When the nation of Israel came out of Egypt, they spent forty troublesome years in the wilderness.
It should have only taken a few weeks to make the journey from Egypt to the Promised land,
It became necessary to enroll them in the school of adversity in order to learn a few things.
And many of those lessons were RECORDED so that WE might learn from them too.
And sometimes they were recorded in other more visual or spectacular ways.
Between them and the fulfillment of the promise flowed the flood waters of the Jordan River.
In other words,.He was duplicating for that generation what He had done for their fathers at Red Sea.
BUT the earlier generation had forgotten the blessing and power of their God, falling into sin & unbelief.
They refused to believe that the God who brought them through the Red Sea could bring them safely through the giants and problems of Canaan.
Twelve preselected men got others to help their families carry their possessions across the Jordan,
And right there before the river was returned to its strength, they were to pile those stones upon each other as best they could as a memorial of the grace of God.
“And Joshua set up twelve stones in the MIDST of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood: and they are there unto this day.”
The purpose for these stone memorials, or cairns, was that in the years to come, when their grand-children and others saw them, they might remember what the Lord accomplished in bringing Israel home.
And more specifically, as is stated in Joshua 4:24: “That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the LORD, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the LORD your God for ever.”
I’d like you to notice that Joshua used an anthropomorphic expression to talk about the Lord’s great power.
An “anthropomorphism” is a word which expresses some characteristic of God in human terms.
Joshua referred to the “HAND of the Lord.”
But God is a spirit and hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.
The Lord doesn’t have hands and feet like a man, or paws and claws, like an animal.
Yet this kind of language puts God’s abilities into an image that people with finite minds can understand.
So for practical purposes Jehovah DOES have hands.
And over here in Acts 11, Luke tells us that the hand of the Lord was with the evangelists in Antioch.
My question this morning is this: HOW was the hand of the Lord with these people?
How did it display itself, and how important was the hand of the Lord?
Peter and John were arrested because the Jews didn’t like them healing people in Jesus’ Name.
They were interrogated, threatened and eventually released.
Then those two apostles went back to their church and reported what had happened.
Please turn to Acts 4:23 and read along because this is such an important theological statement:
And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is:
Who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things?
The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ.
For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together,
For to do whatsoever THY HAND and thy counsel determined before to be done.”
If I told you that with these hands of mine, I tore apart the transmission of my car and rebuilt it, you might be surprised, but you realize that there might be a slight chance that it could be true.
If, however, I told you that I ordered my wife to rebuild that transmission, you might be a little less skeptical.
But if I told that with these hands, my wife, Judy, rebuilt the transmission, you’d know that I was a lunatic.
My hands belong to me, and it’s physically impossible for me to loan them to someone.
I can’t take a nap while Judy uses my hands to rebuild an Oldsmobile transmission.
Herein we see one of the obvious limitations of anthropomorphisms:
Since the Lord is God He does have sovereign control over the hands of others.
And speaking metaphorically, the hand of God can be seen in the deeds of men.
You do believe in the sovereignty of God, don’t you?
You do believe that as God, Jehovah can do anything and everything that He chooses to do, don’t you?
Can we be true Bible-believers and deny that the Lord is omnipotent and in absolute control?
Can we be true Christians if we believe that the Devil or man can keep Lord out of some particular thing?
For example, does the hand of God NEED the hand of man to dam the Jordan River?
I say with qualification: No!
“The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.”
And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus.
And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord.”
I’ve already suggested that the persecution which fell on the church was governed by the hand of the Lord.
It began with the permission of the Lord.
“The LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD” and slaughtered the children of Job.
This persecution was used by God to purify His first church and to strengthen the faith and zeal of His people.
The Lord here made even the wrath of His enemies to praise Him.
Who were those men of Cyprus and Cyrene who escaped the Jerusalem persecution and came to Antioch?
Their names are never shared with us.
How did they escape Jerusalem?
Was it through a hole in the wall as one or two of Israel’s kings had escaped their enemies?
And how was it that they reached Antioch safely without any accidents, highway men, pirates or parasites?
“Wait a minute,” someone says. “They went to Antioch because they chose to go to Antioch.”
I completely concur, but at the same time, if God wanted them to go to Anaheim instead of Antioch that’s were they would have wanted to go.
Generally speaking the Lord will usually turn the man’s heart to the right,
And then he himself will change his mind and his feet will follow.
He’d say that it is more important than eating, or sleeping, or even life itself.
That is why they can strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves up – along with buses, markets and other people.
If you ask a devout Roman Catholic about the importance of being a Catholic, he’ll tell you that he’d sooner die than become a Baptist or cease to reverence the Pope or Mary.
And if you had earlier asked those Jews in Antioch who was more important to them, Jesus of Nazareth or Moses, there wouldn’t have been any doubt but that it would have been Moses.
But when the Christians arrived from Jerusalem with the gospel of Christ, many of those same people believed and turned to the Lord.
I can assure you based upon the authority of the Word of God, what those people did in turning to the Lord by faith was the most important thing that they ever did during their entire lives.
I can tell you by my own experience that when I did the same back in 1964 it was the most important thing that I had ever done, and its importance has still never been exceeded.
Paul was bubbling over with excitement when he said to that people all over Achaia and Macedonia were talking about the faith of the Thessalonians and that they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.”
The Muslims and the Catholics are wrong about their religious ideas of Islam and Mary,
There is absolutely nothing more important than what these Antiochians were doing in believing and turning to the Lord.
And by the way, I have to repeat what I said last week about these verses:
There might be a small friendly debate between sound believers on identity of the Divine Person to Whom the hand of the Lord belongs.
I personally don’t think that we need to debate this particular point, so long as we agree that it is the hand of Jehovah in some way.
In fact, I am of the opinion that the word “Lord” refers to the Lord Jesus every time that it’s used in these two verses.
They preached the Lord Jesus, it was the hand of the Lord Jesus which was with them,
It was to the Lord Jesus Christ that they turned.
How difficult would you expect it to be to get a Muslim to believe on Christ and to turn from his idols to serve the living and true God?
Generally speaking, and intellectually speaking, that would be an extremely difficult thing to do.
It is just about as easy to get a donkey to believe on Christ as it is to intellectually convince a Muslim to receive Christ.
Would it be more difficult than to get a devout Roman Catholic to truly turn to Christ?
It may be difficult to lead a Muslims or Catholic to the Lord,
Because they aren’t.
Even if there weren’t serious cultural and religious differences between the peoples of the world,
Even made all the peoples of the world to think that they were all equals,
There still is no man who naturally loves the one True and Living God.
Because the fact of the matter is that they are spiritually equal; equally dead in trespasses and sins.
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. There is no fear of God before” any man’s eyes.
Sin, like an ugly parasite which is passed from parents to child, worming its way from that infant’s heart through every aspect of that little life, until …
“Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood:
Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known.”
Every Antiochian, Idahoan, American and North American is spiritually depraved – throughly corrupted by sin.
They couldn’t believe on Christ or turn unto the Lord, if they wanted to.
And the truth of the matter is that they don’t want to.
“No man seeketh after God,” because it is contrary to his fallen, depraved, sinful human nature.
The reason that there were a great number of the people of Antioch who believed on Christ, was due to the fact that “the hand of the Lord was with the evangelists” and their hearers.
It was the will of God that these people repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
It was by the power of God that they did so.
It was because of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit that the ministry in Antioch was so highly blessed.
As I have said before, if we had the privilege of interviewing these people, they would tell us that when they heard the preaching of the gospel;
When they heard that Jesus died for their sins according to the scriptures, as the God-ordained sacrifice.
When they heard that they were commanded of God to repent of their sins and to believe on Christ,
They would say that they decided to obey and to do these things,
So our question shouldn’t be whether or not the hand of the Lord is upon us.
You need to just obey God and do it.
It’s a sin against the Lord not to repent and trust Christ.
And as Brother Keener reminded us the other night, it’s a sin against our own souls as well.
Don’t wait another minute: “Repent ye and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.”