I feel very privileged to stand
before you and speak. It's an honor to speak before
God's people, and I hope that the message I bring is an encouragement. That certainly is the intention.
In sermons past, I spoke of God's providence based on the promise
of Jesus Christ to build His church. And the last time I believe
it was I spoke, we kind of led the church or followed the church
from the time of Christ and the apostles up to about the Reformation. And I had intended to pick up
there today and bring it up through more modern times. But as I started
and as I thought about the message today, I changed course. Let me offer to you some scripture
as a base and then we'll deviate from that. And I hope in the
end it will all tie together for us. The first passage I would
like to read for us today is from John chapter 10 verses 14
through 16. Jesus is talking about the people
of God as a sheepfold and that He is the Good Shepherd. And
Jesus tells the disciples, then, I am the good shepherd. I know
my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I
know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. Then he
says this, and I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I
must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice, so there
will be one flock, one shepherd. The second passage I would like
to read for us today is from Matthew chapter 28 verses 18
through 20. And here it is just before the ascension
of Jesus Christ. He has been resurrected from
the grave and He is fixing to ascend to the throne of the Father. He tells those with Him. And
Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples
of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all
that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always
to the end of the age. A third passage I'd like to read
to you today and offer for our consideration is a rather lengthy
passage, but it's a beautiful passage, and I hope we really
hear this. And this is from the book of
the Revelation, chapter 7, verses 9 through 17. John has been taken
up into heaven. He is standing in a vision in
the presence of God and Christ in the throne room of our God. He talks about what he sees there. He sees the heavenly beasts around
the throne. He sees the 144,000 from the
tribes of Israel. And then he sees this. After this I looked, and behold,
a great multitude that no one could number from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the
throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches
in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation
belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. And
all the angels were standing around the throne and around
the elders and around the four living creatures, and they fell
on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, Amen,
blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and
power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. Then one of the elders addressed
me, saying, Who are these clothed in white robes? And where have
they come from? And where, where, from where
have they come? And I said to him, sir, you know,
and he said to me, these are the ones coming out of the great
tribulation. They have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the lamb. Therefore they are
before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his
temple. and he who sits on the throne will shelter them in his
presence. They shall hunger no more, neither
thirst any more. The sun shall not strike them,
nor any scorching heat. For the lamb is in the midst
of the throne, will be their shepherd, and he will be, he
will guide them to the springs of living water, and God will
wipe away every tear from their eyes. That is from the book of
the revelation of Jesus Christ, and hopefully in a Sunday message
to follow, we'll talk more about that vision. As I said, I had
intended to pick up where I left off last time, talking about
the church coming forward even to our day. And I got to thinking
about it, and what led to this was the passage immediately before
that one in Revelation, I read about the 144,000. And there's
so much discussion always when you get into the book of Revelation
about who this represents, who the multitude represents. And
we're not going to discuss that this time. But that did get me
to thinking about the Jews of old as the people of God. And
that led me back into the Old Testament to try and figure out
who are the people of God? This is a question that has been
raging and asked many, many times from the very beginning to now.
And everybody has their idea of who the people of God are,
who they were then, who they are now. And I wanted to get
a handle on this because who the people of God were and who
they have become is an important question to us. So I thought
today what I need to do is to step back into the Old Testament
and try and figure out exactly what marked one as a child of
God in the Old Testament. And then we could bring that
forward into the New Testament. And I will give you a key or
a link here that I found throughout all, so I'll kind of guide the
message even from this. The link has always been faith. At times people's eyes got turned
from that and other things became criteria in the minds of people
as to what made one a child of God, but the key, the link, the
true guide to God's people has always been faith. It was then,
it is now, and it always will be. We look at human history
in the days before the law. And it was, let me say this,
that it was the coming of the law that marked the Jews particularly
as a people, as a nation. But in the days before the law,
there was God and there was His people. We know that. What marked one in those pre-law
days? As a follower of God. There was
no law so you couldn't point to the temple in Jerusalem. You
couldn't point to even the rite of circumcision prior to a certain
time. What was it? It was faith in
one true God. Now the scripture records that
there were those people in the Old Testament. Noah was one.
Noah was one of those people. The rest of the world was not,
but Noah was. Another one that was a man who
believed in the one true God was Job. The best that I can
determine from all that I read and studied is that Job was a
contemporary of Abraham, that they lived in roughly the same
time period. There was not at that time necessarily
the tribe of the family of Abraham called to God, so there was no
unified preaching of the one true God, but Job believed in
the one true God. He knew Him. He was a perfect
man, is what the scripture says. Another of that same time period
who believed in the one true God, and in fact is reckoned
a high priest of the one true God, was Melchizedek. And Abraham
recognized this in Melchizedek in such that he paid tithes to
Melchizedek. Of course, we know about Abraham. Called from a pagan belief, Abraham
did not believe in the one true God. But he was called to God. and from that point walked with
God, was a believer, was a follower, he and his household. God instituted
the rite of circumcision, not as a ritual to bring him into
the kingdom, but as a sign that he did believe. From that point
on for a period, what marked one as a follower of God, a believer
in God, was the admission, the belief, the faith that there
was one true God, and the males of the household were circumcised.
We see people that were brought in under this period, people
that were pagans that came into the kingdom of God. And this
is something that I had always had in my own mind, wrongly so,
that the kingdom of God was extremely exclusive. That it was locked
into the family of Abraham. But as you read the Old Testament
all along, you see that there were people from the other nations
that came and dwelt among Israel and indeed came into the fellowship
of Israel. There were provisions for proselytes,
converts to come into the kingdom of God even in the Old Testament.
That's not something that I had thought much about. Because in
my mind, in my thinking, In the Old Testament, it was blood.
Now, we've talked, we've studied, we've heard enough preaching
to know that it never was blood, but still, we get that idea locked
in our heads sometimes and we think that true faith in the
Old Testament time was a Jewish thing. I will say it was predominantly
a Jewish thing, but there were others outside the camp of Israel
that did come to faith in the true God and became part of the
fellowship of believers, part of the kingdom of God. We see
that communicated to us immediately in the wives of Isaac and in the wives of Jacob. They came from a pagan family. Now, they were kin of Abraham,
but they were pagans. They were pagans. And yet these
women came into the household of belief, and I may be wrong,
but I make the assumption that they did come into belief as
well. They became part of the lineage of faith. We see that
Rebekah was brought in, a pagan, and lingered long with God's
people, bearing children into the kingdom of God. We see that
Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah came in as the wives of Jacob,
giving us the 12 tribes of Israel. Later, as Jacob wandered around,
we see somewhat of a skewed picture of this coming into the family
of God or into the tribe of Israel, if you will. in the incident
that happened at Hamor with Shechem. Now again, this is a skewed picture,
but it demonstrates that there is a reconciliation, a possible
coming into the kingdom of God from outside. If you remember,
Jacob and his family had settled outside the gates of Shechem.
They were invited in for a celebration. In the process, Dinah was raped. It was a big problem, a big disgrace,
a big problem, and there was much hostility. But in discussion
to settle this issue, it was decided by Jacob that if these
people will come into the family of Jacob, if they will submit
to circumcision and accept the God of Jacob and the customs
of Jacob, that there would be forgiveness and reconciliation.
And Shechem agreed to do that. Now again, this is not a complete
picture because we know that they didn't come in. They submitted
and then the sons of Jacob exacted vengeance upon Shechem and the
full forgiveness and inclusion never happened. But the point
of saying that is that there was an opportunity that these
people would be brought in to the kingdom. Later, later we
see in Egypt where Joseph's wife becomes part of the family of
God, bearing sons to Joseph. She herself was an Egyptian.
She was the daughter of a high pagan priest. And I may make
a bad leap here, take it for what you will, this is my opinion,
but I will assume that in time as she was brought in, as she
sat with her husband Joseph, who we know was a great man of
faith, that she herself came to understand the true God. That's
my opinion, take it for what you will. I could be completely
wrong on that. It is certainly not necessary
that she did. But I tend to think she did. As Israel left Egypt, as they
were led out of slavery, Moses was given the law. And a definite
separation was set up between Israel the new, identifiable, unified
nation of Israel coming out of their Egyptian bondage, and all
of the nations around them. They now had a new set of guidelines
to distinguish them from all the other people. It's important
to note that while this was given to a unique people, a people
called by God, set apart by God, This was not based necessarily
upon race. It was based upon faith. Now,
in as much as a person has faith, they also have a race and a culture. So in a way, yes, it was identified
with a race, but the predominant factor was faith. The law instructed
Israel how to behave properly toward their God and toward each
other. And it also instructed them how
to behave toward the people around them and the strangers within
their borders, within their midst. That's important to remember. There were provisions in the
law for proselytes, for converts. This is important to remember
as well. The promise given to Abraham
was that it would be to his seed. Now we have people who are not
the blood seed, the lineage, the direct physical lineage of
Abraham coming into the kingdom of God. And then the question is, do
the promises apply to them? Remember, the promises are of
faith, not of blood. We know that. Paul tells us later. But to prove the point that there
was an inclusiveness, even in the law, even in the nation of
Israel, God made provision for proselytes. People who came and
dwelt in Israel could become God's people. That's important
to remember. One of the passages that speaks
of this is in Deuteronomy 23, verses 7 and 8, and it's significant
that here it even mentions the Egyptians. Egyptians who came
into the fellowship of Israel and dwelt amongst them could
become full citizens of Israel. Now, is there anybody that the
Israelites at this time that the law was given, was there
anybody that the Israelites hated more than the Egyptians? I think
not. And yet God says if these people
come among you and they dwell at peace with you, if they take
on your ways and your God, They become with you. That's significant. That's real significant. Now,
it does have a provision to that, and that is that they dwell among
you for three generations. But after three generations,
they're assimilated. They are the same as Israel.
I didn't remember that. brings about an inclusiveness.
There is an openness even in the nation of Israel for converts. We have examples during this
period, the period of the law, where there were converts. A couple come to mind most immediately. Rahab. Rahab, a prostitute in a pagan
country, The spies of Israel come in to check out the land. She helps them. She throws her
part in with the emerging nation of Israel. She saves the spies. She is reckoned in the scripture
as a hero of the faith. There is no question that she
became part of Israel. Later we see Ruth, who was a
Moabitess, not an Israelite, but she throws in with Naomi
and comes in to the family of Israel. And she is so much a
part of Israel that through her, part of her, she's included in
the bloodline of our Savior, Jesus Christ. She was not of
Israel. She was of Israel. And she was
in the line of Jesus Christ. The nation of God, even in the
Old Testament, was always to be grander and more glorious
than physical lineage. Now it was linked with a physical
lineage in part, but it was always to be more grand and glorious than a physical lineage. God
meant to show His glory in the lives of His people. It would
be through this demonstration on earth of God amongst His people
that the nations around would see that there is one true God
and they would be drawn to Jerusalem. The image always remains somewhat
marred because Israel, just the same as we are, was made up of
sinners. And this picture of a glorious
God dwelling with His people in peace and harmony is inconsistent
with what we actually see. Beginning with, we see a small
tribe of people who fight amongst themselves, who suffer intense
hatred and all kinds of squabbling and bickering within their own
family, even to such that brother hates brother and sells their
brother into slavery. It's not a very good picture
of a relationship with God. We see a huge mass of people,
God's people, who find themselves enslaved in a foreign country
then delivered. Now the delivery is good news,
but it's followed again by this inconsistent news, and that is
that these people rise up in the desert in unbelief and most
die in the desert. Then we see a kingdom established
later. They claim the true God to be
their God. They build this wonderful temple
to their God. And then all the while they revel
in selfishness and pagan practice, ignore their God, and ultimately
are destroyed. All of this and more is true
of the nation of Israel. It's inconsistent with the promise. It's inconsistent with the hope. It's inconsistent with the intention
of God as voiced to us in the Scripture. but it is consistent
with the depravity of man. But it's important to remember,
and here's the hopeful part of this, that throughout all of
this, throughout all of this falling down of the nation of
Israel, there were still some in Israel that believed in God,
that held to God, and that acted in accordance with their faith
in God. And that is the hope in dark times always. As Israel
faltered and fell, prophets rose up in Israel to remind the people
of their special relationship to God and his grand purpose.
A purpose which was more glorious than Israel could even understand
at the time. Israel would not hear the prophets. Later, when the greatest prophet
of all, when the very Son of God, Jesus Christ, came amongst
Israel and spoke, and all He spoke was indeed in complete
harmony with all that God had spoken in the Scripture and the
Law and the Prophets, Israel still wouldn't hear Him. Jesus
spoke of the Kingdom of God, and Israel restored. an Israel
greater and more glorious than ever before, more grand and glorious
than even the people could imagine. Jesus spoke of a kingdom that
included people from everywhere, not just the Jews. This message offended the nation
of Israel. They were looking for a Messiah. They claimed to have a faith
in God and they were looking for a Messiah. This man, Jesus,
they called him the Christ, we know is the Christ, spoke of
Israel, of a grand and glorious Israel, and they wouldn't hear
him. and the reason they wouldn't
hear them again is found right smack dab in the middle of human
depravity. Depraved man, whether he be of
the nation of Israel of old or of today, any nation you want
to mention, even ours, is naturally selfish and self-absorbed. of old was a nation separated
from the world. That's true. They were called
by God to be separate from the world. That was established by
God with a purpose and that purpose was to demonstrate the one true
God to the world. And to prove that people could
have a relationship with God and live in harmony with each
other. As happens with people, any people, over time, ideologies
degenerate. Israel soon became experts on
the word of God, but not on God. The law was meant to show man
the way. It was to point to God and to
point to our need for God. It was not meant to keep people
out of the kingdom of God. But an unbalanced perspective
has exactly that effect. Jesus spoke of the true kingdom
of God, a kingdom that was greater and far beyond the bounds of
Israel. He spoke of sheep from another
field, another fold, And these sheep would be brought in and
there would be one fold and one shepherd. Jesus then commanded
his disciples, soon to be our apostles, to go and preach and
teach to all nations. All nations. The message of Jesus
was shocking. It was shocking to the people
of God, Israel of old. They reckoned themselves to be
the people of God. There was no room in their minds,
in their hearts to include those outside of the camp of Israel. The message that Jesus preached
that there were other sheep, there was another fold, was shocking. It was just absolutely law-breaking
in their minds. But some in Israel heard that
message. And to them it was freeing. It
was liberating. And it was full of possibility. The message that Jesus preached,
taken to heart by the disciples, led them to tell others. It drove
them, actually. Paul said, it compels me. He
couldn't be stopped. It was so burning in him that
he had to tell others. It drove these men, and we talked
about it in sermon past, to travel all over the known world to tell
others of Jesus Christ. The message they preached was
the same message in Israel of old, whether they understood
it or not. And that is that God saves sinners. God saves sinners. There were
sinners in Israel. There were sinners in the Gentile
nations. The message was and is that God
saves sinners. God, through Jesus Christ, guiding
by His Spirit, saves sinners. And these days, they're everywhere. Any nation People of all colors,
languages, countries, borders. There you'll find sinners and
there you'll find God's people. It's an incredible thing. It's
an incredible thing. Again, the question historically
has always been, who are the people of God? And this is an
important question that rages even today. And when you start
talking about, in times, dispensational thinking, you start getting to
this question about who are the people of God? Who are the people
of God? And there are those that hold
that the people of God are the nation of Israel. They always
were. And then Israel kind of dissipated,
but the Jews, wherever they were, were God's people. And today,
they are God's people. And then there are others. And
I will throw myself in there and say that people of God are
those who believe in Jesus Christ, not necessarily the nation of
Israel. According to Paul, there is an
Israel of God, the true seed of Abraham, children of faith,
those who believe in Jesus Christ. He writes about that in the Galatian
letter. Where are those people? They're
everywhere. They're everywhere. Some are
called to Christ now, and we can see them, we can know them.
And some are yet diamonds buried in the dirt to be found, brought
up, and polished clean. But the children of God are everywhere. And for us, this should be a
hopeful message. This should be a hopeful message.
Just as Israel of old at times forgot that there was the possibility
for proselytes, converts from outside of Israel, sometimes
we can become settled in our thinking about who the church
is and who it should be and how we should act And it's natural
to us. We get comfortable in our situation. And we can become exclusive. Now, I'm not trying to go into
an all people are God's people kind of ecumenical pantheistic
viewpoint. That's not what I'm saying. But
the truth is that all the Church of Jesus Christ does not look
like us. They don't sing necessarily the
same songs we sing on Sunday morning. But they're the children
of God. They're our brothers and sisters
in Christ. We can forget that sometimes. And I don't know that
we mean to. I don't know that we set out
to say, well, we're the only ones. But sometimes we, and I
hope I'm not speaking to us personally, but I use the term we generically.
We can do that. we fall into that practice. In
doing so, we can close our eyes to some of the beauty of the
kingdom of God. We fail to recognize the glory
of God then demonstrating the lives of His people. And that
is to the detriment of our own selves because we rob ourselves
of some of the beauty that God has for us to see in this world. It's important that we see and
understand that the church of God, the church of Jesus Christ,
the body of believers, is huge, a great multitude, and beautiful
in its variation. Because that itself is an encouragement.
Especially in dark days. Especially in dark days. And
the Bible records the lives of God's people in the Old Testament
and even through the book of Acts and the letters of the apostles,
of God's people in basically dark days. There are not a whole
lot of, if you really look at it and put a critical eye on
it, there are not a lot of happy stories in the Scripture. There are stories of slavery.
of murder, of hatred, of war, of disease, of famine. Those are not particularly happy
stories. The happiness, the joy, the expectation, the encouragement
that comes out of those is that above and beyond all that, there
is a God who loves His people and who gives of Himself to bring
His people through those times, even to the point that he gave
his only son for his people. That's the encouragement. That
is the encouragement. And this is a message that we
do need to hear. You can turn on your TV, your
radio, or you can look at the internet on any number of pages,
any number of news pages. The message presented there is
to mistrust those around you. Hate those or envy those who
are different than yourselves. That is the message. Politics
thrives when people are dissatisfied and stirred up. And that's what the world is
all about. We as Christians cannot accept
those messages. We have to see beyond those messages. We have to see above those messages. We have to see our God in Christ. Remember that Paul, as he stayed
in one of the most wicked cities in the old world, that of Corinth,
was discouraged. There weren't a lot of converts.
He was ready to leave. And God came to him in a vision
and said, stay here. I have many people in this city. Looking out the window, Paul
didn't see those people. What he saw was wickedness all
around. But as he stayed there and preached,
God brought his people forward and there were great blessings
in that. There was a church in Corinth. Now we know from the
letters that it was far from perfect, but you know what? There
were believers there. Different than the people that
Paul knew in Jerusalem. Different than the people that
Paul knew in Antioch. Different than people that Paul
met anywhere else. There were believers there. God's
people, God's elect are everywhere. We may not see them yet. We may
not know them yet. They may not be called to Christ
yet. But God has his people everywhere. For us as Christians, this thought
lingering in the back of our mind should be an encouragement
to know that our lives, our communications, our efforts on behalf of the
kingdom of God, on behalf of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
are not in vain. They're not in vain. Paul says
one man plants a seed, one man waters, it's God that brings
forth the harvest. We don't know where God's providence
will lead us or what will be said and done to bring this one
or that one to Jesus Christ, but we do know that God's people
are everywhere. They're everywhere. And as God
wills, they will come forth. He will call them. And this should
give us a hopeful expectation and an anticipation, a joyful
anticipation for the days to come. Even in the worst of times,
even in the worst of times, think that the kingdom of God is expanding. I don't necessarily understand
that. I can't make bad things look
good, but we do know that all things work together for good
to those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.
John, while exiled on the island of Patmos, he was an old man at this time. He was a prisoner. He was a slave
at hard labor. God gave him a vision of the
glorious reigning Jesus Christ. Part of that vision was of this
multitude before the throne of God, so great that no man could
number. And they were of all tribes,
all people, all languages, all groups. This vision was given
to John as an encouragement. It was then given to us through
John as an encouragement. The book of Revelation carries
the promise with it in the first chapter that there is a blessing
to all who will read and hear these words. It should be a blessing
to us to know that even though we may be small in this place,
that the church of Jesus Christ is great and glorious over all. And one day, one day we will
stand with our God in Christ and we will be within that multitude
and we will see the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus Christ
that is inherent, that is built into the command to go and preach
and teach to all nations. Let us think about God's working
in our lives individually. It's always a blessing to meditate
on that, because when we stop and think about the goodness
that God has shown to each one of us personally, it can overwhelm
us. And I say that in a very good
sense, because we've all come through so much. Let us think
about God working in the life of our church here. The story
is the same, but on a corporate level. God has taught us so much
here. He has brought us through so
much together as a people in this place. And that's an encouragement. And let us also think of God's
work going on, whether it is known to us, as is the mission
work that we take part in, or workings of God in other places
that we don't even know about. But we have confidence as we
think, as we pray, as we read the scripture, and as we talk
to each other. We have confidence that God is
working everywhere, whether we can see it or not. He's working
right now, at this time, in places far away. Places with names that
you and I couldn't even begin to pronounce. He's working among
people who do not look like us or act like us. But He's working. And one day, one day we will
stand in a great multitude before the throne of our God in Christ,
shoulder to shoulder with people so varied that it's beyond our
imagination now, and so grand and glorious that we can't even
take that in either. And we will all be singing praises
to our God in Christ, because just as He saved us, He saved
them too. Remember the message always,
and that is that God saves sinners. From pole to pole, from horizon
to horizon, God saves sinners. And one day we will all stand
in that great and glorious multitude around the throne of our God
and Jesus Christ.