no man forbidding
One morning, not long ago, I was continuing my reading through the Spanish Old Testament, one chapter at a time. With a good cup of coffee in an old "I Love Cats" (I do actually) mug and a homemade yogurt recipe with chia seeds and fresh blueberries from our bushes, I came to Isaiah 50, my Spanish chapter for the day. And therein, I found great comfort for these dark days.
You see, this chapter speaks of Israel's rebellion against God and how they, like America of today, had SOLD THEMSELVES into the slaveries of the world and had turned their backs upon the LORD and His Word. And yet, a Messiah would come to intervene when there was no one else to do so. He would "know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary" (50:4) and would give his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off his hair. He would not hide his face from shame and spitting" (50:6). Instead he would set his "face like a flint" (50:7) and complete His work, as He had been sent to do. What God commanded in the life of the Messiah, no man in a wicked and messed up nation that had sold itself into slavery would or could forbid. Of course, all these details were fulfilled in the life of one Jesus Christ of Nazareth who truly set His face like a flint and went about His work in the face of man's prohibitions. Those that fear the LORD are called to obey the voice of His Messiah and follow this example. Let such an one trust in the name of the LORD and "stay upon his God" (50:10). On the other hand, all the manmade solutions in dark days, the manmade fires that are kindled to warm . . . they are vanity and will bring only sorrow (50:11).
In these crazy times of pandemics, government overreach, tyrannical dictates, protests, anarchy, and compulsory face masks, many in the churches are kindling their own fires and compassing themselves about with their own sparks, walking in the light of their own fires. When a governor tells them they cannot sing or hold corporate prayer in church, they don't praise or pray. Instead they speak of the Christian life and the Christian testimony in these times, even the Gospel, in terms of PRAGMATISM, what is practical and what will keep them out of trouble. Many copy the virtue signals of the mob and latch on to manmade movements that justify the wicked while condemning the just, both of which are an abomination to the LORD (Proverbs 17:15). God says, "Ok, go head and walk in the light of your own fire and try to warm yourself with the sparks you have kindled. This is my judgment upon you, and you will lie down in sorrow" (Isaiah 50:11, my paraphrase).
Pragmatism, my friends, is the way of Cain, the error of Balaam, the gainsaying of Korah (Jude 11), and it should have no place in the Body of Christ. God calls us to what is RIGHT, not what is necessarily practical or "effective" (a favorite word of the Laodicean Church). And, He calls us to VIRTUE (I Peter 1:3) which is, simply put, doing right because it is right and not for anything else to be gained. For far too long in America, we have valued numbers, church growth, and "effectiveness" over the simple Gospel message, the simple fellowship of the brethren, and simple growth as facilitated by the Holy Spirit--those things that are RIGHT. We have valued what we know naturally as brute beasts and not proceeding from a spiritual understanding (Jude 10). And therefore, in times like these, we speak of things we know not and stumble in our corruption. Friends, we don't come to God on our own terms as did Cain. We don't worship Him or please Him on a governor's terms. We must come to Him on His terms and through His Messiah.
That Messiah is the LORD JESUS CHRIST, and His example is what we should follow in times just like these. He knew how to speak a word in season to those who were weary, and so should we. He did not run from shame and spitting, hide Himself, or try to appease the mob. Neither should we. He set His face LIKE A FLINT. Let us do so.
Pragmatism in the church can only lead to sorrow and boarded up buildings like this one I stumbled upon once in a dilapidated and sorrowful village in Karelia, Northern Russia.
It's strange, while meditating upon the 50th chapter of Isaiah, I was reminded of the very last verse of the Book of Acts, and the Apostle Paul's powerful testimony of setting his face like a flint. This ending to the Book of Acts is an incredible testimony that we would do well to consider, for it contains an adverbial clause that literally and effectively sums up two entire years of Gospel ministry, a ministry that, humanly speaking, SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.
You see, the Apostle was under house arrest, waiting to make appeal before Casear. He was under police guard, and his freedom was restricted. On the third day of this setup, he called the Jewish leaders of the neighborhood together and preached to them the SAME PLAIN TRUTH that had literally incensed Jewish leaders of other places and had thrown entire cities into an uproar (Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus, etc.) He even rightly cast the prophesied judgment of Isaiah 6 into their midst and followed up with the exact same words that got him expelled from Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13) and that incited a riot in the Roman military barracks in Jerusalem (Acts 22). One would think such bold preaching while under house arrest would have shut Paul down completely. But unlike those other places, “the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves” (Acts 28:29).
And from that point on, for two entire years, Paul had liberty to preach to the lost, to teach the Word of God to the disciples, and to do so boldly. And when many should have put an end to it, when many should have accused him of violating the law and the terms of his arrest, when many in places of power could have slammed the door shut, when the Jewish community should have stirred up all the people . . . we instead encounter four amazing little words that fittingly close out the Acts of the Apostles altogether: NO MAN FORBIDDING HIM.
What could have happened, what might have happened, what should have happened . . . all those hypotheticals that often paralyze us . . . none of it did. And Paul enjoyed two fruitful years of ministry even while under house arrest, having set his face like a flint.
The Apostle Paul didn't concern himself with hypotheticals in ministry. He set his face like a flint.
Back in 2015, when we took our first Team Yeshua to Ladakh, we set up shop in a very dark place with lots of restrictions, lots of devils, lots of enemies of the Gospel, a Jewish Chabad house (i.e. anti-missionary society), a long history of Christian persecution at the hands of Tibetan Buddhists, and a large military presence, the same military presence right now in a standoff with the Chinese on the disputed border not far from where we lived that summer. Our objective was to sow seeds of the Gospel with the Israeli backpacker first and also with the Gentiles in our path. At the beginning of the summer, God gave us this last verse from the Book of Acts; and we claimed it, praying that by summer’s end we could look back and say: “This, too, was our testimony in a place where, humanly speaking, it should not have happened.” When that summer came to an end, we looked back praising the Lord, for we had been able to freely preach the Gospel to the lost. We had been able to freely teach one another and local believers the Word of God. We had done so with boldness, and NO MAN FORBIDDING. Our very last night in Leh, it was a dark night, I sent the team out with the last of our stash of local-language Scripture-portion cards. They were instructed to saturate the town under cover of darkness. It was so, NO MAN FORBIDDING. With the rising of the sun, we were off down the dirt road in a van and climbing back over the Himalayas. By summer’s end, 25 Hebrew New Testaments had gone into the hands of lost sheep from the House of Israel, and Gentiles from 36 different nations had been confronted with the Gospel. A local Buddhist family was also saved and baptized in the Indus River. That local family continues to serve the LORD to this day. The son, who was a teenager at the time and also baptized that day, has since survived a major medical scare and has a real heart for missions. A local brother is using him toward that end in some very difficult places. The father is in the Indian Army and was actually onsite when that huge brawl broke out recently between Chinese and Indian troops on a high-altitude disputed border. I believe 20 Indian soldiers were killed. You can read about it HERE, very interesting.
Also, here is the link to an encouraging testimony from five years ago concerning that summer in Ladakh when Acts 28:31 was our prayer and our testimony: TO THE JEW FIRST AND ALSO TO THE GENTILE.
Much that shouldn't have happened from a human perspective HAPPENED that summer of 2015 in Ladakh, including the baptism of a local family who continues to serve the LORD, even to this day.
As mentioned, while meditating upon Isaiah 50, the Lord took me back to Acts 28:31, and all this had me instantly reflecting upon the last three months. As Acts 28:31 summarized the last two years of Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome, and as it effectively summarized our 2015 summer of ministry in Ladakh, by God’s grace, it summarizes my current time in North Carolina amidst pandemic restrictions, hypochondriac paranoia, unconstitutional and tyrannical prohibitions, and unrest in the streets. When this all started, our local church decided to keep preaching the kingdom of God to the lost, to keep teaching one another the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ (i.e. something you have to assemble to do), and to do so boldly. I determined the same thing for my local martial arts dojo that serves as a platform for these very things. We simply kept doing what we were accustomed to doing in spite of being told we shouldn’t, and we did so under a governor’s “house arrest.” And, as in Rome, as in Ladakh . . . NO MAN FORBIDDING. These past three months, it’s been a pleasure to sows seeds of the Gospel with the lost in my community, to preach in the streets, to sit and be nourished in my local church under some of the best preaching and teaching I have ever heard, to watch God call a young man to the Gospel ministry, to see the Lord work in someone’s marriage, and to strengthen relationships with local law enforcement to the point that officers will personally contact me to ask for prayers. I wouldn't trade any of this for the freedom of the open road or the summer we wanted to happen in Peru, something God's Providence overruled.
Christian, what God commands--the regular assembling together of believers (Hebrews 10:28); the preaching of the Gospel (Mark 16:15-16); singing to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19), etc.--when they say you can’t, when they say you shouldn’t, when all manmade reasoning concludes that it won’t work or will not be allowed, just keep: “Preaching the kingdom of God (i.e. to the lost, both Jew and Gentile), teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ (i.e. to the believer), with all confidence . . . “ And like Paul, you very well may able to look back and say: “Hey, that was our testimony, and no man stopped us.” Oh, a governor may have said thus and thus, a President may have forbid thus and thus, your Christian friends may have scoffed thus and thus, or a mob may have threatened thus and thus . . . but no man has the power to stop God's work unless it is given him from above. And, WHAT GOD COMMANDS, NO MAN HAS JURISDICTION TO FORBID. Therefore, set your face like a flint!
We have been assembling regularly at New Testament Christian Fellowship in Catawba County, NC since this all began . . . NO MAN FORBIDDING. Lately, Eric Trent has been given opportunity by the elders to preach exegetically through the first chapter of Titus. I have been greatly blessed by this preaching.
There is another important lesson we learn in this last chapter of Acts from the Apostle to the Gentiles and the greatest missionary the New Testament church has ever known, second only to Jesus Christ. Who did Paul preach to first when he finally, after all the many years of longing, arrived in Rome? It was the JEWS. And, based upon all his previous experience, who was the most likely to make big problems for him in terms of his appeal to Caesar? It was the JEWS. Yet, he, the Apostle to the Gentiles (Romans 11:13), called them together first, preached first to those who weren’t even the “people group” to which he was called. My friends, a local church’s missions ministry that does not in some way invest in the Jewish people is not modeled after the Gentile missions ministry of the greatest Christian missionary the world has ever seen! Investing something in Jewish missions, even a little something, brings a local church’s Great Commission vision into balance. It’s right, and it’s good, and it follows in the footsteps of one who kept doing that he was doing, even under house arrest. We are endeavoring to do this and much appreciate your continued support.
In recent days, I have checked on some of our Israeli contacts from summers past via instant message. It's always a good opportunity to let them know someone is praying for them in the name of Messiah from far away and to sow further seed of the Gospel. I recently wrote to a young man who we spent some good time with in Huaraz last summer:
I was thinking about you and praying for you and your family, my friend, in the name of the Messiah. I hope we can connect again soon, face-to-face. Have a blessed week. And please consider the God of Israel! All the things happening in the world today were foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures, the birth pangs of the coming Messiah. God bless you and your family. -Yishai (Hebrew for Jesse)
He promptly responded with gratitude and joy to have heard from me. The lesson is simple. You can be stuck in North Carolina and still sow seeds of the Gospel with Israeli backpackers, no man forbidding.
It's been fun to continuing sowing seeds, while stuck in North Carolina, with Israeli friends that visited our home in Peru last summer.
Still, we long to get back out on the road or to salvage the end of this year with a trip to Israel. Presently, the Hand of Providence has not opened the door, but we are seeking and praying and watching. Lord willing, we hope to spend some time after the first of August preaching and sowing around this country. The malls are opened back up in some states, and this nation is in desperate need of Gospel preaching on its streets and in its highways and byways. I hope we can go to Israel between the Sukkot and Hannukah holidays when all is quiet. The Lord knoweth.
Financial support has dropped these last few months. Your prayers for God's provision are much appreciated. If the Lord should lay it upon your heart to give something financially, contributions are tax-deductible and can be made online: paypal.me/zerayim
Let us know how we can pray for you specifically, and we will.
For the Word of God & the Testimony of the Messiah,
Jesse Boyd, President
Full Proof Gospel Ministries