What’s New? Who’s New?

05/19/19   —   Meute

“What’s New? Who’s New?”

Acts 11: 1-18: Revelation 21: 1-6; John 13: 31-35

Pearl: The gospel continually expands and transforms whatever it touches.

Function: To motivate listeners to expect to be continually changed, made new, and transformed by the gospel.

The inclusion of the Gentiles (all non-Jews) was a profoundly difficult adjustment for the followers of Jesus after he was raised and departed from them. If it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit moving in them and among them it may not have happened at all.

1. The disciple Peter, the “rock” upon whom the church was built and through whom some streams of the Christian church trace their heritage in what is called apostolic succession, did not come easily to the inclusion of Gentiles among God’s people.
   1. But the Holy Spirit did a work on Peter. God was gradually exposing Peter to the understanding that God shows no partiality.
   2. This understanding culminated from the vision he saw while he was praying one day. It was this vision of a sheet stretching from earth to heaven and on which were all kinds of animals which were not kosher.
      1. Peter heard a voice telling him to “kill and eat” those animals.
      2. He responded that none of those “unclean” animals have ever passed his lips. To which the voice of God said, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Note that!

• God is working and transforming way beyond what we see or know. God is way ahead of us.
  1. And God is the main force which changes our minds, and our hearts.

1. This prepared Peter to go to the home of Cornelius, the centurion, to share the gospel and to be a part of the first Gentile conversion.
2. It also prepared him to share his story with his people the Jews so that others would begin to change their minds and hearts as well to welcome those who formerly were not welcome.

2. On what subject have you changed your mind in a significant way? How is God changing you?

Followers of Christ, expect to change your heart and mind continually into a more open, ever-broadening, ever righteous direction.

1. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father was a preacher and pastor. His real name was Michael. It was after he had a prolonged and extended trip abroad which included meetings with the church in those lands that he returned to Atlanta, Georgia and was so profoundly impacted by the experience that he formally changed his name to Martin. He also changed the name of his son—Martin Luther King, Jr.
   1. Changing your name is a radical way to state that you have changed significantly in some way.
      1. Abram and Sarai became Abraham and Sarah.
      2. Jacob became Israel.

• Simon became Peter.

1. Saul became Paul.
2. The author I quoted several times last week in my sermon on suicide changed his name to Fe Anam Avis which signifies the date in which he entered his Second Day and was delivered from the dark night of the soul.

2. Jesus always stretched and pushed people to see things more deeply and more humanely from the perspective of a loving and merciful God.
   1. The gospel inherently stirs up and challenges your assumptions.
   2. The Spirit of God in you forces you to re-examine viewpoints and beliefs and positions.
      1. So how are you currently being stretched and challenged?
         1. For me in recent years it is around the area of other religions and how to relate with them and how to engage with them.
         2. My interest is growing in the beliefs of others and how God is with them as much as with Christians.
            1. If God shows no partiality then God loves all people of all religions.
            2. It is impacting my understanding of evangelism. It has to do with learning what others believe and think. It has to do more with listening. By listening and attempting to learn, the Holy Spirit seems to have more room to work in another and in me!
            3. Having a relationship with those of other religions and with those who profess no religion, and with those who profess a disdain for religion, is now my preferred form of witnessing and preparing room for the Holy Spirit to move.
         3. New perspectives and new understandings go together. They go with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
            1. Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
            2. That Jesus put this exhortation in the form of a commandment is significant. He knew how important God’s commands were to the disciples and to all God-worshipping people.
               1. Even today we value the Ten Commandments.
               2. What about Jesus’ New Commandment? He didn’t abolish the Ten Commandments but he gave a new one: love one another.
            3. Much of the changing and transforming that you and I need to do comes from loving one another. Our witness depends upon our loving one another.
               1. Jesus wants you and me to be known as his followers by how we love one another.

Expect your heart and mind to change in a more open direction. Because God is making all things new.

This is not change for the sake of change. This is change and transformation in the direction of righteousness, justice, and love. This is the kind of change that makes you “new,” actually which makes you into the real you!

1. In The Last Battle from the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis allows his characters to glimpse the New Earth from a different perspective.
   1. The victorious lion-king Aslan has triumphed over the forces of evil, but the land of Narnia is destroyed. The Pevensie children join a host of virtuous humans and animals as they journey across a lovely landscape of grassy fields following Aslan, who has invited them to follow, but who is now so far ahead that they can no longer see him.
   2. They notice something wonderfully strange about the place. It resembles the familiar landscape of Narnia, and yet it’s not Narnia.
      1. “Those hills,” said Lucy, “the nice woody ones and the blue ones behind—aren’t they the Southern border of Narnia?”
      2. “Like!” cried Edmund after a moment’s silence. “Why, they’re exactly like. Look, there’s Mount Pire with his forked head, and there’s the pass into Archenland and everything!”

• “And yet they’re not like,” said Lucy. “They’re different. They have more colors on them and they look farther away than I remembered and they’re more…more…oh, I don’t know…”

1. “More like the real thing,” said the Lord Digory softly.

1. Lewis explains what the children are seeing, through the words of Lord Digory: “Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course, it is different: as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.”

2. You are destined to be who you really are in all your wonderful humanity as a child of God.
   1. God is changing you continually more and more into who you are meant to be. God is transforming you into the person he created you to be.
   2. A couple of days ago someone brought up Michelangelo and his work on the amazing marble sculpture of King David. And then yesterday a friend posted a picture of the amazing statue from their trip to Italy.
      1. Artists who carve statues from marble speak of bringing out something that is already within the marble.
      2. This is how it is with you and me. We are being transformed into who God created us to be. It is lifelong process. In the end we will be the new creatures that are our destiny.

• It will look like us but it will also look different.

Are you more a shadow of yourself that God intends?

Give yourself freely and openly to the continual transformation of God so that you will be the real you that you and God have always imagined and envisioned.