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Noah's Ark and the Church You are there! Acts 10.34-43 January 17, 1988 You may notice that we have jumped from Nehemiah into the New Testament portion of your Bible without beginning with the Gospels or the life of Jesus. The period bet ween Nehemiah and Jesus is very difficult to summarize, but needless to say the walls and the Temple were rebuilt, but only with great effort and sacrifice. Alexander the Great and Ptolemy who followed continued the policies of Cyrus the Persian who had returned the Israelites to their homeland. However, in the second century B.C.E., Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great's Generals made himself a power in the area. Antiochus the IV attempted to unify his area into a cultural and religious unit. He demanded veneration of himself as Zeus in the flesh, and promoted the worship of Greek gods. The greatest of possible corruptions took place with the profaning of the Temple, the sacred place for Jews to worship. Some Jews resisted and shed their blood. An altar of Zeus was erected in the Temple and Jews were forced to eat the flesh of pigs. Mattathias and his five sons began resistance. Those loyal to the Jewish Law the Hasidim joined him. Judas Maccabeus, Mattathias' son regained control of the temple and held a great ceremony of purification in December 164 B.C.E. Priestly leadership split, warred against one another and the Romans came in to settle the dispute bringing to an end Jewish independence. One of the names to surface is Herod the Great, appointed ruler of the whole area by Rome. He divided the area to be governed among his three sons. His son Herod Antipas ruled during the time of Jesus. We begin with the first sermon of Peter. Those who listened were Jews who were attached to the Law with the devotion of those who listened to it during the time of Nehemiah and Ezra. As a people they had decided there were to be no more prophets among them. God no longer spoke through the prophets but through the Law upon which they meditated day and night. The group that were the intellectual force behind maintaining this stance were the Pharisees. They were the people who attempted to live by the Scriptures and when the Scriptures were not as clear as they needed they would extrapolate conclusions from Scripture in what became known as the tradition of the elders. One can understand why they were not pleased with Peter's preaching about Jesus. For some he was at least a prophet, for others possibly the returned Elijah, and for Peter and his bunch, the Messiah whom God had promised from the beginning when God said the serpent's head would be bruised. It was being expressed with fervor and reached to the outsider, the Gentile. This particular occasion was a visit to the house of Cornelius, an outsider, an oppressor, to whom Peter is going to proclaim the Christ event. So he begins: I. I see that God has no favorites, but that in every nation the one who is godfearing and does what is right is acceptable to God.
Object Description
Title of Sermon | Noah's Ark and the Church |
Author | Landwehr, Arthur |
Subject | Martin Luther King, Jr., Church Unity |
Date of sermon | 1988-01-17 |
Type | Text |
Format | |
Number of Pages | 4 |
Language | English |
Biblical Book | Acts |
Verses | 10:34-43 |
Rights | For permission to reproduce, distribute, or otherwise use this image, please contact The Styberg Library by phone (847)866-3909 or email styberg.library@garrett.edu |
Collection | The Arthur Landwehr Sermon Collection (Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary) |
Identifier | 648 Noah's Ark and the Church.pdf |
Description
Title of Sermon | Page 1 |
Biblical Book | Biblical Book |
Collection | The Arthur Landwehr Sermon Collection (Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary) |
Transcript | Noah's Ark and the Church You are there! Acts 10.34-43 January 17, 1988 You may notice that we have jumped from Nehemiah into the New Testament portion of your Bible without beginning with the Gospels or the life of Jesus. The period bet ween Nehemiah and Jesus is very difficult to summarize, but needless to say the walls and the Temple were rebuilt, but only with great effort and sacrifice. Alexander the Great and Ptolemy who followed continued the policies of Cyrus the Persian who had returned the Israelites to their homeland. However, in the second century B.C.E., Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great's Generals made himself a power in the area. Antiochus the IV attempted to unify his area into a cultural and religious unit. He demanded veneration of himself as Zeus in the flesh, and promoted the worship of Greek gods. The greatest of possible corruptions took place with the profaning of the Temple, the sacred place for Jews to worship. Some Jews resisted and shed their blood. An altar of Zeus was erected in the Temple and Jews were forced to eat the flesh of pigs. Mattathias and his five sons began resistance. Those loyal to the Jewish Law the Hasidim joined him. Judas Maccabeus, Mattathias' son regained control of the temple and held a great ceremony of purification in December 164 B.C.E. Priestly leadership split, warred against one another and the Romans came in to settle the dispute bringing to an end Jewish independence. One of the names to surface is Herod the Great, appointed ruler of the whole area by Rome. He divided the area to be governed among his three sons. His son Herod Antipas ruled during the time of Jesus. We begin with the first sermon of Peter. Those who listened were Jews who were attached to the Law with the devotion of those who listened to it during the time of Nehemiah and Ezra. As a people they had decided there were to be no more prophets among them. God no longer spoke through the prophets but through the Law upon which they meditated day and night. The group that were the intellectual force behind maintaining this stance were the Pharisees. They were the people who attempted to live by the Scriptures and when the Scriptures were not as clear as they needed they would extrapolate conclusions from Scripture in what became known as the tradition of the elders. One can understand why they were not pleased with Peter's preaching about Jesus. For some he was at least a prophet, for others possibly the returned Elijah, and for Peter and his bunch, the Messiah whom God had promised from the beginning when God said the serpent's head would be bruised. It was being expressed with fervor and reached to the outsider, the Gentile. This particular occasion was a visit to the house of Cornelius, an outsider, an oppressor, to whom Peter is going to proclaim the Christ event. So he begins: I. I see that God has no favorites, but that in every nation the one who is godfearing and does what is right is acceptable to God. |