by Keith Bassham
From a message preached in the fall meeting of the Baptist Bible Fellowship in September 2014
When Jesus was conversing with Nicodemus, he illustrated the Spirit’s workings by comparing it with the wind — “you do not know where it is coming from, and you do not know where it is going — so is everyone who is born of the Spirit,” Jesus said.
When I preach from that text I say that the wind of God will take you places you never dreamed of, and that it will take you places you would not have chosen for yourself. Nothing demonstrates those facts better than the experiences of those who first believed the Gospel.
In the chapter before the text we just read, Peter is moved by God to do something he would never have dreamed of, and something he would not have chosen for himself. Peter, after some stubborn reluctance and stiff resistance, enters the home of Cornelius, a centurion, and a man Peter considers a pagan in every sense.
As Peter enters, he introduces himself with these words: “And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.”
And then Peter gave Cornelius and his household the Gospel. And, to the astonishment of everyone in Peter’s group, Cornelius and his company received the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit came upon them. And Peter commanded that they should be baptized in the name of the Lord.
Now, I may be wrong, but I think I just described what one could legitimately call an innovation. One reason I know this is an innovation is the response recorded in the opening verses of Acts 11:
“And the apostles and brethren that were in Judaea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision contended with him, Saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.”
When innovations are introduced, this is how they are generally met.
Peter defended his innovation using two facts: one, God had given him explicit instructions and a vision, and two, when the pagans responded to the Gospel, God did for them what he had done for the Jews. To reject these facts would be tantamount to standing against God. And so, when the critics heard the defense, our text says they held their peace and glorified God.
And now we are at the beginning of our text, and I am so thankful for the careful editing of Luke the physician and historian at this point. Without that story of Peter’s innovation, these next few verses and the importance they carry going forward into Acts would have had us scratching our heads.
We know the basics. Let’s take a look at the particulars. First of all, there are some people on the move. They are traveling. And as they travel, they are preaching the Word. But notice who they are. These are not the apostles. Nor are they from among the seven appointed by the apostles. And at least some of them, maybe most of them, are like Peter, not willing to take their message to pagans. Some, we learn, are not even native Israelites, but men of Cyprus and Cyrene, proselytes perhaps. But one thing is certain, they don’t have the same reluctance to associate with pagans that Peter had. In other words, they never got the memo: the Gospel is for the Jews only. Virtually everything going on in this passage would be classed as innovative.
And so these unauthorized preachers took their message to unauthorized hearers, Grecians, which I think is probably a polite name for a pagan. And now we can see that what happened in the house of Cornelius was not a fluke — it was going to become standard practice. But again, not without a struggle — the argument would go on well into the book of Acts before it is resolved. The wind of God takes us places we would not choose on our own.
Now, before I go on and settle once and for all the Baptist Bible Fellowship position on innovation, I want to make a few observations about what we are reading here.
First of all, we are reading from the writings of Luke. Luke likes to write about travel. His stories around the birth of Jesus include the journey of Mary to see Elizabeth, that of Joseph and Mary from Galilee to Bethlehem, and then after the birth, Joseph taking his young family into Egypt, and finally the return trip home when it was safe.
We have the story of the young family’s visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old, and then later as an adult, when Jesus left home and made a trip to the Jordan to be baptized of John, who was also known to move around a bit. And there are stories of Jesus and the 12 on a continuous journey, traveling from village to village, announcing the kingdom. And finally, in a story that takes up 40 percent of his Gospel, there is the narrative of the journey that begins with the words of Luke 9:51, “And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he (that is Jesus) stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,” and that journey and story appears to end with the crucifixion and resurrection.
But even on the afternoon of the resurrection Jesus is on the road again, this time as one traveling incognito with two people on their way to Emmaus, and just a few verses later the same Jesus who had been on the road tells us to hit the road ourselves, taking the Gospel to all nations.
Add to this catalog from Luke’s Gospel, the journeys, the day trips, the adventures, and harrowing travels recounted in the Acts — Philip on the road to Gaza, Peter on the road to Cornelius, Paul on the road to Damascus, the missionary journeys, and sea voyage and shipwreck of Paul that succeeds in taking the Gospel to Rome and beyond (fulfilling Acts 1:8 at government expense, by the way) — you have to be struck by the amount of traveling and going in these pages. And further note that the Christian movement is called “The Way” five times in the Acts (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:22) and the Gospel begins to look like a series of road stories.
So, what can we gather about this travel talk? For one thing, a Gospel that travels like this almost requires that its handlers be innovative. The Gospel is absolutely universal and intended for all the world. We know that. The Gospel worked in both theistic Jerusalem and philosophically diverse Athens, Syrian Damascus or cosmopolitan Corinth, desert Gaza and metropolitan Rome. Nowhere did Paul or any of the apostles say to themselves, “We can’t preach the Gospel here — they just won’t get it.” They found ways — they innovated — to make their hearers get it because they were absolutely convinced that the Gospel was the fulfillment of all the promises of God given in the Old Testament and realized in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and not just for Israel but for the whole world. So why shouldn’t the Gospel be preached in Rome? Good news is good news no matter where it goes. All who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Second — and this arises from the first point — the Gospel, since it is universal and intended for all, must be portable and suitable for travel. Do you have any idea how many cultures are represented in these Gospel road stories? The diversity of moral issues, gender issues, political issues, religions, occupations, worldviews, nationalities, languages, cultures, and subcultures this Gospel had to weave itself through in order to get a hearing? And yet it got through enough to turn worlds upside down, and some locals understood the danger of the Christian Gospel enough that they thought it prudent to put the preachers in jail, and I would say that’s an indicator they were getting through. I’ve heard some Christian leaders say that people are hostile to the Gospel today because we haven’t been presenting it right, and people misunderstand who God is and what He does. I’m not certain that is entirely true. In Paul’s day, he encountered hostility, lots of it. His message was not universally accepted, even among other believers. And I think he knew what he was doing.
And so, the Gospel is universal, intended for all kinds of people. And the Gospel is designed to be somewhat lean and portable, moving easily among cultures, languages, customs, and nationalities, without a lot of baggage to weigh it down.
And another observation is that the Gospel appears to be adaptive. Just as Jesus speaks of a new birth to one person, and of forgiveness to another, and of lost sheep, coins, and sons to another audience; and just as when he heals he speaks healing to one, and uses the touch of his hand for another, and makes a mudpack for another, and in at least one case, the touch of a tassel on his prayer shawl; and just as he chooses for his base of followers a political zealot to serve alongside a Roman collaborator, and fiery Peter alongside winsome John; and just as he sometimes addresses a large crowd, and at other times attempts to escape them, preferring a long walk in the desert — it is hard to make the case that all Christians must conform to one another in all ways at all times in their service for God.
My conclusion from all this is that we must be ready to do what they did — that is, if we are to be as effective as the apostles and first-century Christians, we will have to embrace adaptations — innovations — and stop pretending that many of the subcultural traditions we embrace have been around since the beginning, and recognize that the only thing not open to change, is the essence of the Gospel itself. I will say it this way. Virtually everything we do on a given Sunday, I don’t care how traditional or how progressive your church is, would look like it was from another universe from the point of view of the apostles. In other words, what you consider traditional and timeless was once an innovation, and you may not be following the old paths as you think.
Check the history for yourself. Look around for church planting missionaries sent and supported the way we do it before about 1900. They are not there. Look for what we call classic premilliennial dispensationalists before 1830. They are not there. Look for churches with a Sunday school before 1800. Same thing. Look for hymnbooks with musical notation from the same time period. And while we’re talking music, look for Baptists using instrumental music before the early 1800s. Look for Baptists singing as a congregation before 1650. Look for people calling themselves Baptists before 1600. You will not find them.
Each of these things I mentioned, and they are just a few of many I could talk about, began as innovations — and they were mostly opposed by a majority. At some time in our history, old paths were once new paths, if there is such a thing, and we used to call those innovators pioneers, and we praise them to the heavens.
Now, that said, there is another side to this issue. I don’t think it is a bad thing to be suspicious of innovations. The brothers in Jerusalem asked Peter to explain himself when he did something new. They sent Barnabas to check out what was happening in Antioch. These were not stupid men, nor did they have fleshly motives. They were prudent and wanted to know the truth. And when they saw God plainly at work in a new way, they did not interfere. To put it in terms of this meeting, they chose to be linked in after due diligence.
Therefore, I think it right that we put innovation to the test. You can fool around with the packaging and the delivery system all you want, but when it comes to the Gospel itself, you have to be on guard. Paul had plenty of opportunity to make innovations to the Gospel message, to make it more palatable to Jews, or to make it more acceptable among the pagans, and he refused to do this. Many times, the crowds described in the Acts were not believers enthusiastic for God but unbelievers threatening Paul with death.
I would like to make some suggestions for our Fellowship as we go forward in 2015. First of all, let us remember that change is a fact of life. Our Fellowship was founded in a time very different from our own. The challenges our founders faced are not necessarily our challenges, and we struggle with issues they could barely imagine. And it is inevitable that we will change, as we have. We must learn to manage that change.
Second, let’s resist the idea that all innovations are good. Something can be both cool and dumb at the same time. I see it all the time.
With both innovation and tradition, there is always the danger of inadvertently creating another “gospel,” and we need to take that warning seriously.
And we also ought to resist the idea that retaining a tradition is always a good thing. I can see the wisdom in following ruts in a road — those ruts can tell you where it is safe to travel, but they will also limit where you can go. And by the way, I think tradition is generally good, but traditionalism is not.
Let’s not be afraid to have our notions tested. I’ve not always been a fan of the Hybels ministry, but it was a gutsy thing he and Willow Creek did a few years ago when they admitted what they were doing was not effective at making disciples. They saw their mistake, and they retooled. I applaud and encourage that kind of thinking.
I think it is interesting that after chapter 11 of Acts Antioch becomes the center from which all missionary activity emanates. In the city where unauthorized preachers gave the Gospel to unauthorized hearers, believers were first given the name Christian. Meanwhile, Jerusalem began to recede in importance in the Book of Acts, becoming little more than a setting for an incident in the story of how the Gospel at last reaches Rome.
This was, of course, part of the fulfillment of the promise God had made to Israel hundreds of years before: “Behold, I do a new thing.” May God apply the blessing of that promise to us as well, and may we embrace it with enthusiasm.