In a world filled with turmoil, strife and confusion, it seems fitting to write about the agenda that God is following at this very moment in time. No, we do not know when Jesus will return and the church age will be ended, but we do know what God has in mind to do as long as there are humans living on earth. It is foolhardy for any of us to predict when God will finish His work on earth, but it is not foolhardy for us to declare what He has said about the work He is presently doing on earth. With that in mind, I will give Acts 15:13-18: “And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: Simeon (Simon Peter) hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord, Who doeth all these things. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.”
I will probably give more verses that are within the context of the verses above, but this is enough for now. First, I want us to see that God is working by His plan in the earth, and that nothing takes Him by surprise, nor will anything stop, or detour, God from what He has planned to do. After all, if we are serving a God Who cannot have a plan, and then carry out that plan to the finishing point, then we are not serving the God of the Bible!!! I realize that all of us sometimes become discouraged when we see the wickedness in the world. We may even wonder sometimes why God does not “hurry up and do His work”, but God has His Own timetable, and everything that concerns that timetable is working on time!!! We humans often get too eager to “help God finish up His work on earth” and get on to the next phase of His plans for the future. Since God is eternal, He is not bound by time, thus He is not wringing His hands in anxiety as to how, or when, He will complete His work on earth. In fact, it is we who are often wringing our hands and wondering why God does not “hurry up” with His work, yet God has no need to hurry, since He is working from His eternal plan!
Our verses above come from a context of Acts chapter 15 that shows a conflict between some believing Pharisees and the apostles concerning whether or not Gentiles were under God’s command to be circumcised and to keep the law of Moses. Right off I would like to ask those Pharisees whether or not they had keep the law of Moses, at least in the strictest sense. The answer would be that they had not. It is interesting that people are often too eager to see that others follow a certain religious teaching that they have not followed themselves! For example, if you are a believer in Christ, having received Hm for salvation and having been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, would you say that you have always followed Him completely since the time of your salvation? Unless one has been saved only minutes or a few hours, likely all of us would have to say that we have not fully followed the Lord ever since we were saved. It is often easy to compel others to do what we are not even doing ourselves! So, in this article I am simply introducing a problem in the early church that needed to be worked out, and which was very easily overlooked by those who supposed that they “had it all together”. We are all still in the “making stage” of our Christianity, and thus need much help from the Lord and others, as we pursue our journey.
By J. Briggs King, Rainsville, AL (678) 451-0921