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An Example of Apostolic Teamwork – Acts 3:1-11

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

Did you ever wonder why only Peter and John are mentioned here (3:1)?  The Lord had three favorite apostles (Mark 5:36-38; 9:2; 14:32), but James seems to have fallen from favor from Luke 22:8 onward.  After that, it was always just James and John (Acts 4:13,19; 8:14).

Perhaps it was because James wanted the best seats in the house in the kingdom (Mark 10:35-37).  Of course, John did too.  But James is always mentioned before John, suggesting he was the dominant brother, and therefore the ringleader in that power grab.  So James may have been an example of how pride goes before a fall (Pr. 16:18; 29:23).

But Peter was guilty of pride too (Mark 14:27-31), and didn’t fall from among the Lord’s three favorites.  That’s why I think James counted himself out of the Lord’s favor.  He probably never forgave himself for failing the Lord—like many Christians do today.  The Lord honored his decision in Luke 22:8 to give him time to heal.  He’ll come back stronger than ever in the kingdom—and so can you if you too are still beating yourself up about some way you let the Lord down.

You wouldn’t think they’d go into the Jews’ temple (3:1) after the Lord denounced it (Mt. 23:38), but remember, He asked God to forgive them (Lu. 23:34) and He did.  So the temple continued to be God’s center of operations (cf. Acts 2:46).  That’s significant since most Bible teachers say God broke off relations with Israel at the cross and didn’t give her another chance, choosing to start something new at Pentecost instead with the Body of Christ.  But that didn’t happen until they stoned Stephen, after which God started the Body with Paul, who did stop hanging around the temple!

If James and John weren’t under the law any more, you’d also think they’d have stopped observing the law’s “hour of prayer” (3:1).  The Jews actually had three hours of prayer (Ps. 55:17), and Peter never did stop observing them (Acts 10:9), even after the age of grace began with Paul in Acts 9.  The kingdom saints also kept offering animal sacrifices (Acts 21:20).

The Lord healed lame men as a sign He was Messiah (Luke 7:22), but the disciples were supposed to give signs of that too (Isa. 8:18 cf. Jo. 13:33;21:5).  Of course, Paul healed a lame man too, but his first miracle was symbolic.  A Jew was blinded so a Gentile could be saved (Acts 13:6-13).  That’s what’s happening today in the dispensation of grace (Rom. 11:25).  Peter’s first miracle was also symbolic.

You see, the Jews had to walk with God to be saved (Ex. 16:4; Pr. 28:18).  When this lame man was laid outside the temple, too lame to enter, he symbolized the nation of Israel, too lame to walk with God into the kingdom.  Being lame “from his mother’s womb” was a symbol of how Israel’s lameness was caused by her religion (cf. Gal. 1:13-15).  The apostles did “many” miracles (Acts 2:43), too many for the Spirit to record, but the ones He did record were symbolic.

Instead of enriching the nation in the kingdom, the Jews’ religion had reduced them to the status of spiritual beggar, as symbolized by this lame man (Acts 3:3).

Peter had no money (Acts 3:4-6) for he had obeyed the Lord’s command to sell all he had and share the proceeds with the saints to be saved (Lu. 18:18,22 cf. Mt. 19:27-29).

When healers can’t heal you today, they say it’s because you don’t have enough faith.  But this lame man didn’t believe Peter could heal him!  He wasn’t expecting healing.  He wasn’t even asking for it.  This shows modern healers aren’t of God.

When God heals, He heals magnificently (Acts 3:7,8), but modern healers not so much—more proof they are not sent of God.  We see even more proof of this in that this lame man was known by everyone to be lame (Acts 3:9-11), but we can’t be as sure of the strangers “healed” on TV!

What we’re seeing with the healing of this lame man is a taste of the kingdom of heaven on earth (Isaiah 35:1,6).  Now God still knows how to heal, but He is giving you the opportunity to show others that His grace is sufficient for you instead (II Cor. 12:7-9).  Are you showing it?

Video of this lesson is also available on YouTube: An Example of Apostolic Teamwork – Acts 3:1-11

Were the Lord’s Disciples Communists? – Acts 2:41-47

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

The Lord’s disciples may have lived together in a communal state, but they ate their meat “with gladness” (2:46), so the answer is no!  Communism never produces gladness!

We know they were saved because they “continued” in the apostles’ doctrine (v.42 cf. John 8:31).  We see further evidence that they were saved when they continued in the apostles’ “fellowship” (v. 42).  In our Lord’s day, “salvation was of the Jews” (John 4:22), but after the Jews crucified the Lord, salvation wasn’t just in the Jews in general, but in the “remnant” of believing Jews in Israel (Joel 2:32).  That’s why Peter told them to “save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2:40), and get into fellowship with the believers in the Lord’s little flock of believers.

The “breaking of bread” (v. 42) can mean just eating meals (Lam. 4:4), but there’d be no need to tell us they continued eating meals!  Here that phrase refers to how they continued to observe the Lord’s Supper, where the Lord also broke bread (Mt. 26:26).  The Lord told them to observe it (Lu. 22:19), so they were observing it!

Finally, Verse 42 says they also continued in prayer, even though they were filled with the Spirit (Acts 2:4).  How much more should we who aren’t Spirit filled continue in prayer!

Fear came upon “every” soul (v. 43), even the believers.  The word “fear” here just means reverence, as it does in Psalm 89:7.  And reverence is just honor and respect, the thing kids should give fathers (Heb. 12:9) and wives should give husbands (Heb. 12:9)—and what we should give God (Phil. 2:12).  Fear also came upon unbelievers (cf. Jer. 33:9). As they saw how the believers were living unselfishly for one another, they reverenced the God that enabled them to live that way.

The “tongues” they spoke in (Acts 2:4) are here called “signs” (2:43), and signs like that ceased when the Word of God was completed (I Cor. 13:8-10).

They weren’t all “together” (v. 44) in the temple, for there were 3,000 of them (2:41).  They were together in spirit.

Did you ever wonder who told them to live with “all things common” (v. 44,45)?  Luke hadn’t recorded Peter saying so, but he mentions the “many other words” he preached that day (v. 40).  Since he spoke those words in response to the question of how to be saved (Acts 2:37), we know he told them to do what the Lord said to do to be saved and sell all they had and share the proceeds with others (Luke 18:18-22).

Pentecost was a taste of the kingdom, but this is not how they’ll live in the kingdom.  At Pentecost, no man called anything his own (Acts 4:32), but they will in the kingdom (Micah 4:3,4).  But these disciples were heading into the Tribulation, when the Beast will make it impossible to buy or sell without his mark (Rev. 13:17,18).  They’ll need to share with one another to get through that.  After that, they’ll hunger and thirst no more (Rev. 7:13-16).

You couldn’t continue “daily” in the temple (2:46), or in church for that matter, for you have to go to work!  How come they didn’t?  It was because part of what they sold was their means of making a living (Luke 5:10,11,27,28).  This matches how the Jews will be “a kingdom of priests” in the kingdom (Ex. 19:6).  Priests weren’t allowed to work!  They were allowed to keep their primary houses though, and so eat bread from house to house (2:46).  That’s because they weren’t allowed to sell their inheritance (I Ki. 21:1-16).

“Singleness of heart” (2:46) means they didn’t have a double heart, and so could keep rank and stay focused in times of war (I Chron. 12:33).  That’s what the Spirit-filled disciples had at Pentecost, a laser-like focus on serving the Lord!  The kind Paul says we should have too (Eph. 5:18).  Isn’t that what you give your boss (Col. 3:22)?  Why not the Lord?

This kind of living caused them to have favor with the unbelievers (2:47 cf. Pr. 16:7).  “Such as should be saved” are not some elect group God chose to be saved.  Peter’s already told us who should be saved—those who call on the Lord! (Acts 2:21).

Video of this message is also available on YouTube: Were the Lord’s Disciples Communists? – Acts 2:41-47

What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Witness? – Acts 24:14-15

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

A “witness” is someone who saw or heard something and is willing to testify that it is true, like Paul (Acts 24:15).  But that means, technically speaking, we can’t be witnesses.  But we can still testify for Him with something “more sure” than “eyewitness” testimony—the Scriptures (II Peter 1:16-20). If you’ve ever seen a magician, you know you can’t trust your eyes, and witnesses often lie.  But God can’t (Tit. 1:2), and He wrote the Scriptures!  But can you see how, when we testify using the Bible, our witness is different from that of the apostles who saw and heard the Lord?

Our witness is also different from the witness of God’s people in the Old Testament, for they didn’t do any witnessing.  God witnessed for Himself (Acts 14:17), so He didn’t need the witness of men.

Another reason He didn’t need the witness of men is because of the way He witnessed for them (Heb. 11:4) by devouring their sacrifices with fire (Lev. 9:24; I Chron. 21:26; II Chron. 7:1; I Kings 18:24).  Hey, if you offered an animal sacrifice on your front lawn and God devoured it with fire from heaven, would you need to tell your neighbor that your God was the only true God?

God also witnessed for Himself by witnessing to His people through the miracles He did for them.  Parting the Red Sea testified to a Gentile named Rahab that He was God, causing her to believe on Him (Joshua 2).  A Gentile named Naaman believed when God healed his leprosy (II Ki. 5:15), an incurable disease.  Nebuchadnezzar believed when God delivered the three Hebrews (Dan. 3:29), and Darius believed when He delivered Daniel (Dan. 6:26,27).

But now that God is not testifying to Himself by working miracles like that any more, can you see how important it is for you to witness for Him?

God’s ability to tell the future also testified that He was God.  He taunted the false gods that they couldn’t tell the future (Isa. 41:23).  But we live in the dispensation of the mystery.  God is not making and fulfilling prophecies today, nor fulfilling Old Testament prophecies, to prove He is God.  So if you don’t witness for Him, He won’t witness for Himself.

All the time God was witnessing for Himself with miracles, He had one problem He couldn’t overcome—the sinfulness of His people.  So in the New Testament He introduced a new plan to witness that the Jews were His people, and in so doing witness to Himself.  He filled them with His Spirit and caused them to obey Him, just as He predicted He would (Ezek. 36:37), so much so they couldn’t sin (I Jo. 3:19; 5:18).

A misunderstanding of all that has impacted the witness of Christianity in a negative way.  When a Christian sins a lot, men say he that he can’t be saved, because the Lord said you could know believers by their fruit (Mt. 7:20,21).  Now that was true at Pentecost, and will be again in the Tribulation when God again fills His people with His Spirit, but it is not true today.  Just ask the Corinthians.  They were carnal, but Paul called them saints (I Cor. 1:2).

But a failure to rightly divide the Word in this instance has led to a heresy called Lordship Salvation, which says if Christ is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all!  This causes Lordship Salvationists to witness to sinners by telling them to “make Jesus the Lord of your life” to be saved.  But if you promise to make Him your Lord, you’re promising to obey Him (Lu. 6:46).  And if you promise to make Him your Lord to get saved, what happens if you do get saved and disobey Him by sinning?  You’re going to be tempted to think you’re not saved at all!  Can you see the important difference that rightly dividing the word of truth makes to our witness?

Finally, our witness is also different than the Lord’s, who testified to the world of their sinfulness (John 7:7), as did John (Mt. 14:3,4).  But they were trying to establish the kingdom in which no one will sin!  Paul says the only sinners that we should tell are sinners are believers (I Cor. 5:9-12).  Telling unsaved sinners they are sinners just alienates them, and causes them to turn a deaf ear to the gospel.

Video of this message is available on YouTube: What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Witness? – Acts 24:14-15

What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Walk? – Colossians 2:6

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

Our “walk” (Col. 2:6) is how we behave (Ps. 101:2), our manner of life (Gal. 2:14), i.e., how we live our lives.  God has always wanted His people to walk in ways that please Him, but as we rightly divide the Word, we know that how to walk to please Him changes dispensationally.

For instance, God told Israel to walk in the law (Ex. 16:4), because they got saved by the law.  But He tells us to walk as we received Christ (Col. 2:6), and we received Him by faith, by believing something (Acts 16:31).  So we should walk in Him by believing some things!

What things?  Well, Paul uses the word “walk” often, so let’s let him tell us.   First, he says to walk in “newness of life” (Rom. 6:2-4).  If you believe you died and rose with Christ and have been given a new life, you should walk in it.

Paul gloried in the cross (Gal. 6:14) because the Galatians were glorying in circumcision.  The Jews walked in circumcision (Acts 21:21), that was their rule, but we walk in the “rule” that only the newness of life of the new creature matters (Gal. 6:15,16).

We’re spiritually circumcised (Col. 2:10,11), so we have what the symbol of circumcision symbolized.  We also rest in Christ, which the sabbath symbolized, and we have the cleansing that water baptism symbolized (Tit. 3:5).  See how rightly dividing makes our walk different that 7th Day Adventists and Baptists?

Paul also says to walk in the Spirit so you won’t fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Gal. 5:16).  How?  By believing that we’ve already crucified the flesh (v. 24,25)!  If God sees you as sinless, why not walk that way, if you believe it.

Paul also says to walk “honestly” by not sinning (Rom. 13:13).  If God sees you as sinless, and you sin, you’re not being honest with yourself.  The way to stop that is to put on Christ (v. 14).  How?  By believing that you already have put Him on (Gal. 3:27).  He’s the “new man” you put on when you trusted Christ (Col. 3:9-12).

Paul also says to “walk by faith” (II Cor. 5:7).  Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about, walking in Christ by believing some things?  He had to add “not by sight” because that’s how the Jews walked.  God saved Abraham by faith (Gen. 15:5,6), but he didn’t have to take God’s word for it that he was saved.  God gave him wealth he could see (Gen. 13:2) to prove he had the salvation that he couldn’t see. He did the same for Job, who lived around the same time (Job 1:3).  But we don’t walk by sight like that, for God doesn’t enrich His people financially today.

God also enriched the Jews (Deut. 8:18), and gave them other things to see, like parting the Red Sea.  They didn’t have to walk by faith when they saw that, but we do, for God isn’t doing miracles like that any more.

Rightly dividing also affects our “walk” (I Cor. 7:17) when it comes to the subject of divorce (v. 12).  Paul says to stay married to an unsaved wife, but under the Law God told the Jews it would give Him “pleasure” if they would divorce their unsaved wives (Ezra 10:2-11).

Rightly dividing also affects our walk in that the Lord said not to work for food and clothing, that God would provide it (Mt. 6:25-33).  The Jews to whom He said that were heading into the Tribulation, when God would feed them with the “daily bread” He taught them to pray for (Micah 7:14,15),  But Paul says we should work for our bread (I Thes. 4:11,12).

Can you see why Paul tells us to walk as he walked, and mark them which walk otherwise, so we have him as an example (Phil. 3:17)?

You hear a lot about identity theft these days, but you didn’t steal Christ’s identity, God gave it to you as a gift.  Men who steal your identity don’t love you so they charge things to your account, knowing you’ll have to pay for them.  When you sin, you’re acting like you don’t love the Lord, charging things to His account that He’s already paid for.  Why not “walk worthy of the Lord” instead (Col. 1:10)?

Video of this lesson is available on YouTube: What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Walk? – Colossians 2:6

What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Worship? – 2 Timothy 2:15

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

This message is also available on YouTube: What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Worship? – 2 Timothy 2:15

Summary:

Rightly dividing means to see the difference between God’s grace program for us and His law program for Israel.  When Paul began to preach it, the Jews accused him of worshipping “contrary to the law” (Acts 18:12,13).  He refuted that, insisting he worshipped “believing all things… in the law and the prophets” (24:14).  That means we worship in some of the same ways they did back then.

Abraham worshipped by being willing to obey God whatever the cost (Gen. 22:5), and so should you.  “The lad” worshipped by being willing to give his life as a sacrifice, and so should you (Rom. 12:1).  You can worship God by believing all things in the law by putting God first in your life (Deut. 26:10).  If you can worship God when you lose your baby son (II Sam. 12:20) or all your children (Job 1:20,21), you can worship by believing all things in the law.

The Lord said the unsaved Jews worshipped Him “in vain” by teaching incorrect doctrine (Mt. 15:9), which means teaching correct doctrine (as we do) worships Him correctly.  If teaching the commandments of men made for vain worship, then teaching the commandments of God would make for true worship.  And Paul repeats the commandments!

But we worship differently in that the Jews were told to keep the commandments or be cursed (Deut. 11:26-28).  We are told to keep them out of love, not fear (Rom. 13:8-10).  If you love your neighbor, you won’t lie to him, steal from him, etc. And the love He showed you by not sending you to hell for your lying and stealing should constrain you to keep them (II Cor. 5:14,15).

But there were 603 other commandments in the law, many of them like the “touch not, taste not” of Colossians 2:21.  Paul called them “the commandments…of men” (v. 22) because commandments of God imposed on people out of their proper dispensation become commandments of men.

But worshipping God by keeping His commandments involves more than just recognizing that some of the commandments of God are no longer in effect.  It involves recognizing that God gave some new commandments through Paul.  Circumcision was a commandment of God, so for Paul to say it was nothing, but keeping the commandments was everything (I Cor. 7:19), he must have been talking about keeping the commandments given to him (I Cor. 14:37 cf. I Thes. 4:2; II Thes. 3:6,12).  Paul gave hundreds of commandments, and if you teach them you’ll avoid worshipping God in vain, for you’ll be teaching the commandments of God for this dispensation. 

The only other time Paul tells us how we should worship (besides Acts 24:14) is when he says we worship God “in the spirit” (Phil. 3:2,3).  That means to recognize that Gentiles used to be dogs (Mt. 15:26), but now the Jews are (Phil. 3:2) because we are the circumcision (v. 3), the spiritual circumcision.

We were circumcised with Christ (Col. 2:10,11) when He was “cut off” (Isa. 53:8; Dan. 9:26).  God told the Jews that He wanted that for them (Deut. 10:16 cf. Rom. 2:29), and promised to give it to them in the kingdom (Deut. 30:6).  But we have that now, so we have no confidence in the flesh.  The Jews had all their confidence in the fact that their flesh was the circumcised flesh of Abraham (Mt. 3:9), and in the fact that three times a year they had to march their flesh to Jerusalem for Israel’s feasts.  But we observe the feasts in the spirit (cf. I Cor. 5:7).  Our confidence isn’t in the flesh of a passover lamb, but in the Lamb of God that was slain!

We gave examples of how we worship as they did under the law, but we gave none of how we worship as they did in the prophets.  But the prophet Isaiah said that in the kingdom the Jews will worship God by looking into the pit of hell to see the suffering of the unsaved (Isa. 66:23,24).  This answers the question I’m often asked of how we’ll enjoy heaven knowing our loved ones are in hell.  God won’t erase our memories, He’ll change how we think about them.  We will agree with God that they are getting what’s coming to them (cf. Rev.16:7).  So if you don’t ever want your loved ones to be “an abhorring” (Isa. 66:4), tell them about Christ!