A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. I find it strange when people think Christians are narrow-minded, but even stranger when too many of us prove them right! Reading the grand story of the Bible, we find God’s people as fish out of water, constantly finding new ways to communicate the truth of God’s character through the languages and cultures around them. Joseph went from being a slave and condemned prisoner to the right hand of a global superpower. Moses was raised within the Judaism of his family, the Egyptian learning of Pharaoh’s house, and the wilderness wisdom of his wife’s Bedouin roots, which all prepared him to lead his people. Across Scripture we see God frequently taking the best and most beautiful aspects of all His image-bearers and using those things to draw all peoples to Himself. This was just as true of Paul as it was of his Jewish ancestors. Paul grew up within the Pharisaic tradition, but also as a Roman citizen. This widened his worldview long before Jesus met him on the road to Damascus and called him to be a missionary to the nations. Paul was always paying attention to his surroundings, leveraging the best ideas of his environment to communicate the good news of Jesus. We see this brilliantly on display from the heights of Athens to the depths of a Roman dungeon (Acts 17; Ephesians 6). Among the Greeks, he used the plurality of idols to share the "Unknown God," and as the frequent guest of the imperial guard, he adopted their military language to describe his service to Christ. Writing to the multicultural church in Philippi, Paul saw how they were getting lost in translation, creating confusion and conflict among themselves. Instead of narrowing their field of vision, Paul encouraged them to widen it—not to think less, but more! Frank Thielman notes, “Paul asserts the need for believers to cast their intellectual nets widely—to allow all that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy, wherever it is found, to shape their thinking.” As Christians, we should be known for our love for one another and our curiosity and compassion toward all, because we’ve been saturated by His Word and empowered by His Spirit. May this be said of us.
