it on people in another dispensation, it becomes a doctrine of devils.  When Paul added that “every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused” (v. 4), that’s just another way of saying, “unto the pure all things are pure.”

The apostle expressed this truth again when he wrote,

“…the kingdom of God is not meat and drink… all things indeed are pure” (Rom. 14:17,20).

Had Paul written those words during Old Testament times, someone would have steered him to Leviticus 11 and reminded him that the kingdom of God did involve meat and drink under the law.  Then they would have led him out to be stoned for saying otherwise!

I know there are many who insist that unclean meats are still impure for the pure, but the only reason God pronounced certain foods unclean was to teach the Jews that certain people were unclean—the unsaved Gentiles (Lev. 20:24,25).  We know that Peter understood this, for after the Lord told him he could eat unclean meats (Acts 10:9-16), he said about the Gentiles,

“God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28).

So to say that certain meats are unclean today under grace is to say that the Gentiles are still unclean, and God says otherwise.  It’s better to agree with Him when He says, “unto the pure all things are pure.”

Now would somebody please pass the bacon!

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.

Two Minutes with the Bible lets you start your day with short but powerful Bible study articles from the Berean Bible Society. Sign up now to receive Two Minutes With the Bible every day in your email inbox. We will never share your personal information and you can unsubscribe at any time.



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Enter the Big Shots – Acts 4:1-12

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

It was the job of the priests (4:1) to teach the people (Lev. 10:8-11), so they didn’t like it when the apostles taught them.  “The captain of the temple” (4:1) was supposed to keep everyone but priests out of the temple (II Chron. 23:1-9), but the leaders in Israel used them and their weapons as “muscle” to arrest the Lord (Lu. 22:52) and the apostles here (4:2).  So the captain didn’t like the apostles preaching Christ, for it made him look bad for arresting Him.  And “the Sadducees” didn’t like it when they preached “the resurrect-tion” (4:2) because they didn’t believe in the resurrection (Acts 23:8).

When the Lord was here on earth, most of His grief came from the Pharisees, because they sat in Moses’ seat (Mt. 23:2), and they preferred Moses to the Lord (Jo. 9:16,28).  So the Pharisees led the way in arresting the Lord (Jo. 18:3).  But when the apostles preached the resurrection of Christ, the Sadducees took over as God’s chief opponents.

Resurrection “from” the dead (4:1) is when one is raised from among the dead and the rest of the dead stayed dead (Jo. 12:1).  Resurrection “of” the dead comes when a whole group of people are raised (Jo. 5:29).  That shows how carefully and accurately the Bible is written.  By the way, men don’t like to believe in resurrection, for it means they’ll be judged (Acts 10:40-42; 17:30,31).

The arrest of the apostles was the response of Israel’s leaders to Peter’s offer of the kingdom (Acts 3:19-21).  But the apostles weren’t surprised, for the Lord had warned them this would happen (Jo. 15:20), unless they could figure out a way to preach the truth without making men mad.  But that would have made them greater than the Lord, for He couldn’t figure that out, for it can’t be done!  Men hate the truth!

But I’m sure the apostles didn’t care they were arrested after they heard 5,000 men alone believed (4:4).  That large group, plus the 3,000 that believed earlier (2:41), means they were getting way more results than the Lord got (1:15), something the Lord also predicted (Jo. 12:24).

This is just a sample of the awesome victory God will win over the devil because of what Christ did. He will “spoil” the devil (Isa. 53:11) of his captives (49:24,25 cf. Mt. 12:28,29).

Annas and Caiaphas (Acts 4:5,6) were both high priest at that time (Lu. 3:2), perhaps because they were related (Jo. 18:12) and the office was in transition.  When they asked the apostles by what “power” and “name” they healed the lame man, that shows the word power here means authority (cf. Ro. 13:1).  They were the authority in Israel, and they knew they hadn’t given the apostles authority to heal anyone.

You’ll notice they asked by what authority the apostles did “this” (4:7), afraid to charge them with healing a man!  But Peter called them on it (Acts 5:8,9)!  He was filled with the Spirit when he spoke (5:8) just as the Lord promised (Lu. 12:11,12).  We can’t speak with the Spirit inspiring our every word as he did, but we can speak graciously (Col. 4:6) which is just as important as speaking accurately. 

Peter knew they didn’t like hearing that their Messiah was from Nazareth (4:10 cf. Jo. 1:46), and that they had killed Him, and that God had raised Him, but he said all those things anyway (4:10) to bring them under conviction.  He then quoted Psalm 118 (4:11), the same verse the Lord quoted when they asked Him by what authority He did what He did (Mt. 21:23-42).  The Jews knew God promised to send a foundation stone that they were supposed to build the kingdom on (Isa. 28:16).  They refused Him, but God made Him the cornerstone of the kingdom church anyway.

Now when Peter concluded his message by saying that the name of Jesus was the only name by which men could be saved (4:12), we use that verse to say men can’t be saved by Buddha or Mohammed, etc.  But the Jews wouldn’t have thought salvation was in the name of Zeus or any of the other false gods of the day.  No, the leaders had asked the apostles by what “name” they’d healed the lame man, so they responded by saying the name of Jesus healed him and saved him.  The Lord did what they could see (heal his lameness) to prove He could do what they couldn’t see (save him) as He did in Matthew 9:5,6.

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: Enter the Big Shots – Acts 4:1-12

Table the Fables!

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

“Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth” (Titus 1:13,14).

The “vain talkers…of the circumcision” in Crete (Tit. 1:10) were telling “Jewish fables” that were turning men from the truth, so Paul told Titus to tell people to put them on the pay-no-mind list.  But what were these fables about?

Whatever they were, they probably had to do with “the commandments of men” that Paul says they were also using to turn others from the truth.  And since these fables were being told by unsaved Jews of the circumcision, it seems reasonable to believe that they were about the commandments of men Paul mentions in Colossians 2:21,22:

“Touch not; taste not; handle not… the commandments… of men.”

The commandments of men here were the commandments of the law of Moses.  The law was filled with commands concerning things that couldn’t be touched, tasted or handled!

You say, “But the law contained the commandments of God, not the commandments of men!”  And you’d be right—if we were under the law.  But our apostle says “we are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:15).  And when you put men under commandments found in past dispensations, those commandments of God become the commandments of men.  What a testimony to the importance of “rightly dividing the word of truth” (II Tim. 2:15).

But now that we know which commandments of men Paul is warning Titus about, it helps us determine the nature of those fables.  He was telling him to beware of men who teach the law, and then tell stories about the law.  A fable is a story that is told to teach a lesson, and the fables these unsaved Jews were telling were designed to teach the lesson that we are still under the law.

What kind of stories?  The same kind men tell about the law today.  How many times have you heard this verse from the law quoted:

“…serve… God, and He shall… take sickness away from the midst of thee” (Ex. 23:25).

That’s a promise God made to the people of Israel under the law.  But when you tell people who quote that verse that we’re not under the law, and so we can’t expect God to honor that prom-ise, what do you hear?  Stories!  “But Brother Jim serves the Lord, and God took away his terminal cancer!”  That’s a fable, a story designed to teach the lesson that we are still under the law.

The law also said, “the LORD thy God… is He that giveth thee power to get wealth” (Deut. 8:18).  That’s another promise God gave the people of Israel under the law.  If they would “hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD” (Deut.28:1), God promised to multiply their crops and livestock (v. 4,11,12).  But when you remind people today that we’re not under the law where this promise is found, what do you hear?  More fables!  “But Brother Smith always hearkened to God, and now he’s so rich he can afford to pay Bill Gates to cut his grass!”  More stories designed to teach the lesson we are still under the law.  Paul says to pay no attention to fables like that!

But as I’m sure you know, most Christians put a lot of stock in those kinds of success stories.  But that shouldn’t surprise you, for the Apostle Paul predicted it, saying,

“…the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but… they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (II Timothy 4:3,4).

Sadly, this prophecy has come true.  Most Christians would rather believe a fable than the Word of God, rightly divided.

Don’t you be one of them!  Table the fables, turn back to the truth of grace taught by Paul, and never look back!

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.

Two Minutes with the Bible lets you start your day with short but powerful Bible study articles from the Berean Bible Society. Sign up now to receive Two Minutes With the Bible every day in your email inbox. We will never share your personal information and you can unsubscribe at any time.



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A Man Like Moses – Acts 3:22-26

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

To convince the Jews that Jesus was their Christ, Peter calls Moses to the witness stand (3:22) because the Jews loved Moses (Jo. 9:28).  But in clinging to Moses and rejecting God’s new prophet, they were making a dispensational error.  You’d think they would have followed the Lord, since their favorite prophet Moses predicted His coming, as Peter says here, but they didn’t.

Of course, it was mostly Israel’s rulers who didn’t believe the Lord was a prophet.  Many of the people did(Mt. 21:11). And they knew he was a prophet like Moses for He too could heal leprosy (Ex. 4:5-7 cf. Mt. 11:5).

Moses was a type of Christ in many ways, ways that we’ll consider when Stephen talks about them in Acts 7, when we get there in our study.  But here, notice that Peter said that Moses predicted this prophet would arise from “your brethren,” speaking of the people of Israel.  This means He’d be Jewish, and everyone knew the Lord was a Jew!

But the Lord was also like the Prophet that Moses said would come in that Moses said of Him, “Him shall ye hear in all things.”  Now, we know he didn’t mean all the Jews would hear Him, for Moses also said what would happen to the Jews who didn’t hear Him (Acts 3:23).  Having your soul cut off from among the people meant physical death if you disobeyed Moses (Lev. 23:30 cf. Num. 15:32-36).  But it also meant spiritual death, for the Jews had to obey the law to be saved.  And not hearing the Prophet like Moses also meant spiritual death, of course.  But it also meant physical death.  Remember, had the dispensation of grace not interrupted prophecy, those who didn’t hear the Lord would have died at the Second Coming of Christ (II Thes. 1:7,8).

Peter didn’t quote the part where Moses explained that he made that promise “according” to the time when the Jews feared to hear God’s voice, so insisted Moses hear it for them and relay God’s Word in a less scary way (Deut. 18:15,16 cf. Deut. 5:17-28).  Moses did, but he did it again when he died and came back, so to speak, in the Lord, the Prophet like Moses.  The Lord was way less scary (Isa. 42:1-3).  The Jews were used to the idea one of their leaders could return (Mal. 4:4,5)

But did Elijah return personally?  The Lord said he returned in John the Baptist (Mt. 17:12,13).  The apostles asked about Elijah cuz they’d just seen a vision of Elijah (Mt. 17:1-5), and wanted to know why the Lord had come (the prophet like Moses) but Elijah hadn’t, if Elijah was to come “first.”  But Elijah had come, and so had Moses—in Christ!

On the mount of transfiguration, God was recreating the scene when the Jews feared to hear Him (Lu. 9:30).  He was saying, as it were, “Here’s the Moses you asked for, hear Him.  He’s the one I said you’d hear!”  Peter quoted Moses, knowing that the Jews he was speaking to would remember all that, and would know that God sent them Jesus in answer to their request.  Everyone knew that prophecy (Jo. 1:45)!

Moses was also a king (Deu. 33:4,5) and a priest (Ps. 99:5,6), making him a prophet, a priest and a king—like the Prophet God raised up like him!

The Jews at Pentecost weren’t the literal children of the prophets (Acts 3:25).  Ephesians 2:3 calls unbelievers “children of wrath” partly because they’ll be the recipients of God’s wrath, and the Jews at Pentecost were the recipients of the prophecy the prophets made of those days (Acts 3:24), the days when they’d be offered the kingdom (3:19-21).

They were also “the children of the covenant” God made with Moses (Gen. 12:1-3), the covenant where God promised to bless the world with salvation through Israel.  But Israel had to “first” be saved, and have their sins turned away (Acts 3:26), because God intended to use Israel to reach the world with salvation, and He insists that His representatives be saved!  That’s why the angel said that the Savior was born to Israel, but that was good news for all people (Lu. 2:10,11).

And someday, that’s how it will go down.  God will save Israel, and the nations will be blessed with salvation through the people of Israel (Zech. 8:13-23).

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: A Man Like Moses – Acts 3:22-26

How Slow Is Your Belly?

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

“The Cretians are… slow bellies” (Titus 1:12)

“Slow bellies” is a figure of speech that is generally taken to mean lazy gluttons, and that could be.  But the Greek word for “belly” is usually translated “womb” by our KJV translators, and the word for “slow” is usually translated barren.  And the Bible says that “the barren womb” is “never satisfied” (Pr. 30:15).  Women who long to have children and don’t have them are often never satisfied with any substitutes.

So in calling the Cretians “slow bellies,” it is possible that the Bible is saying they were never satisfied, that they were people who always desired more, who always wanted what they couldn’t have.  The Bible calls that covetousness, and the law of Moses forbad it:

“Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s house, his field… or any thing that is thy neighbour’s” (Deuteronomy 5:21).

This was probably the verse that the “vain talkers… of the circumcision” were quoting to Titus (Tit. 1:10), the men who were like those who had “turned aside unto vain jangling; desiring to be teachers of the law” (I Tim. 1:6,7).  Men who teach the law believe that the only way to help God’s people overcome covetousness is to put them under the law that prohibited covetousness.

But Paul says “we are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:15).  The law cursed all who could not keep it perfectly (Gal. 3:10; James 2:10,11), and we can’t do that any better now than we could before we were saved!

But you don’t need the law to help someone who is struggling with covetousness, for grace forbids this sin just as surely (Eph. 5:3).  That’s why Paul agreed that the Cretians were slow bellies, but prescribed a different remedy for their covetousness:

“This witness is true.  Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith” (Titus 1:13).

Rather than tell Titus to remind the Cretians that the law says “thou shalt not covet” (Ex. 20:17), Paul told him to rebuke them to “be sound in the faith.”  And he defined what it means to be sound in the faith when he told Timothy,

“Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me…” (II Timothy 1:13).

Being sound in the faith means to hold fast the form of sound words that we’ve heard from Paul.  He’s the apostle to whom the Lord gave “the dispensation of the grace of God” to give to us (Eph. 3:1,2).  So in the dispensation of grace, being sound in the faith means being Pauline!  Being unsound in the faith means anything “that is contrary to sound doctrine; according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God” which Paul says was “committed to my trust” (I Tim. 1:10,11).

That means if you’re not Pauline in your theology, you’re not being Biblical!  As the editor of the Scofield Reference Bible wrote about Paul, “in his writings alone we find the doctrine, position, walk, and destiny of the church” (Page 1252).

So if you’re a covetous slow belly, don’t look to the law for help, look to Paul’s epistles!  He’s the one who went on to tell Titus,

“…the grace of God… hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11,112).

The way to deal with ungodliness like covetousness is to learn more about God’s grace, not beat yourself up with the law!

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Berean Searchlight – January 2020

Posted on by kevin

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