Called to Witness

August 6, 2017 Background Scripture: Acts 1, 6, 7 Lesson Passage: Acts 6:1 – 8 After about two thousand years, opinions are still diverse on whether it is the calling of every Christian to witness to the world or only a select few. By witness, I mean to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the non-Christians of the world. Allow me to make my position clear. I believe there is a distinction between witnessing and preaching. I believe that witnessing is about sharing one’s own understanding about the gospel based on personal salvation and experience living as a Christian. This sharing by way of witnessing is done with non-Christians. On the other hand, I believe that preaching is receiving a message from God and verbally delivering it to those one is sent to whether they are Christians or not. Furthermore, I believe that one should receive a divine call from God to be a preacher. To this end then I will speak on the topic of today’s lesson from the standpoint of all Christians are expected to be witnesses to non-Christians. It is only from this standpoint that I would use the term “called” to apply to all Christians. After all, people who follow the teachings and ways of Jesus should do the same things he did—not individually but the group as a whole. It should be noted from Chapter 1 of Acts that Jesus told the group of disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they were empowered by the Holy Ghost to go throughout the world and be his witnesses. However, after the Holy Ghost came in a demonstration of power on the day of Pentecost, the group of Christians appeared to settle in and become reasonably comfortable meeting in the temple in Jerusalem as they were accustomed. It was only after the persecution against them turned fatal that the group began to disperse away from Jerusalem. Fatal acts of persecution against the infant church began on the day that Stephen was stoned and this led to the dispersion of the Christians out of Jerusalem throughout Judea and Samaria. Note that the apostles remained in Jerusalem but the Christians who scattered because of the persecution went and witnessed wherever they fled. They did exactly as Jesus commanded or prophesied they would except it was done under duress. Today, Christians are still called to be witnesses. Like our fellow Christians in the Jerusalem congregation, many of us will only do it under situations of duress. Unlike them, in America today, we don’t feel persecution that we believe is widespread and potentially fatal. Rather, we see internal dissension causing congregations to split and form smaller congregations that feel pressured to witness for the sake of growing the new congregations into groups large enough to sustain themselves. Whatever the cause or motivation, Christians of all generations and during all times have continuously returned to the mandate of Jesus that we must witness to a dying world the reality of personal salvation that is available in Jesus Christ alone. We either find it within us to reach out to the lost or we find ourselves in uncomfortable situations that are only remedied by reaching out to others to grow the size of the congregation. Whatever the motivation, we respond to being called to witness to others. Robert C. Hudson June 29, 2017

Amos

July 30, 2017 Background Scripture: Amos 7 Lesson Passage: Amos 7:10 – 17 Amos was unique among the prophets of Israel in that he resided in the southern kingdom of Judah but God sent him to prophesy against the northern kingdom of Israel. This was unique because God typically placed a prophet in the midst of the situation even if it were in exile outside of Palestine. Because the nation of Israel was divided into two kingdoms at the time, Amos’ work reminds us that God has jurisdiction over all governments. As with other prophets, Amos’ work was met with stiff opposition by the local leaders. The priest of Israel conspired with the king to send Amos out of Israel and back to Judah. There is no wonder God would send an outsider with the religious leaders and civil leaders of Israel being in such collusion. Whenever there is collusion between those in religious leadership positions and civil leaders, then there is often no religious leadership. It may all become political. In spite of the local opposition, Amos defended himself against their verbal attacks and declared the word of God to them anyway. Amos spoke truth to power and the powers that were resisted the truth with all their might. Amos made it clear that his prophesying to Israel was not personal for him. Amos obeyed the calling of God upon his life. Furthermore, Amos testified to them that he was not a prophet nor was he the son of a prophet but rather a rancher and farmer. In other words, Amos was minding his own business when God sent him to Israel with the message of rebuke. There was no reason for Amos to suspect that the prophetic ministry would become his calling but God called him. When Amos gave his testimony about his calling, it is almost as though he saw himself as a fish out of water. Without the pedigree or credentials from the school of prophets to lean on, Amos was left to declare the visions and statements that God gave him just as he received them. And declare those visions he did and it shook the very temples and palaces of Israel. They knew from the oracles Amos spoke that a true God-sent prophet had visited them. In spite of their resistance to the oracles, Amos confirmed by the word of the Lord that Israel would be taken into exile although the leaders had hoped it would not happen. The leaders knew that the word of God’s prophet was powerful and would come to pass because it was spoken. They could not deny the truth of God’s word so they sought to avoid it. Therefore they conspired to have Amos go back to Judah and prophesy there and leave Israel alone. Little did they know that Amos was pleading with God on their behalf and God had forgone some of the judgments that would have been more devastating because of Amos’ plea for Israel. The prophet was being a friend to Israel although the leaders there thought otherwise. If Amos had not been sent to Israel and filled with compassion for them, their fate could have been much worse. Amos was not the son of a prophet nor did he attend the school of the prophets. But the calling of God was upon Amos and a powerful prophet he was. Robert C. Hudson June 7, 2017

Ezekiel

July 23, 2017 Background Scripture: Ezekiel 1 – 3 Lesson Passage: Ezekiel 3:1 – 11 Oftentimes we are so caught up in Ezekiel’s ministry as a prophet that we rarely notice that he was initially a priest. As you might recall, these are two complementary but mutually exclusive ministries. As a priest, he represented the people’s interest before the altar of God. As a prophet, he spoke to the people as an ambassador of God. Although several individuals are presented in the scriptures who served in both offices—including Jesus—Ezekiel appears to be the only one whose ministry as a prophet supplanted or replaced his ministry as a priest. After the introductory statement in the book of Ezekiel which speaks of him as a priest, the remainder of the book details his prophetic ministry to the nation of Israel which had been taken into captivity. Jeremiah had been prophesying to the nation of Israel for over thirty years prior to Ezekiel receiving his call of God to be a prophet. Ezekiel was a contemporary of Jeremiah and, as such, he was also a witness and a recipient of the chastisement of God’s people. As with the other prophets, Ezekiel heard the voice of God and was given visions. Ezekiel’s visions and explanations have been at the center of many soul-winning revivals over the years. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel spoke truth at a time when lying was popular. It appears that he accepted his calling at an older age than Jeremiah and while in exile or captivity rather than in Judah. Ezekiel was a member of one of the groups taken into captivity prior to the fall of the capitol city of Jerusalem. Jeremiah was left in the city and saw the fall and was taken from there into Egypt. Some of the images Ezekiel were given are still puzzling today and likely fall into the category of apocalyptic. Yet, God explained some of the images as to what they symbolize relative to the prophecy. Ezekiel described the anointing of God on him as “the hand of the Lord upon him”. God told Ezekiel about the nature of his assignment. The people Ezekiel would speak to were stubborn and rebellious. They were not going to listen to the prophet but the prophet had to prophesy to them anyway. He was told to not be afraid of them and to not be rebellious like them. God commissioned Ezekiel to declare His word to Israel even though they would not listen to or heed them. God showed Ezekiel a scroll and told him to eat it so that he would have the word of God in him. Then God sent Ezekiel to the house of Israel to speak His words to them. Ezekiel did not read and repeat recorded scriptures but was given a prophetic word directly from God for the nation. The eating of the scroll is all symbolic of Ezekiel consuming the word of God so that when he opened his mouth, then the word of God would come forth to the people. There should be no doubt as to where or who the word came from. This was important because it was at a time when many prophets were speaking and most of them were false prophets. When Ezekiel declared “The Lord said…” he did so with the anointing and power of God upon him. The hand of the Lord was upon Ezekiel. Robert C. Hudson June 7, 2017

Jeremiah

July 16, 2017 Background Scripture: Jeremiah 1 Lesson Passage: Jeremiah 1:4 – 10 At one point in his life, Jeremiah seems to have been the most unpopular of all of his contemporaries. The reason for this is quite simple: he spoke the truth when the people preferred to hear a lie. Many of his contemporaries told the people what they wanted to hear and Jeremiah refused to go along with it. He even became angry with God because when he told the people what God told him to say, it caused trouble for him. Jeremiah decided to not say anything to the people that God told him and he thought his life would be less complicated as a result of it. However, God’s calling upon Jeremiah’s life was too much and he could not ignore God’s voice or commission to prophesy. Jeremiah was called by God at a very young age. In fact, God told Jeremiah that his calling was established before he was born. Jeremiah was literally born to be God’s prophet to Israel during what would become one of the nation’s darkest times. The Bible does not give us the specific age Jeremiah was when he learned of his calling but the terms used to refer to Jeremiah suggest that he was either a teenager or a very young man. God informed Jeremiah that he had called and commissioned him before He formed him in his mother’s womb. Again, Jeremiah was born to do God’s bidding no matter how difficult the task would become. Whatever Jeremiah would suffer would be for God’s sake. God told Jeremiah to not be afraid to look the people in their faces and declare God’s word to them. God gave Jeremiah a sign of a boiling pot and told him what it meant. God was going to judge His people harshly for their unrepentant sin and Jeremiah was going to be an eyewitness to the judgment. Jeremiah does not appear to be a person who ever wrestled with whether God called him to be a prophet or not but instead he wrestled with whether he would be better off not doing God’s will. As was the case with the other prophets whose calling is detailed in the Bible, Jeremiah clearly heard God’s voice commission him for the work of prophecy and he was given visual signs to accompany the oral calling. Every prophecy God sent to Israel by the mouth of Jeremiah came to pass. The people hated the message but they could not deny that the future unfolded exactly as God declared it would through Jeremiah. This was probably of little consolation to Jeremiah because the fulfillment of the prophecies sometimes happened years later after he had endured much ridicule. And besides that, Jeremiah was an eyewitness of the account so that whatever Israel was suffering because of the oracle of God, Jeremiah had to live through as well. As a result of this, Jeremiah wept over Jerusalem as he witnessed the devastation that occurred. When you live through the pain, there is no room for “I told you so.” Jeremiah was ultimately vindicated by history because it unfolded according to the prophetic word he spoke. As an eyewitness, later he became popularly known as the weeping prophet of Israel. Robert C. Hudson May 26, 2017

Isaiah

July 9, 2017 Background Scripture: Isaiah 6 Lesson Passage: Isaiah 6:1 – 8 Sometimes people get in our way. No, not the rude or disruptive type people but rather the type of people we look up to and admire. Our admiration and respect for our chosen role models will sometimes make it difficult for us to see anyone else. The prophet Isaiah could really give us a lesson in understanding this. Isaiah has the distinction of being the greatest of the writing prophets of Israel. It has been noted that his writing covers the same span of time as the Bible. The writing even includes the time beyond a new heaven and a new earth. Some have considered Isaiah’s writing as a miniature bible because of the numerous parallels that are found between the two. As with the other prophets of Israel, Isaiah’s calling was unique. In spite of the uniqueness, all of the prophetic callings shared many similarities. They experienced the calling through their physical senses. Some heard, saw, felt and even tasted something at the time of their calling. Isaiah shares with his readers what he heard and what he saw when he was called. Isaiah dated his calling by a significant historic event in his life. It was the year that King Uzziah died. Tradition states that King Uzziah was either Isaiah’s uncle or cousin. Uzziah had been enthroned as king of Judah at the age of sixteen and ruled for fifty two years. He had literally matured as a man on the throne of Judah. King Uzziah’s death was a tragedy for Isaiah in several ways. Not only did Judah lose its king of over half a century but there are many perks that go along with being part of a royal family. There is also much insecurity that arises at the death of a patriarch in the family who is also a good king. Into this sadness and confusion in Isaiah’s life, God stepped. God was not there to replace King Uzziah in Isaiah’s life but to elevate Isaiah to a level that exceeded many of the prophets of Israel. The first sight in Isaiah’s vision during his calling was the Lord enthroned above the temple. This was significant in that it should have reassured Isaiah that although human kings come and go, the Lord does not abdicate his throne and he continues to rule throughout history. The Lord was not in the temple but was high above it. Although Israel had become a monarchy at their request to be like other people, the Lord continued to rule over the monarchy with his theocracy. Put another way, Israel desired a manmade government but God only allowed that because man’s government is overruled by God’s government. Isaiah also observed the heavenly court praising the Lord continuously for his holiness. Isaiah trembled as the temple began to quake and fill with smoke. All of this caused Isaiah to reflect on his own unworthiness to be in the Lord’s presence. When Isaiah confessed his shortcoming, one of the heavenly beings came and purged it. The seraphim assured Isaiah that his iniquity had been forgiven. At this point, Isaiah heard the Lord ask for a volunteer to go as his messenger. Isaiah answered the call and Judah now had the greatest of its writing prophets called and commissioned by the Lord. Robert C. Hudson May 26, 2017