You Have Filled Jerusalem with Your Teaching

Acts 5:21-32

    In order to truly understand the meaning of the building of our new buildings, you have to see it as part of the Christian Movement throughout history and around the world. I want to give you some glimpses of that movement, but first let's get the most important facts on the table.

We'll take them from Peter's message here in Acts 5:30-31:

  Fact #1: God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Verse 30: "The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree." The God who created the world--and called Abraham, Isaac and Israel to be his people--this ever-living God raised Jesus from the dead.

  Fact #2: God exalted Jesus to his right hand as Prince and Savior. Verse 31: "God exalted him at his right hand as Leader (or Prince) and Savior." God did not raise Jesus from the dead just to die again. He raised him to reign and to save. He is alive today. He upholds the universe by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3). All authority in heaven and earth has been given to him (Matt. 28:18). He is building his church as he said he would (Matt. 16:18).

  Fact #3: Jesus has authority to give repentance and forgiveness of sins and he is giving them to men and women from all the peoples. Verse 31b: "God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." But not only to Israel--that was only the spring board to the world. Acts 11:18 says the church glorified God saying, "Then to the Gentiles (i.e., the peoples) also God has granted repentance unto life."

Fact #1: God raised Jesus from the dead. Fact #2: God exalted Jesus to his right hand as Prince and Savior. Fact #3: Jesus has authority to give repentance and forgiveness of sins to whom he will, and he is leading his church today in a worldwide movement, gathering all of God's sheep into the fold of faith from every people and tribe and tongue and nation (John 10:16; 11:52).

  Now these are the foundational facts of the Christian movement of which our building and our efforts to pay for it are a part. What the buildings stands for and what will happen in these buildings are part of a movement in history and in the world that is led by Jesus Christ today and cannot be defeated because Jesus reigns omnipotently at the right hand of God and has his authority in the world by virtue of an indestructible life.

   Now, with the foundational facts on the table, let me give you some glimpses of the Christian movement and what we are a part of as we build our buildings for Christ and his kingdom.

First lets look at CHINA

   We are familiar with the story of the amazing growth of the church during the oppression and persecution of the Maoist Cultural Revolution that closed China to the outside world for 40 years. Instead of crushing Christianity, one million Christians became thirty to fifty million.

   What is new and not as widely known is what has happened since Tiananmen Square in June 1989. During the Communist oppression almost all of the church growth was among the poor, the peasants, the under-educated. Millions of them. But after the massacre of Tiananmen Square many of the intellectuals of the land were openly disillusioned with the regime and the philosophy that could crush unarmed students. Writing one year later one insider said,

    We have reports of thousands of intellectuals turning to Christ. In at least five university cities no less than ten percent of the students have been reported as turning to Christianity. In a way this is even more amazing than the revival during the Cultural Revolution. Now it is believed there are more than 200 Million Christians in China. For the revolution that was led by intellectuals is now being deserted by those who made it. (From Herbert Schlossberg, Called to Suffer Called to Triumph, Multnomah Press, 1990, p. 26)

AFRICA

The continent was about 4% professing Christian in 1900 and is about 40% today. There are approximately 16,000 to 20,000 new Christians every day in Africa.

The Old -SOVIET UNION

   After 70 years of atheistic repression, the Christian movement is about 36% of the population--over one hundred million people, five times the size of the Communist Party. And of course the toppling of the Iron Curtain has opened a flood of Christian literature into these spiritually hungry lands. Albania,  Mongolia and North Korea and Cuba may not be far behind. Marxism is bankrupt spiritually and economically.

INDONESIA

   The percent of Christians is so high in this Muslim land that the government won't print it--probably nearing 25%. "More Muslims have become Christians in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Iran, and East Africa in the last ten years than in the last ten centuries" (R. Winter in Mission Frontiers, March, 1989).

KOREA

  In 1900 Korea had no Protestant church; it was thought to be "impossible to penetrate." Today Korea is 30% Christian with 4,000 churches in Seoul alone.

LATIN AMERICA

  Evangelicals have grown from 300,000 in 1900 to 34 million in 1985 and to 80 million in 2000. There are more evangelicals in Brazil than in the whole of Europe, excluding the Former USSR. (Operation World, p. 65.)

Mission agencies

  In the United States, 350 new mission agencies have been established since 1950. More important is that about the same number have been established by non-western churches and the numbers of non-western missionaries is growing so fast that the number overtook the number of all western missionaries some time in 1998. In 1988 there were about 35,000 non-western missionaries; by 2000 that number was 160,000. (Larry Pate, "The Dramatic Growth of Two-Thirds World Missions" in Bridging Peoples, Vol. 8, No. 3, July, 1989, p. 4). God has sent Chinese to reach Tibetans, Hondurans to reach North African Muslims, Navajos to reach Laplanders and other strategies that we can't even mention.

   Now the point is this. Faith Temple is not big. But the Christian movement is big. Even when it is suffering and persecuted and laughed at and beleaguered it is big--because it is God's movement, and his purpose is to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). And his counsel shall stand and he will accomplish all his purpose (Is. 46:10).

   When Peter and the apostles were arrested Acts 5:28 says they were charged like this: "We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching." ….Filled Jerusalem! Well that is step one. Jesus had said, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Now Jerusalem is full. It is almost time to move on.

     Jerusalem is full of teaching--the teaching that God raised Jesus from the dead. And God exalted him to his right hand as Prince over the world and as Savior. And this Jesus is now leading a movement that spreads unstoppably where he wills because he himself gives repentance and forgiveness of sins. That's what Jerusalem is full of--full of the glory of the Lord Jesus--risen, triumphant over death, exalted, Prince and Savior of the world. And that is what the whole world will be full of--and that is the meaning of missions. Filling the earth with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

    We are not big. But we are part of something big. Something that cannot fail. And when I think of these buildings and what I will give to help pay for them, what I think of is the movement--not just our little part in it, but the history-long, everlasting, universe-filling Christian movement called the kingdom of God. The undefeatable Christian movement. "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it."

    That's what we are part of. It means that the new buildings stand for filling the Poetry area with our teaching. If we are going to "spread praise to all nations" with integrity, we have to give ourselves at home to filling Poetry with our teaching. And I don't mean just little us. I mean with all the other Bible-believing churches. That's what the building stands for--filling the Cities and filling the earth with our teaching--the teaching of this text--that God raised Jesus from the dead, that he is exalted to his right hand reigning as Prince and Savior, and that he is leading a world-changing movement by giving repentance and forgiveness of sins among all the nations.

How can we do this?

     Well, how did they do it in Jerusalem--"you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching!" Answer: they did it by radical obedience to God. Verse 29: "Peter and the apostles said, We must obey God rather than men."

    But where does that kind of radical freedom come from? What makes people able to risk jobs and reputation and life like this? The answer is given in verse 32 where Peter explains where this kind of radical obedience comes from. Verse 32: "We are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him." Literally: " . . . and so is the Holy Spirit whom God gave (past tense) to those who are obeying him (present tense)."

    The point is that obedience is the evidence and sign that the Holy Spirit has been given. So the answer to where radical obedience comes from is: it comes from the power of the Holy Spirit.

    They filled Jerusalem with their teaching because in the face of great danger they obeyed God and not man. They obeyed God and not man because they had received the power of the Holy Spirit.

    My prayer for you and for my own family and these new buildings is that God will give us the Holy Spirit in great measure. Because the more he fills us the more radical will be our obedience and the more quickly this city and this world will be filled with the glory of the Lord.

    One of our women told me this morning that as she looked at the picture on the bulletin it looked as though God’s shikinah glory was shining in.

    That's it. That what I want to happen at Faith Temple for the world to see Gods Glory shining through!

Keep that in your mind as you pray this week.