Apostolic Attitude — Part 2

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the YouTube recording's caption track, read through the transcript panel — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Bringing in the sheaves.

He imagines his own arrival before the Lord armed with a résumé — youth offices, a missions directorship with missionaries in twenty-four nations, a district superintendency — and hears the only questions that will matter: did you influence anybody, heal any hurts, bring anybody to Calvary, baptize anybody in the only name? The church gets its eyes on the harvesters instead of the harvest. Against the preaching that denies restoration, he insists God is restoring his church, and she will go out as she came in — an army with banners, apostolic. The ministry gifts and the grace gifts must be understood in their differences: apostles govern, prophets guide, evangelists gather, pastors guard, teachers ground — and the tensions among them come from men not understanding one another's function. An eighty-eight-year-old elder's charge closes the movement: get off the backs of the young preachers; open the street corners and the pulpits to them, or take responsibility for shutting the doors we told them to go through.

The image and the refiner's fire.

How does a man take on the image of Christ? By a blow, the way a die strikes a coin. He has brother Jeff join him in the reading of the refiner text — he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver — and explains the ancient craft: with no gauges, the refiner sat and watched the kettle until the silver went placid and he could see his own image in it perfectly; then, and only then, he took it off the fire. So God turns up the heat and sits, waiting until we react as he reacts and look as he looks. All things work together for good, he reads — and refuses to stop at the twenty-eighth verse, directing the house to the twenty-ninth: everything God lets happen happens so that we might be conformed to his image.

Scriptures: Malachi 3:3; Romans 8:28-29

Warriors, not weekenders.

There are three kinds of soldiers — deserters, cowards, and warriors — and no peaceful coexistence with the devil is on offer. A warrior has firsthand revelation: no man risks his life for a king he does not know, and the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. Against the gates of hell — the place where the enemy conducts his business — the church is the aggressor, and warriors in genuine spiritual warfare keep hell too confused to plot. He tells of a converted motorcycle-gang member who described the weekend warriors of the gang world, men who dressed the part on Saturday and went back to the office on Monday, and applies it without mercy: noise drew the crowd on the day of Pentecost, but power kept them; the Philistines once heard noise in Israel's camp and found only an empty symbol. Then Gideon, threshing by a dry winepress and called a mighty man of valor by an angel who was not affirming what he was but identifying what he would be; dryness always produces questions, and even unsanctified questions, honestly poured out, can bring a man into the presence of an angel.

Scriptures: Matthew 16:18

Woe, lo, go.

The prophet Isaiah's collision with the angelic voice gives the sermon its three monosyllables: woe — the word of man, contrition; lo — the word of the angels; go — the word of God, commission. You came in saying woe is me, Tenney tells the house; you leave at go. And the approach matters: the tabernacle was wrapped in layers of goats' hair, and a man who climbs in over the coverings instead of entering by the gate comes in smelling like a goat. Sheep come through the gate — his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise. Fruit now and root later is the world's order; God says no root, no fruit.

Scriptures: Isaiah 6

Restoring fallen worship.

His closing theology is the sermon's most original construction. The church's teaching on Satan rests on three Old Testament passages, and in the twenty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel the fallen cherub stands revealed as heaven's worship leader — the anointed cherub that covered God with praise, with a third of the angels, the choir, in his train; the sons of God sang while the foundations of the earth were laid. When Lucifer fell, music fell, singing fell, worship fell. Challenged for a single scripture where angels in heaven now sing, he takes the house's answer — the thirteenth verse of Luke's second chapter — and rules on it himself: the angel said it; they did not sing it; not one scripture shows angels singing today, because the choir fell. Worship's restoration has therefore been given to the church: when God wants to hear a song, he goes down to a jail at Philippi to hear two beaten preachers redeem it. The stones that covered Satan, symbols of his authority, hang stripped in the foundations of the holy city, because the fifteenth verse of Colossians' second chapter is true — he spoiled him, made a show of him openly, triumphed over him. When the people sing, God is enthroned on their praises; where the throne is, the King is, and where the King is, the kingdom is, with all its authority and power. The panel's text ends mid-phrase inside that final charge, the congregation on its feet, still singing.

Summary scripture index (the exact union of the sections above): Ezekiel 47 · James 1:1 · James 2:1 · James 3:1-2 · James 4:4 · James 4:6-8 · 2 Chronicles 7:14 · Philippians 3:13 · 2 Peter 1:5-7 · Malachi 3:3 · Romans 8:28-29 · Matthew 16:18 · Isaiah 6 · Luke 2:13 · Ezekiel 28 · Job 38:7 · Colossians 2:15

Scriptures: Luke 2:13; Ezekiel 28; Job 38:7; Colossians 2:15