Heavenly Father, we want to thank you that you have been so gracious to us. There is a one of us in this room who sought you with our whole hearts, or who deserved to be saved by you. Every one of us is a rebel, and every one of us has sinned in all sorts of ways. And your word teaches us, but if we break your law at one point, we are guilty of all of it. Father, we pray that you will forgive us, all of us, for the hardness of our hearts, because we acknowledge our hearts are hard, hard to you, and hard to one another is fellow believers and hard to people around us in their unbelief and sin. Father, we pray that you will do your work of grace in our hearts, both to soften our hearts towards you, and towards the great love you have shown us through your Son, and also father to soften our hearts to people around us. We pray that you will make us into people who are conformed to the image of your Son, enable us to be an example of that to others, and enable us to teach it to our children and to model it to them. Father, we ask these things, and we pray that you will be with us in this hour together in Jesus' name. Amen. So, we have been going through this outline in Acts, which I did send this morning to your friendlier person who is passing it along to you, so he will get that to you probably tonight. We went through this first section on the Day of Pentecost. We looked at the way the apostles went, or the gospel went out from Jerusalem, and we talked about their reluctance. Now, this order on here isn't exactly the order we've gone through in class because I've been dealing with issues more as I felt constrained to, and then I have them in this outline. We looked at how persecution drove the church to mission, though the apostles themselves did not go. We saw Philip ministering in Samaria, and then we looked at what it took to get Peter into the home of Cornelius, and we were going through that outline there. And we also looked just very briefly at some of the reluctance of the church to go out through our church history. We looked at Jonah in the Old Testament. I mentioned briefly awful us mission to the Goths. The beginning of the church in Ethiopia, the Apostle Thomas in India, I mentioned Patrick in Ireland, the conversion of the Vikings, the Crusades, the failure to reach beyond Christendom of the Reformers. We spoke briefly about William Kerry. At the end last time I used the example of slavery and the slave trade from Africa to the Americas, and the abysmal failure of the church, either to send missionaries to Africa, which what it should have been doing, and its failure also, with a very few exceptions, to speak against slavery and the slave trade. What was new about the slave trade is not that human beings have in practice slavery through much of their history, as sadly they haven't still do. It's one of the things Bill Devlin has recently involved in. He's just been in Pakistan, speaking up to the government there on behalf of Christians who are at this present time enslaved by Muslims in Pakistan, and have been for many, many generations of tiny minority of Christians in Pakistan. This slavery there right now, of course, during the time of war, there are women enslaved to be used as prostitutes. I was listening to a program on NPR this morning on Diane Reem. There's interviewing several lawyers who've been working in the International Court of Justice to bring people to trial for the appalling rape and abuse of an enslavement of women as prostitutes during the war in the wars that have taken place in Yugoslavia over the last seven or eight years, and they've managed to convict people of that. There are lots of slavery in the Sudan right now, slavery, enslavement of Christians by Muslims. So there's been lots of slavery through the history of the human race. What's different here in terms of what I'm referring to and slavery to the Americas is that up until about 1480, slavery was basically practiced by most people against most other people. If you looked at a group of slaves, for example, in 1450, in various parts of Europe or North Africa or across the Middle East, you would have found slaves of every nation basically, slaves of every race, up until that point. The term slave itself comes from the word Slav, the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, and that's where the term slave comes from. But up until about 1480, slavery was very widely practiced, and most slaves were prisoners of war. People captured in war who were then used to slaves, and of course that was completely wrong. What's different from 1480 onwards is that beginning with Portugal, the Portuguese began to capture and buy Africans from, first of all, the west coast of Africa and start transporting them across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and to South America and eventually to North America as well, and beginning with the Portuguese and then the Spanish and the French and the Dutch and the British, that slave trade then just grew dramatically from that beginning in around 1480. And there's a very fine history of this which just came out a couple of years ago. It's the definitive history by a Welshman named Thomas. It's the best history of the slave trade that's ever written and perhaps I'll bring it to class next time for those of you who are interested. And that was the first time really in history that slavery of one race by another race for purely economic purposes. And that's really what happened from that point onwards. And millions and millions of Africans were transported across the Atlantic to North and South and Central America and the Caribbean over the next several hundred years. And what is appalling about that period of history is, as I said, really two things in terms of the churches, involvement and lack of response, biblically, to what was taking place. The first was the failure of churches in Europe and in the Americas to send missionaries to Africa, which is what they should have been doing in obedience to Jesus' command. And the second failure, of course, was the failure to speak against the slave trade and against slavery with very few exceptions. And there are a few exceptions. The Quaker Church here in the States from very early on was passionately involved in fighting against slavery, not fighting, of course, because Quaker's a pacifist, but in protesting against slavery and against the slave trade and a very consistent way for a long period of time, the other church that was involved from its beginning were the Covenanters, a small group of Presbyterians of Scottish descent who, from their beginnings here in the United States, spoke passionately against slavery and against the slave trade and refused to be involved in it. In any kind of way at all, a disciplined church members who were involved in it, they would not welcome any other Presbyterians, some other denominations, or any other professed Christians to the Lord's table in their churches at any point, and that caused all sorts of criticism of course for them. They were very involved in proclaiming the gospel to black people around them, to Africans around them, and some points they had to move whole churches to avoid the problems. Some of their churches were moved from the Carolinas to Illinois to avoid problems they got into because of their stand against slavery, and then they became extremely involved in the underground railroad, and when the nation was founded as a nation, at the time the declaration of independence, they refused to acknowledge the United States government as a legitimate government, for really for two reasons, one because they said it's not explicitly Christian, but simply acknowledges the god of nature, it's basically a deistic document that was their stand, and right up until the 1970s, only in the 1970s that they finally acknowledged the legitimacy of the government, and also they absolutely refused to acknowledge the rightness of the Declaration of Independence because of the attitude to Africans that they were treated as less than human, and they said this is not a document that a Christian can recognize as something to be obeyed. They have a wonderful history, though they were a very small church in terms of this, but sadly the overwhelming majority of our churches and our church members have almost every denomination failed to either speak or act in any way against slavery and the slave trade. It's not really until William Wilberforce working in the British Parliament in the early 1800s for his, in fact giving his whole life to it, that there began to be a passionate outcry by Christians against slavery and the slave trade, and that in itself is a wonderful story to read. Wilberforce, born in an English noble family, was converted as a young man, actually under the ministry of John Newton who wrote the film Amazing Grace. It's also a wonderful story. John Newton himself, of course, had been an officer on a slave trip for many years before his own spiritual awakening and then called the ministry. Wilberforce was converted under his ministry and then as a young man devoted his life as a Christian to the abolition of first the slave trade and then the practice of slavery. When he began, of course, very few people paid any attention. He was a tiny minority. He and his group of friends in the British Parliament and he kept reintroducing bills for a period of 40 years and eventually was able to change the law. It's a wonderful example of a Christian realizing that if you're going to change anything, it takes a long time and you have to keep trying. You don't just give up when you don't get anywhere. It's one of the problems with democracy. It's why Plato called democracy the best form of bad government and the worst form of good government and what he meant by that was it's the worst form of good government because it takes a very long time to change things because you've got to change the way people think. You can't just pass laws. If people don't acknowledge them, you have to change the moral climate of a nation and a democracy to change laws. Something Christians need to recognize at the present time with the battles that we're all involved in. Plato said that it's the worst form of good government for that reason. It's the best form of bad government because it takes longer for things to get worse and a democracy for the same reason because you've got to take the people with you. But Wilberforce recognized the necessity of not only working in Parliament but working to change the way that people thought and he and his friends committed themselves the two things. One was unceasing attempts to change the law as a Christian obligation in obedience to the word of God and secondly that they had to commit themselves to reshaping the moral climate of the nation. Not only the British nation but other nations as well because they then became involved in seeking to abolish the slave trade and slave not only for Britain but for every other European nation involved in it and also for North America as well for the United States and South American nations too. But they devoted themselves to changing the moral climate. If you study the history of politics and government you will discover that it's really the first popular movement where Wilberforce and his friends devoted themselves to getting involved at a local level sending around teachers all over Britain to give lectures and have discussions in every village and city hall all over the nation to change the way people thought and they gave those talks of course from a biblical perspective attacking the institution of slavery and the slave trade as an abomination to God and a disobedience to his word and it began a popular movement and it was because the people under their influence started speaking out against slavery and writing to their politicians and putting pressure on them that eventually the British Parliament finally passed the laws that Wilberforce kept introducing year after year because there was such enormous pressure economically during the 18th century Britain carried the biggest number of slaves across the Atlantic to the Americas and consequently made enormous amounts of money from it. It was one of the sources of Britain's prosperity at that time as well as of course of the source of the prosperity of particularly the southern states here that practiced slavery so widely the prosperity of the south was built on the practice of slavery if you don't have to pay people you can make lots of money well those economic pressures were what made it so hugely difficult for Wilberforce and his friends but they committed themselves as Christians to that and it took 44 years of Wilberforce's life and he was almost dead himself he was dying in fact by the time not first the slave trade and then finally slavery itself was completely abolished through at Britain and all of its colonies at that time and then they also persuaded the British government to use its naval forces to prevent the carrying of slaves across the Atlantic to the Americas and gradually managed to bring other nations into that as well but the history is a tragic history of the church with these singular exceptions so all these examples of our reluctance to obey the commandment of God to go out to the world with the gospel my last example here is an example from Wickliffe Wickliffe Bible translators in New Guinea which I saw in one of their own films and one of their videos about their work and it was an extraordinarily moving example was a Wickliffe Bible translator who was in New Guinea working in a community there with the people translating the Bible into their language you'll all know that that is what Wickliffe does we have several graduates of this seminary who work for them the brother of my colleague in in the English Libre for many years but I just got a prayer letter from them yesterday it's a graduate of the seminary John and Heidi McCoy they've been working in Tanzania for the last 20 years and have just bought out their translation of the New Testament into one of the languages there but those that's what Wickliffe missionaries do they go into a situation they learn the language of a people of a people that have no written language themselves they then create a written language for them and they then translate the Bible beginning with a New Testament and then the Old Testament into the language of the people get it printed and distributed and then of course teach the people to read so that they can have God's word in their own language well this woman was in New Guinea doing this task in an area of New Guinea in the remote jungle and in this video is absolutely fascinating and some of you may have seen it because it's one they used to talk about their work in this video she one day a deputation from another part of New Guinea comes on several days journey to her and they come to her with a request and they say the news has come to us that you are teaching these people a new message about God's work of deliverance on our behalf and we are eager for you to come and proclaim this message to our people too in fact we have already built a church for you and they had so can you come and tell us this message as well and she goes with this deputation of people it's rather like the a canton acts can actually of Cornelius sending a deputation to Peter and the story we were looking at last week and she goes with these people and she comes to their villages in this remote even remote area of the forest several days journey away and they're indeed they built a church ready to hear the gospel and they ask her to stay and she says well I can't because I have to go back and complete the work where God has called me but I will send to our headquarters and see if they can send you somebody it's a wonderful example of you know again the churches inadequate response to the needs of people to hear the gospel God is always one step ahead to say the least in fact he's hundreds of steps ahead not just one but you know that's to put it very mildly and let me just finish that section with these words with just with this question do we believe the words of Christ when he says in John chapter 4 that the fields are white to harvest and at an even deeper level do we believe that God is a god of compassion and mercy because that's really the issue remember in starting this section I said so often we speak as if we had more care for people than God does when we ask questions about what about those who've never heard the gospel and is God fair and why doesn't God do something about it well when we look at all these examples historically of the failure of the church we see that it's not God's problem it's our problem what our problem really is is our failure to come to terms with these words of Jonah where and of course this is Jonah's complaint though I haven't put these words down here as a complaint but rather as an encouragement to us I hope that these words are not a complaint for any of us today you are a gracious and compassionate God slow to anger and abounding in love a God who relents from sending calamity that's Jonah's complaint that's why he's sick to death and God's response to him is Nineveh has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left should not Igui be concerned about that great city and of course that's the message of Scripture that God is concerned about every city and every people on the face of this earth now our next heading here is the missionary God and I want to go very quickly through this first part and as we've already really gone over this the apostles seem reluctant to leave Jerusalem to preach in Samaria to preach to the Gentiles and they certainly were reluctant as we saw they didn't leave Jerusalem even despite the persecution it was others who went Peter had a hard time going to the house of an easy Gentile never mind pagan ones so the apostles and the church were reluctant but of course God was not and as we saw God has planned for our salvation before the foundation of the world he prepared for the coming of his son and then he sent his son and the question is who will see that this work is applied to anyone God of course is the one who does make sure that this work is applied now we looked already at the example of the Ethiopian eunuch and I won't go over that we saw of course that God is the one who brings about his salvation he takes still up there by extraordinary means to bring the Ethiopian eunuch to have his questions answered who's this person that Isaiah is speaking about in Isaiah 53 if we were to read the account of the conversion of Cornelius and his household and his friends and his soldiers again from Acts chapter 10 we would if we look at it the other side what you see of of course is a record of what God does to bring the message of the gospel to the house of Cornelius we were looking at it from the perspective of what it took to get Peter there in terms of Peter's reluctance but if we look at it the other way round you know all those points that I made last week reveal to us how committed God was to get the gospel to the house of Cornelius it's a really wonderful story that brings us to another example the conversion of Saul the conversion of Saul which of course is a turning point in the history of missions the account of the conversion of Saul is perhaps the most dramatic story of anyone's salvation that we read in the New Testament and the reason it's so dramatic is that Saul is according to his own testimony a person who lived at the very heart of Judaism he reads Paul's description of himself in Philippians 3 4 through 6 he writes this way about himself Philippians 3 verses 4 through 6 I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews in regard to the law I was a Pharisee and a Pharisee of the strictest sect that's how he describes himself in Acts 23 verse 6 that I lived according to the strictest sect of our religion he was a Pharisee of the strictest persuasion as for zeal he says I persecuted the church as for legalistic righteousness I was faultless I was passionately committed to being every letter of the law of God and not just God's written laws but all those laws that Judaism had over the centuries added to the law of God as we read the book of Acts we see that Saul is present at the stoning to death of Stephen if you read at the beginning of Acts 8 and the end of Acts 7 it says Saul is there where Stephen is stoned to death and right after that Saul then takes the lead in bringing about a terrible persecution of the church in Jerusalem and not only the church in Jerusalem he's not content to destroy the church there simply he gets letters from the chief priest and he goes to other cities as well to drag men and women who are Christians off to prison now as we think about the conversion of Saul and how it came about we might ask the question you know were the Christians praying for his conversion
were the Christians praying for his conversion of course we don't know the answer to that question but if we look at the way Christians are today how often do we pray for those who persecute the church
and when I tell you a story for example about Christians being enslaved for generations in Pakistan is your response to pray for them yeah I'm sure it is but and to feel sympathy for them or do you also respond and pray for those who are enslaving and persecuting them it's hard to do it's hard to do when you think of the Christians enslaved and murdered every day in the Sudan
you pray for them do you also pray for their persecutors that they might be converted
when you think of Christians being persecuted in China today and that of course is still happening that what makes the news all the time is the persecution of Thalangong because that's the one that's most right out in the open but Christians are still having a hard time in China today too do you pray not only for the Christians but for their persecutors we looked at the example of Jane Fonda though she wasn't exactly a persecutor of Christianity
it's very difficult to do last night I watched this movie contender the contender
about a woman who becomes vice president the actress has been nominated for the Oscar this year I wouldn't encourage you to watch it it's not a savory film there are all sorts of sections of it that need fast forwarding but one of the offensive things about it for a Christian watching it it's not just the language and the explicit sexuality but the way in which Christianity is treated and the assumption that anybody who is pro-life is an appalling hypocrite and thoroughly politically corrupt and and a person who's absolutely ruthless in order to get their ends and that the only real heroes are passionately committed humanists that's really the message of the film and as you know from this class I challenge us as Christians not to do the same thing the other way round you know that the film is an appalling caricature of people on the political right and people who are pro-life and and of Christians it's an appalling caricature and it's very offensive as a Christian to see something like that but it's a good reminder to us not to do the same thing the other way round to present caricatures about the people it doesn't help anybody to get to the truth of anything but as I think about that film and how offended I was by it I kept waking up in the night thinking about it really all sorts of aspects of it bothered me but I asked myself as I make this point did I think of praying for the people who made the film who have their passionately pro-humanist anti-Christian message in it it's very hard to do you know making this point is a good reminder to me to go home and pray for them it's very challenging so it's very unlikely that the Christians prayed much for Saul maybe one or two of them did we'll find out one day we know that Stephen did that's the wonderful thing he actually prays for the people who are killing him Lord forgive them his prayer is the same as Jesus prayer on the clock cross for the people who are crucifying him so that's what we're actually called to do it's very difficult it goes so much against the grain because we like to hate people who hate us it's very challenging to hear Jesus' word to love your enemies and to bless those who persecute you and perhaps there were a few other Christians along with Stephen who were blessing literally the persecuted Saul and the others who were stoning him to death so were there prayers for his conversion perhaps a few but probably not a lot I imagine the response of most of the Christians was just to be terrified of Saul and yet you know Saul becomes the apostle the Gentiles but if we read about the conversion of Saul you know it's such a wonderful story because it reminds us never to give up on praying for people never to give up on praying for people you may see somebody who thinks the most hardened enemy of the gospel the person who is most hateful to the church and you may draw the conclusion it's pointless to pray for them
we very easily we rather lightly quote passages like we're not going to cast our pearls before swine and draw the conclusion that somebody is a swine that they're not going to respond so there's no point if what's the point of persevering with this person who's so unpleasant who's so uninterested who's so hateful well Saul stands as a wonderful reminder now God doesn't just write people off he's prepared to reach people who are his enemies and who are the enemies of his church and draw them to himself and of course that's what he does with Saul we had a wonderful example like this in our church where I was a pastor in England we and a man come to church one day with his wife and children and he was in a wheelchair he had fragile bone disease and it's a very appalling disease where your bones just break very very easily and eventually he died of pneumonia which is a very shocking way to die and that's how people with that disease usually die because every time he coughed he'd break another rib you know and then they don't mend so it's excruciating absolutely excruciating but he came to our church started coming every week and oh another friend of our church one of the deacons in our congregation is also a man who's in a wheelchair paralyzed some his neck down one of my dearest friends he writes to me every couple of weeks that we've been living here 12 years he writes with a thing in his mouth if you'd have flared on a computer because nothing from that nothing below here works he'd been a gymnast an international gymnast who broke his neck warming up for display and the story of his conversion is wonderful too I'm getting a little aside here but that's fine it's a wonderful story here yeah his name is Philip and he broke his neck and when he was warming up for this gym display and he got rushed to this special hospital which deals with spinal injuries the place called stoke mandible in Britain and he died like a dozen times that night oh his heart stopped and everything stopped and they had to keep bringing him back to life and it was between a couple of those occasions that God spoke to him directly and he became a Christian just in his own heart you know he wasn't consciously talking to anybody nobody was witnessing to him he had his parents were Christians and he'd completely rebelled against their faith as a child but that night you know in between those times he died Christ spoke directly to his heart and he came to faith and he's one of the most joyful believers I have ever met here's this man paralyzed some the neck down he's in his 50s now and he's been this wafer over 30 years just a wonderful guy he and his wife ran the youth ministry in our church for years quite remarkable he loved sports still he never became bitter or cynical about it and every Sunday at church you see him surrounded by a group of 10 to 15 year old boys talking about the latest sports games that they've all seen and just like he's just like a honey pot surrounded by bees it's extraordinary just a person filled with vibrancy and vitality it's a remarkable example of the grace of God at work but I was going to talk about his response to this other man who came in a wheelchair well when when Phil saw this man Peter coming to our church he said that's amazing so that really teaches me a lesson I knew him 13 years ago and I thought he was the most cynical person I had ever met in my life and I decided it wasn't worth even praying for him because clearly he was a person who was totally be God beyond God's reach he was so filled with bitterness over his fragile bone disease so filled with cynicism about life about the possibility of God's existence or of God being good and everything else I thought I won't even pray for this man and he came to our church and he became converted and it was just wonderful with his family but it really taught him a lesson and all of us a lesson you know not to write people off not to say well here's a person who is completely on reach as God delights to do what is impossible for us actually saving anybody is impossible for us remember how Jesus says this to the rich young ruler about the rich young ruler when he goes away sorrowful how can people be saved the apostle's responses if this guy goes away like this and Jesus responses well with men this is impossible but with God it's possible he can save the wealthy and he can save the cynical and the better and the hard-hearted and he can save persecutors of his church as he does with Saul now as we read the account of Saul's conversion we cannot imagine a more dramatic conversion here's Saul he's on the way to Damascus with lettuce from the high priest you know planning to put more Christians in prison he's breathing out murderous threats that's the language that that the book of acts uses against the believers and while he's on the journey he is literally arrested I've stopped in his tracks by this shining light from heaven a brighter than the sun and a voice speaking to him and of course it's the voice of Christ Saul Saul why are you persecuting me and he replies who are you Lord and he says I am Jesus whom you are persecuted and Saul comes to faith it's just a wonderful story of God's work in saving people if you doubt that God's the one who saves people read the story of Saul's conversion again you know it's such a marvelous account of what God does now what's interesting though about this or another point that's interesting is that as you read this story even in the account of Saul's conversion there is an indication that God has already been at work in Saul's heart before that day when Jesus confronts him on the Damascus road now why do I say that anybody idea any ideas what in the texts in the book of acts yes that's right that's exactly right that's one of the things that Paul tells us that Jesus said to him it is hard for you to kick against the goats oh that's recorded in acts 26 verse 14 where Paul himself tells about his conversion on another occasion it's in one of his trials he talks about his conversion and he adds there these words to the words that we read in Acts 9 in the first account of his conversion because Acts 9 isn't complete so later on Paul gives us some more details why are you kicking against the goats so the point is that God is already at work in Saul's heart before Christ meets him on the Damascus road already there are goats pricking at his mind and heart the text does not tell us precisely but the point is the spirit of God is already at work drawing Saul to Christ before he meets the Lord face to face now we don't know what those goats were there's several possibilities it might have been the quality of life and of courage and even the love for Saul in the faces of some of the people he dragged off the prison and were they the goats that God was using maybe it was the words of Stephen as he's dying and Saul hears those Lord don't hold this sin against them there was at his own excellent knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures and of the Messianic prophecies and what he had heard about Jesus so that he's beginning to wonder whether he should be quite so confident in his assumption that Christianity is a heresy we don't know of course and again being of a curious mind I'd love to ask him one day you know what were the goats that Jesus referred to what was he doing Saul in your mind and heart as he worked to draw you to himself now as we think about the conversion of Saul it is something enormously important in the life of the history of the church and in the history of mission in particular it's to the church at Antioch that Saul goes not too long after his conversion the church at Antioch you remember was the one where they first started reaching out to pagan Gentiles and we read that account at the end of Acts chapter 11 and the first people these Christians some North Africa and Cyprus who start reaching out to the pagan Gentiles and large numbers of them are converted in Antioch in Syria and then Barnabas goes and Barnabas goes and fetches Saul and Saul comes to work at the church in Antioch to preach and to teach and to do the work of evangelism there and then from that church as they fast and pray the Holy Spirit sends Barnabas and Saul out on their first missionary journey and they start going right across the Roman Empire and we see missions as we understand them really beginning to take place in a planned way by God's people for the first time. Now let me just stop there and I say I don't want to have any questions before I move on here yes yeah that's a good question a question about the institution of slavery in the Old Testament yeah I want to make several comments about it I don't have time to give a full lecture on it but I'll make several comments
number one there are all sorts of laws within Israel which ameliorate the condition of the slaves and also require their liberation oh they are to be treated with justice and with fairness
in all in the life of Israel as a nation they're not property I like animals in the way that in the way that Europe and in the Americas there were laws as I said that required their liberation in the 50th year in the year of jubilee slaves were to be released liberty was to be proclaimed throughout the land so enslavement was not a permanent institution I guess the first thing I would say the second is that there are all sorts of laws in the Old Testament which are allowed because of the hardness of the hearts of the people of Israel so we ought not to read all Old Testament law as if it were perfect this is true with regard to marriage and easy divorce where Jesus uses those words explicitly he says that these easy divorces were allowed because of the hardness of your hearts but that's not God's original intention not God's perfect law for you for the human race or for his people and he quotes Genesis so there are laws about marriage and divorce and the treatment of women which are clearly rescinded by Christ very explicitly and we can say the same as also think about marriage with the practice of polygamy which is clearly not in agreement with God's law but is endured by him in the Old Testament and there are many other examples like this you can think of the way Abraham treats his wife Sarah which is clearly not an obedience to the commandments of God and many many other examples or of in terms of enslavement you can think of Joseph's brother selling him into slavery and we have many things that take place both that are recorded as historical events and also even laws within the law of Moses which are clearly not God's perfect purpose for his people but which are endured by God because of the hardness of the hearts of his people so that's a second thing I think that needs to be said about it the other thing you should notice the third thing you should notice is that it's never based on race as such a slavery in Israel is practiced as it is in the nations around Israel primarily in the context of people who are taken captive in war and as I said this is how most slavery has been practiced throughout history they're forbidden to kidnap people and to enslave them so there are all sorts of laws against the enslavement of people the times you see it practiced are our prisoners of war and that happens to Israelis they are taken as prisoners of war by let's say the Syrians we're going to look later at Namom's conversion he is converted primarily through the witness of an Israeli slave girl in his home so this slavery is practiced in that context but the enslavement about the people by kidnapping them is forbidden by the word of God now when you come to the New Testament it's made quite clear in the New Testament that to enslave people is a sin absolutely forbidden by God to kidnap people to sell them into slavery is sin in the New Testament which is spoken explicitly of as a practice which is outside the kingdom of God that Paul says just like murdering of mothers and murdering of fathers and all kinds of other sins he includes enslaving people in that list which the church needed to pay attention to now clearly in the New Testament there are many people who are slaves who become Christians in the early church read lots of examples of this in the New Testament as you read the New Testament letters and that does not imply an approval of the practice slavery is very widely practiced in the Roman Empire there were enormous numbers of slaves millions of them in the Roman Empire and consequently wherever the gospel was preached within the Gentile world in particular there were vast numbers of slaves and so in many of the New Testament letters you find Paul writing to slaves and to their masters what's interesting about that to us is that that doesn't first it doesn't apply any approval of the practice in fact what you see Paul doing is challenging Christians who are masters to treat their slaves justly and fairly which is a huge thing in other words they're not property these are fellow human beings who to be treated as people who bear the image of God and what Paul says to the slave owners is you need to remember you have your own master in heaven you are going to give an account to him one day and in the most explicit example we have you find Paul's letter to Philemon which is a letter to a slave owner about his slave Anesimus and that's a very interesting example because in that particular account Anesimus has run away from Philemon and just as in any other culture when people run away they try to hide themselves by going to some major city and Anesimus ends up in the city of Rome long way away to go from Turkey from the city of Colossi from where he comes or that area of Aesimina in the heart of Turkey to the east of Ephesus and he runs to the city of Rome where there were enormous numbers of runaway slaves and many others something you'll observe if you see the film gladiator that's one of the things you see in that context run away slaves in Rome and Anesimus goes there and while he's there he somehow by the providence of God is brought into the hearing of the gospel proclaimed by Paul while Paul is under house arrest in Rome waiting for his trial before Caesar where he spends two or three years in that context and Anesimus is converted and then Paul sends Anesimus back as a converted as a new Christian he sends him back to Philemon with a letter and of course he's also carrying the letter to the Colossian Church and the letter to the Ephesian churches as well and probably the letter to the Philippian Church also and we must assume that he did indeed return with these letters which is why we have them that they actually reached their destination that he didn't burn them and or disappear with them along the way so he returned but as you read the letter to Philemon and you see Paul's challenge to Philemon and because what he says this is you are to receive Anesimus back no longer as a slave but as a brother in Christ in fact he goes further and he says you are to receive this man back you're run away slave as if he were me you were to treat him as if he were the apostle Paul coming to stay in your home in other words as an honored guest that's that's how Paul challenges Philemon and and again we must assume that's what happened be rather unlikely that we had these letters still if Philemon's response had been to burn them as soon as they came into immediately re-inslave Anesimus so what you see in the practice of the early churches the basically in the context of the Christian home slavery becomes completely changed into
into household servants instead basically I mean that's that's the result of Paul's challenges it completely changes the institution now as Christianity began to have more impact and as it grew within the Roman Empire it eventually leads to the abolition of these practices with certainly within the context of the church and eventually more widely okay let's turn to our next section here what I want to spend just a little bit of time on before we start looking in great detail at the way Paul communicated the gospel which is going to be the heart of our course here I want to say a little bit about the infinite variety of means which God uses to save people the infinite variety of means that God uses to save people because our overall theme here in this section is that God is the great missionary that God is the great missionary you remember I've already said to you that one of the things you need to do when God gives you the privilege of leading somebody to faith in Christ is that you need to ask them the history now what has God been doing in your life that you have come to faith if we look at the example of Timothy his story is a very different one of course from the conversion of Saul now we are told by the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 2 that Timothy was Paul's true son in the faith that's the expression Paul uses my true son in the faith this expression and others like it when they are used by Paul and the other apostles appear to indicate that the person who is my son or my child in the faith was converted primarily through the ministry of the one writing or speaking if you look at 3 John verse 4 you'll see another example of this where the apostle John talks to someone there about as his child in the faith someone who was converted primarily through his ministry so we must assume from Paul using this expression that Timothy comes to faith under the preaching and ministry of the apostle Paul and we must assume I think as we read the account in Acts that it was while Paul was preaching on his first missionary journey through the cities of Asia Minor that is southern Turkey today Timothy lived in the pagan city of Listera L-Y-S-T-R-A if you read Acts chapter 16 verse 1 that's where we're told about Timothy who at this point is already a convert this is when Paul comes back through these cities and Timothy's faith is well spoken of by the other members of the church and so Paul calls Timothy to come along with him and learn to be a missionary learn to be an evangelist alongside of Paul is a good school to go to that was a good seminary probably the next best one after being trained by Christ but Paul takes Timothy with him because he's well spoken of and he has him circumcised now what's fascinating about the city of Listera where Timothy lived is that we read about Paul's time there in Acts 14 verses 19 through 20 if you turn to Acts 14 in Acts 14 we read about what happened to Paul there this is after his his and Barnabas in Canter with the people wanting to worship them as if they were gods and we'll talk more about this story later Barnabas they call Zeus and Paul they called Hermes back in verse 12 and then they want to offer sacrifices to them in the chief priest of the temple of Zeus is wanting to do this and then they managed to stop them verse 18 they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them then some Jews came from Antioch and Econium and won the crowd over they stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city thinking he was dead but after disciples had gathered around he got up and went back into the city the next day he and Barnabas left for Derby what's fascinating is in this account of the time of Paul and Barnabas in Listera it doesn't tell us anything about anybody being converted but in fact the church was started there and Timothy is one of the early members of this church so when Paul comes back there there's this church in existence now we're going to need to stop here and I will pick this story up at the beginning of our class on Thursday now let me give you one more challenge here we're going to be looking at some examples you'll see the examples we're going to look at here and you may want to read through the stories ahead of time we're going to look at the at Neum and the Syrian the widow of Zarifath, Manasseh and then I'm going to tell you a little bit of my own conversion and then we're going to talk about why the early church had such a hard time reaching out to people around them and why Peter for example had such a hard time going to the helm of Cornelius so I'd like you to think about that question why did Peter and the others have such a hard time in reaching out to the Gentiles okay we need to stop there