Trained, Equipped, and Mobilized

Psalm 33:1-12           Acts 2:1-21           John 14:15-17, 25-27

Trained, Equipped, and Mobilized

Every job has its requirements…whether it be a degree or diploma or experience or expertise or even on-the-job training…prospective employers expect their prospective employees to possess certain qualifications for whatever position they wish to occupy. Plus, most companies expect employees to attend some sort of refresher courses or advanced training courses at regular intervals.

Well, the same ought to be true for the most important work in the universe. Being witnesses to Jesus requires preparation and training and regular refresher courses. While the great passion of the followers of Jesus ought to be to love God and to love people, the great purpose of the Church is to continue to do and teach everything Jesus did and taught while he was here on earth. Jesus final command to his group of followers was for them to make disciples of all people groups. But Jesus knew that in order to do what he did, his followers then (as now) needed to be trained and that training in the art of making disciples is illustrated most clearly by what Jesus demonstrated through and in his own life and ministry.

Before mobilising his followers, Jesus taught them the true meaning of the Scriptures and showed them clearly how to apply what they learned. The call of Jesus to follow him was a call to do what he did...to copy him…to live like him and to love like him. But in the first century, there were many teachers and many followers and, like today, many different ways of understanding the Scriptures. Initially, God gave Israel the tribe of Levi to lead them and teach them the biblical requirements so that they might lead lives that would reflect the holiness of God. They were not given land like the other tribes because their role was to teach the law. So, instead of land, they were given cities throughout the land of Israel…48 cities in total, 4 cities in each tribal area. The apparent purpose of this dispersal of the Levites throughout the land was to enable them, as the official representatives of God, to instruct the people throughout the land in the law and in worship. The cities also served as cities of refuge for a person who accidentally committed murder.

To compensate for the lack of arable land by which they could provide for themselves, God established the system of tithing…every member of every other tribe had to give ten percent of their income (which would in their case be crops and livestock) so that the Levites could focus on what they were intended to do…to study and teach God’s Word to God’s people. But as you read through the history of Israel, you will notice that the tribes were not always obedient with regard to tithing (among other things) and the result was the Levites were forced to be bi-vocational in order to live…and soon, the law was no longer being taught and the nation began to slide down that slippery slope of compromise with the ways of life and the religions and practices of the nations around them. 

The prophets repeatedly warned the people that if they continued to live disobedient lives, God would discipline them…and if they did not respond positively to this discipline, the Lord would eventually expel them from the land. And this is exactly what happened. It is a long and sad story, but the short version is that Israel was permanently exiled by Assyria in 722 BC and in 586 BC Judah was exiled by the Babylonians. 

The Jews in exile in Babylon realised that the reason this had happened to them was because they had disobeyed God’s commandments. So, in order to prevent that from ever happening again, some of the teachers of the law began to provide fairly extensive commentary on the Scriptures. This developed over time and by the time of Jesus, the oral law was in full force. The purpose of the oral law as a code of conduct was to provide sufficient rules to control the behaviour of the people of God. This was later written down in the 3rd century AD and is now called the Mishnah. 

But, as you can imagine, there were different views on the interpretation of Scripture…some were lenient, others stricter...some were inclusive, others exclusive…but these differences of opinion served to only confuse the people. What had God really said? And, consequently, what should have been a relationship of love and peace and joy, became a legalistic chore and a burden.

So, when Jesus began to teach his disciples about life in the kingdom, he knew what he was up against. A set of rules and regulations and traditions that were so ingrained that it would take years to dismantle a system that dominated life from the cradle to the grave. You can see the beginning of this attempt to dismantle the oral law in the beatitudes…Jesus said repeatedly, you have heard that it was said…but I say to you. He was not going against what was written, but what had been said about what had been written, in other words, the oral law or, as Jesus would often refer to it, the tradition of the elders. 

And so, for three years, Jesus taught large groups and mid-sized groups, but mostly he taught a small select group we call his disciples…twelve men, symbolically representing the twelve tribes of Israel, and a number of faithful women disciples. He even had a smaller inner core group of three, Peter, James, and John, with whom he went even deeper, investing more of himself in their training as leaders of what would become the extension of himself once he ascended the throne. 

But dismantling years of misleading instruction doesn’t happen overnight. Close to the end of his earthly life, we hear Jesus saying things like, ‘have I been with you so long and still you don’t know me?’ or ‘do you still have no understanding?’ or ‘where is your faith?’ or ‘how slow of heart you are to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’. Right up until the end, Jesus was still correcting their misunderstandings. He clearly taught that his kingdom is not an earthly kingdom and yet just moments before the ascension the disciples asked him if this was the time for the restoration of the physical, geographical kingdom of Israel. 

For three years he had taught them the true meaning of Scripture. For a period of forty days between the resurrection and the ascension, Jesus took them through the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and working his way through all the prophets. In one sense this was easier for him than for most of us because the disciples, even some of the women, had been committing most of the Scriptures to memory since the age of three. But my point is, Jesus taught to correct misleading interpretation of the Word.

But the mind is a strange thing…it seems to like ruts…it doesn’t deal with change easily. Perhaps it is laziness, perhaps it is pride, or perhaps it is force of habit, but it prefers to keep things the way they have been. My mother always used to say, ‘a woman convinced against her will, is of the same opinion still’. I’m not sure that only applies to women, methinks not, but the sad reality is that people do not change gears easily, and the disciples were no exception. 

So, what was Jesus’ solution? After telling his disciples that his followers would be known for their obedience to his teaching, Jesus said this: “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you…I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you in all truth.”

Jesus knew full well that if left to their own devices, the disciples would slip back into their old ways of thinking…and so he promised not to leave them on their own, but to send them his Holy Spirit who would continue to remind them of the teaching they had received from Jesus. God had promised through the prophet Ezekiel that the day would come when he would cleanse his people from their impurities, give them new hearts and new spirits, and place his Spirit in them who would move them to follow his decrees and to be careful to keep his laws. 

This is what Jesus meant when he said, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” Power to be obedient to God. Power to live according to his Word. Power to be witnesses to him wherever they went. And that is exactly what happened on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit came upon the 120 disciples in Jerusalem just as he had on Mount Sinai and the Tabernacle and the Temple…but this time the pillar of fire came and rested on every one of them because every believer in Jesus is a temple of the Holy Spirit. We are the living stones that now make up the spiritual house of God. Those who are in Jesus – Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female – we are the chosen people…we are a royal and holy priesthood…we are a holy nation…we are a people who belong to God and who are indwelt by God…so that, like Israel of old, we might declare the praises of him who calls people out of darkness into his marvellous light. 

Once we were not a people…but now, because the Holy Spirit lives in us, we are the people of God. We have been born from above. We are new creations. That, dearest beloved brethren, is the power of what happened at Pentecost. This day marks the inauguration of the New Covenant in which God forgives our sins and chooses to remember them no more. THAT is power! The coming of the Holy Spirit is nothing less than the beginning of a renewed creation. The old has passed away…the new HAS come! Just as the Spirit of God hovered over the primeval darkness prior to the commencement of the creative acts of God, so too with us…the Holy Spirit lives in us, making us new and empowering us to be the agents of renewal in the world.

But how? How are we to fulfil the command of Jesus to disciple the nations?

Have you ever wondered how Jesus did what he did? Of course, Jesus was God, but the Scriptures teach us that when he came in the likeness of humanity, he chose to live his life never more than a man so that he could be a living example of what the obedient life might look like. So, if Jesus didn’t play his “God-card”, so to speak, how did he do what he did? Have you ever thought about that? 

Well, for starters, he studied and memorised the Word of God, like every other Jewish person of that time. He studied it and internalised it for thirty years while living and working as a labourer before he embarked on his public ministry. 

He also spent hours and hours in prayer, listening carefully to the still, small voice of the Father. Jesus said he only spoke what he heard from the Father and only did what he saw the Father doing. He was in tune with the will of God by knowing the Scriptures and knowing the God of the Scriptures. 

But we are also told that Jesus was Holy Spirit directed and Holy Spirit filled. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, anointed by the Holy Spirit, guided by the Holy Spirit, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and resurrected by the Holy Spirit. So, how did Jesus do what he did? By being Word-centred, prayerfully dependant, and Holy Spirit filled. 

God’s Word, prayer, and the Holy Spirit. That’s how Jesus did what he did.

But pray tell, do we not have the same three resources? We have the Word of God. We have access to the Father through prayer. And we have been united with Jesus in his resurrection by the Holy Spirit, we are born again through the Holy Spirit, we are anointed by the Holy Spirit, we are guided by the Holy Spirit, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live like Jesus lived, love like Jesus loved, and make disciples like Jesus made disciples.

The power of the Holy Spirit is not just so that we might do great things. You can heal people and prophesy, you can have faith to move mountains…you may impress many…you may even impress yourself…BUT to change the orientation of a sinful, selfish, self-obsessed, self-absorbed, self-centred heart to a holy, God-centred, other-person-centred heart – THAT is power!

God’s Word, prayer, and the Holy Spirit.

With these three resources, we too can be trained, equipped, and mobilized to do what Jesus did and to teach as Jesus taught. As God’s people, we have been given a task…we have been given a ministry – the ministry of reconciliation of misguided and lost individuals to God through Jesus Christ…we are the new living temple of the Holy Spirit…we are the holy priesthood. And, like the Levites of old, we too are distributed among the nations to be cities of refuge…cities of learning…cities of life.

We have God’s Word. Let’s read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. We have access to the Father. Let’s live prayerfully dependant lives. We have the Holy Spirit…the most powerful Person in the universe. Let’s walk in step with him. 

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2022