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| A Plan for Man |
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| Written by Dell Young | |||
| Wednesday, 31 December 1969 23:59 | |||
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In the book of Acts, the Lord gave a commission to a group of people. We want to start with Acts 1:1-8 ?The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Unt...
In the book of Acts, the Lord gave a commission to a group of people. We want to start with Acts 1:1-8 ?The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days , and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but ?wait for the promise of the Father, which,? saith He, ?ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.? When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, ?It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and yue shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea , and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.??
Now, the different gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke, give us some words saying the same thing, but because they are different writers, they approach it in a different way. Mark 16:15-16 ? And he said unto them, ?Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be damned.?? Matthew 28:18-20 ? And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, ?All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.?? Luke 24:47 ?And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.? So, the instructions we have here are the beginning of one of the grandest plans that the world has ever known. Before my retirement, we had some responsibilities that would require the employment, supervision, training and care of as many as 300 people. But there would times of major maintenance when we would hire 1000 more people and bring them in for a short amount of time to accomplish our goals. At the introduction of computers in the early 70?s, they were so massive you could fill up a building if you just kept adding to them. But, they were a great benefit to us for planning and scheduling because we could isolate jobs, know the detail of manpower hours and figure the materials required. We always knew there were other plans that had to be made for future jobs, so planning, scheduling, input of data and the changing of management over different jobs was all that some employees would do. It was a continual thing that went on and on. But, all of this doesn?t compare one iota to the plan that God set out to accomplish through his only begotten Son. It wasn?t just that the Lord wanted his Son to come into the world and teach, which he did beginning in Matthew 4:17; he also wanted him to die and to bleed for the sins of mankind, which he did recorded in the closing chapters of all the gospels; and he wanted him to leave a remnant of people in this world to see that this work continued and would go to every corner of the earth. Now, it is great that the Lord didn?t ask for any input from any of us. I think it is great that he didn?t ask any input from those who received the great commission. And when they would question him of things outside of that commission, he would tell them it was not for them to know. He had something for them to do and if they did it like He wanted it done, they were going to be busy every day as long as they lived in this world, and they didn?t need to be worrying about things that are outside of that commission. And he spoke this to 12 people. When he handed out this commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, he was speaking basically to the apostles. They were the ones He had chosen for the task, and they were the ones He depended upon to carry out the task of teaching the whole world about the Son of God and what He means to a lost and dying world. This was not their challenge. This was their responsibility. This was not something they needed to be afraid of because He was going to be with them. This was not something they needed to worry about being able to do because He was going to go back to Heaven so the Holy Ghost could come down and reprove the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. They needed to take no thought of what to say because the Holy Spirit would speak through them. Now, this was the age of some of the greatest educators that the world has ever known and He had all of the choices of all of the people in the world to put in this band of 12 people and he put together 4 fisherman, a tax collector, a bookkeeper, a doubter, and one that would even be a traitor. He took this group of simple people and He gave them the command to go teach all nations. And the only format He left for these people to follow would be to ? tarry in Jerusalem, until you be endued with power from on high? and to begin at Jerusalem. We can read in the book of Acts that there were dwelling in Jerusalem at that time, Jews devout men out of every nation under Heaven. Now, if we are going to out and plant a hybrid seed, and this certainly was a hybrid seed to the Jew and the Gentile alike, we need to go to the most fertile place there is to begin this planting. The most fertile place, at that time, was Jerusalem which was filled with men who had a background association with God and the teachings of God?s word. So He wanted them to start there and it would only follow that the regions around Jerusalem, the country of Judaea, would be the next fertile spot. They were relunctant to leave Jerusalem and only left because of persecution. After Judea, they were to go north to Samaria, a place the Jews had themselves by nature, called a despised place. And then, the world was open to them. Go from there to the uttermost parts of the earth. God wanted them to get the job done. Now, these people that were dwelling in Jerusalem came together on the first Pentecost after the resurrection of Christ. This was a time that the Holy Ghost came into a room of 120 seated people and like cloven tongues of fire sat upon each of them and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. The people who were witnesses to this began to talk among themselves. Some assumed they were drunk. Others didn?t know what was happening. Acts 2:14 ?But, Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day? and he began to preach the first gospel sermon that contained the words ?that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.? That had never been preached before, but it was preached at Jerusalem upon Pentecost. ?And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?? Peter was speaking in one voice and all of these other people were understanding him in their own language. ?Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians...? These were the differents nations that were represented here on that day. Now, when Peter wrote his first epistle, in Peter 1:1, he addressed it, for the most part, this same group of people. He wrote to them and explained in his second letter in Peter 3:1 ?This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance...? He wrote to them for a purpose and wanted them to understand that. He wrote to them to stir their pure minds and continues on to go over what he preached on the day of Pentecost. A plan, a method, and a continuity. Peter would write to Timothy and speak of him as a young evangelist and give him God?s plan and the interpretation of it saying simply, ?And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.? He established a continuity. So, we have an obligation to teach and to be taught if we expect this message to go on through the world. In His first plans ever made for man, which we can study in Genesis, the Lord had in mind to deal with man as though He were his friend. He put the first man in the most beautiful place that you and I have ever heard of. Though we have never seen it, it has become a symbol to us for peace, beauty and prolific production. The Garden of Eden. We have never seen it but we believe it was there. And when we look back and see it, we don?t see the cherabim with the flaming sword which turns every way to keep up out of that garden, we only see the garden where Adam and Eve were in the beginning where each day in the cool of the evening, God would come down and visit these two people as with a friend. He would walk with them and talk with them. I can think of no better way that we could be deal with someone than to walk with them and talk with them and guide them through and see that they make each step as it ought to be made. That is close communion and no better method of teaching has ever been introduced that will supercede the way God planned to deal with man. In the language that comes after this, we learn that God?s plans in the beginning, even before the creation, gave man every opportunity and told him he would last as long as he wanted to last. And God knew that man that would not want to last forever...and he made another plan to take over after death. 2500 years; divers manners; sundry times; speaking unto the prophets by the fathers; God tried to keep the relationship as friends. Then He tried another method. He took a slave, made him free, called him His, made him national and brought about a group of people recognized around the world as the brightest, richest and the most prolific nation of all the nations of men. The old law of Moses: God tried it for 1500 years. And that didn?t work. They turned their back on him. And the Hebrew writer continues that thought in Hebrews 1, and he speaks of the law as though it were an old garment. God didn?t destroy that law...He folded it up and He took it out of our way. Not because it wouldn?t work, but because they rejected it and wouldn?t let it work. God tried one other thing. All of the sacrifices that have been offered down through the years, all of the animals that have been killed, all of the good things that have been done by rightous men of God and all of the bad things by the enemies of God - He erased them to that point. God would send one sacrifice into the world; one that was acceptable to him; one that would do what man wanted done as a friend; one that would accomplish his task in 33 short years; and one who would leave a band of people to explain this message to the rest of the world. And when this is done...all is done. When this ceases to work, then time will cease to be. Now, how did he pick out the 12 men to do this? Jesus? method is almost casual. He was walking by the seashore and saw a man and his brother and told them to ?Follow me.? And they did. He walked a little further and saw two fishermen with their father and told them to ?Follow me.? And they did. He went further and there sat a man at customs and he told him to ?Follow me.? And he did. When he puts all of them together and gives them names, then they become persons to us. We begin to get familiar with them. We know them as Peter, James the son of Zebedee, John, Simon the Canaanite, Thaddeus, Thomas, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, James the son of Alphaeus, Matthew and Judas. There is nothing in their backgrounds for this kind of responsibility. Paul, who was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, became an apostle only by being born out of due season because the Lord had a special thing that He wanted done. Paul was taught to be a teacher and was current in the teachings of the Roman Law, the old law of Moses, was a very avid Jew, a part of the Pharisees which was the straightest sect of the Jews, and a son of the tribe of Benjamin but the Lord wanted him to be an apostle to the Gentiles. The plan for man could not be complete until God could establish something new for a group of people who had never been included in His plan of learning, law, or nationality. He chose to take another route to reach another group of people, so he chose these 12 and told them to go unto all the world and preach the gospel. Now, here?s the seriousness of their task. God wanted them to go into all the world, not just to their friends and relatives. All the world, because the world is going to be measured by this and everybody deserves an opportunity for God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Through the years, we think we have become a wise people. When the Lord was here, and people were continually asking about when the end shall come or when he would return to the earth, He gave them a few signs. One: He spoke of His end as it was with Jonas, when he spent three days in the belly of a great fish , as the Son of Man will spend three days in the earth. Two: He spoke of the world?s end as when it gets as in the time of Noah when ?the thoughts and imaginations of man?s heart had become evil continually.? Jesus had to remind the apostles before he left this world the end of time was not their concern; it was God?s. They needed to preach and teach as if it were going to be tomorrow. The teachings that the apostles did in the book of Acts beginning in Chapter 2 were a story-based teaching. When we leave Acts and get into the epistles written to churches and individuals down through the years by these chosen people with a pen guided by the Holy Ghost Himself, we find how to take care of the details of all of the fusses that we want to bring into this world. And we, as a human race, have introduced a bunch of them over the years. We?ve asked too many questions, we?ve imposed too many probabilities, and we?ve speculated about the end of the world. And one of the last things the Lord said before witnesses saw him go up into Heaven and be received by angels, was that was not our concern. Your concern is preaching a life saving gospel unto a lost and dying world. Confine yourselves to the things you are capable of doing and do it right. But we got wiser. It took us about 1600 years, but we got wiser and we began to discover things. A man from Italy, named Columbus, discovered this country. He never actually got here, but he got credit for discovering America. We?ve had people go to other places in the world to explore, but they have never been where there wasn?t already someone there. If it was a habital country, there was someone there. Ever since the Tower of Babel, there has already been someone there. And when the explorers got there, they found a common thread of devoutness in the people already there. When we first discovered the Inca Indians back in the 16th century, the theme of their religion was a belief in a Saviour that was born of a virgin woman. That didn?t follow the gospel because of time and generations and lack of teaching, but it had to start somewhere. Their concept was that a feather came down and touched this woman and she brought forth a Savior. The Eskimo people also have a religion that is kin to what we call the Christian religion...that common thread. Was it possible that he could tell this 12 men to go into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature? Well, 1500 years later, we got smart enough to go and check out the rest of the world and there it is...that common thread. That word went out. It worked. It went to the lost and dying world. But, as we got smarter in other things, we also got what we thought was smarter with the Word of God. We started to bend it, stretch it and rearrange it to make it fit because, as one of the oldest arguments we have in religion goes, things going on in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd century aren?t going on today. There are some things written in there that apply only to that group of people and we don?t need to apply it today. ?Let your woman keep silent in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak? was written only for the Greek prophets at Corinth. We don?t want that today because we have woman?s liberation. We don?t enslave our women as it is said those women did, so those instructions don?t apply to us...we got smart in other ways, didn?t we? We began to out think God in our own minds and set up kingdoms to force religion on others and it led us into one of the darkest ages of man, aply named the Dark Ages. We came out of that era because of desperation. We came out because even the lowest educated person in the world could see that there was nothing in the religion being forced upon them that provided a blessing for every man, woman and child in the world as it was promised to do, but rather it was a curse that we walked away from in fear rather than walking toward to be a part of it. It wasn?t the gospel that Christ spoke of in this way when he said ?When, if I am lifted up, I will draw all men nigh unto me.? The gospel is not a goad to push us down the road to religion but an attraction that makes us want to be there. There was nothing in the Dark Ages that reflected that. The kings who were enforcing these religions would kill people who wanted to educate themselves from a religious standpoint. Our great hunger and thirst for the truth led us out of the Dark Ages and into what is called the Reformation. Out of this reformation, came those stalwart teachers who had no comparative background to bring with them except the old Catholic doctrine. Now, we can look back at the early churches and see the confusion about the immenence of the Jew or the Greek; this caused a great stir because one thought they were better than the other. We look at the people at Corinth coming together to break bread in 1 Cor 11:20-21 ?When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord?s supper. For in eating everyone taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is thirsty. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?? Paul had to tell them how to partake of the Lord?s supper. But, before we raise our foot too high to stomp them down, look what they had, compared to us, to go by. They didn?t have Corinthians - it wasn?t completed yet. They had messengers - but they didn?t come and stay with them. They had to write letters back and forth to communicate. They didn?t have years of examples set out in front of them as we have had. I obeyed the gospel and went to church for about 5 years, got married, and had 3 children. We went over to Whitesboro, Tx to hold a meeting and were put up in a motel. We got up, got ready and were killing time waiting for 10:30 to come around and a fellow came and knocked on the door to ask us if anybody had told us they met at 10:00. They were about to run out of songs that they knew! I didn?t even know if that was scriptual because everybody else met at 10:30! I did learn to ask after that what time services started when we attended an unfamiliar church. But, we have tradition to follow that has become a part of our religious life. These early churches didn?t have that. I don?t know what time Corinth met. Paul told them to tarry one for another and they didn?t even understand that. If a man was hungry, he would get there early and eat his fill of bread. If another was thirsty, he would get there early and get a long drink. If one got there late, they got left out. That was not the Lord?s supper. They didn?t know why they were gathering there and they had to be told. You and I grew up in it. And when someone reads a passage in the Bible about the Lord?s supper, we are familiar with it so we behave ourselves in a certain way. But it had to start somewhere and it started back there. We are blessed in many ways and don?t realize it because we are familiar with this way of life in the company of the Lord?s people and in the company of the Lord?s teachings. Thru our teaching efforts, we need to recognize there are people who are not familiar with these blessings. Like the Ethiopian eunuch, who read and studied but didn?t understand because he needed someone to guide him. There?s not many homes that don?t have a table that doesn?t have a Bible on it. We cannot be ignorant in this dispensation of God?s time, unless we want to be because we are with the plan of salvation every day of our lives. So, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; go ye therefore and teach all nations; and become something we can all see. That plan will work, it has worked, and it is working to the saving of souls.
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