Sermons

Believe Your Theology!
Acts 18:9-11

The church has had a mission challenge from its very beginning. Such mission can lead us to some daunting places. So it was already in the first century.

After being beaten at Philippi, run out of Thessalonica and Berea, and laughed at in Athens, St. Paul arrived at Corinth, a busy seaport and the capital of Achaia. Temples to idols abounded there. Corinth was noted for its decadence. People all over the Mediterranean world knew what it meant to “sin like a Corinthian.” How on earth was Paul supposed to reach people for Christ in this environment?

We also know how big our outreach challenges look, and how inadequate we flawed and selfish sinners are to meet them. At one point fear seized Paul in Corinth, but the Lord comforted him with a vision in which He said, among other things, “I have many people in this city.” For their sake, Paul was to go on speaking about Christ and not fall silent.

About this same time, Paul by inspiration was writing these words to the Thessalonians: “We ought always to give thanks to God concerning you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you for salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” This is, God had had people among the Thessalonians too. They were chosen from the beginning.

But included in this choosing was the work of the Holy Spirit, Who comes to the chosen with the Gospel through which He creates faith in their hearts. They needed to hear God’s Word of rescue, as Paul also wrote: “For this purpose also He called you by the Gospel which we preach.” Earlier, Paul had written to the Thessalonians: “Fellow Christians, loved by God, we know that He has chosen you, because the Gospel we preached did not come to you with mere words, but with power, with the Holy Spirit, and with conviction.”

In the Acts 18 vision Jesus was in effect telling Paul, “Believe your own theology.” For this is really God’s theology. Believe that He has chosen people from eternity, that He chose them in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. He determined to bless them with faith by bringing them the Gospel of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. For Christ has bought and paid for our forgiveness and that of all people. Paul later wrote the Corinthians that he wanted to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified, so their faith clearly would rest not upon human wisdom but on divine power.

We need to believe our theology. The odds may seem stacked against the church as we try to reach out with the Gospel in inner cities, to ethnic populations, proud intellectuals, or whatever your own latest personal challenge may be. But never sell short God and His grace. He is and remains the cause of salvation. He gives us poor sinners the privilege of taking the Gospel message to people all around us. In it we are able to tell of a God Who gave His own Son as the sacrifice for all sin, ours and theirs included.

God’s grace in Christ, delivered in Word and Sacrament, is seriously offered to everyone. It takes care of the guilt of anyone. So we go on believing our theology and telling the Good News about Jesus.